Explicit discrimination and ingroup favoritism, but no implicit biases in hypothetical triage decisions during COVID-19.

Disturbingly realistic triage scenarios during the COVID-19 pandemic provide an opportunity for studying discrimination in moral reasoning. Biases and favoritism do not need to be explicit and overt, but can remain implicit and covert. In addition to assessing laypeople's propensity for engaging in overt discrimination, the present study examines whether they reveal implicit biases through seemingly fair random allocations.

Humans strategically avoid connecting to others who agree and avert the emergence of network polarization in a coordination task.

Clusters of like-minded individuals can impede consensus in group decision-making. We implemented an online color coordination task to investigate whether control over communication links creates clusters impeding group consensus. In 244 6-member networks, individuals were incentivized to reach a consensus by agreeing on a color, but had conflicting incentives for which color to choose.

Link updating strategies influence consensus decisions as a function of the direction of communication.

Consensus decision-making in social groups strongly depends on communication links that determine to whom individuals send, and from whom they receive, information. Here, we ask how consensus decisions are affected by strategic updating of links and how this effect varies with the direction of communication. We quantified the coevolution of link and opinion dynamics in a large population with binary opinions using mean-field numerical simulations of two voter-like models of opinion dynamics: an incoming model (IM) (where individuals choose who to receive opinions from) and an outgoing model (OM) (where individuals choose who to send opinions to).

The role of position in consensus dynamics of polarizable networks.

Communication constraints often complicate group decision-making. In this experiment, we investigate how the network position of opinionated group members determines both the speed and the outcome of group consensus in 7-member communication networks susceptible to polarization. To this end, we implemented an online version of a color coordination task within experimentally controlled communication networks.

Perspectives on the 2 × 2 Matrix: Solving Semantically Distinct Problems Based on a Shared Structure of Binary Contingencies.

Cognition is both empowered and limited by representations. The matrix lens model explicates tasks that are based on frequency counts, conditional probabilities, and binary contingencies in a general fashion. Based on a structural analysis of such tasks, the model links several problems and semantic domains and provides a new perspective on representational accounts of cognition that recognizes representational isomorphs as opportunities, rather than as problems.