Children have an early-emerging expectation that resources should be divided fairly amongst agents, yet their behavior does not begin to align with these expectations until later in development. This dissociation between knowledge and behavior raises important questions about the mechanisms that encourage children to behave how they know they should behave. Here I tested whether explicitly invoking fairness norms encourages costly fair decisions in 4- to 9-year-old-children. I examine children’s responses to unequal resource allocations in the Inequity Game by varying the direction of inequity (advantageous versus disadvantageous inequity) and normative information (to be fair or to act autonomously). The results show children are more likely to reject advantageous allocation in the Fairness norm condition than in the Autonomous norm condition, but I did not see this difference when children are presented with disadvantageous allocations. This study showcases children’s costly fairness norm enforcement as a flexible process, one that can be brought in and out of alignment with their knowledge of fairness by shining a spotlight on how one ought to behave.

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Source memory is our ability to relate central information (the “item”) to the context (the “source”) in which it was learned or experienced. People are often highly confident in their source judgements even when this information is incorrectly recalled. Past work has aimed to explain why source errors made with high confidence occur with a framework called the Converging Criteria (CC) account. The CC account posits that item memory can interact with source memory by altering decision criteria as item confidence increases, increasing the probability of a high confidence source judgement. This prediction differs from alternate models, like the Fixed Criteria (FC) account, where decision criteria are not expected to change with item confidence. The current study not only tests the implications of the CC account, but contrasts it to the predictions of the FC account relative to item memory, item confidence, and source discriminability, using existing data from 12 recognition memory experiments. We use a Bayesian Hierarchical model to estimate a key metric called the Item Confidence Effect (ICE) - the change in the proportion of source errors made with high confidence as item confidence increases. Results show a positive ICE, demonstrating that the proportion of source errors made with high confidence increases with item confidence, as predicted by the CC account. In the context of memory, this evidence shows that decision processes can influence behavior, regardless if evidence in memory supports it or not.

Two very different classes of theoretical models have been proposed to explain visual perception. One class of models assume that there is a point at which we become consciously aware of a stimulus, known as a threshold. This threshold is the foundation of discrete process models all of which describe an all-or-none transition between the mental state of perceiving a stimulus and the state of not perceiving a stimulus. In contrast, the other class of models assume that mental states change continuously. These continuous models are founded in signal detection theory and the more contemporary models in Bayesian inference frameworks. The continuous model is the more widely accepted model of perception, and as such discrete process models were mostly discarded. Nonetheless, there has been a renewed debate on continuous versus discrete perception, and recent work has renewed the idea that perception can be all-or-none. In this dissertation, we developed an experimental platform and modeling framework to test whether visual perception exhibits measurable characteristics consistent with discrete perception. The results of this study revealed a selective influence of stimulus type on the way that a visual stimulus is processed. Moreover this selective influence implied perception can either be discrete or continuous depending on the underlying perceptual processing. These qualitative differences in the way perception occurs even for highly similar stimuli such as motion or orientation have crucial implications for models of perception, as well as our understanding of neurophysiology and conscious perception.

This thesis intends to revise and update devoted actor theory (DAT) by introducing a neglected dataset—female suicide bombers. DAT provides one such theoretical framework for understanding extremist group behavior and, to a lesser extent, suicidal bombing. DAT is largely satisfying: its claims and conclusions address relevant issues and provide compelling answers to critical questions. However, it is not without its analytical and empirical gaps. Crucially, DAT does not explicitly account for the narratives and characteristic motives of female suicide bombers—which often differ in logic, content, and tone from those of their male counterparts. In addition, DAT assumes that people who are fused with extreme groups are willing to self-sacrifice for their group, but the theory does not account for how this fusion process transpires. Therefore, I propose two amendments to DAT that not only address theoretical issues, which arise partially from the lack of female terrorist accounts, but also creates a narrative that bridges the gap that would explain how an individual progresses from bonding to a group to making the decision to die for it. Accordingly, I also propose to theorize a psychosocial process that links the way in which individuals, specifically females, become fused to a group and edge closer to the most extreme of extremist decisions: to annihilate their bodies and selves, while at the same time annihilating or wreaking havoc upon the lives of others whom they have deemed enemies of themselves or their group.

Game immersion is an important aspect of gaming and is a term used by players and critics alike. It is one of the aspects that keeps a player “hooked” and is often seen as critical for a good game session. A Heads-up Display (HUD) is a common element of most games. It is used to communicate vital information to the player, such as health and ammunition. While these two things are important for gaming, there is not a lot of research on how these two correlate. An experiment with 12 participants was set up to investigate how different HUD designs affect game immersion and whether there is a difference between experienced players and novice players regarding immersion. The experiment, set in the game Fortnite, used eye tracking tounderstand how the participants used the HUD, and a questionnaire to evaluate to what extent a participant was immersed by said HUD. The results show no significant effect of HUD choice on game immersion. Moreover, the results did not show any significant effect of expertise. Although not significant, novice players were more immersed than experts. While also not significant, the results show a trend suggesting that a HUD design with larger elements promptsmore eye fixations over all elements in the HUD. When asking what the participants thought about the HUDs, we could see a significant effect of HUD design on subjective rating. / Spelinlevelse är en viktig aspekt inom gaming och är en term som används av både spelare och kritiker. Det är den aspekt som får en spelare att vilja fortsätta spela och ses ofta som en kritisk aspekt för en bra spelsession. En head-up display (HUD) är ett vanligt element i de flesta spel. Den kommunicerar kritisk information till spelaren som liv och ammunition. Medan båda dessa två aspekter är viktiga för gaming så finns det inte så mycket forskning om hur de korrelerar. Ett experiment, med 12 deltagare, utfördes för att undersöka hur olika HUDs har en effekt på spelinlevelse och om det finns någon skillnad mellan erfarna spelare och nybörjare. Experimentet, som utfördes i spelet Fortnite, använde sig av eye-tracking för att förstå hur deltagarna använde sig av HUDsen och en enkät för att evaluera till vilken grad av inlevelsedeltagarna upplevde vid varje HUD. Resultatet visade inte på någon signifikant effekt av inlevelse vid val av HUD. Resultaten visade utöver detta inte på någon signifikant skillnad avexpertis. Trots att dessa resultat inte var signifikanta, så hittades en trend som antyder att en större HUD framkallar flera ögonfixeringar på alla element i HUDen. När deltagarna blev tillfrågade om vad de tyckte om HUDsen, kunde vi se en signifikant skillnad vid val av HUD design på subjektiv värdering.

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