Barbara A Mellers, John P McCoy, Louise Lu, Philip E Tetlock
{"title":"Human and Algorithmic Predictions in Geopolitical Forecasting: Quantifying Uncertainty in Hard-to-Quantify Domains.","authors":"Barbara A Mellers, John P McCoy, Louise Lu, Philip E Tetlock","doi":"10.1177/17456916231185339","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17456916231185339","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research on clinical versus statistical prediction has demonstrated that algorithms make more accurate predictions than humans in many domains. Geopolitical forecasting is an algorithm-unfriendly domain, with hard-to-quantify data and elusive reference classes that make predictive model-building difficult. Furthermore, the stakes can be high, with missed forecasts leading to mass-casualty consequences. For these reasons, geopolitical forecasting is typically done by humans, even though algorithms play important roles. They are essential as aggregators of crowd wisdom, as frameworks to partition human forecasting variance, and as inputs to hybrid forecasting models. Algorithms are extremely important in this domain. We doubt that humans will relinquish control to algorithms anytime soon-nor do we think they should. However, the accuracy of forecasts will greatly improve if humans are aided by algorithms.</p>","PeriodicalId":19757,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"711-721"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11373164/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10109373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Building Human-Like Artificial Agents: A General Cognitive Algorithm for Emulating Human Decision-Making in Dynamic Environments.","authors":"Cleotilde Gonzalez","doi":"10.1177/17456916231196766","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17456916231196766","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>One of the early goals of artificial intelligence (AI) was to create algorithms that exhibited behavior indistinguishable from human behavior (i.e., human-like behavior). Today, AI has diverged, often aiming to excel in tasks inspired by human capabilities and outperform humans, rather than replicating human cogntion and action. In this paper, I explore the overarching question of whether computational algorithms have achieved this initial goal of AI. I focus on dynamic decision-making, approaching the question from the perspective of computational cognitive science. I present a general cognitive algorithm that intends to emulate human decision-making in dynamic environments, as defined in instance-based learning theory (IBLT). I use the cognitive steps proposed in IBLT to organize and discuss current evidence that supports some of the human-likeness of the decision-making mechanisms. I also highlight the significant gaps in research that are required to improve current models and to create higher fidelity in computational algorithms to represent human decision processes. I conclude with concrete steps toward advancing the construction of algorithms that exhibit human-like behavior with the ultimate goal of supporting human dynamic decision-making.</p>","PeriodicalId":19757,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"860-873"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71413406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial for the Special Issue on Algorithms in Our Lives.","authors":"Sudeep Bhatia, Mirta Galesic, Melanie Mitchell","doi":"10.1177/17456916231214452","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17456916231214452","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19757,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"707-710"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139080663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gaëtan Mertens, Iris M Engelhard, Derek M Novacek, Richard J McNally
{"title":"Managing Fear During Pandemics: Risks and Opportunities.","authors":"Gaëtan Mertens, Iris M Engelhard, Derek M Novacek, Richard J McNally","doi":"10.1177/17456916231178720","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17456916231178720","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Fear is an emotion triggered by the perception of danger and motivates safety behaviors. Within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were ample danger cues (e.g., images of patients on ventilators) and a high need for people to use appropriate safety behaviors (e.g., social distancing). Given this central role of fear within the context of a pandemic, it is important to review some of the emerging findings and lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and their implications for managing fear. We highlight factors that determine fear (i.e., proximity, predictability, and controllability) and review several adaptive and maladaptive consequences of fear of COVID-19 (e.g., following governmental health policies and panic buying). Finally, we provide directions for future research and make policy recommendations that can promote adequate health behaviors and limit the negative consequences of fear during pandemics.</p>","PeriodicalId":19757,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"652-659"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10293863/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9705158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jade Butterworth, David Smerdon, Roy Baumeister, William von Hippel
{"title":"Cooperation in the Time of COVID.","authors":"Jade Butterworth, David Smerdon, Roy Baumeister, William von Hippel","doi":"10.1177/17456916231178719","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17456916231178719","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Humans evolved to be hyper-cooperative, particularly when among people who are well known to them, when relationships involve reciprocal helping opportunities, and when the costs to the helper are substantially less than the benefits to the recipient. Because humans' cooperative nature evolved over many millennia when they lived exclusively in small groups, factors that cause cooperation to break down tend to be those associated with life in large, impersonal, modern societies: when people are not identifiable, when interactions are one-off, when self-interest is not tied to the interests of others, and when people are concerned that others might free ride. From this perspective, it becomes clear that policies for managing pandemics will be most effective when they highlight superordinate goals and connect people or institutions to one another over multiple identifiable interactions. When forging such connections is not possible, policies should mimic critical components of ancestral conditions by providing reputational markers for cooperators and reducing the systemic damage caused by free riding. In this article, we review policies implemented during the pandemic, highlighting spontaneous community efforts that leveraged these aspects of people's evolved psychology, and consider implications for future decision makers.</p>","PeriodicalId":19757,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"640-651"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10311366/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9742818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Do COVID-19 Vaccination Policies Backfire? The Effects of Mandates, Vaccination Passports, and Financial Incentives on COVID-19 Vaccination.","authors":"Bita Fayaz-Farkhad, Haesung Jung","doi":"10.1177/17456916231178708","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17456916231178708","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Faced with the challenges of motivating people to vaccinate, many countries have introduced policy-level interventions to encourage vaccination against COVID-19. For example, mandates were widely imposed requiring individuals to vaccinate to work and attend school, and vaccination passports required individuals to show proof of vaccination to travel and access public spaces and events. Furthermore, some countries also began offering financial incentives for getting vaccinated. One major criticism of these policies was the possibility that they would produce reactance and thus undermine voluntary vaccination. This article therefore reviews relevant empirical evidence to examine whether this is indeed the case. Specifically, we devote separate sections to reviewing and discussing the impacts of three major policies that were implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic: vaccination mandates, vaccination passports, and the provision of financial incentives. A careful analysis of the evidence provides little support that these policies backfire but instead can effectively promote vaccination at the population level. The policies are not without limitations, however, such as their inability to mobilize those that are strongly hesitant to vaccines. Finally, we discuss how policy-level interventions should be designed and implemented to address future epidemics and pandemics.</p>","PeriodicalId":19757,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"660-674"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11295420/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138478327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Do Pandemic Policies and Communication Shape Intergroup Outcomes? Initial Findings From the COVID-19 Pandemic and Open Questions for Research and Policy.","authors":"Chadly Stern, Benjamin C Ruisch","doi":"10.1177/17456916231185298","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17456916231185298","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Government policies can be productive tools for protecting citizens while simultaneously forging more egalitarian societies. At the same time, history has shown that well-intentioned governmental actions, such as those meant to quell pandemics (e.g., blood-donation restrictions), can single out members of marginalized groups (e.g., men who have sex with men). How did government actions shape intergroup outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic? Here, we draw from emerging research to provide informed conjectures regarding whether and how government actions affected stereotypes (e.g., beliefs about gender), prejudice (e.g., anti-Asian bias), and intergroup violence (e.g., hate crimes against Asian individuals) during the COVID-19 pandemic. We discuss research examining the impact of policies intended to curb the spread of the disease, and we consider possible effects of the strategies used to communicate about the virus. Furthermore, we highlight open questions regarding how and why pandemic policies and communication shape intergroup outcomes, propose key directions for future research, and note possible implications for future development of policy and communication strategies.</p>","PeriodicalId":19757,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"694-703"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9874264","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Maryanne Garry, Rachel Zajac, Lorraine Hope, Marcel Salathé, Linda Levine, Thomas A Merritt
{"title":"Hits and Misses: Digital Contact Tracing in a Pandemic.","authors":"Maryanne Garry, Rachel Zajac, Lorraine Hope, Marcel Salathé, Linda Levine, Thomas A Merritt","doi":"10.1177/17456916231179365","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17456916231179365","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Traditional contact tracing is one of the most powerful weapons people have in the battle against a pandemic, especially when vaccines do not yet exist or do not afford complete protection from infection. But the effectiveness of contact tracing hinges on its ability to find infected people quickly and obtain accurate information from them. Therefore, contact tracing inherits the challenges associated with the fallibilities of memory. Against this backdrop, digital contact tracing is the \"dream scenario\"-an unobtrusive, vigilant, and accurate recorder of danger that should outperform manual contact tracing on every dimension. There is reason to celebrate the success of digital contact tracing. Indeed, epidemiologists report that digital contact tracing probably reduced the incidence of COVID-19 cases by at least 25% in many countries, a feat that would have been hard to match with its manual counterpart. Yet there is also reason to speculate that digital contact tracing delivered on only a fraction of its potential because it almost completely ignored the relevant psychological science. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of digital contact tracing, its hits and misses in the COVID-19 pandemic, and its need to be integrated with the science of human behavior.</p>","PeriodicalId":19757,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"675-685"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/38/3a/10.1177_17456916231179365.PMC10315505.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9735391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jay J Van Bavel, Clara Pretus, Steve Rathje, Philip Pärnamets, Madalina Vlasceanu, Eric D Knowles
{"title":"The Costs of Polarizing a Pandemic: Antecedents, Consequences, and Lessons.","authors":"Jay J Van Bavel, Clara Pretus, Steve Rathje, Philip Pärnamets, Madalina Vlasceanu, Eric D Knowles","doi":"10.1177/17456916231190395","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17456916231190395","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Polarization has been rising in the United States of America for the past few decades and now poses a significant-and growing-public-health risk. One of the signature features of the American response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been the degree to which perceptions of risk and willingness to follow public-health recommendations have been politically polarized. Although COVID-19 has proven more lethal than any war or public-health crisis in American history, the deadly consequences of the pandemic were exacerbated by polarization. We review research detailing how every phase of the COVID-19 pandemic has been polarized, including judgments of risk, spatial distancing, mask wearing, and vaccination. We describe the role of political ideology, partisan identity, leadership, misinformation, and mass communication in this public-health crisis. We then assess the overall impact of polarization on infections, illness, and mortality during the pandemic; offer a psychological analysis of key policy questions; and identify a set of future research questions for scholars and policy experts. Our analysis suggests that the catastrophic death toll in the United States was largely preventable and due, in large part, to the polarization of the pandemic. Finally, we discuss implications for public policy to help avoid the same deadly mistakes in future public-health crises.</p>","PeriodicalId":19757,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"624-639"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41179636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Impact of School Closures on Learning and Mental Health of Children: Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic.","authors":"Deni Mazrekaj, Kristof De Witte","doi":"10.1177/17456916231181108","DOIUrl":"10.1177/17456916231181108","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>To curb the spread of the coronavirus, almost all countries implemented nationwide school closures. Suddenly, students experienced a serious disruption to their school and social lives. In this article, we argue that psychological research offers crucial insights for guiding policy about school closures during crises. To this end, we review the existing literature on the impact of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic on children's learning and mental health. We find that the unprecedented scale and length of school closures resulted in a substantial deficit in children's learning and a deterioration in children's mental health. We then provide policy recommendations on how to ensure children's learning and psychosocial development in the future. Specifically, we recommend that more attention should be paid to students from marginalized groups who are most in need of intervention, evidence-informed and personality-tailored mental-health and social- and emotional-learning programs should be implemented in schools, and generational labels should be avoided.</p>","PeriodicalId":19757,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Psychological Science","volume":" ","pages":"686-693"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11295395/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9767077","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}