Accountability and complexity of thought.

Explored the impact of accountability (the need to justify one's views to others) on the complexity of people's thinking on controversial social issues. 48 undergraduates reported their thoughts on 3 issues and then responded to a series of attitude scales relevant to each topic. Ss provided this information under 1 of 4 conditions: expecting their attitudes to be anonymous or expecting to justify their attitudes to an individual with liberal, conservative, or unknown views. Consistent with previous work on strategic attitude shifts, Ss reported more liberal attitudes when they expected to justify their views to a conservative. Accountability also increased the integrative complexity and evaluative inconsistency of the thoughts reported on each issue but only when Ss expected to justify their attitudes to an individual with unknown views. Findings suggest that accountability leads to more complex information processing only when people do not have the cognitively lazy option of simply expressing views similar to those of the individual to whom they feel accountable. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Supreme Court decision making: Cognitive style as a predictor of ideological consistency of voting.

An integrative complexity coding system was used to explore the relations between cognitive style and political ideology among US Supreme Court justices who served on the Court between 1964 and 1978. The integrative complexity of case opinions that Ss authored during their 1st terms on the Court and the overall liberalism–conservatism of their voting records throughout their tenure were assessed. Consistent with past work on cognitive style and political ideology, Ss with liberal and moderate voting records exhibited more integratively complex styles of thought in their early case opinions than did those with conservative voting records. Unexpectedly, these relationships between cognitive style and ideology were more powerful on cases involving economic conflicts of interest than on cases involving civil liberties and rights issues. Results remain significant after controlling for a variety of demographic and background characteristics of the Ss (e.g., age, religion, quality of law school attended) and characteristics of the judicial opinions scored for integrative complexity (unanimous or split-Court, majority–minority status of opinion). Possible explanations for the results and processes that limit the cross-issue generality of relationships between cognitive style and ideology are discussed. (60 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Authoritarianism, ideology, and political candidate choice.

2 experiments were conducted investigating the relationship between F Scale scores and preference for the candidates of a particular party or ideology. Exp. I showed that Ss with high scores on the F Scale preferred the Republican party and voted for Nixon while those with low scores preferred the Democratic party and voted for Kennedy. The relationship was hypothesized to appear because (a) both candidates clearly differed in the degree to which they represetned liberal and conservative ideologies, (b) the voters possessed an ideological outlook, and (c) liberal or conservative values were more salient than other factors in the choice of candidates. In Exp. II, 3 samples of students were presented with different pairs of candidates: liberal Democrat and conservative Republican, liberal Republican and conservative Democrat, and candidates ideologically equated. Ignoring candidate ideology, there was no relationship between F score and party vote. When ideology was taken into account, high scorers voted for the conservative candidate and low scorers voted for the liberal candidate regardless of party label. When the stimulus figures were equated ideologically there was no relationship between F scores and choice. There was no support for the hypothesis that choices by high scorers were more subject to the pressure of group norms than those of low scorers. (18 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Terror management and tolerance: Does mortality salience always intensify negative reactions to others who threaten one's worldview?

Terror management research has shown that reminding Ss of their mortality leads to intolerance. The present research assessed whether mortality salience would lead to increased intolerance when the value of tolerance is highly accessible. In Study 1, given that liberals value tolerance more than conservatives, it was hypothesized that with mortality salience, dislike of dissimilar others would increase among conseratives but decrease among liberals. Liberal and conservative Ss were induced to think about their own mortality or a neutral topic and then were asked to evaluate 2 target persons, one liberal, the other conservative. Ss' evaluations of the targets supported these hypotheses. In Study 2, the value of tolerance was primed for half the Ss and, under mortality-salient or control conditions, Ss evaluated a target person who criticized the US. Mortality salience did not lead to negative reactions to the critic when the value of tolerance was highly accessible. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integrative complexity of American and Soviet foreign policy rhetoric: A time-series analysis.

Used the integrative complexity coding system to analyze official American and Soviet foreign policy statements concerned with problems that bore directly on American-Soviet relations issued between 1945 and 1983. Time series (ARIMA) and 2-stage least squares analyses revealed that the integrative complexity of Soviet statements was a function of Soviet complexity levels in the past, American complexity levels in the present, Soviet military or political interventions in other countries, the successful culmination of American-Soviet negotiations, and American presidential elections. The integrative complexity of American statements was a function of American complexity levels in the past, Soviet complexity levels in the past, presidential elections, changes in presidential administrations, Soviet military or political interventions in other countries, American military or political interventions in other countries, and the successful culmination of American-Soviet negotiations. Findings are interpreted in terms of 2 complementary levels of analysis: the study of cognitive processes and the study of bargaining and impression management strategies. (77 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The slavery debate in antebellum America: Cognitive style, value conflict, and the limits of compromise.

Explores the relations among value conflict, cognitive style, and policy preferences in pre-Civil War America. Drawing on major historical works, prominent political figures were classified into 1 of 4 political positions: abolitionists, free-soil Republicans who would tolerate slavery in the South but prevent further spread, Buchanan Democrats who would permit slavery in new territories, and advocates of slavery. Results revealed (1) greatest integrative complexity among free-soil Republicans and Buchanan Democrats, with declines in complexity moving either leftward toward abolitionists or rightward toward slavery supporters; (2) integrative complexity was a positive function of endorsing values widely regarded as in conflict in that historical period (property rights, states' rights, and domestic peace vs the threat of "Southern slave power" to free labor and democracy). The results are consistent with the value pluralism model and raise warnings against the tendency to view integratively simple reasoning as both cognitively and morally inferior to complex reasoning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Overlooking the incongruent: Categorization biases in the identification of political statements.

To explore factors affecting memory for statements expounding political positions, 2 experiments examined source attribution for 1-sentence political statements embedded in either congruent or incongruent contexts. In Exp I, 28 female undergraduates who were active in a campus feminist group and 26 who were not read essays by 4 writers of differing overall viewpoints on feminism; in Exp II, 32 undergraduates who were active in the anti-nuclear-power movement and 32 who were not read similar essays about nuclear power. Analysis revealed a pronounced "congruency bias"—both superior recognition memory and more accurate attribution to source for statements embodying a position consistent with the global position of the source. Among incongruent statements, however, there was significantly better source memory for statements that represented extreme, rather than moderate, departures from the overall position of the writer, an effect attributable in part to the greater salience of extremely incongruent items. There was also significantly better source attribution for statements made by writers whose global positions were relatively congenial to Ss and for statements embodying either minority positions or extreme versions of majority views. These effects were not moderated by either intensity of Ss' attitudes or instructions that specifically requested Ss to remember incongruent items. An extension of these studies that adjusted for response bias by transforming the source attribution dependent variable is appended. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Formal operational reasoning and the primacy effect in impression formation.

Investigated the relationship between level of cognitive development and the primacy effect in impression formation. 48 concrete operational and formal operational 8th graders were presented with blocks of information (photographs) about a target individual and were asked to write an impression. When the information was presented in 2 internally consistent but mutually contradictory blocks, impressions produced by concrete operational Ss contained a significantly greater proportion of evaluative statements in the same evaluative direction as the 1st block of information presented (the primacy effect) than did impressions produced by formal operational Ss. Results support the argument that the processing and organizing abilities measured in "objective" cognitive tasks are also used in social cognition. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pre- to postelection shifts in presidential rhetoric: Impression management or cognitive adjustment.

Used content analysis to assess the conceptual or integrative complexity of pre- and post-election policy statements of 20th-century American presidents. Two hypotheses were tested. According to the impression management hypothesis, presidents present issues in deliberately simplistic ways during election campaigns but in more complex ways upon assuming office when they face the necessity of justifying sometimes unpopular decisions to skeptical constituencies. According to the cognitive adjustment hypothesis, presidents gradually become more complex in their thinking during their tenure in office as they become increasingly familiar with high-level policy issues. Results support only the impression management position. The complexity of presidential policy statements increased sharply immediately after inauguration but did not increase with length of time in office. Complexity of policy statements also significantly declined in reelection years. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual and structural solutions to resource dilemmas in two cultures.

Administered a resource management task to 86 US and 97 Dutch undergraduates. Ss were divided into groups of 6 and instructed to harvest points from a regenerating resource pool. Their objective was to maximize individual harvests while maintaining the resource pool. The factorial design crossed 3 levels of resource use (overuse, underuse, and optimal use) with 2 levels of variance of others' purported harvests (low and high). Both variables were manipulated through false feedback to Ss regarding the pool size and the other Ss' harvests. The primary dependent measures were Ss' individual harvests and whether Ss voted for or against elimination of free access to the resource in favor of electing a leader who would make harvest decisions for the group. Results indicate that harvest size increased over time only in the under- and optimal-use conditions. As predicted, overuse Ss voted to give up free access to the resource and to elect a leader more frequently than Ss in the other conditions. Differences between American and Dutch Ss were found only for the variance manipulation. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Experimenter approval, social desirability, and statements of self-reference.

Using 40 undergraduate Ss high or low on a social desirability scale, a verbal conditioning attempt was made to alter the relative frequency of self-referent statements that were either positive or negative. Before reinforcement, high and low social desirability Ss responded very similarly, and used more positive than negative self-references. High social desirability Ss responded to reinforcement by increasing equally the frequency of both positive and negative self-referent statements. Low social desirability Ss did not condition, but continued to make more positive than negative self-references. Although high and low social desirability Ss both have the need to impress others favorably, the high social desirability person is apparently more dependent on the overt, evaluative behavior of others, and for this reason he can be manipulated more easily than low social desirability Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the self-serving function of social anxiety: Shyness as a self-handicapping strategy.

Tested the hypothesis that socially anxious or shy individuals use their anxiety symptoms as a strategy to control attributions made about their performances in social-evaluative settings (i.e., self-handicapping strategies). 70 female and 72 male undergraduates, classified as low and high socially anxious on the basis of the Social Anxiety and Distress Scale, were given role-play tasks in a 3?×?2?×?2 design. It was predicted that trait-socially anxious or shy Ss would report more symptoms of social anxiety in an evaluative setting in which anxiety or shyness could serve as an excuse for poor performance than would Ss in (a) an evaluative setting in which shyness was precluded as an excuse or (b) a nonevaluative setting. It was also predicted that this self-protective pattern of symptom reporting would not occur for Ss who were not trait-socially anxious because these Ss would not commonly use such symptoms as a self-handicapping strategy. Results support these predictions for males but not for females. Sex differences in the strategic use of shyness are discussed in relation to other research on sex differences in the etiology and correlates of social anxiety. (56 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual complexity and preferred coping strategies in anticipation of temporally predictable and unpredictable threat.

Conceptualized the coping strategies of vigilance and avoidance as information search patterns, which were viewed from an information-processing perspective. Conceptual complexity (measured here by the Paragraph Completion Test) was examined as a mediator of response to environmental stress. The major issues of interest were whether (1) the choice of a vigilant or avoidant coping strategy would be related to individual differences in conceptual complexity level, (2) differences in complexity level would be related to patterns of physiological arousal and subjective anxiety, and (3) the cognitive performance of conceptually complex and simple Ss would be differentially affected by variations in environmental threats. 120 female undergraduates served as Ss. Contrary to expectation, the results indicate that when anticipating a temporally unpredictable shock, conceptually simple Ss were more vigilant (behaviorally and cognitively) and reported more subjective anxiety than conceptually complex Ss. Results also indicate that the conceptually complex Ss exhibited higher levels of skin conductance overall than the conceptually simple Ss. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Approach and avoidance of social information.

Examined how an approach or avoidance tendency to information influences the perception of related social behaviors. The sexual attitudes of 50 male and 54 female undergraduates were assessed prior to viewing either a birth control, conservative social values, or educational issues lecture. Ss indicated the number of meaningful actions in the sequence by pressing a thumb switch. It was hypothesized that more units would be indicated when the topic was consistent with the S's sexual attitudes, due to an attempt to gain more informational content. Ss with positive sexual attitudes (erotophiles) indicated more units in the birth control condition, whereas Ss with negative sexual attitudes (erotophobes) indicated more units in the social values condition. Results suggest that there are chronic differences in the segmentation patterns of individuals, reflecting affective orientations toward social information. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive style and political belief systems in the British House of Commons.

Used the integrative complexity coding system to analyze confidential interviews with 89 members of the British House of Commons. The primary goal was to explore the interrelation between cognitive style and political ideology in this elite political sample. Results indicate that moderate socialists interpreted policy issues in more integratively complex or multidimensional terms than did moderate conservatives who, in turn, interpreted issues in more complex terms than extreme conservatives and extreme socialists. The latter 2 groups did not differ significantly from each other. These relations between integrative complexity and political ideology remained significant after controlling for a variety of belief and attitudinal variables. Results are interpreted in terms of a value pluralism model that draws on M. Rokeach's (1973, 1979) 2-value analysis of political ideology and basic principles of cognitive consistency theory. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intimations of mortality: Integrative simplification as a precursor of death.

Tested the hypothesis that a "terminal drop" in cognitive functioning occurs a few years prior to death. Letters written during the last 10 yrs of life were selected from the published correspondence of 18 eminent individuals (such as Freud and Napoleon) and scored for integrative complexity—a variable related to the degree of integration and differentiation in information processing. The overall analysis supported the terminal drop hypothesis. The predicted decline in complexity was found during the 5 yrs prior to death among Ss who died of protracted illness or old age but only in the year immediately prior to death among Ss who died suddenly. There was no relation between complexity and age, and the mean complexity scores of men were higher than those of women. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The self-serving function of hypochondriacal complaints: Physical symptoms as self-handicapping strategies.

Tested the hypothesis that hypochondriacal individuals commonly use reports of physical illness and symptoms as a strategy to control attributions made about their performances in evaluative settings (i.e., self-handicapping strategies). It was predicted that hypochondriacal Ss would report more recent physical illness and complaints and more current physical symptoms in an evaluative setting in which poor health could serve as an alternative explanation for poor performance than would either Ss in an evaluative setting in which poor health was precluded as an excuse or Ss in a nonevaluative setting. 109 undergraduates selected on the basis of their high or low score on the Hypochondriasis scale of the MMPI were administered a short form of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and then received either the evaluative or nonevaluative instructions as a rationale for the experiment. It was found that as predicted, results support the self-protective pattern of complaints in hypochondriacal Ss but not in nonhypochondriacal Ss. The self-protective role of hypochondriacal behavior is discussed in relation to theory and research on the nature and treatment of hypochondriasis. (57 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Communicative incompetence and the non-fluent bilingual.

Examined the evaluative reactions during a communication experiment with 32 male native speakers of English who had moderate but nonfluent speaking abilities in French. Ss had to speak to interlocutors in either English or French using either a casual or formal speech register. Results show that Ss evaluated their interlocutor less favorably when using their second language if the sociolinguistic demands of the communication situation required the use of a casual rather than a formal speech register. The reverse pattern was observed when Ss used their native language. Results are discussed in terms of self-perception theory and a communicative competence approach to 1st and 2nd language learning. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Flattering and unflattering personality portraits of integratively simple and complex managers.

Research has revealed a good deal about both the situational determinants and judgmental and behavioral consequences of integrative complexity. Little is known, however, about people who are prone to think in integratively simple or complex ways. The present study fills this gap by drawing on data collected during in-depth assessments of MBA candidates. Integrative complexity was correlated with a broad range of self-report, observer-rating, semiprojective, and managerial-simulation measures. Results revealed a more complex pattern of correlates than one would expect from the flattering theoretical portrayals of integrative complexity. On self-report measures, complex persons scored higher on openness and creativity and lower on social compliance and conscientiousness. On personality-observer ratings, they emerged as narcissistic and somewhat antagonistic. On managerial-observer ratings, complex persons emerged as higher on initiative and self-objectivity. On semiprojective measures, complex persons scored higher on power motivation. The integratively complex manager is reminiscent of creative architects, scientists, and writers who participated in previous assessments over the past 3 decades. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)