Manifest and latent influence of majorities and minorities.

Compared group cohesiveness and behavioral style as mediators of majority and minority influence and tested the hypothesis that whereas majorities produce more manifest influence, minorities produce more latent influence. 96 female undergraduates, divided into majority and minority groups based on their initial judgments of the experimental issue, were asked to role play members of a jury and were led to anticipate deliberating on 2 civil cases. Ss, who were led to believe they were interacting in groups were exposed to an influence attempt by an individual who advocated either a majority or a minority position in the group. A 2?×?2?×?2 design was used, varying source status (majority or minority), group cohesiveness (high or low), and behavioral style of the influence source (high or low consistency). Results confirm the greater influence of majorities on a manifest level but not of minorities on a latent level. Both majority and minority influence were affected by group cohesiveness; neither was affected by behavioral style. Findings provide no evidence of different processes underlying majority and minority influence, consistent with a unitary model of social influence phenomena. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Majority and minority influences on restaurant preferences.

Studied how social influence is affected by varying majority and minority size and strength (expertise) in the context of an information-integration task. The authors tested the predictions, derived from social impact theory, that influence by either a majority or a minority would be a multiplicative function of the number and strength of its members and that strength would therefore have more effect for majorities than minorities. 40 undergraduates, exposed to the restaurant preferences of 12 residents of each of 2 cities, were asked how much they would like to eat at each restaurant mentioned. By integrating the information provided, participants could determine the number of high- and low-expertise individuals who liked and disliked each restaurant. Six levels of majority–minority size (unanimous majorities of 1, 2, 4, and 6 and, holding majority size at 4, opposing minorities of 1 and 2), 2 levels of expertise, and 2 directions of influence were varied, with a different restaurant assigned to each of the 24 conditions. Unexpectedly, negative information had no effect on restaurant preference. However, positive information did, and the number and strength of influence sources affected influence largely as predicted. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fair selection decisions.

Judges were asked to fairly assign priority ratings to hypothetical candidates applying to medical school, given information about their Medical College Aptitude Test scores, grade-point averages, and group memberships (majority or minority). The affirmative action goal and the qualifications of minorities relative to majorities in the applicant pool were also manipulated. When there is no specified affirmative action goal nor differences between groups in the applicant pool, minorities and majorities are treated similarly. When either group differences in the applicant pool occur or affirmative action goals are introduced, decision makers assign higher priority ratings to minorities than to equally qualified majority applicants. When both factors are operating, minorities receive an even bigger boost. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that decision makers evaluate minority and majority candidates in the same way; differences between groups occur in the response function. Equally qualified majority and minority candidates are assigned to different categories, depending on the size of the affirmative action goal and the extent to which the two groups differ in the applicant pool. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Systematic and nonsystematic processing of majority and minority persuasive communications.

The ability of majorities and minorities to induce privately accepted attitude change by systematic or nonsystematic processing was investigated in four studies. In two of these studies, subjects simultaneously exposed to a majority with which they disagreed and a minority with which they agreed showed considerable issue-relevant processing of the majority message and long-term, generalized private acceptance of the majority position. A third experiment demonstrated that this change was in response to the majority position and was not a reaction against the minority view. Subjects provided with consensus information about the majority and minority (without a persuasive communication) also demonstrated significant attitude change, but this change did not generalize and was not maintained or mediated by subjects' thoughts about the issue. Subjects exposed to a minority with which they mildly disagreed showed slight movement toward the minority position. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The development of the concept of majority decision: A pilot study.

Hypothesized that between 8 and 13 yrs of age, children come to discriminate between static and shifting majorities and that once they make this distinction, they are more apt to accept the majority rule in the case of shifting majorities than in fixed majorities. Ss were 56 8- and 13-yr-old Swiss children. Results indicate that once the distinction between fixed and shifting majorities was understood, the majority rule was preferred and used by Ss in the case of shifting majorities. (French abstract) (2 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The social impact of majorities and minorities.

Reviews 2 traditional lines of research on social influence processes—research on conformity, which looks at the influence of the majority on a passive minority, and research on innovation, which considers the influence of active minorities on a silent majority. A new theory of social impact is examined that views social influence as resulting from forces operating in a social force field. It proposes that influence by either a majority or a minority will be a multiplicative function of the strength, immediacy, and number of its members. It is suggested that social impact theory offers a general model of social influence processes that integrates previous theoretical formulations and empirical findings and accounts for the reciprocal influence of majorities and minorities. Thus, by viewing social influence as a unitary concept, social impact theory permits comparisons between conformity and innovation and predicts the relative magnitude of their effects. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Music-dependent memory: The roles of tempo change and mood mediation.

Music-dependent memory was obtained in previous literature by changing from 1 musical piece to another. Here, the phenomenon was induced by changing only the tempo of the same musical selection. After being presented with a list of words, along with a piece of background music, listeners recalled more words when the selection was played at the same tempo than when it was played at a different tempo. However, no significant reduction in memory was produced by recall contexts with a changed timbre, a different musical selection, or no music (Experiments 1 and 2). Tempo was found to influence the arousal dimension of mood (Experiment 3), and recall was higher in a mood context consistent (as compared with inconsistent) with a given tempo (Experiment 4). The results support the mood-mediation hypothesis of music-dependent memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Verbal conditioning of value-related material.

Studied verbal conditioning as a function of the interaction between content of stimulus material and S's personal value orientation. 2 groups of 20 undergraduates each were conditioned to select words either consistent or inconsistent with their value orientations as measured by the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values. 20 additional Ss were conditioned to select words unrelated to values. As predicted, those Ss conditioned to select words consistent with their value orientations produced a steeper acquisition curve than those Ss conditioned to select inconsistent words. However, there was no difference between the acquisition curves of the former group and the control group. Results are related to verbal conditioning in psychotherapy. It is suggested that the therapist who plans to use such a tool should consider the personal and relational aspects of the therapeutic process as important determinants of conditionability. (15 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The importance of consistency of modeling behavior upon imitation: A comparison of single and multiple models.

80 2nd and 3rd graders were exposed to either a single model who made 2 choices/trial or to 2 models (multiple models) who made 1 choice each/trial. The modeled choices were either identical (consistent) or different (inconsistent) from each other on every trial of 2 4-option preference tasks. A single-response control condition was included, in which a single model made 1 choice/trial. As expected, Ss who observed multiple models whose choices were consistent (multiple–consistent) imitated more than any other group. Ss who were exposed to 2 models whose choices differed from each other on every trial (multiple–inconsistent) showed little imitation of either model. An intermediate amount of imitation was observed for the single model conditions, with the single model who made 2 identical choices/trial (single–consistent) resulting in more imitation than the single model whose choices were inconsistent on each trial (single–inconsistent). The single–consistent group and the single-response control group did not differ in imitation, but the 2 consistent modeling groups showed significantly less imitation than the control group. (11 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contamination of facial memory through exposure to misleading composite pictures.

In Exp I, 46 male and 51 female undergraduates witnessed a filmed incident and later described the target. Results show that Ss who observed a composite containing misleading information (either incorrect hair or an added moustache) were significantly more likely to misreport hairstyle and the presence of a moustache than those who did not. In Exp II, 210 17–65 yr old Ss observed a filmed incident and were tested for their recall and recognition of the target either immediately or after delays of 2 or 7 days. Significant bias, consistent with the content of the misleading composite, was present for both cued recall and choice of mug shot in a photo spread. The effect did not increase over delay but was greater when the composite was seen just prior to recall than immediately after the incident. Implications concerning interference with the memory of the witness who produced the composite and for other witnesses exposed to the misleading composite are discussed. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of expectancy timing and outcome consistency in expectancy-guided retrieval.

Two studies investigated how expectancy-timing and expectancy-outcome consistency affect expectancy-guided retrieval. Ss were given a student's grade report for later recall. During the retention interval, Ss' expectancies about the student's future performance (improve vs decline) were manipulated. The expectancy information was presented either at the beginning (T1), halfway through (T2), or at the end of the retention interval (T3). Ss then received outcome information, half consistent and half inconsistent with their expectancy. In both studies, T2 and T3 Ss showed evidence of expectancy-guided retrieval, recalling consistent information accurately but displaying expectancy-congruent distortion of inconsistent information. T1 Ss showed no evidence of expectancy-guided retrieval and accurately recalled both inconsistent and consistent information. Further analyses suggested that T1 Ss appeared to reprocess the original information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit processing in the cued recall of young and old adults.

Reports 2 cued recall experiments in which younger and older Ss studied target words varying in number of preexperimental associates. In Exp 1, targets were studied in either the absence or presence of meaning-related context cues, with recall always prompted by the cues. In the absence of context, words with smaller sets of associates were easier to recall than those with larger sets, but this effect was reduced for older Ss. The presence of a study context cue facilitated recall and eliminated the effect of associative set size for both ages. In Exp 2, targets were studied and tested in the presence of unrelated words. In this situation, words with smaller sets of associates were less likely to be recalled than words with larger sets; again the effect was reduced for older Ss. The results are interpreted as an age decrement in processing implicitly activated information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of temporal focus on the recall of expectancy-consistent and expectancy-inconsistent information.

Examined the impact of temporal focus on the recall of information that is consistent or inconsistent with an expectation. A consistent pattern of results across 4 experiments indicates that when Ss' expectations are temporally unfocused, better memory for consistent information is observed. In contrast, when expectations are focused in time (i.e., Ss know when the relevant events are likely to occur) recall for consistent and inconsistent information is more balanced. Exp 4 tied these recall findings to the amount of processing devoted to consistent and inconsistent events. When expectations were temporally unfocused, processing time and recall was greater for the confirmatory information. When expectations were temporally focused, more equivalent processing time and recall of consistent and inconsistent information was observed. Discussion centers on the role of temporal focus as a determinant of whether an event is 1-sided or 2-sided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Do I see only what I expect? Evidence for an expectancy-guided retrieval model.

The article proposes an expectancy-guided retrieval model of memory reconstruction. In all 3 experiments, Ss were presented with a student's grade report that they would later have to recall. As predicted by the model, the results of Experiment 1 indicate that Ss' recall was significantly influenced both by manipulations of Ss' expectancies about the student's future performance and by manipulations of outcome information. The results of Experiment 2 show that Ss were sensitive to variations in the original information, indicating the use of expectancy-guided retrieval rather than simply expectancy-based inference or guessing. However, the results of Experiment 3 indicate that the proposed retrieval process (resulting in expectancy-consistent recall) is not inevitable; retrieval accuracy was significantly improved by giving Ss either an alternative retrieval strategy, a monetary incentive, or both manipulations. The possible cognitive and motivational components mediating Ss' use of the proposed retrieval strategy are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discourse-based emotional consistency modulates early and middle components of event-related potentials.

In this study, participants read stories describing emotional episodes with either a positive or negative valence (Experiment 1). Following each story, participants were exposed to short sentences referring to the protagonist, and the event-related potential (ERP) for each sentence's last word was recorded. Some sentences described the protagonist's emotion, either consistent or inconsistent with the story; others were neutral; and others involved a semantically anomalous word. Inconsistent emotions were found to elicit larger N100/P200 and N400 than consistent emotions. However, when participants were exposed to the same critical sentences in a control experiment (Experiment 2) in which the stories had been removed, emotional consistency effects disappeared in all ERP components, demonstrating that these effects were discourse-level phenomena. By contrast, the ordinary N400 effect for locally anomalous words in the sentence was obtained both with and without story context. In conclusion, reading stories describing events with emotional significance determines strong and very early anticipations of an emotional word. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cobalamin and folate deficiency: acquired and hereditary disorders in children

Two experiments examined the viability of several explanations for why majority group individuals process persuasive messages from stigmatized sources more than those from nonstigmatized sources. In each study, majority group participants who either were high or low in prejudice or were high or low in ambivalence toward a stigmatized source's group were exposed to a persuasive communication attributed to a stigmatized (Black, Experiment 1; homosexual, Experiment 2) or nonstigmatized (White, Experiment 1; heterosexual, Experiment 2) source. In both studies, source stigmatization increased message scrutiny only among those who were low in prejudice toward the stigmatized group. This finding is most consistent with the view that people scrutinize messages from stigmatized sources in order to guard against possibly unfair reactions by themselves or others.     

Retrieval dynamics in recognition and list discrimination: further evidence of separate processes of familiarity and recall

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that the time course of retrieval from memory is different for familiarity and recall. The response-signal method was used to compare memory retrieval dynamics in yes-no recognition memory, as a measure of familiarity, with those of list discrimination, as a measure of contextual recall. Responses were always made with regard to membership in two previous study lists. In Experiment 1 an exclusion task requiring positive responses to words from one list and negative responses to new words and words from the nontarget list was used. In Experiment 2, recognition and list discrimination were separate tasks. Retrieval curves from both experiments were consistent, showing that the minimal retrieval time for recognition was about 100 msec faster than that for list discrimination. Repetition affected asymptotic performance but had no reliable effects on retrieval dynamics in either the recognition or the list-discrimination task.     

Memory organization during children's repeated recall.

Presented a list of categorically related words to 20 2nd graders and 20 6th graders in a memory test. Multiple recall tests followed the initial presentation of words so that changes in memory organization could be assessed over recall attempts. Ss in both grades remembered many new words on later recall trials that they had not remembered on Trial 1. The proportions of new words recalled and the retrieval characteristics of these words were similar in both grades. Younger Ss, however, forgot many words during repeated recall, and older Ss did not. Different patterns of forgetting were correlated with different types of organizational strategies. Second graders recalled words in a sequential, rote manner with few transformations or rearrangements of words. Sixth graders, on the other hand, actively constructed larger categories or chunks of words over recall attempts. The spontaneous reconstruction of remembered information by 6th graders is interpreted as a manifestation of constructive memory-monitoring skills. Some potential advantages of a repeated recall paradigm for developmental research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)