The long-held popular notion of intuition has garnered much attention both academically and popularly. Although most people agree that there is such a phenomenon as intuition, involving emotionally charged, rapid, unconscious processes, little compelling evidence supports this notion. Here, we introduce a technique in which subliminal emotional information is presented to subjects while they make fully conscious sensory decisions. Our behavioral and physiological data, along with evidence-accumulator models, show that nonconscious emotional information can boost accuracy and confidence in a concurrent emotion-free decision task, while also speeding up response times. Moreover, these effects were contingent on the specific predictive arrangement of the nonconscious emotional valence and motion direction in the decisional stimulus. A model that simultaneously accumulates evidence from both physiological skin conductance and conscious decisional information provides an accurate description of the data. These findings support the notion that nonconscious emotions can bias concurrent nonemotional behavior-a process of intuition.

No abstract

Traffic accident is one of the main causes of death among young drivers, both in developed and developing country. Sleep deprivation is agreed to be one of the major contributing factors. In this study, we investigate the effect of sleep deprivation on visual attention during driving and how it contributes to driving behaviors and performance. Twelve male students (mean age = 21.6 years, SD = 0.6 years) who already had valid driving license participated in this study. They were required to drive on a driving simulator in two conditions: normal sleep and sleep-deprived condition. In normal sleep condition, participants were allowed to have a normal sleep for at least 8 h prior to having driving simulation session, whereas in sleep-deprived condition, participants performed simulated driving session after 24 h of continuous sleep deprivation. We found that visual attention, represented by fixation duration and number of fixation on Direct Sight, decreased during driving simulation in sleep deprivation condition. In addition, we observed performance deterioration in sleep deprivation condition.

Cheating has become a global problem that is ubiquitous in various facets of human life. While previous literature has suggested a link between cheating and competition, another type of social relation, that is, collaboration, could arguably promote cheating behavior, particularly with a sample of participants who held collectivistic values. To examine whether competition, collaboration, or a combination of both caused participants to overreport the dice score, we designed a novel experimental dice-rolling paradigm in a lab setting. Across 4 studies, we found that collaboration but not competition triggered potential cheating behavior. Participants were inclined to overreport their scores when they were paired with cheating partners; this pattern was not evident when they did it individually or when they were paired with honest partners. This behavioral change was also accompanied by a change in participants’ perception of the experimental conditions. Furthermore, we found that the dice score overreporting behavior was exclusively contingent upon their partner’s influence. In a collectivistic society, potential cheating seems to be triggered by collaboration as opposed to competition, as previous literature has suggested. Our findings suggest that the determinant of potential cheating behavior is rather culturally specific.

Lingkungan yang sarat dengan perubahan menuntut individu untuk senantiasa mampu beradaptasi dengan cepat. Kondisi stress muncul jika tuntutan untuk beradaptasi tidak sebanding dengan kapasitas yang dimiliki oleh individu tersebut. Salah satu cara untuk mendeteksi stress adalah dengan memberikan tes kognitif yang dilanjutkan dengan pengamatan respon hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) sebagai indikator fisiologis terhadap stress. Penelitian-penelitian terdahulu menggunakan Tes Kraepelin untuk menginduksi sekaligus meramalkan kapasitas individu dalam menghadapi stress. Namun demikian, literatur terbaru menunjukkan bahwa tes tersebut kurang prediktif karena kemungkinan adanya perbedaan individual. Penelitian kali ini melibatkan instrumen pengukuran kognitif numerik berbasis komputer yang memanfaatkan algoritme dinamis sehingga mampu menyajikan tingkat kesulitan yang sesuai dengan kapasitas maksimal tiap partisipan untuk mengatasi isu perbedaan individual ini. Penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa kadar kortisol, sebagai hasil dari HPA, meningkat seiring dengan bertambahnya beban kognitif dalam tes kognitif numerik. Dengan demikian, temuan penelitian ini menunjukkan pentingnya penyesuaian tingkat kesulitas tugas terhadap kapasitas maksimal masing-masing individu untuk menghasilkan efek stress.