Unconstrained Descriptions of Facebook Profile Pictures Support High-Dimensional Models of Impression Formation.

Dominant models of impression formation focus on two fundamental dimensions: a horizontal dimension of warmth/communion/trustworthiness and a vertical dimension of competence/agency/dominance. However, these models have typically been studied using theory-driven methods and stimuli of restricted complexity. We used a data-driven approach and naturalistic stimuli to explore the latent dimensions underlying >300,000 unconstrained linguistic descriptions of 1,000 Facebook profile pictures from 2,188 participants.

A few theoretical results for Laplace and arctan penalized ordinary least squares linear regression estimators.

Two new nonconvex penalty functions - Laplace and arctan - were recently introduced in the literature to obtain sparse models for high-dimensional statistical problems. In this paper, we study the theoretical properties of Laplace and arctan penalized ordinary least squares linear regression models. We first illustrate the near-unbiasedness of the nonzero regression weights obtained by the new penalty functions, in the orthonormal design case.

Ethical judgments of poverty depictions in the context of charity advertising.

Aid organizations, activists, and the media often use graphic depictions of human suffering to elicit sympathy and aid. While effective, critics have condemned these practices as exploitative, objectifying, and deceptive, ultimately labeling them 'poverty porn.' This paper examines people's ethical judgments of portrayals of poverty and the criticisms surrounding them, focusing on the context of charity advertising.

Lying is sometimes ethical, but honesty is the best policy: The desire to avoid harmful lies leads to moral preferences for unconditional honesty.

People believe that some lies are ethical, while also claiming that "honesty is the best policy." In this article, we introduce a theory to explain this apparent inconsistency. Even though people view prosocial lies as ethical, they believe it is more important-and more moral-to avoid harmful lies than to allow prosocial lies.

When Interdependence Backfires: The Coronavirus Infected Three Times More People in Rice-Farming Areas During Chinese New Year.

Interdependent cultures around the world have generally controlled COVID-19 better. We tested this pattern in China based on the rice theory, which argues that historically rice-farming regions of China are more interdependent than wheat-farming areas. Unlike earlier findings, rice-farming areas suffered more COVID-19 cases in the early days of the outbreak.

What can machine learning teach us about habit formation? Evidence from exercise and hygiene.

We apply a machine learning technique to characterize habit formation in two large panel data sets with objective measures of 1) gym attendance (over 12 million observations) and 2) hospital handwashing (over 40 million observations). Our Predicting Context Sensitivity (PCS) approach identifies context variables that best predict behavior for each individual. This approach also creates a time series of overall predictability for each individual.

The Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence and the Doctor-Patient Relationship: Origins, Programs, and Future Directions.

The Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence at the University of Chicago was established in 2011 with the mission to improve patient care, strengthen the doctor-patient relationship, enhance communication and decision making in health care, and reduce health care disparities. The Bucksbaum Institute supports the development and activities of medical students, junior faculty, and senior clinicians who devote themselves to improving doctor-patient communication and clinical decision making. The institute seeks to enhance the skills of physicians as advisers, counselors, and navigators to help patients make informed decisions when facing complex treatment choices.

Predicting Outcomes in a Sequence of Binary Events: Belief Updating and Gambler's Fallacy Reasoning.

Beliefs like the Gambler's Fallacy and the Hot Hand have interested cognitive scientists, economists, and philosophers for centuries. We propose that these judgment patterns arise from the observer's mental models of the sequence-generating mechanism, moderated by the strength of belief in an a priori base rate. In six behavioral experiments, participants observed one of three mechanisms generating sequences of eight binary events: a random mechanical device, an intentional goal-directed actor, and a financial market.

Generative models for visualizing idiosyncratic impressions.

In their comprehensive review of research on impressions from faces, Sutherland and Young (this issue) highlight both the remarkable progress and the many challenges facing the field. We focus on two of the challenges: the need for generative, powerful models of impressions and the idiosyncratic nature of complex impressions.

A Randomized Trial of Behavioral Nudges Delivered Through Text Messages to Increase Influenza Vaccination Among Patients With an Upcoming Primary Care Visit.

Purpose: To evaluate if nudges delivered by text message prior to an upcoming primary care visit can increase influenza vaccination rates.

Design: Randomized, controlled trial.

Setting: Two health systems in the Northeastern US between September 2020 and March 2021.

Pivotal voting: The opportunity to tip group decisions skews juries and other voting outcomes.

Many important social and policy decisions are made by small groups of people (e.g., juries, college admissions officers, or corporate boards) with the hope that a collective process will yield better and fairer decisions.

Estimated cost-savings from optimizing use of inhaled medications for inpatients with obstructive lung disease.

Models representing transitions from all-nebulized to nebulizer-plus-MDI respiratory medications resulted in cost savings, largely from the reduction of labor cost of nebulizer administration with nebs-only treatment. Therefore, transitioning from nebs to MDIs can lead to cost savings and could allow greater opportunities for inhaler education.

A 680,000-person megastudy of nudges to encourage vaccination in pharmacies.

Encouraging vaccination is a pressing policy problem. To assess whether text-based reminders can encourage pharmacy vaccination and what kinds of messages work best, we conducted a megastudy. We randomly assigned 689,693 Walmart pharmacy patients to receive one of 22 different text reminders using a variety of different behavioral science principles to nudge flu vaccination or to a business-as-usual control condition that received no messages.

Prosocial lies: Causes and consequences.

Prosocial lies-lies that are intended to benefit others-are ubiquitous. This article reviews recent research on the causes and consequences of prosocial lies. Prosocial lies are often motivated by the desire to spare others from emotional harm.

Thousands Of Lives Could Be Saved In The US During The COVID-19 Pandemic If States Exchanged Ventilators.

It is thought that there are not enough mechanical ventilators in the United States for every patient who may need one during the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. However, there has been no analysis that measures the potential magnitude of the problem or proposes a solution. In this article I combine the pandemic forecasting model used by the federal government with estimates of ventilator availability from the literature to assess the expected shortage under various scenarios.

The ABC of society: Perceived similarity in agency/socioeconomic success and conservative-progressive beliefs increases intergroup cooperation.

The dimensions that explain which societal groups cooperate more with which other groups remain unclear. We predicted that perceived similarity in agency/socioeconomic success and conservative-progressive beliefs increases cooperation across groups. Self-identified members ( = 583) of 30 society-representative U.

A small number of objective function weight vectors is sufficient for automated treatment planning in prostate cancer.

Current practice for treatment planning optimization can be both inefficient and time consuming. In this paper, we propose an automated planning methodology that aims to combine both explorative and prescriptive approaches for improving the efficiency and the quality of the treatment planning process. Given a treatment plan, our explorative approach explores trade-offs between different objectives and finds an acceptable region for objective function weights via inverse optimization.

Hong Kong Liberals Are WEIRD: Analytic Thought Increases Support for Liberal Policies.

This study tests whether liberals and conservatives within the same society think as if they were from different cultures. I tested this by measuring the cultural thought style of social liberals and conservatives in Hong Kong (Study 1). Liberals tended to think more analytically (more "WEIRD"), and conservatives tended to think more holistically (more common in East Asia).

The Empirical Case for Acquiescing to Intuition.

Will people follow their intuition even when they explicitly recognize that it is irrational to do so? Dual-process models of judgment and decision making are often based on the assumption that the correction of errors necessarily follows the detection of errors. But this assumption does not always hold. People can explicitly recognize that their intuitive judgment is wrong but nevertheless maintain it, a phenomenon known as acquiescence.

Cardiology Consultation in the Emergency Department Reduces Re-hospitalizations for Low-Socioeconomic Patients with Acute Decompensated Heart Failure.

Background: Re-hospitalization after discharge for acute decompensated heart failure is a common problem. Low-socioeconomic urban patients suffer high rates of re-hospitalization and often over-utilize the emergency department (ED) for their care. We hypothesized that early consultation with a cardiologist in the ED can reduce re-hospitalization and health care costs for low-socioeconomic urban patients with acute decompensated heart failure.

Too far to help: The effect of perceived distance on the expected impact and likelihood of charitable action.

Fact: Holding force constant, a snowball thrown from 10 feet away will hurt more than one thrown from 50 feet away; it will have more impact. We show that people expect charitable donations-much like snowballs-to have more impact on nearby (vs. faraway) targets.