Interpretive biases for one's own behavior and physiology in high-trait-anxious individuals and repressors.

The experiments reported here were designed to test predictions from a cognitive theory of personality proposed by M. W. Eysenck (1997). According to that theory, many of the observed differences between individuals high in trait anxiety and repressors (individuals low in trait anxiety and high in social desirability) depend on underlying individual differences in cognitive biases. It follows from the theory that high-anxious individuals should have an interpretive bias for their own behavior in social situations, that is, they exaggerate how anxious it is. In contrast, repressors should have an opposite interpretive bias for their own behavior, that is, they underestimate how anxious it is. Evidence consistent with these predictions was obtained in Experiments 1 and 2. Implications of these findings for cognitive theories of personality are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The use of source memory to identity one's own episodic confusion errors.

In 4 category cued recall experiments, falsely recalled nonlist common members, a semantic confusion error participants. Errors were more likely if critical nonlist words were presented on an incidental task, causing source memory failures called episodic confusion errors . Participants could better identify the source of falsely recalled words if they had deeply processed the words on the incidental task. For deep but not shallow processing, participants could reliably include or exclude incidentally shown category members in recall. The illusion that critical items actually appeared on categorized lists was diminished but not eradicated when participants identified episodic confusion errors post hoc among their own recalled responses; participants often believed that critical items had been on both the incidental task and the study list. Improved source monitoring can potentially mitigate episodic (but not semantic) confusion errors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depression, self-esteem, and the absence of self-protective attributional biases.

Previous research has demonstrated a relation between depression and attributional style. In the present study we evaluated the extent to which self-esteem may be an important determinant of attributional style. Subjects completed measures of self-esteem, depression, and anxiety and responded to the Attributional Style Questionnaire. Maximum R–2 analyses revealed that for significant one-variable and multivariable regression models, self-esteem accounted for the variation in attributional style on the majority of outcome measures. Depression and anxiety added little beyond the contribution of self-esteem. These findings were consistent for both positive and negative events. In addition, self-esteem accounted for variation in attributional evenhandedness. Results are discussed in terms of the role of self-esteem maintenance in attributional style. (61 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's use of dispositions to predict classmates' behavior.

Kindergartners, 3rd, and 6th graders chose classmates whom they would and would not like to have on their team for an academic contest and as playmates. Ss also rated their classmates on likableness and academic ability. At all ages, children's choices for the academic competition and the play situation were significantly associated with their ratings of their classmates' academic and social competence, respectively. Ss typically referred to academic abilities to explain their teammate choices for the academic contest and to social competence or friendship to explain playmate choices. Questions about the stability of classmates' academic and social competencies revealed that not until 6th grade did Ss indicate that there are limits in the degree to which academic and social competencies could improve with effort. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Religious orientation and helping behavior: Responding to one's own or the victim's needs?

Hypothesized that being religious in one way—as an intrinsic end in itself—leads to helping that is more a response to the helper's internalized need to be helpful than to the victim's expressed needs, whereas being religious in another way—as an open-ended quest—leads to helping that is responsive to the victim's expressed needs. To test these hypotheses, 60 female undergraduates interested in religion were confronted with another female undergraduate (a fictional confederate) who was lonely. This fictional confederate indicated either that she wanted help, or that she did not want help because she wanted to work through the problem on her own. Consistent with the 1st hypothesis, an intrinsic end orientation to religion correlated as positively with offers of help when it was not wanted as when it was. Consistent with the 2nd hypothesis, a quest orientation correlated positively with offers of help when it was wanted but negatively when it was not. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Monitoring one's own forgetting in younger and older adults.

The present study examined whether there are age-related differences in the ability to accurately monitor forgetting. Young and older adults studied a mixed list of categorized words, and later recalled items when cued with each category. They then estimated the number of additional items that they did not recall—a form of monitoring one's forgetting. Older adults exhibited impaired memory performance compared with young adults, but also accurately estimated they forgot more information than young adults. Both age groups were fairly accurate in predicting forgetting in terms of resolution, indicating that aging does not impair the ability to monitor forgetting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Joint use of adaptive behavior and IQ to predict achievement.

Determined the influence of IQ, adaptive behavior, SES, and race-ethnicity on reading and math achievement, using multiple linear regression analyses. Ss consisted of 345 children stratified on racial-ethnic characteristics (Anglo, Black, Mexican-American), SES (middle and low), gender, and age (CAs 7–14 yrs). Data were obtained from Ss' scores on the WISC-R, Adaptive Behavior Inventory for Children, and California Achievement Tests. The variance accounted for by the full model, consisting of the 4 previously mentioned variables, was highly significant for reading (.45) and math (.35). The amount of variance associated with race-ethnicity and SES was nonsignificant. It is concluded that adaptive behavior does not significantly predict achievement beyond that predicted by IQ. (8 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of personal experience on self-protective behavior.

This article seeks to further our understanding of self-protective behavior by examining the effects of a particularly powerful stimulus to action: personal experience. It reviews the effects of automobile accidents on seat belt use, criminal victimization other than rape on individual crime prevention efforts, natural hazards experience on both natural hazards preparedness and compliance with evacuation warnings, and myocardial infarction on smoking. Theories suggesting mechanisms that could link personal experience to behavior are described, and data concerning the effects of experience on some key variables in these theories are discussed. Tentative propositions are offered to resolve the many apparent discrepancies in this literature. These propositions concern the effects of experience on risk perceptions, the influence of experience on risk salience, the specificity of responses to victimization, and the duration of experience effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Chronic exposure to an environmental hazard: Risk perceptions and self-protective behavior.

The risk perceptions and self-protective behavior of 282 immigrant workers (all of Mexican origin) in response to pesticide exposure were examined. Several variables were predicted to influence reactions, but some deviations from past studies were expected because cultural or socioeconomic factors could modify risk responses. In keeping with predictions, greater risk perceptions were associated with beliefs that past harm had occurred, future harm to self or offspring was likely, precautions were less effective, and cancer-causing agents were mostly unavoidable. Self-protective behavior was most likely for those receiving risk information, having greater perceptions of control over health and the occupational situation, and believing that precautionary methods were effective. The discussion considers variability in response to chronic risk and the broader perspective offered by environmental hazard studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-monitoring and the attitude–behavior relation.

130 undergraduates responded to 3 questionnaires over a 6-wk period before and after the 1980 presidential election. The questionnaires assessed self-monitoring tendency, attitudes, and intentions with respect to voting in the election and smoking marihuana, and included self-reports of actual behavior. Low self-monitors tended to exhibit stronger attitude–behavior correlations than high self-monitors. There was, however, no difference in the predictability of intentions from attitudes, a finding that disconfirmed the perceived relevance interpretation of the effect of self-monitoring. Instead, the difference was located in the relation between intentions and behavior; low self-monitors exhibited significantly stronger intention–behavior correlations than did high self-monitors. Findings support the interpretation that the 2 types of individuals are equally aware of the implications of their attitudes, but that high self-monitors, being sensitive to situational demands, are less likely to carry out their previously formed intentions than low self-monitors, who are more attentive to internal cues. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceiving one's own traits and others': The multifaceted self.

Four experiments supported the hypothesis that people see themselves as having rich, multifaceted, and adaptive personalities that result in the perceptions that they possess more traits than other people and are less predictable than other people. Experiment 1 showed that people perceived themselves as having more of opposing pairs of traits than they perceived others as having when they rated both self and an acquaintance on each trait in the pair separately, (e.g., serious and carefree). When the ratings were made on bipolar scales (e.g., serious vs. carefree), the self was rated as closer to the midpoint than was the acquaintance. Experiment 2 showed that the latter result reflects people's belief that they possess both traits in opposing pairs. Subjects in Experiment 2 also rated their behavior as less predictable than that of others. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 2 and showed that people perceive that they have both members of pairs of opposing traits independent of the social desirability and observability of the traits. Experiment 4 indicated that familiar and liked persons are perceived to have more traits than unfamiliar and disliked persons. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rumination and emotion-related biases in refreshing information.

The present research examined rumination-related biases in refreshing, a component process of memory updating that involves briefly thinking back to a just-activated thought or percept. In 2 studies, participants were presented with neutral words and with task-relevant (Study 1) and task-irrelevant (Study 2) emotional words. We predicted that brooding, a maladaptive subtype of rumination would be associated with biased refreshing. Compared with nonbrooders, brooders showed slowed refreshing (of emotional and neutral words) when relevant emotional words were presented. Moreover, whereas among nonbrooders only task-relevant emotional words impaired refreshing of neutral words, among brooders both relevant and irrelevant emotional words led to this impairment. These biases were not accounted for by depression, and they were specific to refreshing words rather than to perceptual processing of the words. These findings are discussed in relation to the magnitude and nature of emotional interference in rumination. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Monitoring one's own knowledge during study: A cue-utilization approach to judgments of learning.

How do people monitor their knowledge during acquisition? A cue-utilization approach to judgments of learning (JOLs) is outlined, distinguishing 3 types of cues for JOLs: intrinsic, extrinsic, and mnemonic. In 4 experiments using paired-associates learning, item difficulty (intrinsic) exerted similar effects of JOLs and recall. In contrast, the extrinsic factors of list repetition, item repetition within a list, and stimulus duration affected JOLs less strongly than recall, supporting the proposition that extrinsic factors are discounted in making JOLs. Although practice impaired calibration, increasing underconfidence, it did improve resolution (i.e., the recall-JOL correlation). This improvement was seen to reflect a shift in the basis of JOLs with practice, from reliance on intrinsic factors, towards greater reliance on mnemonic-based heuristics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Person perception and self-awareness: Knowledge of influences on one's own judgments.

96 college students watched 50 short interviews and rated the interviewees' intelligence, friendliness, or deceptiveness, then later estimated how the interviewees' characteristics had influenced their judgments. Ss were moderately accurate at estimating the impact of characteristics on their judgments, with the mean correlation between the actual influence and their estimates being 42. To control for Ss' use of a priori theories of causation, observers who did not see interviews or make person-perception judgments estimated how these characteristics would have influenced their judgments. Ss' self-awareness remained even after controlling for observers' estimates of effects. Although Ss showed self-awareness, their beliefs about what influenced them were also shaped by a priori theories about what should have influenced them. Ss' degree of self-awareness varied with the person-perception judgments they had made and the characteristics they were assessing. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of the participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impact of a group decision on perception of one's own and others' attitudes.

We designed two experiments to examine the influence of a group decision on subjects' estimates of the attitudes of group members. In Experiment 1, subjects were led to believe that their initial vote in a jury decision-making task either agreed or disagreed with the majority vote and, independently of agreement with the majority, that their vote either agreed or disagreed with the final group decision. Subjects' own attitudes changed in the direction of the majority position only when the group decision was inconsistent with their initial vote. Consistent with prior research on the group attribution error, subjects inferred a correspondence between the final group decision and the other jurors' attitudes about the guilt or innocence of the defendant. In Experiment 2, subjects actively participated in or passively observed a group decision that either had or did not have direct consequences for the voting group. We found evidence of the group attribution error in both active participants' and passive observers' inferences about the attitudes of group members. Moreover, subjects tended to infer correspondence between the decision and the attitudes of voting members only when the decision had no immediate consequences for the group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related differences in responses to thoughts of one's own death: Mortality salience and judgments of moral transgressions.

Two experiments explored age differences in response to reminders of death. Terror management research has shown that death reminders lead to increased adherence to and defense of one's cultural worldview. In Study 1, the effect of mortality salience (MS) on evaluations of moral transgressions made by younger and older adults was compared. Whereas younger adults showed the typical pattern of harsher judgments in response to MS, older adults did not. Study 2 compared younger and older adults' responses to both the typical MS induction and a more subtle death reminder. Whereas younger adults responded to both MS inductions with harsher evaluations, older adults made significantly less harsh evaluations after the subtle MS induction. Explanations for this developmental shift in responses to reminders of death are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selective information use in the development of search behavior.

Age differences in children's use of various sources of information about object location were examined in a study of search behavior in 3-, 4-, and 7-yr-olds. The 2 principal sources of information were general associative knowledge about the typical locations of objects (location specificity) and explicit verbal statements about object location. Age differences in the results reflected increasing utilization of the 2 sources of information when each was considered separately. More importantly, the design allowed consideration of Ss' ability to combine the information to limit search. In this respect, the findings reveal sophisticated information integration on the part of even the youngest Ss tested. At all ages, Ss were able to combine both sources of information when both were relevant and to ignore irrelevant location-specificity information when the verbal information was logically superordinate. (7 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Vocal isolation: Effects of occluding auditory feedback from one's own voice.

Investigated the effects of vocal masking on the associative structure and content of ideas elicited in an imagery task, using 16 college graduates as Ss. When Ss were unable to hear their own voices, their images showed significantly greater indications of overall drive expression (unweighted drive), more intense drive expression (weighted drive), and a significant increase in morality references. The degree of drive expression was positively correlated with speech editing behaviors (aborted sentences, incomplete words, etc.), and negatively correlated with language editing behaviors (e.g., use of qualifying expressions). Findings are discussed in terms of the reciprocal activity of speech and language editing in relation to (a) drive expression, (b) the functional significance of hearing one's own voice, and (c) the contribution of the total experimental situation (e.g., the masking noise) to the effects obtained. (15 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)