Spring 2017 Talk Series
June 2 - William Cunningham (Professor, University of Toronto)
Title: Exploring the conflict between self-interest and concern for others
Abstract: Human societies exist, at least in part, because groups can accomplish more as a collective than as a set of lone individuals. For this to work, people need to not only take their own immediate self-interest into consideration for behavior, but also the consequences of their actions for others in the community. Although this is critical for society, the exact nature of these processes remains unclear. It is possible that group action is completely selfish in that collective action occurs only because people believe that they will gain something from the interaction. Such a view is consistent with the classical theory of self-interest postulated by economists for centuries. Alternatively, people may be able to consider the consequences for others in the same way that they consider the outcomes for the self. By converting the rewards and punishments of others into the same “common currency” that is used to evaluate various self-needs, one can generate overlapping representations of self and other. Although there is data to support this suggestion, existing measures of concern for others are limited in the inferences that can be drawn from them, and as such the boundary conditions for these effects remain unclear. In my talk, I will explore decision making for self and others and address the following questions: (a) For whom are we more likely to show concern? (b) Is self-interest a more automatic or fundamental process than concern for others? (c) What are the attentional and motivational mechanisms that drive these effects? (d) What are the neural bases for these differences?
May 12 - Kathrin Rothermich (Research Scholar, University of Connecticut)
Title: How to make sense of the speech signal: social-pragmatic processes and individual differences.
Abstract: Social communication is complex and rarely straightforward. Often listeners must infer what speakers mean, since what is said and what is meant often differ. Therefore, speakers and listeners must use linguistic strategies to facilitate the comprehension process. Additionally, cognitive abilities, personality characteristics, and contextual factors influence how we understand and interpret utterances. In order to study the complexity of everyday communication, I developed a large open-source inventory of video vignettes (RISC; Relational Inference in Social Cognition). This database contains 600 short scenes displaying actors engaged in conversations using nonliteral intentions, such as sarcasm, teasing, and prosocial lies. In my talk I will present several studies using this database, focusing on social-emotional aspects, cross-cultural differences, development, and personality factors.
May 5 - Gordon Pennycook (Postdoc, Yale University)
Title: Analytic thinking, bullshit receptivity, and fake news sensitivity
Abstract: Harry Frankfurt defined 'bullshit' as something constructed without regard for the truth (or, at least, what the bullshitter believes the truth to be). His focus on ones position toward the truth is becoming more and more prescient. 'Post-truth' was Oxford Dictionary's 2016 word of the year. Millions of books are sold each year that contain little more than a collection of buzzwords and aphorisms. Entirely (and often blatantly) fake news stories spread through social media. Given these developments, along with longstanding issues such as deception in politics, it is imperative to develop a psychological understanding of the seemingly prevalent tide of bullshit. In this talk, I will discuss how the interplay between intuitive and analytic thinking is important for understanding who is particularly susceptible to seeing profundity in pseudo-profound bullshit and accuracy in fake news stories. This represents an initial step toward understanding the broader set of phenomena that encompass the large category of things reasonably referred to as bullshit, with the ultimate goal of devising ways to leave the 'post-truth' world behind us.
April 28 - Emorie Beck (Graduate Student, Washington University in St. Louis)
Title: A Tale of Two Stabilities: Longitudinal Temporal Personality Networks
Abstract: Until recently, much of the study of personality has focused on personality structure and traits. Trait approaches rely on average levels of trait relevant manifestations, which means that deviations from average manifestations are lost. In contrast, network approaches represent personality traits as a complex system made up of local interactions between individual items included in a trait inventory at a person-specic level. Coupled with experience sampling methods (ESM) that assess state, rather than trait, personality, network science offers insight into temporal (between time points) and contemporaneous (across time points) personality dynamics at both population and individual levels.
We demonstrate the long-term stability of personality networks using two years of ESM data from the Personality and Intimate Relationships Study (PAIRS; N = 372 participants, total assessments N = 17,715). We computed temporal and contemporaneous networks at both the population and individual level and assessed their stability over time. Our results suggest strong stability in the contemporaneous networks (for both population and individual levels) and moderate (population level) or weak (individuals level) stability in the temporal networks over time. In addition, across the networks, node centrality varied, with Neuroticism nodes playing more central roles in temporal networks and Extraversion nodes playing more central roles in contemporaneous networks. In sum, we show how network science offers insight into personality dynamics and structure above and beyond trait approaches.
April 21 - Amy Krosch (Assistant Professor, Cornell University)
Title: Economic scarcity alters social perception to promote discrimination: Evidence from the brain and behavior
Abstract: When the economy declines, racial discrimination typically increases. Although this effect is often described as reflecting existing structural and institutional inequalities, here I will explore the psychological and perceptual processes through which scarcity exacerbates discrimination. Specifically, using tools from experimental social psychology, psychophysics, and neuroscience, I will present evidence that scarcity alters the extent to which decision makers perceive and represent Black Americans in a discrimination-promoting fashion. I will further explore the role of egalitarian motivation on discriminatory allocation of scarce resources between groups, as well as the learning mechanisms that give rise to such discrimination over time. Together, my findings support the notion that scarcity influences multiple levels of social perception—from category-level representations of Blackness to early face processing of Black individuals—to proliferate racial disparities during times of economic duress.
April 7 - Stacey Sinclair (Professor, Princeton University)
Title: Birds of a Feather: Attitudes toward Blacks shape affiliation among Whites
Abstract: Although individuals are thought to have limited awareness of, and conscious access to, their degree of implicit prejudice, we have emerging evidence that it regulates within-group interpersonal interactions. In this talk I will discuss research showing that greater implicit prejudice among Whites is associated with expressing less interest in affiliating with fellow ingroup members who have Black, as opposed to White, friends. Rather than being a product of stigma by association, this tendency seems to be due to differing assumptions regarding the likelihood of sharing worldviews with the ingroup member being evaluated. The implications of this work for attitudinal diversity in individuals’ social networks will be discussed.
March 24 - Kate Klonick (PhD candidate, Yale Law School)
Title: The New Governors: The People, Rules, and Processes Governing Online Speech
Abstract: Private online platforms have an increasingly essential role in free speech and participation in democratic culture. But while it might appear that any Internet user can publish freely and instantly online, many platforms actively curate the content posted by their users. How and why these platforms operate to moderate speech is largely opaque.
This Article provides the first analysis of what these platforms are actually doing to moderate online speech under a regulatory and First Amendment framework. Drawing from original interviews, archived materials, and leaked documents, this Article not only describes how three major online platforms—Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube—moderate content, it situates their moderation systems into a broader discussion of online governance and the evolution of free expression values in the private sphere. It reveals that private content moderation systems curate user content with an eye to First Amendment norms, corporate responsibility, and at the core, the economic necessity of creating an environment that reflects the expectations of its users. In order to accomplish this, platforms have developed a detailed system with similarities to the American legal system with regularly revised rules, trained human decision-making, and reliance on a system of external influence.
This Article argues that to best understand online speech, we must abandon traditional doctrinal and regulatory analogies, and understand these private content platforms as systems of governance operating outside the boundaries of the First Amendment. These platforms shape and allow participation in our new digital and democratic culture. They are the New Governors of online speech.
March 10 - Steven Sloman (Professor, Brown University)
Title: Ignorance and the Community of Knowledge
Abstract: Asking people to explain how something works reveals an illusion of explanatory depth: Typically, people know less about how things work than they think they do. We overestimate our knowledge of common objects. We similarly overestimate our understanding of political policies. How well do you really understand Obamacare? I will argue that the reason we live in this illusion of understanding is that we live in a community of knowledge, guided by shared intentionality. Our communities understand how things work and we fail to distinguish what we know from the knowledge that resides in other people’s heads. I will spell out some of the implications about what this means for our political attitudes, and other things (depending on time).
Title: Exploring the conflict between self-interest and concern for others
Abstract: Human societies exist, at least in part, because groups can accomplish more as a collective than as a set of lone individuals. For this to work, people need to not only take their own immediate self-interest into consideration for behavior, but also the consequences of their actions for others in the community. Although this is critical for society, the exact nature of these processes remains unclear. It is possible that group action is completely selfish in that collective action occurs only because people believe that they will gain something from the interaction. Such a view is consistent with the classical theory of self-interest postulated by economists for centuries. Alternatively, people may be able to consider the consequences for others in the same way that they consider the outcomes for the self. By converting the rewards and punishments of others into the same “common currency” that is used to evaluate various self-needs, one can generate overlapping representations of self and other. Although there is data to support this suggestion, existing measures of concern for others are limited in the inferences that can be drawn from them, and as such the boundary conditions for these effects remain unclear. In my talk, I will explore decision making for self and others and address the following questions: (a) For whom are we more likely to show concern? (b) Is self-interest a more automatic or fundamental process than concern for others? (c) What are the attentional and motivational mechanisms that drive these effects? (d) What are the neural bases for these differences?
May 12 - Kathrin Rothermich (Research Scholar, University of Connecticut)
Title: How to make sense of the speech signal: social-pragmatic processes and individual differences.
Abstract: Social communication is complex and rarely straightforward. Often listeners must infer what speakers mean, since what is said and what is meant often differ. Therefore, speakers and listeners must use linguistic strategies to facilitate the comprehension process. Additionally, cognitive abilities, personality characteristics, and contextual factors influence how we understand and interpret utterances. In order to study the complexity of everyday communication, I developed a large open-source inventory of video vignettes (RISC; Relational Inference in Social Cognition). This database contains 600 short scenes displaying actors engaged in conversations using nonliteral intentions, such as sarcasm, teasing, and prosocial lies. In my talk I will present several studies using this database, focusing on social-emotional aspects, cross-cultural differences, development, and personality factors.
May 5 - Gordon Pennycook (Postdoc, Yale University)
Title: Analytic thinking, bullshit receptivity, and fake news sensitivity
Abstract: Harry Frankfurt defined 'bullshit' as something constructed without regard for the truth (or, at least, what the bullshitter believes the truth to be). His focus on ones position toward the truth is becoming more and more prescient. 'Post-truth' was Oxford Dictionary's 2016 word of the year. Millions of books are sold each year that contain little more than a collection of buzzwords and aphorisms. Entirely (and often blatantly) fake news stories spread through social media. Given these developments, along with longstanding issues such as deception in politics, it is imperative to develop a psychological understanding of the seemingly prevalent tide of bullshit. In this talk, I will discuss how the interplay between intuitive and analytic thinking is important for understanding who is particularly susceptible to seeing profundity in pseudo-profound bullshit and accuracy in fake news stories. This represents an initial step toward understanding the broader set of phenomena that encompass the large category of things reasonably referred to as bullshit, with the ultimate goal of devising ways to leave the 'post-truth' world behind us.
April 28 - Emorie Beck (Graduate Student, Washington University in St. Louis)
Title: A Tale of Two Stabilities: Longitudinal Temporal Personality Networks
Abstract: Until recently, much of the study of personality has focused on personality structure and traits. Trait approaches rely on average levels of trait relevant manifestations, which means that deviations from average manifestations are lost. In contrast, network approaches represent personality traits as a complex system made up of local interactions between individual items included in a trait inventory at a person-specic level. Coupled with experience sampling methods (ESM) that assess state, rather than trait, personality, network science offers insight into temporal (between time points) and contemporaneous (across time points) personality dynamics at both population and individual levels.
We demonstrate the long-term stability of personality networks using two years of ESM data from the Personality and Intimate Relationships Study (PAIRS; N = 372 participants, total assessments N = 17,715). We computed temporal and contemporaneous networks at both the population and individual level and assessed their stability over time. Our results suggest strong stability in the contemporaneous networks (for both population and individual levels) and moderate (population level) or weak (individuals level) stability in the temporal networks over time. In addition, across the networks, node centrality varied, with Neuroticism nodes playing more central roles in temporal networks and Extraversion nodes playing more central roles in contemporaneous networks. In sum, we show how network science offers insight into personality dynamics and structure above and beyond trait approaches.
April 21 - Amy Krosch (Assistant Professor, Cornell University)
Title: Economic scarcity alters social perception to promote discrimination: Evidence from the brain and behavior
Abstract: When the economy declines, racial discrimination typically increases. Although this effect is often described as reflecting existing structural and institutional inequalities, here I will explore the psychological and perceptual processes through which scarcity exacerbates discrimination. Specifically, using tools from experimental social psychology, psychophysics, and neuroscience, I will present evidence that scarcity alters the extent to which decision makers perceive and represent Black Americans in a discrimination-promoting fashion. I will further explore the role of egalitarian motivation on discriminatory allocation of scarce resources between groups, as well as the learning mechanisms that give rise to such discrimination over time. Together, my findings support the notion that scarcity influences multiple levels of social perception—from category-level representations of Blackness to early face processing of Black individuals—to proliferate racial disparities during times of economic duress.
April 7 - Stacey Sinclair (Professor, Princeton University)
Title: Birds of a Feather: Attitudes toward Blacks shape affiliation among Whites
Abstract: Although individuals are thought to have limited awareness of, and conscious access to, their degree of implicit prejudice, we have emerging evidence that it regulates within-group interpersonal interactions. In this talk I will discuss research showing that greater implicit prejudice among Whites is associated with expressing less interest in affiliating with fellow ingroup members who have Black, as opposed to White, friends. Rather than being a product of stigma by association, this tendency seems to be due to differing assumptions regarding the likelihood of sharing worldviews with the ingroup member being evaluated. The implications of this work for attitudinal diversity in individuals’ social networks will be discussed.
March 24 - Kate Klonick (PhD candidate, Yale Law School)
Title: The New Governors: The People, Rules, and Processes Governing Online Speech
Abstract: Private online platforms have an increasingly essential role in free speech and participation in democratic culture. But while it might appear that any Internet user can publish freely and instantly online, many platforms actively curate the content posted by their users. How and why these platforms operate to moderate speech is largely opaque.
This Article provides the first analysis of what these platforms are actually doing to moderate online speech under a regulatory and First Amendment framework. Drawing from original interviews, archived materials, and leaked documents, this Article not only describes how three major online platforms—Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube—moderate content, it situates their moderation systems into a broader discussion of online governance and the evolution of free expression values in the private sphere. It reveals that private content moderation systems curate user content with an eye to First Amendment norms, corporate responsibility, and at the core, the economic necessity of creating an environment that reflects the expectations of its users. In order to accomplish this, platforms have developed a detailed system with similarities to the American legal system with regularly revised rules, trained human decision-making, and reliance on a system of external influence.
This Article argues that to best understand online speech, we must abandon traditional doctrinal and regulatory analogies, and understand these private content platforms as systems of governance operating outside the boundaries of the First Amendment. These platforms shape and allow participation in our new digital and democratic culture. They are the New Governors of online speech.
March 10 - Steven Sloman (Professor, Brown University)
Title: Ignorance and the Community of Knowledge
Abstract: Asking people to explain how something works reveals an illusion of explanatory depth: Typically, people know less about how things work than they think they do. We overestimate our knowledge of common objects. We similarly overestimate our understanding of political policies. How well do you really understand Obamacare? I will argue that the reason we live in this illusion of understanding is that we live in a community of knowledge, guided by shared intentionality. Our communities understand how things work and we fail to distinguish what we know from the knowledge that resides in other people’s heads. I will spell out some of the implications about what this means for our political attitudes, and other things (depending on time).
Fall 2016 Talk Series
December 9 - Diana Tamir (Assistant Professor, Princeton University)
Title: The structure and dynamics of mental state representations
Abstract: The social mind is tailored to the problem of predicting other people. Imagine trying to navigate the social world without understanding that tired people tend to become frustrated, or that frustrated people tend to lash out. Our social interactions depend on the ability to anticipate others’ actions, and we rely on knowledge about their mental state (i.e., tired, frustrated) to do so. I will present a multi-layered framework of social cognition that helps to explain how people represent the richness and complexity of others’ minds, and how they use this representation to predict others’ actions. First, I provide neuroimaging and behavioral evidence that people use a simple structure to represent others’ mental states. This structure is defined by three psychological dimensions, and can account for almost half of the variation in neural patterns of activity during mentalizing. Next, I outline a formal model for how people predict others’ mental states and actions. Using large-scale experience-sampling studies and Markov modeling, I demonstrate that people employ mental models of emotion dynamics that accurately predict others’ mental state transitions. Together, these findings demonstrate how the social mind might leverage both the structure and dynamics of mental state representations to make predictions about the social world.
December 2 - Thalia Wheatley (Associate Professor, Dartmouth College)
Title: How we connect: From shared experience to social networks
Abstract: The human brain evolved to be massively interactive with its social environment. A deep understanding of human thought and behavior will therefore require research that incorporates the context of others. In this talk I will present studies from my lab that demonstrate how one ancient mechanism (entrainment) may elucidate the kinetic and emotional power of music, why we click with some people but not others, and the presence of homophily in our social networks. This work uses a variety of methods and analyses including cross-cultural research, intersubject correlation (pupils, brains) and social network analysis. I will discuss how entrainment is only one piece of the greater puzzle of human connectedness and argue that a rich understanding of the human mind will require a shift from current scientific practices (static stimuli, treating people as isolated units) to methods that better simulate the interactive, dynamic world that the brain evolved to solve.
November 18 - Brendan Gaesser (Assistant Professor, University at Albany, SUNY)
Title: Episodic Morality
Abstract: Broadly, I seek to understand how imagining the future (i.e., episodic simulation) and remembering the past (i.e., episodic memory) guide social decision-making and behavior. I am particularly interested in elucidating the cognitive mechanisms by which episodic simulation and memory can be used to facilitate moral decision-making and altruistic economic behavior directed at benefiting the welfare of others (e.g. charitable donations). Are people more willing to lend a helping hand when they can imagine and remember how to do so? In this talk I will present evidence that humans’ ability to construct episodes by vividly imagining or remembering specific prosocial events can be used to facilitate a willingness to help others. Emerging data suggests this episodic mechanism dynamically interacts with--but independently from--theory of mind. Applied and theoretical implications will be discussed.
November 11 - Roberta Salvador-Silva (Visiting Graduate Student, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil)
Title: Pshychopathic Traits and Recognition of Emotional Faces
Abstract: In this talk I will present findings from my research in Brazil regarding the impact of psychopathic traits on the ability to recognize emotional faces through the lifespan. First, I will present results from my previous studies about recognition of emotional faces in male adolescents and female inmates with psychopathic traits. However, psychopathic traits are already identifiable in childhood. Research data has shown that callous-unemotional traits are the most significant predictors of psychopathy in adulthood. Studies have also shown that deficits in the processing of emotional expressions are one of the central points in the etiology of maladaptive social functioning in psychopathic individuals. Nevertheless, there is no consensus about the developmental trajectory of the emotional deficits. For instance, since when the emotional processing and, in particular, the recognition of facial expressions are impaired? In order to shed light on this topic, also, I will present some preliminary data from my current research on the impact of calllous-unemotional traits on the ability to recognize emotional faces in a community sample of children aged 6-7 years old. Implications for future clinical intervention on callous-unemotional traits will be discussed.
September 23 - Roseanna Sommers (Graduate Student, Yale University)
Title: Commonsense Consent
Abstract: Consent is a bedrock principle in democratic society and a ubiquitous concept in our laws. In a series of psychological experiments, I investigate people’s commonsense understandings of when consent has been granted, particularly in situations involving fraud or coercion. I find that, contrary to the canonical view that fraud vitiates consent, most laypeople generally think consent is compatible with significant forms of deception. For instance, a patient whose doctor deceives him into undergoing surgery is seen by a majority of survey respondents as giving consent—despite the fact that the doctor lies about a fact he knows is important to the patient’s decision-making. The same holds true for a woman whose prospective sexual partner lies to her about something she previously announced is material to her willingness to engage in sexual relations: she is nonetheless seen by a majority of respondents as engaging in sexual relations consensually, willingly, voluntarily, and of her own free will. These results extend to police officers searching homes without warrants, to scientists conducting biomedical research on human subjects, and to independent parties drawing up contracts. Yet respondents feel differently when one party uses coercion, as opposed to deception, to induce the other party to acquiesce, suggesting that there is something special about deception that makes it seem uncorrupting of consent. I present several possible explanations for this finding and argue that the incongruity between commonsense consent and legal consent carries ramifications for the public—for their ability to serve as fact-finders in legal cases involving consent, and for their willingness to assert their own rights when they are exploited, manipulated, or deceived.
Title: The structure and dynamics of mental state representations
Abstract: The social mind is tailored to the problem of predicting other people. Imagine trying to navigate the social world without understanding that tired people tend to become frustrated, or that frustrated people tend to lash out. Our social interactions depend on the ability to anticipate others’ actions, and we rely on knowledge about their mental state (i.e., tired, frustrated) to do so. I will present a multi-layered framework of social cognition that helps to explain how people represent the richness and complexity of others’ minds, and how they use this representation to predict others’ actions. First, I provide neuroimaging and behavioral evidence that people use a simple structure to represent others’ mental states. This structure is defined by three psychological dimensions, and can account for almost half of the variation in neural patterns of activity during mentalizing. Next, I outline a formal model for how people predict others’ mental states and actions. Using large-scale experience-sampling studies and Markov modeling, I demonstrate that people employ mental models of emotion dynamics that accurately predict others’ mental state transitions. Together, these findings demonstrate how the social mind might leverage both the structure and dynamics of mental state representations to make predictions about the social world.
December 2 - Thalia Wheatley (Associate Professor, Dartmouth College)
Title: How we connect: From shared experience to social networks
Abstract: The human brain evolved to be massively interactive with its social environment. A deep understanding of human thought and behavior will therefore require research that incorporates the context of others. In this talk I will present studies from my lab that demonstrate how one ancient mechanism (entrainment) may elucidate the kinetic and emotional power of music, why we click with some people but not others, and the presence of homophily in our social networks. This work uses a variety of methods and analyses including cross-cultural research, intersubject correlation (pupils, brains) and social network analysis. I will discuss how entrainment is only one piece of the greater puzzle of human connectedness and argue that a rich understanding of the human mind will require a shift from current scientific practices (static stimuli, treating people as isolated units) to methods that better simulate the interactive, dynamic world that the brain evolved to solve.
November 18 - Brendan Gaesser (Assistant Professor, University at Albany, SUNY)
Title: Episodic Morality
Abstract: Broadly, I seek to understand how imagining the future (i.e., episodic simulation) and remembering the past (i.e., episodic memory) guide social decision-making and behavior. I am particularly interested in elucidating the cognitive mechanisms by which episodic simulation and memory can be used to facilitate moral decision-making and altruistic economic behavior directed at benefiting the welfare of others (e.g. charitable donations). Are people more willing to lend a helping hand when they can imagine and remember how to do so? In this talk I will present evidence that humans’ ability to construct episodes by vividly imagining or remembering specific prosocial events can be used to facilitate a willingness to help others. Emerging data suggests this episodic mechanism dynamically interacts with--but independently from--theory of mind. Applied and theoretical implications will be discussed.
November 11 - Roberta Salvador-Silva (Visiting Graduate Student, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil)
Title: Pshychopathic Traits and Recognition of Emotional Faces
Abstract: In this talk I will present findings from my research in Brazil regarding the impact of psychopathic traits on the ability to recognize emotional faces through the lifespan. First, I will present results from my previous studies about recognition of emotional faces in male adolescents and female inmates with psychopathic traits. However, psychopathic traits are already identifiable in childhood. Research data has shown that callous-unemotional traits are the most significant predictors of psychopathy in adulthood. Studies have also shown that deficits in the processing of emotional expressions are one of the central points in the etiology of maladaptive social functioning in psychopathic individuals. Nevertheless, there is no consensus about the developmental trajectory of the emotional deficits. For instance, since when the emotional processing and, in particular, the recognition of facial expressions are impaired? In order to shed light on this topic, also, I will present some preliminary data from my current research on the impact of calllous-unemotional traits on the ability to recognize emotional faces in a community sample of children aged 6-7 years old. Implications for future clinical intervention on callous-unemotional traits will be discussed.
September 23 - Roseanna Sommers (Graduate Student, Yale University)
Title: Commonsense Consent
Abstract: Consent is a bedrock principle in democratic society and a ubiquitous concept in our laws. In a series of psychological experiments, I investigate people’s commonsense understandings of when consent has been granted, particularly in situations involving fraud or coercion. I find that, contrary to the canonical view that fraud vitiates consent, most laypeople generally think consent is compatible with significant forms of deception. For instance, a patient whose doctor deceives him into undergoing surgery is seen by a majority of survey respondents as giving consent—despite the fact that the doctor lies about a fact he knows is important to the patient’s decision-making. The same holds true for a woman whose prospective sexual partner lies to her about something she previously announced is material to her willingness to engage in sexual relations: she is nonetheless seen by a majority of respondents as engaging in sexual relations consensually, willingly, voluntarily, and of her own free will. These results extend to police officers searching homes without warrants, to scientists conducting biomedical research on human subjects, and to independent parties drawing up contracts. Yet respondents feel differently when one party uses coercion, as opposed to deception, to induce the other party to acquiesce, suggesting that there is something special about deception that makes it seem uncorrupting of consent. I present several possible explanations for this finding and argue that the incongruity between commonsense consent and legal consent carries ramifications for the public—for their ability to serve as fact-finders in legal cases involving consent, and for their willingness to assert their own rights when they are exploited, manipulated, or deceived.