Available and unavailable decoys in capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.) decision-making.

Decision-making has been observed to be systematically affected by decoys, i.e., options that should be irrelevant, either because unavailable or because manifestly inferior to other alternatives, and yet shift preferences towards their target.

Context-effect bias in capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.): exploring decoy influences in a value-based food choice task.

Decision making is known to be liable to several context effects. In particular, adding a seemingly irrelevant alternative (decoy) to a set of options can modify preferences: typically, by increasing choices towards whatever option clearly dominates the decoy (attraction effect), but occasionally also decreasing its appeal and generating a shift in the opposite direction (repulsion effect). Both types of decoy effects violate rational choice theory axioms and suggest dynamic processes of preference-formation, in which the value of each alternative is not determined a priori, but it is instead constructed by comparing options during the decision process.

Facial impression of trustworthiness biases statement credibility unless suppressed by facemask.

Unlabelled: The impression of trustworthiness based on someone's facial appearance biases our subsequent behavior toward that subject in a variety of contexts. In this study, we investigated whether facial trustworthiness also biases the credibility of utterances associated with that face (H1). We explored whether this bias is mitigated by utterances eliciting reasoning, i.

Trusting COVID-19 vaccines as individual and social goal.

Trust in vaccines and in the institutions responsible for their management is a key asset in the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. By means of a structured multi-scales survey based on the socio-cognitive model of trust, this study investigates the interplay of institutional trust, confidence in COVID-19 vaccines, information habits, personal motivations, and background beliefs on the pandemic in determining willingness to vaccinate in a sample of Italian respondents (N = 4096). We observe substantial trust in public institutions and a strong vaccination intention.