Humans systematically make poor decisions because of cognitive biases. Can digital games train people to avoid cognitive biases? The goal of this study is to investigate the affordance of different educational media in training people about cognitive biases and to mitigate cognitive biases within their decision-making processes. A between-subject experiment was conducted to compare a digital game, a traditional slideshow, and a combined condition in mitigating two types of cognitive biases: anchoring bias and representativeness bias. We measured both immediate effects and delayed effects after four weeks. The results suggest that the digital game and slideshow conditions were effective in mitigating cognitive biases immediately after the training, but the effects decayed after four weeks. By providing the basic knowledge through the slideshow, then allowing learners to practice bias-mitigation techniques in the digital game, the combined condition was most effective at mitigating the cognitive biases both immediately and after four weeks.

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With the COVID-19 pandemic, families are having to coordinate their behaviors to face new challenges, such as negotiating the social distancing measures that the family will or will not take in their daily interaction. This study utilizes Family Communication Patterns Theory to examine conversations that young adults reported having with their family members about social distancing measures and what factors predicted the outcomes of these disagreements. A family’s level of conversation orientation and the interaction of conversation orientation and conformity orientation predicted change in relational closeness due to the argument and the perceived positivity level of predicted outcome value levels for future interaction with these family members. Additionally, level of conformity orientation predicted perceived relational harm from disagreements about social distancing.

This study examined the effectiveness of various messaging via Twitter in persuading bystanders of domestic violence (DV) to intervene on behalf of DV victims. Using Fishbein's (2000) integrative model of behavioral prediction as a guiding framework, an experiment was conducted with 196 undergraduates from a large Southwestern university. Participants were randomly assigned to read either a: (1) tweet describing warning signs associated with DV motivating bystander intervention, (2) gain or loss framed tweet emphasizing why a bystander chose to intervene, or (3) control tweet that simply provided statistics on the prevalence of DV in the U.S. Results indicate injunctive norms were the best predictor of participants' intent to intervene in a DV situation, and that the most effective approach to promoting bystander intervention is to highlight warning signs of DV. Implications for practice are also discussed.

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