@article{FoersterMoellerFringsetal.2023, author = {Foerster, Anna and Moeller, Birte and Frings, Christian and Pfister, Roland}, title = {What is left after an error? Towards a comprehensive account of goal-based binding and retrieval}, series = {Attention, Perception, \& Psychophysics}, volume = {85}, journal = {Attention, Perception, \& Psychophysics}, number = {1}, doi = {10.3758/s13414-022-02609-w}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-324851}, pages = {120-139}, year = {2023}, abstract = {The cognitive system readily detects and corrects erroneous actions by establishing episodic bindings between representations of the acted upon stimuli and the intended correct response. If these stimuli are encountered again, they trigger the retrieval of the correct response. Thus, binding and retrieval efficiently pave the way for future success. The current study set out to define the role of the erroneous response itself and explicit feedback for the error during these processes of goal-based binding and retrieval. Two experiments showed robust and similar binding and retrieval effects with and without feedback and pointed towards sustained activation of the unbound, erroneous response. The third experiment confirmed that the erroneous response is more readily available than a neutral alternative. Together, the results demonstrate that episodic binding biases future actions toward success, guided primarily through internal feedback processes, while the erroneous response still leaves detectable traces in human action control.}, language = {en} } @article{ReisPfisterFoerster2023, author = {Reis, Moritz and Pfister, Roland and Foerster, Anna}, title = {Cognitive load promotes honesty}, series = {Psychological Research}, volume = {87}, journal = {Psychological Research}, number = {3}, doi = {10.1007/s00426-022-01686-8}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-324913}, pages = {826-844}, year = {2023}, abstract = {In three experiments, we examined the cognitive underpinnings of self-serving dishonesty by manipulating cognitive load under different incentive structures. Participants could increase a financial bonus by misreporting outcomes of private die rolls without any risk of detection. At the same time, they had to remember letter strings of varying length. If honesty is the automatic response tendency and dishonesty is cognitively demanding, lying behavior should be less evident under high cognitive load. This hypothesis was supported by the outcome of two out of three experiments. We further manipulated whether all trials or only one random trial determined payoff to modulate reward adaptation over time (Experiment 2) and whether payoff was framed as a financial gain or loss (Experiment 3). The payoff scheme of one random or all trials did not affect lying behavior and, discordant to earlier research, facing losses instead of gains did not increase lying behavior. Finally, cognitive load and incentive frame interacted significantly, but contrary to our assumption gains increased lying under low cognitive load. While the impact of cognitive load on dishonesty appears to be comparably robust, motivational influences seem to be more elusive than commonly assumed in current theorizing.}, language = {en} } @article{FoersterPfisterWirthetal.2023, author = {Foerster, Anna and Pfister, Roland and Wirth, Robert and Kunde, Wilfried}, title = {Post-execution monitoring in dishonesty}, series = {Psychological Research}, volume = {87}, journal = {Psychological Research}, number = {3}, doi = {10.1007/s00426-022-01691-x}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-324862}, pages = {845-861}, year = {2023}, abstract = {When telling a lie, humans might engage in stronger monitoring of their behavior than when telling the truth. Initial evidence has indeed pointed towards a stronger recruitment of capacity-limited monitoring processes in dishonest than honest responding, conceivably resulting from the necessity to overcome automatic tendencies to respond honestly. Previous results suggested monitoring to be confined to response execution, however, whereas the current study goes beyond these findings by specifically probing for post-execution monitoring. Participants responded (dis)honestly to simple yes/no questions in a first task and switched to an unrelated second task after a response-stimulus interval of 0 ms or 1000 ms. Dishonest responses did not only prolong response times in Task 1, but also in Task 2 with a short response-stimulus interval. These findings support the assumption that increased monitoring for dishonest responses extends beyond mere response execution, a mechanism that is possibly tuned to assess the successful completion of a dishonest act.}, language = {en} } @article{ReisPfisterKundeetal.2023, author = {Reis, Moritz and Pfister, Roland and Kunde, Wilfried and Foerster, Anna}, title = {Creative thinking does not promote dishonesty}, series = {Royal Society Open Science}, volume = {10}, journal = {Royal Society Open Science}, number = {12}, issn = {2054-5703}, doi = {10.1098/rsos.230879}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-349859}, year = {2023}, abstract = {We assessed the relation of creativity and unethical behaviour by manipulating the thinking style of participants (N = 450 adults) and measuring the impact of this manipulation on the prevalence of dishonest behaviour. Participants performed one of three inducer tasks: the alternative uses task to promote divergent thinking, the remote associates task to promote convergent thinking, or a simple classification task for rule-based thinking. Before and after this manipulation, participants conducted the mind game as a straightforward measure of dishonesty. Dishonest behaviour increased from before to after the intervention, but we found no credible evidence that this increase differed between induced mindsets. Exploratory analyses did not support any relation of trait creativity and dishonesty either. We conclude that the influence of creative thinking on unethical behaviour seems to be more ambiguous than assumed in earlier research or might be restricted to specific populations or contexts.}, language = {en} } @article{PfisterSchwarzHolzmannetal.2023, author = {Pfister, Roland and Schwarz, Katharina A. and Holzmann, Patricia and Reis, Moritz and Yogeeswaran, Kumar and Kunde, Wilfried}, title = {Headlines win elections: mere exposure to fictitious news media alters voting behavior}, series = {PloS One}, volume = {18}, journal = {PloS One}, number = {8}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0289341}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-349845}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Repeatedly encountering a stimulus biases the observer's affective response and evaluation of the stimuli. Here we provide evidence for a causal link between mere exposure to fictitious news reports and subsequent voting behavior. In four pre-registered online experiments, participants browsed through newspaper webpages and were tacitly exposed to names of fictitious politicians. Exposure predicted voting behavior in a subsequent mock election, with a consistent preference for frequent over infrequent names, except when news items were decidedly negative. Follow-up analyses indicated that mere media presence fuels implicit personality theories regarding a candidate's vigor in political contexts. News outlets should therefore be mindful to cover political candidates as evenly as possible.}, language = {en} } @article{PfisterFoerster2022, author = {Pfister, Roland and Foerster, Anna}, title = {How to measure post-error slowing: The case of pre-error speeding}, series = {Behavior Research Methods}, volume = {54}, journal = {Behavior Research Methods}, number = {1}, issn = {1554-3528}, doi = {10.3758/s13428-021-01631-4}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-273244}, pages = {435-443}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Post-error slowing is one of the most widely employed measures to study cognitive and behavioral consequences of error commission. Several methods have been proposed to quantify the post-error slowing effect, and we discuss two main methods: The traditional method of comparing response times in correct post-error trials to response times of correct trials that follow another correct trial, and a more recent proposal of comparing response times in correct post-error trials to the corresponding correct pre-error trials. Based on thorough re-analyses of two datasets, we argue that the latter method provides an inflated estimate by also capturing the (partially) independent effect of pre-error speeding. We propose two solutions for improving the assessment of human error processing, both of which highlight the importance of distinguishing between initial pre-error speeding and later post-error slowing.}, language = {en} } @article{ReisPfister2022, author = {Reis, Moritz and Pfister, Roland}, title = {Being Observed Does Not Boost Rule Retrieval}, series = {Advances in Cognitive Psychology}, volume = {18}, journal = {Advances in Cognitive Psychology}, number = {3}, doi = {10.5709/acp-0359-8}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-301089}, pages = {173 -- 178}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Previous research, mainly focusing on the situational preconditions of rule violations, indicates that feelings of being watched by other agents promote rule compliance. However, the cognitive underpinnings of this effect and of rule violations in general have only attracted little scientific attention yet. In this study, we investigated whether cues of being observed not only reduce the likelihood of violating rules but also affect the underlying cognitive processes of such behavior when still putting a rule violation into action. Therefore, we applied a motion-tracking paradigm in which participants could violate a simple stimulus-response mapping rule while being faced with pictures of either open or closed eyes. In line with prior research, temporal and spatial measures of the participants' movements indicated that violating this rule induced substantial cognitive conflict. However, conflict during rulebreaking was not moderated by the eye stimuli. This outcome suggests that rule retrieval constitutes an automatic process which is not or is only barely influenced by situational parameters. Moreover, our results imply that the effect of perceived observation on rule conformity is driven by normative influences on decision-making instead of social facilitation of dominant action tendencies.}, language = {en} } @article{NeszmelyiWellerKundeetal.2022, author = {Neszm{\´e}lyi, Bence and Weller, Lisa and Kunde, Wilfried and Pfister, Roland}, title = {Social action effects: representing predicted partner responses in social interactions}, series = {Frontiers in Human Neuroscience}, volume = {16}, journal = {Frontiers in Human Neuroscience}, issn = {1662-5161}, doi = {10.3389/fnhum.2022.837495}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-276609}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The sociomotor framework outlines a possible role of social action effects on human action control, suggesting that anticipated partner reactions are a major cue to represent, select, and initiate own body movements. Here, we review studies that elucidate the actual content of social action representations and that explore factors that can distinguish action control processes involving social and inanimate action effects. Specifically, we address two hypotheses on how the social context can influence effect-based action control: first, by providing unique social features such as body-related, anatomical codes, and second, by orienting attention towards any relevant feature dimensions of the action effects. The reviewed empirical work presents a surprisingly mixed picture: while there is indirect evidence for both accounts, previous studies that directly addressed the anatomical account showed no signs of the involvement of genuinely social features in sociomotor action control. Furthermore, several studies show evidence against the differentiation of social and non-social action effect processing, portraying sociomotor action representations as remarkably non-social. A focus on enhancing the social experience in future studies should, therefore, complement the current database to establish whether such settings give rise to the hypothesized influence of social context.}, language = {en} } @article{EckDignathKalckertetal.2022, author = {Eck, Julia and Dignath, David and Kalckert, Andreas and Pfister, Roland}, title = {Instant disembodiment of virtual body parts}, series = {Attention, Perception, \& Psychophysics}, volume = {84}, journal = {Attention, Perception, \& Psychophysics}, number = {8}, doi = {10.3758/s13414-022-02544-w}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-324844}, pages = {2725-2740}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Evidence from multisensory body illusions suggests that body representations may be malleable, for instance, by embodying external objects. However, adjusting body representations to current task demands also implies that external objects become disembodied from the body representation if they are no longer required. In the current web-based study, we induced the embodiment of a two-dimensional (2D) virtual hand that could be controlled by active movements of a computer mouse or on a touchpad. Following initial embodiment, we probed for disembodiment by comparing two conditions: Participants either continued moving the virtual hand or they stopped moving and kept the hand still. Based on theoretical accounts that conceptualize body representations as a set of multisensory bindings, we expected gradual disembodiment of the virtual hand if the body representations are no longer updated through correlated visuomotor signals. In contrast to our prediction, the virtual hand was instantly disembodied as soon as participants stopped moving it. This result was replicated in two follow-up experiments. The observed instantaneous disembodiment might suggest that humans are sensitive to the rapid changes that characterize action and body in virtual environments, and hence adjust corresponding body representations particularly swiftly.}, language = {en} } @article{KlaffehnSellmannKirschetal.2021, author = {Klaffehn, Annika L. and Sellmann, Florian B. and Kirsch, Wladimir and Kunde, Wilfried and Pfister, Roland}, title = {Temporal binding as multisensory integration: Manipulating perceptual certainty of actions and their effects}, series = {Attention, Perception \& Psychophysics}, volume = {83}, journal = {Attention, Perception \& Psychophysics}, number = {8}, issn = {1943-393X}, doi = {10.3758/s13414-021-02314-0}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-273195}, pages = {3135-3145}, year = {2021}, abstract = {It has been proposed that statistical integration of multisensory cues may be a suitable framework to explain temporal binding, that is, the finding that causally related events such as an action and its effect are perceived to be shifted towards each other in time. A multisensory approach to temporal binding construes actions and effects as individual sensory signals, which are each perceived with a specific temporal precision. When they are integrated into one multimodal event, like an action-effect chain, the extent to which they affect this event's perception depends on their relative reliability. We test whether this assumption holds true in a temporal binding task by manipulating certainty of actions and effects. Two experiments suggest that a relatively uncertain sensory signal in such action-effect sequences is shifted more towards its counterpart than a relatively certain one. This was especially pronounced for temporal binding of the action towards its effect but could also be shown for effect binding. Other conceptual approaches to temporal binding cannot easily explain these results, and the study therefore adds to the growing body of evidence endorsing a multisensory approach to temporal binding.}, language = {en} }