Regulatory adaptations for delivering information: the case of confession

Abstract

Prior to, or concurrent with, the encoding of concepts into speech, the individual faces decisions about whether, what, when, how, and with whom to communicate. Compared to the existing wealth of linguistic knowledge however, we know little of the mechanisms that govern the delivery and accrual of information. Here we focus on a fundamental issue of communication: The decision whether to deliver information. Specifically, we study spontaneous confession to a victim. Given the costs of social devaluation, offenders are hypothesized to refrain from confessing unless the expected benefits of confession (e.g. enabling the victim to remedially modify their course of action) outweigh its marginal costs—the victim’s reaction, discounted by the likelihood that information about the offense has not leaked. The logic of welfare tradeoffs indicates that the victim’s reaction will be less severe and, therefore, less costly to the offender, with decreases in the cost of the offense to the victim and, counter-intuitively, with increases in the benefit of the offense to the offender. Data from naturalistic offenses and experimental studies supported these predictions. Offenders are more willing to confess when the benefit of the offense to them is high, the cost to the victim is low, and the probability of information leakage is high. This suggests a conflict of interests between senders and receivers: Often, offenders are more willing to confess when confessions are less beneficial to the victims. An evolutionary-computational framework is a fruitful approach to understanding the factors that regulate communication.

The grammar of anger: Mapping the computational architecture of a recalibrational emotion

“…Moreover, the statements that Set C subjects thought would weaken their case were exactly those that made Set D subjects more angry (see also Sznycer, Schniter, Tooby, & Cosmides, 2015;Sznycer, De Smet et al, 2016). Furthermore, the results of Experiment Sets A and B were replicated.…”

“…by motivating the destruction of incriminating evidence) whether others are seen as deserving higher WTRs or not (whether guilt is also mobilized or not). Recent findings indicate a close match between the intensity of shame in the discredited individual and the adverse reaction of the audience (Sznycer, De Smet et al, 2016), suggesting that these emotions are informed by the same underlying welfare-tradeoff architecture (see also Sznycer, AlShawaf et al, 2017;Sznycer et al, 2015;Sznycer, Tooby et al 2016). …”

Shame closely tracks the threat of devaluation by others, even across cultures

“…Shame motivates one to avoid behaviors that could cause devaluation and to conceal damaging information (31). When damaging information is discovered, the shamed individual withdraws (32), accepts subordination (33,34), shows appeasement behavior (35), increases cooperativeness (36,37), and upregulates cortisol (38) as well as proinflammatory cytokines to defend against infection (39).…”

Conflicted emotions following trust-based interaction

“…When one's prior actions did not succeed in achieving an adaptive goal negative emotions are triggered to recalibrate one's regulatory programs (Carver & Scheier, 1990;Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996). Guilt is one such negative emotion that appears triggered exclusively in response to failure of a long-sighted program, such as when one discovers that they have undervalued another's welfare -potentially harming the relationship (Sznycer et al, 2015).…”