John Voiklis | Brown University (original) (raw)

Papers by John Voiklis

Numeracy

Because people are constantly confronted with numbers and mathematical concepts in the news, we h... more Because people are constantly confronted with numbers and mathematical concepts in the news, we have embarked on a project to create journalism that can support news users’ number skills. But doing so requires understanding (1) journalists’ ability to reason with numbers, (2) other adults’ ability to do so, and (3) the attributes and affordances of news. In this paper, we focus on the relationship between adults’ news habits and their quantitative reasoning skills. We collected data from a sample of 1,200 US adults, testing their ability to interpret statistical results and asking them to report their news habits. The assessment we developed differentiated the skills of adults in our sample and conformed to the theoretical and statistical assumption that such skills are normally distributed in the population overall. We also found that respondents could be clustered into six distinct groups on the basis of news repertoires (overall patterns of usage, including frequency of news use ...

Psychology and Our Planet

Zoo Biology

Prior research into the conceptual underpinnings of the public's institutional trust in zoos ... more Prior research into the conceptual underpinnings of the public's institutional trust in zoos and aquariums has suggested a range of ethical dimensions that set these types of cultural institutions apart from others in the museum sector. As the recognized holders, care-takers, and nurturers of wild animals, zoos and aquariums are sustained at least in part by the public's perception that these activities are legitimate pursuits and essential to the long-term conservation of the natural world. This paper builds on recent research that identified the ethical dimensions of trust in zoos and aquariums and assessed their distribution among the U.S. public by analyzing survey responses with respect to the importance of trust criteria. We hypothesized that distinct clusters of individuals, as defined by their response to trust criteria items, would emerge and that these clusters would prioritize different dimensions in their trust of zoos and aquariums. Using k-means clustering, we identified four relevant clusters of individuals on seven dimensions of institutional trust in zoos and aquariums. Based on these clusters, we suggest strategies for addressing what may be necessary for zoos and aquariums to claim authority as agents promoting conservation behaviors in society.

Numeracy

Numeracy is not a luxury: numbers constantly factor into our daily lives. Yet adults in the Unite... more Numeracy is not a luxury: numbers constantly factor into our daily lives. Yet adults in the United States have lower numeracy than adults in most other developed nations. While formal statistical training is effective, few adults receive it-and schools are a major contributor to the inequity we see among U.S. adults. That leaves news well-poised as a source of informal learning, given that news is a domain where adults regularly encounter quantitative content. Our transdisciplinary team of journalists and social scientists propose a research agenda for thinking about math and the news. We engage here in a dialogue about two recent news articles, contrasting journalist and researcher perspectives on each. We close by talking about the particular opportunities and challenges that the global COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare for both of our professions.

Current Directions in Psychological Science

Blame is not only a cognitive process but also a social act of moral criticism. Such acts of crit... more Blame is not only a cognitive process but also a social act of moral criticism. Such acts of criticism often serve to correct a transgressor’s behavior but can be costly—to the moral critic, the transgressor, and the community. To limit these costs, blame is socially regulated: Communities set standards of evidence for blame and expect individuals to provide warrant, or justification, for their expressed judgments by pointing to appropriate evidence. We describe the path model of blame, which captures the cognitive processes that underlie blame judgments and that specify the kind of evidence that counts as warrant for blame. We then show how the varying costs of blaming put social pressure on the moral critic to be accurate and fair. We also identify conditions under which these pressures are weakened and standards of evidence decline: for example, when the transgressor has low status or is an out-group member, when the critic has high status or is anonymous, or when interactions ar...

Contempt for one or two individual(s) Contempt for three or more

Collaborators generally coordinate their activities through communication, during which they nego... more Collaborators generally coordinate their activities through communication, during which they negotiate a shared lexicon for activity-related objects. This social-pragmatic activity both recruits and affects cognitive and social-cognitive processes ranging from selective attention to perspective taking. We ask whether negotiating reference also facilitates category learning or might private verbalization yield comparable facilitation? Participants in three referential conditions learned to classify imaginary creatures according to combinations of functional featuresnutritive and destructive-that implicitly defined four categories. Remote partners communicated in the Dialogue condition. In the Monologue condition, participants recorded audio descriptions for their own later use. Controls worked silently. Dialogue yielded better category learning, with wider selective attention. Monologue offered no benefits over working silently. We conclude that negotiating reference compels collaborators to find communicable structure in their shared activity; this shareability constraint accelerates category learning and likely provides much of the benefit recently ascribed to learning labeled categories.

Teaching Climate Change in the United States, 2020

Numeracy, 2021

The news arguably serves to inform the quantitative reasoning (QR) of news audiences. Before one ... more The news arguably serves to inform the quantitative reasoning (QR) of news audiences. Before one can contemplate how well the news serves this function, we first need to determine how much QR typical news stories require from readers. This paper assesses the amount of quantitative content present in a wide array of media sources, and the types of QR required for audiences to make sense of the information presented. We build a corpus of 230 US news reports across four topic areas (health, science, economy, and politics) in February 2020. After classifying reports for QR required at both the conceptual and phrase levels, we find that the news stories in our sample can largely be classified along a single dimension: The amount of quantitative information they contain. There were two main types of quantitative clauses: those reporting on magnitude and those reporting on comparisons. While economy and health reporting required significantly more QR than science or politics reporting, we ...

Human beings live complex social lives, composed of various types of relationships across nested ... more Human beings live complex social lives, composed of various types of relationships across nested social hierarchies, all structured by rights, rules, and obligations. However, selfish goals persist, and keeping individuals' goals in line with community interests has become the primary challenge of modern morality. To meet this challenge, human societies have developed two major social-cultural tools: a vast network of rules, norms, and values (Sripada & Stich, 2006; Ullmann-Margalit, 1977) and complex social practices of norm enforcement, such as blame, praise, apology, and reconciliation (Semin & Manstead, 1983). This kind of social-cultural morality has to be taught, learned, and enforced by community members, even by the youngest among them (Gockeritz, Schmidt, & Tomasello, 2014). Acquiring norms likely benefits from early-appearing preferences for proso-

Cognitive Science, 2011

Tort Reform: Negligence Explains Attributions of Intentionality for Negative Side Effects John Vo... more Tort Reform: Negligence Explains Attributions of Intentionality for Negative Side Effects John Voiklis Stevens Institute of Technology Jeffrey Nickerson Stevens Institute of Technology Abstract: It seems intuitive to attribute intentionality to goal-directed actions. Sometimes, though, goal-directed actions yield side effects that actors could foresee but did not necessarily intend. Previous research suggests that people make opposing attributions to negative and positive side effects: they attribute intentionality to negative side effects but not to positive side effects. Those researchers argue that moral disapproval colors intentionality judgments for negative side effects. We do not dismiss this interpretation, rather we show that moral judgment influences intuitions about a specific type of intentionality: negligence. Participants learned about a business decision that yields explicitly intended profits and one of two foreseeable side effects (harmful or helpful) on the environ...

Cognitive Science, 2011

The Social-Pragmatics of Category Learning John Voiklis Stevens Institute of Technology James Cor... more The Social-Pragmatics of Category Learning John Voiklis Stevens Institute of Technology James Corter Teachers College, Columbia University Abstract: Collaborators generally coordinate their activities through communication, during which they negotiate a shared lexicon for activity-related objects. This social-pragmatic activity both recruits and affects cognitive and social-cognitive processes ranging from selective attention to perspective taking. We ask whether negotiating reference also facilitates category learning or might private verbalization yield comparable facilitation? Participants in three referential conditions learned to classify imaginary creatures according to combinations of functional features – nutritive and destructive – that implicitly defined four categories. Remote partners communicated in the Dialogue condition. In the Monologue condition, participants recorded audio descriptions for their own later use. Controls worked silently. Dialogue yielded better categ...

Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 2020

This paper presents a study of the specific disciplinary competencies required of library program... more This paper presents a study of the specific disciplinary competencies required of library programming professionals and the training pathways where they develop those skills. Most existing competency frameworks focus on general library service or audience, rather than the specializations required for public programming. Reflecting the emerging importance of programming to libraries’ service model, this US research study demonstrates that excellence in programming requires a unique set of competencies not found in other areas of library practice. The evidence shows that most public-programming competencies are learned outside of MLIS training but could be introduced as an MLIS concentration or learned as professional development.

The Library Quarterly, 2020

The authors present a mixed-methods research study that has resulted in a framework to characteri... more The authors present a mixed-methods research study that has resulted in a framework to characterize public programs offered by US libraries. This categorization lays the foundation for long-term study of the impact of library public programming. Using an iterative approach with library expert panels as well as seeking broad, representative input from across the library field through a validity survey and case studies, this work benefits from a level of consensus not previously achieved at this scale. The resulting framework considers library profile, program characteristics, audience characteristics, and program administration—each with various subdimensions—to understand who programs affect, how those people are likely to be affected, and the institutional impact of library public programs.

Journal of Pragmatics, 2021

PtJrpo~e+ To ¢l'mra¢lenzo tbe d~]me I.~THK) and {~fe el i~Iftlal wall thlckefllrl~J stlt~e(Itlenl... more PtJrpo~e+ To ¢l'mra¢lenzo tbe d~]me I.~THK) and {~fe el i~Iftlal wall thlckefllrl~J stlt~e(Itlenl to ablaPon using in~r~i~!ffi~¢ echoeardlogr~Dhy (ICE/ Meft!o(~: ICE (9 MH~I lmao*ng gu~le(t catheter ab~af~r~s *n the ~Oht (RAI a~ ~lt afrll.a~rt (LA) were pedw/ne~ in ;' Closed c.hest SWit~ (~120 kg) ~n~rgy ,~l~¢~Im~ Irnamroa! powe~-empmc, temperate rrl feeDing.pas

International Journal of Science Education, Part B, 2020

ABSTRACT Global interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) literacy necessitat... more ABSTRACT Global interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) literacy necessitates studying public perceptions of the STEM learning ecology – the spectrum of settings where people encounter STEM. By expanding on the STEM learning ecosystem focused on youth’s structured learning, we explore settings where lifelong learners encounter STEM in their daily lives. We conducted a nationwide study with the US public describing where and how people engage with STEM. Results show that the public encounters each STEM discipline with similar frequency in various informal settings. Settings resonate uniquely with the public regarding STEM disciplines, topics, and modes of learning. Specifically, science centres are the standard for informal STEM learning, and are associated most closely with the experiences outlined above. Other informal learning centres are perceived to cover aspects of that ecology. Zoos are seen as places to learn most about animals and related topics (e.g., animal behaviour), and aquariums for teaching about water quality. Comparatively, science centres are thought to provide opportunities to learn about broader STEM topics, including climate change. We highlight that informal learning settings can advance STEM learning by explicitly prioritizing each STEM discipline in programmes, and by identifying strategies to measure the public’s informal STEM learning.

Modern human societies demand enforcement of social and moral norms using two types of sanctions ... more Modern human societies demand enforcement of social and moral norms using two types of sanctions that have distinct historical origins. Informal sanctions (e.g., chiding a relative) have existed since the dawn of humanity, whereas formal sanctions (e.g., punishment by the state) emerged more recently—over the last few thousand years, when laws began to separate norm violations into illegal and non-illegal violations. However, little research has investigated the psychological mechanisms underlying people’s use of these two distinct systems of sanctions. We show for the first time that these different cultural histories have left detectable traces in people’s moral judgments of today. When considering formal sanctions, people are experts in discriminating among illegal violations of varying severity, which is an adaptation to the culturally recent introduction of authority and law. When considering light informal sanctions (e.g., disapproval), people are experts in discriminating amo...

Numeracy

Because people are constantly confronted with numbers and mathematical concepts in the news, we h... more Because people are constantly confronted with numbers and mathematical concepts in the news, we have embarked on a project to create journalism that can support news users’ number skills. But doing so requires understanding (1) journalists’ ability to reason with numbers, (2) other adults’ ability to do so, and (3) the attributes and affordances of news. In this paper, we focus on the relationship between adults’ news habits and their quantitative reasoning skills. We collected data from a sample of 1,200 US adults, testing their ability to interpret statistical results and asking them to report their news habits. The assessment we developed differentiated the skills of adults in our sample and conformed to the theoretical and statistical assumption that such skills are normally distributed in the population overall. We also found that respondents could be clustered into six distinct groups on the basis of news repertoires (overall patterns of usage, including frequency of news use ...

Psychology and Our Planet

Zoo Biology

Prior research into the conceptual underpinnings of the public's institutional trust in zoos ... more Prior research into the conceptual underpinnings of the public's institutional trust in zoos and aquariums has suggested a range of ethical dimensions that set these types of cultural institutions apart from others in the museum sector. As the recognized holders, care-takers, and nurturers of wild animals, zoos and aquariums are sustained at least in part by the public's perception that these activities are legitimate pursuits and essential to the long-term conservation of the natural world. This paper builds on recent research that identified the ethical dimensions of trust in zoos and aquariums and assessed their distribution among the U.S. public by analyzing survey responses with respect to the importance of trust criteria. We hypothesized that distinct clusters of individuals, as defined by their response to trust criteria items, would emerge and that these clusters would prioritize different dimensions in their trust of zoos and aquariums. Using k-means clustering, we identified four relevant clusters of individuals on seven dimensions of institutional trust in zoos and aquariums. Based on these clusters, we suggest strategies for addressing what may be necessary for zoos and aquariums to claim authority as agents promoting conservation behaviors in society.

Numeracy

Numeracy is not a luxury: numbers constantly factor into our daily lives. Yet adults in the Unite... more Numeracy is not a luxury: numbers constantly factor into our daily lives. Yet adults in the United States have lower numeracy than adults in most other developed nations. While formal statistical training is effective, few adults receive it-and schools are a major contributor to the inequity we see among U.S. adults. That leaves news well-poised as a source of informal learning, given that news is a domain where adults regularly encounter quantitative content. Our transdisciplinary team of journalists and social scientists propose a research agenda for thinking about math and the news. We engage here in a dialogue about two recent news articles, contrasting journalist and researcher perspectives on each. We close by talking about the particular opportunities and challenges that the global COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare for both of our professions.

Current Directions in Psychological Science

Blame is not only a cognitive process but also a social act of moral criticism. Such acts of crit... more Blame is not only a cognitive process but also a social act of moral criticism. Such acts of criticism often serve to correct a transgressor’s behavior but can be costly—to the moral critic, the transgressor, and the community. To limit these costs, blame is socially regulated: Communities set standards of evidence for blame and expect individuals to provide warrant, or justification, for their expressed judgments by pointing to appropriate evidence. We describe the path model of blame, which captures the cognitive processes that underlie blame judgments and that specify the kind of evidence that counts as warrant for blame. We then show how the varying costs of blaming put social pressure on the moral critic to be accurate and fair. We also identify conditions under which these pressures are weakened and standards of evidence decline: for example, when the transgressor has low status or is an out-group member, when the critic has high status or is anonymous, or when interactions ar...

Contempt for one or two individual(s) Contempt for three or more

Collaborators generally coordinate their activities through communication, during which they nego... more Collaborators generally coordinate their activities through communication, during which they negotiate a shared lexicon for activity-related objects. This social-pragmatic activity both recruits and affects cognitive and social-cognitive processes ranging from selective attention to perspective taking. We ask whether negotiating reference also facilitates category learning or might private verbalization yield comparable facilitation? Participants in three referential conditions learned to classify imaginary creatures according to combinations of functional featuresnutritive and destructive-that implicitly defined four categories. Remote partners communicated in the Dialogue condition. In the Monologue condition, participants recorded audio descriptions for their own later use. Controls worked silently. Dialogue yielded better category learning, with wider selective attention. Monologue offered no benefits over working silently. We conclude that negotiating reference compels collaborators to find communicable structure in their shared activity; this shareability constraint accelerates category learning and likely provides much of the benefit recently ascribed to learning labeled categories.

Teaching Climate Change in the United States, 2020

Numeracy, 2021

The news arguably serves to inform the quantitative reasoning (QR) of news audiences. Before one ... more The news arguably serves to inform the quantitative reasoning (QR) of news audiences. Before one can contemplate how well the news serves this function, we first need to determine how much QR typical news stories require from readers. This paper assesses the amount of quantitative content present in a wide array of media sources, and the types of QR required for audiences to make sense of the information presented. We build a corpus of 230 US news reports across four topic areas (health, science, economy, and politics) in February 2020. After classifying reports for QR required at both the conceptual and phrase levels, we find that the news stories in our sample can largely be classified along a single dimension: The amount of quantitative information they contain. There were two main types of quantitative clauses: those reporting on magnitude and those reporting on comparisons. While economy and health reporting required significantly more QR than science or politics reporting, we ...

Human beings live complex social lives, composed of various types of relationships across nested ... more Human beings live complex social lives, composed of various types of relationships across nested social hierarchies, all structured by rights, rules, and obligations. However, selfish goals persist, and keeping individuals' goals in line with community interests has become the primary challenge of modern morality. To meet this challenge, human societies have developed two major social-cultural tools: a vast network of rules, norms, and values (Sripada & Stich, 2006; Ullmann-Margalit, 1977) and complex social practices of norm enforcement, such as blame, praise, apology, and reconciliation (Semin & Manstead, 1983). This kind of social-cultural morality has to be taught, learned, and enforced by community members, even by the youngest among them (Gockeritz, Schmidt, & Tomasello, 2014). Acquiring norms likely benefits from early-appearing preferences for proso-

Cognitive Science, 2011

Tort Reform: Negligence Explains Attributions of Intentionality for Negative Side Effects John Vo... more Tort Reform: Negligence Explains Attributions of Intentionality for Negative Side Effects John Voiklis Stevens Institute of Technology Jeffrey Nickerson Stevens Institute of Technology Abstract: It seems intuitive to attribute intentionality to goal-directed actions. Sometimes, though, goal-directed actions yield side effects that actors could foresee but did not necessarily intend. Previous research suggests that people make opposing attributions to negative and positive side effects: they attribute intentionality to negative side effects but not to positive side effects. Those researchers argue that moral disapproval colors intentionality judgments for negative side effects. We do not dismiss this interpretation, rather we show that moral judgment influences intuitions about a specific type of intentionality: negligence. Participants learned about a business decision that yields explicitly intended profits and one of two foreseeable side effects (harmful or helpful) on the environ...

Cognitive Science, 2011

The Social-Pragmatics of Category Learning John Voiklis Stevens Institute of Technology James Cor... more The Social-Pragmatics of Category Learning John Voiklis Stevens Institute of Technology James Corter Teachers College, Columbia University Abstract: Collaborators generally coordinate their activities through communication, during which they negotiate a shared lexicon for activity-related objects. This social-pragmatic activity both recruits and affects cognitive and social-cognitive processes ranging from selective attention to perspective taking. We ask whether negotiating reference also facilitates category learning or might private verbalization yield comparable facilitation? Participants in three referential conditions learned to classify imaginary creatures according to combinations of functional features – nutritive and destructive – that implicitly defined four categories. Remote partners communicated in the Dialogue condition. In the Monologue condition, participants recorded audio descriptions for their own later use. Controls worked silently. Dialogue yielded better categ...

Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 2020

This paper presents a study of the specific disciplinary competencies required of library program... more This paper presents a study of the specific disciplinary competencies required of library programming professionals and the training pathways where they develop those skills. Most existing competency frameworks focus on general library service or audience, rather than the specializations required for public programming. Reflecting the emerging importance of programming to libraries’ service model, this US research study demonstrates that excellence in programming requires a unique set of competencies not found in other areas of library practice. The evidence shows that most public-programming competencies are learned outside of MLIS training but could be introduced as an MLIS concentration or learned as professional development.

The Library Quarterly, 2020

The authors present a mixed-methods research study that has resulted in a framework to characteri... more The authors present a mixed-methods research study that has resulted in a framework to characterize public programs offered by US libraries. This categorization lays the foundation for long-term study of the impact of library public programming. Using an iterative approach with library expert panels as well as seeking broad, representative input from across the library field through a validity survey and case studies, this work benefits from a level of consensus not previously achieved at this scale. The resulting framework considers library profile, program characteristics, audience characteristics, and program administration—each with various subdimensions—to understand who programs affect, how those people are likely to be affected, and the institutional impact of library public programs.

Journal of Pragmatics, 2021

PtJrpo~e+ To ¢l'mra¢lenzo tbe d~]me I.~THK) and {~fe el i~Iftlal wall thlckefllrl~J stlt~e(Itlenl... more PtJrpo~e+ To ¢l'mra¢lenzo tbe d~]me I.~THK) and {~fe el i~Iftlal wall thlckefllrl~J stlt~e(Itlenl to ablaPon using in~r~i~!ffi~¢ echoeardlogr~Dhy (ICE/ Meft!o(~: ICE (9 MH~I lmao*ng gu~le(t catheter ab~af~r~s *n the ~Oht (RAI a~ ~lt afrll.a~rt (LA) were pedw/ne~ in ;' Closed c.hest SWit~ (~120 kg) ~n~rgy ,~l~¢~Im~ Irnamroa! powe~-empmc, temperate rrl feeDing.pas

International Journal of Science Education, Part B, 2020

ABSTRACT Global interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) literacy necessitat... more ABSTRACT Global interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) literacy necessitates studying public perceptions of the STEM learning ecology – the spectrum of settings where people encounter STEM. By expanding on the STEM learning ecosystem focused on youth’s structured learning, we explore settings where lifelong learners encounter STEM in their daily lives. We conducted a nationwide study with the US public describing where and how people engage with STEM. Results show that the public encounters each STEM discipline with similar frequency in various informal settings. Settings resonate uniquely with the public regarding STEM disciplines, topics, and modes of learning. Specifically, science centres are the standard for informal STEM learning, and are associated most closely with the experiences outlined above. Other informal learning centres are perceived to cover aspects of that ecology. Zoos are seen as places to learn most about animals and related topics (e.g., animal behaviour), and aquariums for teaching about water quality. Comparatively, science centres are thought to provide opportunities to learn about broader STEM topics, including climate change. We highlight that informal learning settings can advance STEM learning by explicitly prioritizing each STEM discipline in programmes, and by identifying strategies to measure the public’s informal STEM learning.

Modern human societies demand enforcement of social and moral norms using two types of sanctions ... more Modern human societies demand enforcement of social and moral norms using two types of sanctions that have distinct historical origins. Informal sanctions (e.g., chiding a relative) have existed since the dawn of humanity, whereas formal sanctions (e.g., punishment by the state) emerged more recently—over the last few thousand years, when laws began to separate norm violations into illegal and non-illegal violations. However, little research has investigated the psychological mechanisms underlying people’s use of these two distinct systems of sanctions. We show for the first time that these different cultural histories have left detectable traces in people’s moral judgments of today. When considering formal sanctions, people are experts in discriminating among illegal violations of varying severity, which is an adaptation to the culturally recent introduction of authority and law. When considering light informal sanctions (e.g., disapproval), people are experts in discriminating amo...