Search

Young children show remarkably sophisticated abilities to evaluate others. Yet their abilities to engage in proportional moral evaluation undergoes protracted development. Namely, young children evaluate someone who shares "absolutely" more as being "nicer" than someone who shares "proportionally" more (e.g., sharing 3-out-of-6 is nicer than sharing 2-out-of-3, because 3 > 2, even though 3/6 < 2/3), whereas adults think the opposite. We investigate the hypothesis that this prior work underestimates children's proportional social reasoning by relying on discrete and spatially separated quantities (e.g., individual stickers), which can hinder proportional reasoning even outside social contexts. In three experiments we examine whether 4- and 5-year-old children's social evaluations are impacted by the discreteness and spatial separation of the resource and compare their behavior to adults (18 to 63 years; across all samples: 38% girls/women, 62% boys/men; no other demographic data was collected). We find that children are sensitive to these features: when the resource was divided into discrete units (Experiment 1) or spatially separated (Experiment 2) children were more likely to use absolute amount, as opposed to proportion, relative to when the resources were not divided and remained spatially connected. However, adults were highly sensitive to proportion regardless of the display's perceptual features (Experiment 3), and children's use of proportion remained below adult-levels. These results suggest that perceptual features influence children's use of absolute versus proportional information in their social evaluations, which has theoretical and methodological implications for understanding children's conceptions of fairness.

Socially savvy individuals track what they know and what other people likely know, and they use this information to navigate the social world. We examine whether children expect people to have shared knowledge based on their social relationships (e.g., expecting friends to know each other's secrets, expecting members of the same cultural group to share cultural knowledge) and we compare children's reasoning about shared knowledge to their reasoning about common knowledge (e.g., the wrongness of moral violations). In three studies, we told 4- to 9-year-olds (N = 227) about what a child knew and asked who else knew the information: The child's friend (Studies 1-3), the child's schoolmate (Study 1), another child from the same national group (Study 2), or the child's sibling (Study 3). In all three studies, older children reliably used relationships to infer what other people knew. Moreover, with age, children increasingly considered both the type of knowledge and an individual's social relationships when reporting who knew what. The results provide support for a 'Selective Inferences' hypothesis and suggest that children's early attention to social relationships facilitates an understanding of how knowledge transfers -- an otherwise challenging cognitive process.

Condemnation is ubiquitous in the social world and adults treat condemnation as a costly signal. We explore when children begin to treat condemnation as a signal by presenting 4- to 9-year-old children (N = 435) with stories involving a condemner of stealing and a noncondemner. Children were asked to predict who would be more likely to steal as well as who should be punished more harshly for stealing. In five studies, we found that 7- to 9-year-old children treat condemnation as a signal--thinking that a condemner is less likely to steal and should be punished more harshly if caught hypocritically stealing later. We discuss the implications of these results for children's emerging understanding of signaling and moral condemnation.

Secrets carry valuable social information. Because the content of secrets can be damaging to the secret-keeper's reputation, people should only disclose their secrets to people whom they trust. Therefore, tracking which people know each other's secrets can be used as cue of social relationships: If one person tells another person a secret, those people are likely friends. Here, in 5 studies with 3- to 12-year-old children (total N = 452), we examined the developmental trajectory of reasoning about secret sharing as an indication of third-party friendship. By age 6, but not before, children expected that a person would be friends with someone that she told a secret. We replicated this main finding across four studies by comparing secret sharing to other cues of affiliation. Children treated sharing a secret as a stronger cue to friendship than sharing a physical object (Study 1), sharing a fact (Studies 2-4), or sharing membership on the same sports team (Study 3). Although younger children did not understand that secret sharing indicated friendship, they did expect people to be more likely to disclose their secrets to friends than to nonfriends (Study 5). Taken together, our results indicate that children understand the social significance of sharing secrets and use secret sharing to make important predictions about the social world. Specifically, children infer social relationships based on which people know each other's secrets and expect others to share secrets selectivity with friends.

Across a variety of situations, people strongly condemn plagiarizers who steal credit for ideas, even when the theft in question does not appear to harm anyone. Why would people react negatively to relatively harmless acts of plagiarism? In six experiments, we predict and find that these negative reactions are driven by people's aversion toward agents who attempt to falsely improve their reputations. In Studies 1-3, participants condemn plagiarism cases that they agree are harmless (i.e., stealing credit from an anonymous source). This effect is mediated by the extent to which participants perceive the plagiarizer to have falsely benefitted from plagiarizing. In Studies 4-5, we demonstrate that this effect is not explained solely by participants' negative response to lies or violations of permission. In Study 6, participants condemn a plagiarism case in which the idea's original author actually "benefits", providing the strongest evidence that people condemn plagiarism for reasons beyond perceived harm. We discuss how this work connects to broader questions of intellectual property and impression management.

Purpose: Many athletes report consuming alcohol the day before their event, which might negatively affect their performance. However, the effects of previous-day alcohol ingestion on performance are equivocal, in part, due to no standardization of alcohol dose in previous studies. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of a standardized previous-day alcohol dose and its corresponding impact on morning-after muscular strength, muscular power, and muscular fatigue in a short-duration test and on performance of severe-intensity exercise. Methods: On 2 occasions, 12 recreationally active individuals reported to the Applied Physiology Laboratory in the evening and ingested a beverage containing either 1.09 g ethanol·kg−1 fat-free body mass (ALC condition) or water (PLA condition). The following morning, they completed a hangover symptom questionnaire, vertical jumps, isometric midthigh pulls, biceps curls, and a constant-power cycle ergometer test to exhaustion. The responses from ALC and PLA were compared using paired-means t tests. Results: Time to exhaustion in the cycle ergometer tests was less (P =.03) in the ALC condition (181 [39] s vs 203 [34] s; –11%, Cohen d = 0.61). There was no difference in performance in vertical jump test, isometric midthigh pulls, and biceps curls tests between the ALC and PLA conditions. Conclusions: Previous-day alcohol consumption significantly reduces morning-after performance of severe-intensity exercise. Practitioners should educate their athletes, especially those whose events rely on anaerobic capacity and/or a rapid response of the aerobic pathways, of the adverse effect of previous-day alcohol consumption on performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the update from ENDF/B-VII.1 to ENDF/B-VIII.0, copper cross sections were significantly altered in the intermediate and fast spectrum of the ENDF-VIII.0 library. Performance of this ENDF data requires validation to determine whether recent evaluation has proven beneficial. To examine the performance of the new library, particularly new copper data, critical benchmarks from the ICSBEP handbook were chosen for their sensitivity to copper cross section changes and modeled using SCALE continuous energy Monte Carlo simulations. Selected benchmarks were modeled in ENDF-VII.1 and ENDF-VIII.0 to compute keff within a statistical uncertainty of 10 pcm and compared in reference to the benchmark experimental criticality. Due to spectrum choices in selection based on the changes to cross section data, the set of benchmarks consist of intermediately enriched uranium, highly enriched uranium, or plutonium systems. 11 separate benchmark evaluations containing 32 individual configurations highly sensitive to copper were selected, modelled, and compared to benchmark experimental criticality. This work demonstrates a significant decrease in the deviation between calculated and experimental criticality as a result of the ENDF-VIII.0 library; a decrease in absolute mean deviation from 522.5±39.3 to 249.6±39.3, and a decrease in root mean square deviation from 630.8±46.1 to 338.1±74.9. Additionally, the role of recently evaluated copper data in this improved agreement is presented, confirming the benefit of reaffirming cross section data.

As scientists, we primarily award authorship, as well as legal patents, to those who generate ideas, often without formally crediting others who executed the actual experiments. However, little is known about how and when people come to value ideas. Here, we investigate whether young children also value ideas over labor. In Study 1, we found that 4 and 6 year olds preferred pictures containing their ideas to those containing their labor. In Study 2 we rule out an alternative explanation--that children simply favor pictures containing their idiosyncratic preferences--by discovering that 6 year olds, but not 4 year olds chose a picture they mistakenly believed contained their idea, over a picture that contained their idiosyncratic preferences. Consistent with these results, using a third-party design in Study 3, we found that 6 year olds, but not 4 year olds favored a person who only contributed an idea over another who only contributed labor in awarding ownership. Across three studies, these results suggest that by 6 years old, children value ideas over labor. (Contains 4 figures.)

Elucidating how inequity aversion (a tendency to dislike and correct unequal outcomes) functions as one develops is important to understanding more complex fairness considerations in adulthood. Although previous research has demonstrated that adults and children reduce inequity, it is unclear if people are actually responding negatively to inequity or if people dislike others getting more than them (motivated by social comparison) and like to share maximal resources, especially with those who have few resources (motivated by social welfare preferences). In order to evaluate if children are truly averse to inequity, we had 3- to 8-year-old children distribute resources to 3rd parties and found that 6- to 8-year-old children would rather throw a resource in the trash than distribute unequally, suggesting that concerns with equity can trump concerns with maximal sharing. We also demonstrated that children's reactions were not based on wanting to avoid upsetting the recipients or based on a preference for visual symmetry and that children will even throw away a resource that could have gone to themselves in order to avoid inequity. These results demonstrate the existence of inequity aversion in children, provide a new method for studying inequity aversion specifically, and suggest the need for new models to explain why inequity aversion may have evolved. (Contains 2 figures.)

Adults believe that plagiarizing ideas is wrong, which requires an understanding that others can have ideas and that it is wrong to copy them. In order to test when this understanding emerges, we investigated when children begin to think plagiarism is wrong. In Study 1, children aged 7, 9 and 11 years old, as well as adults, disliked someone who plagiarized compared to someone who drew an original drawing or someone who drew an identical picture by chance. Study 2 investigated the same question with younger children, focusing on children aged 3-6 years old. Children aged 5-6 years old evaluated plagiarizers negatively relative to unique drawers, but 3-4-year-olds did not. Study 3 replicated the findings from Study 2 and found that children justify their negative evaluations of plagiarizers by mentioning concerns over copying. These experiments provide evidence that, by age 5 years old, children understand that others have ideas and dislike the copying of these ideas.

People care where others around them stand on contentious moral and political issues. Yet when faced with the prospect of taking sides and the possibility of alienating observers with whom they might disagree, actors often try to "stay out of it"--communicating that they would rather not to take a side at all. We demonstrate that despite its intuitive appeal for reducing conflict, opting not to take sides over moralized issues can harm trust, even relative to siding against an observer's viewpoint outright. Across eleven experiments (N = 4,383) using controlled scenarios, real press video clips, and incentivized economic games, we find that attempts to stay out of the fray are often interpreted as deceptive and untrustworthy. When actors choose not to take sides, observers often ascribe concealed opposition, an attribution of strategic deception which provokes distrust and undermines real-stakes cooperation and partner choice. We further demonstrate that this effect arises only when staying out of it seems strategic: Actors who seem to hold genuine middle-ground beliefs or who lack incentives for impression management are not distrusted for avoiding conflict. People are often asked to take sides in moral and political disagreement. Our findings outline a reputational risk awaiting those who opt not to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the nuclear data evaluation and validation cycle, the ENDF/B-VIII.0 cross-section library released in 2018 requires testing to determine areas of improvement and deterioration. Previous work by the authors investigated the performance of 16O, 56Fe, and 63,65Cu cross sections, with this study acting as an extension of the prior work. In addition to the isotopes and nuclear criticality safety benchmarks of interest to the prior work, benchmarks from the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project Handbook were selected for their keff sensitivity to ¹H, C, 58,60Ni, 182,183,184,186W, 235,238U, or 239Pu cross sections and were modeled in the SCALE code system maintained by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In total, 253 benchmark configurations were selected for their sensitivities and modeled using SCALE 6.2.4 Criticality Safety Analysis Sequences (CSAS) continuous-energy Monte Carlo keff calculations. This collection includes and expands upon the 99 benchmarks in the prior work. The AMPX-processed ENDF/B-VIII.0 library was decomposed into individual ENDF/B-VIII.0 datum libraries for each isotope of interest. Doing so allowed for the individual substitution of an ENDF/B-VIII.0 cross section in the place of ENDF/B-VII.1, determining isotope-specific effects of ENDF/B-VIII.0 relative to ENDF/B-VII.1. Full library calculations with entirely ENDF/B-VII.1 data or entirely ENDF/B-VIII.0 data were also executed. As a measure of performance, the average relative deviation was determined as the ratio of the deviation between calculated and experimental keff to the propagated calculational and experimental uncertainty. With calculated full library and isotope-specific ENDF/B-VIII.0 keff's, an optimized combination of data libraries was estimated and confirmed with SCALE calculations. This showed that reverting 239Pu, 58Ni, 16O, and 65Cu cross sections to ENDF/B-VII.1 resulted in improved performance relative to the full ENDF/B-VIII.0 library. Across all 253 benchmarks, the average relative deviation was 1.29s for the full ENDF/B-VII.1 library, 1.17s for the full ENDF/B-VIII.0 library, and 0.97s for the optimized combination. The reversion of 239Pu, 58Ni, 16O, and 65Cu cross sections to ENDF/B-VII.1 in the 99 benchmarks of the prior work resulted in further improved experimental agreement compared to the previously reported improvement from 16O and 65Cu alone. Therefore, it is suggested that applications with significant sensitivities to 239Pu, 58Ni, 16O, and 65Cu consider their choice of nuclear data library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children engage in reputation management to appear favorably to others. The present studies explore when children use reputational motives to predict others' behavior. Four- to 9-year-old children (N = 576; 53% female; approximately 60% White) heard stories about two kids: one who cares about being competent, and one who cares about appearing competent. Across five studies, with age, children predicted the reputationally motivated child would be more likely to lie to cover up failure (OR = 1.97) but less likely to seek help in public (vs. private; OR = 0.53) or downplay success (OR = 0.66). With age, children also liked this character less (OR = 0.56). Implications of these findings for children's reputation management and achievement motivation are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research documents "the friendly taking effect" in choosing consumption packages for the self and others, interpersonal closeness leads to a preference for a self-benefiting package when this package also offers greater total benefit to the self-other collective (studies 1 and 2). We propose that a friendly intention (i.e., concern for the total benefit) underlies the friendly taking effect; therefore, people both take more from and give more to a close (vs. distant) other when doing so offers greater benefits in total (study 3), and people are cognitively tuned in to (e.g., acquire, remember) information about the total benefit more when choosing a package for themselves and a close (vs. distant) other (study 4). Moreover, the importance people place on the total benefit mediates the impact of closeness on people's preference for self-benefiting packages (study 5). We explore boundary conditions (study 6) and implications for marketers of consumption packages (study 7). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether a student wants to improve their ability (i.e., has learning goals) or demonstrate it (i.e., has performance goals) plays an important role in their learning and motivation; students focused on the latter tend to avoid taking on challenges and seeking help when they need it. In the achievement literature, these different goals are thought to result primarily from holding different mindsets about whether one's ability is malleable or fixed. We argue, however, that this traditional framework has largely overlooked the powerful role that reputational concerns play in influencing which achievement goals students pursue. Specifically, reputational concerns may drive students to pursue performance goals and "prove" their ability to others, irrespective of their mindsets. We argue that closely investigating these concerns may help uncover new mechanisms by which performance goals are fostered and maintained as well as new strategies for developing interventions aimed at encouraging learning goals. Finally, we offer suggestions for how the achievement and reputation management literatures can be productively brought to bear on one another in future research. This article is categorized under:Psychology > Reasoning and Decision MakingPsychology > Emotion and MotivationPsychology > Development and Aging [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Delay to closure of ileostomy following anterior resection for rectal cancer may impair postoperative bowel function and quality of life. We analysed time to ileostomy closure across the UK and investigated factors delaying closure. Methods: For the retrospective cohort we assessed time to closure and incidence of non‐closure for patients who underwent anterior resection with defunctioning ileostomy during 2015. Multivariate linear/Cox regression analyses were performed. For the prospective cohort we captured patients undergoing ileostomy closure during a 3‐month period in 2018 to validate retrospective findings. Results: The retrospective cohort involved 788 patients of whom 669 (84.9%) had bowel continuity restored, median time to closure 259 days. Recognized factors associated with delay and risk of non‐closure included anastomotic leak (hazard ratio [HR] 3.65, 2.61–5.08), chemotherapy (HR 2.62, 2.17–3.15) and cancer progression (HR 2.05, 1.62–2.58). Crucially, specific aspects of the surgical pathway were associated with time to closure; for example, waiting list entry prior to outpatient clinic review/imaging was associated with an estimated 133‐day shorter interval to closure (P < 0.001). In the prospective cohort 288 patients underwent closure, at a median of 271 days. Chemotherapy use and cancer progression were associated with delay to closure while listing for surgery prior to clinic and imaging was associated with an estimated shorter interval to closure of 168 days (P = 0.008). Conclusions: Delays to closure of ileostomy are common in the UK. Listing patients for surgery only after follow‐up outpatient appointment, imaging or chemotherapy delays closure. Findings will inform consensus guidelines towards an optimum treatment pathway to reduce delay and improve post‐closure quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]