Psychological science
-
Psychological science · Feb 2014
Intercommunication between prefrontal and posterior brain regions for protecting visual working memory from distractor interference.
Because visual working memory has a very restricted capacity, good filtering mechanisms are essential for its successful functioning. A neuronal signal emitted by the prefrontal cortex is considered to be an important contributor to filtering. ⋯ From human electroencephalograms, we extracted several event-related components that reflect the different subprocesses of filtering. On the basis of their timing and a clear pattern of correlations, we reason that filtering might consist of a causal chain of events that involve prefrontal and posterior cortex regions: After distractors are detected in posterior regions, a prefrontal mechanism is activated, which in turn prevents subsequent unnecessary parietal storage of distractor information.
-
Psychological science · Feb 2014
Nothing to declare: mandatory and voluntary disclosure leads advisors to avoid conflicts of interest.
Professionals face conflicts of interest when they have a personal interest in giving biased advice. Mandatory disclosure--informing consumers of the conflict--is a widely adopted strategy in numerous professions, such as medicine, finance, and accounting. Prior research has shown, however, that such disclosures have little impact on consumer behavior, and can backfire by leading advisors to give even more biased advice. ⋯ These results show that, although disclosure has generally been found to be ineffective for dealing with unavoidable conflicts of interest, it can be beneficial when providers have the ability to avoid conflicts. Mandatory and voluntary disclosure can deter advisors from accepting conflicts of interest so that they have nothing to disclose except the absence of conflicts. We propose that people are averse to being viewed as biased, and that policies designed to activate reputational and ethical concerns will motivate advisors to avoid conflicts of interest.