Persuasive Power of Neuroimages

Persuasive Power of Neuroimages Neuroimage effect and repeated exposure:  The contextual origin of neuroimage’s persuasive power Bethany Waites Erica Chastain If you were to open up a newspaper, or visit an online news source, there is good chance that you will come across a media coverage story of a scientific research study, and that article will probably contain an image to help facilitate complicated scientific information to the reader (McCabe and Castel, 2008). Many of the popular media articles describing the latest scientific research simplify the findings for the general public, accompany these findings with neuroimages, and more often than not, these findings are oversimplified or misrepresented (Morling, 2012, p.18). In 2008, it was suggested that judgments on the credibility of scientific reasoning behind research conclusions can be positively influenced (or persuaded) by the supplementary presence of neuroimages depicting cognitive processes described in the scientific research presented by media research articles (McCabe and Castel, 2008) – a finding which many have focused on replicating and discovering the for this p ower (Schweitzer et al., 2013; Weisberg et al., 2008; Schweitzer et al., 2013). If the contextual origins of the documented significant power that neuroimages exert on the credibility judgments of the scientific reasoning (henceforth called the Neuroimage Effect or NIE) can be discovered, there would be implications not only in the fields of psychology but across the scientific field in general. The scientific community is dependent on the popular media to correctly facilitate scientific information and findings to the general public, and if there are in fact contexts out of which NIE can arise, it would be imperative for the scientific community to discover and prevent them from occurring in popular media so that scientific information has a better opportunity of being correctly conveyed to the general public. In 2008, McCabe and Castel’s groundbreaking study introduced the idea of NIE after explicitly examining the persuasive power neuroimages had on the perceived credibility of cognitive neuroscience data and argued that the tendency for images to be intuitively interpreted as scientifically credible representations of various cognitive activities may be due to the reductionist nature of humanity. In their tri-experimental study, they: (1) examined whether the presence of the neuroimages led to higher ratings of flawed scientific reasoning in cognitive neuroscience research compared not only to their absence, but also to the presence of another widely-used visual representations of data such as bar graphs and a text-only control group; (2) examined whether brain images affected credibility judgments because they were more visually complex than bar graphs and whether it was this complexity that influenced judgments, and (3) attempted to generalize the findings of the first two expe riments by using a real news article with scientifically sound reasoning to depict material encountered in the real world (McCabe and Castel, 2008). They concluded that the presence of neuroimages had a statistically significant positive influence on judgment ratings of the credibility of scientific reasoning (NIE) than with the presence of bar graphs and text-only groups, and that they may be more persuasive not because of their visual complexity but because they provide tangible physical explanations of cognitive processes appealing to the reductionist nature of humanity. Following the publication of McCabe and Castel’s study, several research studies have attempted to replicate these findings, some with over-exaggerated success (Michael et al., 2013), while others failed to do so overall (Michael et al., 2013; Schweitzer et al., 2013). While a general failure to replicate the original findings of McCabe and Castel’s original study is prominent, these failures were not complete and have produced interesting and surprising results that have prompted the exploration into finding the origin of the marginal persuasive influence of the presence of a neuro-image on the judgments of scientific reasoning (Schweitzer et al., 2013). There are a handful of speculated contextual sources of the persuasive power of neuro-images including: the methodological design of repeated measures (Schweitzer et al., 2013; Weisberg et al., 2008), the quality of the article’s scientific reasoning (Schweitzer et al., 2013; Weisberg et al., 2008), and the pres ence of criticism, which calls into question the validity of the article’s conclusions (McCabe and Castel, 2008; Michael et al., 2013). The first two speculated sources of NIE previously mentioned were examined in the fifth experiment of the Schweitzer et al. (2013) study. The repeated measures effect (RME) is the suggested underlying contextual variable which produces NIE by introducing a comparative opportunity for participants in which they base their judgments of scientific reasoning in subsequent articles on the quality of scientific logic presented in the initial article (Schweitzer et al., 2013, Weisberg et al., 2008). The second mentioned underlying source, the quality of the article’s scientific reasoning, has been argued by Weisberg et al.(2008) to play a role in the influential power of neuroscience information and that the optimal condition for NIE was the use of non-scientific language, a weak argument, and high-impact images (Schweitzer et al., 2013) Schweitzer et al. (2013) designed the fifth experiment to satisfy the optimal conditions presented by Weisberg et al. and others as well as to test RME, and argued its presence would be found in the 2nd block of the experiment, as participants would have been previously exposed to scientific reasoning of the 1st block. They concluded that the study demonstrated a significant NIE in the presence of weak scientific reasoning, but only in the 2nd block after participants were presented with a comparison on which to base their judgments of scientific reasoning credibility, indicating RME as a critical contextual origin. Because there was not a significant NIE in the first block, the authors concluded that faulty arguments were not a critical contextual source. However, it is noteworthy to again mention the fact that McCabe and Castel (2008) used faulty scientific reasoning as a control within their first two experiments which did produce a significant NIE, and coupled with the arguments of Weisberg et al. (2008), it would be unwise to not deem it a potential source of NIE. The final potential source of NIE within the scope of this study is effect that the presence of criticism has on NIE which was introduced by McCabe and Castel (2008) but was iterated upon by Michael et al. in 2013. The original study’s design allowed the researchers to control the participant’s level of reasonable doubt about the credibility of scientific reasoning behind research conclusions by the presence of obviously flawed scientific reasoning within the first 2 articles, and by the presence of criticisms in the last experiment which called into question the validity of the article’s conclusions and counteracted NIE (McCabe and Castel, 2008; Michael et al., 2013). McCabe and Castel (2008) reported that the presence of criticism did not influence the participant’s ratings on the credibility of the article’s conclusions, but upon further investigation of the original data, Michael et al. (2013) discovered that the brain images were more influenti al when critiques were present to question the validity of conclusions – a notable find which counteracted the claims made by the original investigators (Michael et al., 2013). While Michael et al. discovered the discrepancy regarding the role criticism played in NIE and conducted five experiments that included a criticism manipulation, they did not elaborate on the effects of criticisms as they performed a meta-analysis of the original 2008 data and the data from their 10 experiments, to more precisely estimate NIE (Michael et al., 2013). Because this interesting discrepancy was not explicitly investigated, it does pose an intriguing possibility that neuroimages are more influential as they provide evidence against a criticism contradicting the article’s conclusions. The present study attempts to not only examine the persuasive power that neuroimages exert on the perceived credibility of the conclusion’s scientific reasoning (or the Neuroimage Effect; NIE) but also the relationship between NIE and the three potentially critical contextual origins. It is our goal to demonstrate that neuroimages exert a statistically significant positive influence on participant’s ratings of scientific reasoning, and based on prior research, expect to find a significant NIE in each of the three contextual variables. It is also our goal to discover which of those variables produces the most significant NIE, and purpose that NIE is the most influential when participants are presented with a comparative opportunity in which they are able to base their ratings on the credibility of scientific reasoning in subsequent articles on the quality of the reasoning presented in the initial article. References McCabe, D. P., Castel, A. D. (2008). Seeing Is Believing: The Effect of Brain Images on  Judgments of Scientific Reasoning. Cognition, 107(1), 343-352. Michael, R. B., Newman, E. J., Vuorre, M., Cumming, G., Garry, M. (2013). On the  (non)persuasive power of a brain image. Psychonomic Bulletin Review, 20(4), 720-725. doi:10.3758/s13423-013-0391-6 Morling, Beth. Research methods in psychology: evaluating a world of information. New York,  NY: Norton, 2012. Print. Schweitzer, N. J., Baker, D. A., Risko, E. F. (2013). Fooled by the brain: Re-examining the  influence of neuroimages. Cognition, 129(3), 501-511. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2013.08.009 Weisberg, D., Keil, F. C., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E., Gray, J. R. (2008). The Seductive Allure  of Neuroscience Explanations. Journal Of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(3), 470-477.

Everyday Life in the Industrial Revolution Essay

Industrialisation created an enormous impact on people’s everyday lives. Many machines were invented to produce goods much more quickly and efficiently. This lowers the price for expensive goods such as textiles and furniture and made it more affordable for everyone due to mass production. Steam trains were also invented to move perishable goods and people in quickly in long distances to markets and bring fresh, organic foods to cities which are growing in population. Trains were an affordable form of transport for citizens and people. The invention of steam ships allowed a large number of people to North America and Australia from Europe. These were the fundamental changes that occurred during the industrial revolution. The first artificial was produced using gas. These lights made cities safer, it allowed people begin to go out at night to social events or meetings, shops and factories open for longer. Working hours in in factories were also extended thanks to the invention of artificial lighting. Electricity led to the development of household appliances such as refrigerators and irons that help with house chores. It also led to many innovations such as telegraph which made communication much easier, following the telegraph were the telephone and radio. Technologies has made a dramatic change to people’s ordinary lives, it has affected the society in a positive and negative way. The industrialised innovations helped with factory work and produce products more efficiently; however these machineries have highly polluted the environment. It was very surprising how far society have come, the development of technologies made the process of things much easier. Thanks to these inventions made during the industrial revolution and is still being improved, changed the lives of younger generations. Children in the modern society now have phones, iPad, iPod etc.

Cause and Effects of Texting While Driving Essay

Texting while driving is a major issue affecting today’s society. Texting has grown to be one of the biggest forms of communication among people, despite the fact that some of these messages might be sent from behind the wheel of a moving vehicle. As a result, distracted driving often occurs removing the main objective a driver should be focusing on; the road ahead. Texting-related vehicular accidents and fatalities have caused a majority of states to establish texting bans, making this act illegal while driving. With texting-related accidents increasing, new approaches and resources are being developed to eliminate this epidemic problem. It is imperative to express awareness that performing the illegal act of texting while driving is a dangerous behavior that not only causes distracted driving but also impairs the driver’s ability to lose focus on the road with the possibility of severe consequences. Text messaging is becoming the commonly used method in our connected society today. People of all ages can be seen using modern day devices such as cell phones and tablets. â€Å"Six billion SMS (short message service) messages are sent every day, while 2.2 trillion are sent a year within the United States and 8.6 trillion text messages are sent globally each year† (CNN.com). These devices allow its users the mobility and immediate accessibility to communicate with each other. With this in mind, some of these outgoing messages are sent while driving. The reasons can vary upon why a person would text and drive but, one possibility can be linked to its convenience. It is not uncommon to see a person fully indulged in their device; checking texts and emails or social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and, Twitter. With the progression of text messaging being the method of choice to communicate in this society, people have become so fixated on their devices that it is becoming a daily occurrence to incorporate it in their everyday routines, including driving. Sending a text out while driving can have numerous effects, which includes distracted driving. Distracted driving is anything that can divert the driver’s main attention that is critical to driving safely such as texting,  talking on the cell phone, eating, conversing with passengers, and so forth. Texting while driving is the worst of all driver distractions because it simultaneously uses cognitive, visual, and manual recognition. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that at least 3,000 deaths occur annually from driver distracted accidents (NHTSA 2012). Furthermore, studies have also shown that novice drivers (i.e. teenagers) tend to be at a higher risk at distracted driving than experienced drivers (i.e. adults). For the most part, texting is the worst distraction for anyone driving because both tasks require concentration which ultimately, the driving suffers due to the lack of attention fro m the driver’s ability to entirely focus on the road. The effects of texting while driving also can cause extremely hazardous driving conditions that compromise the safety of the driver and their passengers along with other drivers sharing the roads and highways. Because texting requires at least one hand on the device and the driver’s eyes away from the road, the focus of the driver is not fully devoted to controlling the vehicle. This often leads to lane deviation that could possibly result in potentially dangerous situations. â€Å"Most drivers take their eyes off the road a minimum of five seconds to perform any task and if the driver is travelling at a speed of 55 mph, it is equivalent to covering the distance of an entire football field while blindfolded† (Harmon 10). Moreover, the ability to stop quickly is also compromised in the event that the driver approaches nearby hazards. For example, a driver might inadvertently turn the wheel suddenly due to the fact that their focus was on their device. This could lead to missed opportunities to stay straight ahead on the road, swerve into another lane and/or vehicle, or possibly worse, into an innocent pedestrian walking along the road. With all things considered, texting is a dangerous behavior while driving that could impact not only their safety, but the safety of their passengers, other drivers and their passengers, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Drivers are aware not to text while driving, but many still do despite the fact that it is illegal in many states. Currently, 45 states ban text messaging while driving (NCSL 2015). Of those states, 39 enforce laws with  primary restrictions (an officer may pull a driver over for texting) and only 5 enforce it as a secondary offense (an officer can only ticket a driver committing a primary offense [e.g. speeding] first and not just for texting). A study performed by the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health looked into the effects of the different texting bans on vehicular fatalities from 48 states from 2000-2010 (Harman 10). Their study found that states with primary enforced laws detected a 3% (an average of 19 deaths per year) reduction of fatalities in all age groups whereas; states that enforced secondary restrictions had no significant decline. The greatest impact shown was texting bans that affected young drivers (aged 15-21) with an 11% reduction in deaths. Given these points, hard evidence concludes that these states implementing and enforcing these texting bans are also saving the lives of many people. As a result of texting-related accidents and fatalities increasing, new approaches and resources are being developed to eliminate this problem. One of the simplest methods a person can apply while driving—one that can possibly save a life—would be to turn their cell phone off. If an incoming message is that important, the driver can simply pull on the side of the road to read and/or send an outgoing message. Furthermore, several apps such as AT&T DriveMode and Live2Txt, are now available for users to download on their cell phones to prevent any incoming calls and text messages from appearing while inside of a moving vehicle. In addition, in March 2010 AT&T—now supported by Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, as well as more than 200 other organizations—has launched their â€Å"It Can Wait† campaign with the efforts to end texting while driving (Mlot 2013). Their multi-million dollar awareness campaign includes a texting-while-driving simulator and an outreach program geared towards teens emphasizing the threat and dangers of texting behind the wheel. The DOT has also launched several distracted driving enforcement and advertising campaigns using the phrase â€Å"U Drive. U Text. U Pay.† to combat and crackdown on distracted driving. In brief, accidents related to texting while driving can easily be avoided if drivers heed the warnings of these awareness campaigns or by simply switching off their phones; which could perhaps save a life. Taking everything into consideration, texting has enhanced the lives of many people with the ease and mobility to communicate with one another however; applying this method while driving is a dangerous behavior that is not only illegal in many states, but also has serious consequences if the driver is not focused behind the main priority of driving safely. Awareness campaigns have been designed to emphasize the extreme importance on how texting and driving can and has impacted many lives. Everyone can do their part to eliminate this problematic issue by simply taking one step and make the roads a little safer by easily turning off their phones while driving. Ultimately, drivers should be aware that there is no message or text that could be of greater importance than the life of another person.

Plato, Augustine And Aquinas - 962 Words

How do we know things? Where does our knowledge come from? Plato, Augustine and Aquinas all had different ideas of what was the true definition of knowledge and how you are able to acquire that specific notion of knowledge. Plato claims that we are only able to acquire it through reason. What does he mean by reason? How would Augustine and Aquinas respond to his claims? Among these three I will accept one theory and give you the reasons of why I believe it more than the others. Do we obtain it through reason, through the divine power of god? As I mentioned Plato reveals to us that knowledge of things can only be attained by reason. In his work he says that true knowledge is always based on the knowledge of the pure, eternal and unchanging form. Since we live in an â€Å"illusory† world of matter and senses. Our knowledge of all forms remains limited. Plato also thinks that through proper education, philosophical studies and contemplation that we can attain a certain dim intell ectual understanding of the forms that surround us. Just as much as we come to know the true reality of mathematics and logic. He also defines his theories of knowledge with his political and ethical beliefs. He also made a reference to one of this written work, to the Allegory of the Cave. He said that; â€Å"The prisoner who escapes upward to the light of the sun and of real objects gains knowledge.† As if the prisoner looks at the true forms of the world he will somehow obtain a certain degree of knowledge.Show MoreRelatedComparison of Plato, Aquinas, Aristotle and Augustine1473 Words   |  6 PagesPlato Truth and Reality- And isnt it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are. Truthfulness. 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