For child welfare professionals, the decision to initiate involuntary care is far from easy. It often involves choosing the lesser between two evils. Given the significant impact of these decisions...Show moreFor child welfare professionals, the decision to initiate involuntary care is far from easy. It often involves choosing the lesser between two evils. Given the significant impact of these decisions on families, it is crucial to understand which factors influence risk assessment and how the decision-making process can be structured as accurately as possible, minimizing the risk of adverse outcomes. This study focuses on the characteristics of the decision-maker, specifically the personal attributions that child welfare professionals hold regarding involuntary care. The sample consisted of 89 child welfare professionals from The Netherlands, who registered families at the Jeugdbeschermingstafel between December 2022 and January 2024. It was hypothesized that positive attributions toward involuntary care would be associated with a higher likelihood of initiating such care, while negative attributions would be related to fewer decisions to initiate involuntary care. Furthermore, it was expected that the use of structured risk assessment tools would reduce the impact of personal attributions on the decision made, indicating an interaction effect. To formulate an answer to the research questions, binary logistic regression analyses with interaction terms were performed. No significant effects of attitudes toward involuntary care were found. However, some trends were found that suggest a positive relationship between professionals’ attitudes and the decision to initiate involuntary care, as well as a negative relationship between the use of risk assessment tools and the influence of attitudes on this decision. As these effects were not statistically significant, the results of this study should be deemed exploratory. They provide valuable guidelines for future research, which could investigate the use of different kinds of risk assessment tools, the role of intuition, and other factors that influence the decision-making process in the context of involuntary care.Show less
Selective attention poses a challenge to informed judgment among voters, potentially exacerbating political polarisation (Iyengar & Hahn, 2009). The relationship between ideological orientation...Show moreSelective attention poses a challenge to informed judgment among voters, potentially exacerbating political polarisation (Iyengar & Hahn, 2009). The relationship between ideological orientation and selective attention has been the subject of much debate in the scientific community. This thesis seeks to clarify this relationship by examining epistemic emotions within that context. Participants (N = 202) responded to headlines, differing on political orientation of statements and complexity, and were given the choice to further engage with the corresponding article. I find no ideological differences in selectivity of ideologically congruent information, but right-leaning individuals avoided incongruent information more than leftists. The data also points to an ideological asymmetry of the experience of epistemic emotions, which is surprisingly conditioned by the complexity of headlines. Rightists felt more confused than leftists only towards simple incongruent headlines. Further, leftists reported higher curiosity in incongruent complex headlines, which mediated the relationship of ideology and choosing to engage with those headlines. Implications of cognitive style differences reflected in differing experience of epistemic emotions are discussed. Further research is needed to clarify the role of the complexity of political messaging style information on information processing in ideologues.Show less
Changing people’s behavior is sometimes of vital importance. However, it seems some people are not always willing to adapt, no matter how many valid reasons are provided. These observations may...Show moreChanging people’s behavior is sometimes of vital importance. However, it seems some people are not always willing to adapt, no matter how many valid reasons are provided. These observations may indicate the effect of a confirmation bias at play. This study aimed to research existence of confirmation bias in a reinforcement learning environment, while using gender as its main predictor to explore possible differences with the intent to better understand behavioral change resistance. The study had a 2 x 2 within-subjects design. 112 participants performed an instrumental learning task involving factual and counterfactual reinforcement learning, in part derived from a previous study by Palminteri et al. (2017). Following exclusion criteria, 99 participants were included for analysis (age = 25.29, SD = 13.27; 81.82% females). Contrary to expectations, statistical analysis showed no evidence of a non-zero mean confirmation bias in the population (Z = -1.260, p = .208, r = -.127). Additionally, no relation was found between the ability to adapt and confirmation bias (rs(97) = .197, p = .051), strengthening the previous finding. A difference in confirmation bias between men and women could not be supported by this study (U = 717, p = .913, r = -.01). Though these results were unexpected, they exposed opportunities to improve confirmation bias testing by controlling for autocorrelation of choice, metacognition and mental states. Finally, though results may have been influenced by effects from the current COVID-19 pandemic, it also provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study these effects by replicating this study afterwards.Show less
