We examine the impact of glucose in a choice task that can distinguish Bayesian from lower-level reinforcement heuristic choice. Drawing from a dual systems framework, we hypothesize that glucose administration will increase response times and improve Bayesian accuracy because it should shift decision making toward the more deliberate system 2 and away from the more automatic system 1 decision process. We study 113 subjects randomly assigned to either a glucose or placebo drink condition, who make choices in incentivized easy and difficult Bayesian task trials. Our results indicate a significant robust effect of glucose on response times. Glucose administration has a main effect of increasing response time, as predicted, and it also facilitates faster response times across trials. We do not find a direct impact of glucose administration on Bayesian accuracy, but we do estimate an impact of response times on accuracy that differs by task difficulty. This suggests an indirect impact of glucose on decision outcomes via its impact on response times.

Physical activity level is an important contributor to overall human health and obesity. Research has shown that humans possess a number of traits that influence their physical activity level including social cognition. We examined whether the trait of "need for cognition" was associated with daily physical activity levels. We recruited individuals who were high or low in need for cognition and measured their physical activity level in 30-second epochs over a 1-week period. The overall findings showed that low-need-for-cognition individuals were more physically active, but this difference was most pronounced during the 5-day work week and lessened during the weekend.

In this paper we report the outcomes of two attempts to correlate the Zenhausern Preference Questionnaire (PT) with the Polarity Questionnaire (PQ). Across two laboratories we consistently found no correlation between these two scales. Our findings are consistent with a previous attempt to validate the PQ (Genovese, 2005). We conclude that researchers attempting to use the PQ should take note of this validity question.

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In this paper we set out to explore how the processing differences associated with the respective hemispheres would influence susceptibility to anchoring effects. To do so we provided participants with both a positive and negatively valenced anchoring task. Based on prior research, we predicted stronger anchoring effects under conditions of right hemisphere activation and relatively attenuated anchoring effects under left hemisphere activation. Further, based on the valence hypothesis, we predicted stronger anchoring effects under conditions of hemispheric-valence consistency. Our results support the former hypothesis but do not support the latter.