The actor as context for social judgments: effects of prior impressions and stereotypes

Three experiments identified conditions under which trait judgments made about a behavior were more likely to influence later judgments of the behavior. In Experiment 1, participants made trait judgments about numerous behaviors presented with photos of actors. Some behaviors were repeated, paired with the same or a different actor. All repeated behaviors were judged faster than new behaviors. Facilitation was greatest when repeated behaviors were paired with the same actor, suggesting greater influence of prior judgments in this condition. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated this effect, and the pattern of response times (RTs) suggested a stronger association between the actor and behavior when a prior impression of the actor had been formed (Experiment 2) and when the behavior was stereotypic of the actor's group (Experiment 3). Level of prejudice moderated RT patterns in Experiment 3. Implications for context effects, the nature of trait inferences, and stereotype change are discussed.     

The magic spell of language: Linguistic categories and their perceptual consequences.

Language is a tool that directs attention to different aspects of reality. Using participants from the same linguistic community, the authors demonstrate in 4 studies that metasemantic features of linguistic categories influence basic perceptual processes. More specifically, the hypothesis that abstract versus concrete language leads to a more global versus local perceptual focus was supported across 4 experiments, in which participants used (Experiment 1) or were primed either supraliminally (Experiments 2 and 3) or subliminally (Experiment 4) with abstract (adjectives) or concrete (verbs) terms. Participants were shown to display a global versus specific perceptual focus (Experiments 1 and 4), more versus less inclusiveness of categorization (Experiments 2 and 3), and incorporation of more rather than less contextual information (Experiment 3). The implications of this new perspective toward the language-perception interface are discussed in the context of the general linguistic relativity debate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Practice schedules and subgoal instantiation in cascaded problem solving.

Fluent problem solving depends on efficient instantiation of subgoals for executing component skills. In 3 experiments, the authors examined how component-skill practice schedules and problem-solving demands interact to affect fluency in mental calculation. Participants practiced Boolean rules in blocked or random practice schedules and then solved problems that varied in the need to switch rules and in preview of upcoming operators. In Experiment 1, participants more quickly solved problems requiring repeated use of a single rule than problems using multiple rules, but practice schedules had no effect. In Experiment 2, random practice produced a transfer benefit for multiple-rule problems that allowed operator preview. Experiment 3 verified the importance of preview. These results suggest that when participants can rapidly switch rules, they achieve fluency by overlapping steps in a manner analogous to perceptual-motor skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the generality of the part-set cuing effect: Evidence from nonmemory tasks.

A puzzling finding in memory research is that part–set cuing, or the presentation of some of the to-be-recalled items as cues, impairs recall of the remaining items. In this article a series of four experiments involving nonmemory tasks extends this finding to other cognitive domains. Specifically, it is shown that providing possible responses impairs the production of other responses when words are constructed from the letters of a lengthy word (Experiment 1), when differences between almost identical pairs of pictures are discovered (Experiment 2), when blurred pictures brought gradually into focus are identified (Experiment 3), and when nonsense figures are likened to meaningful objects or scenes (Experiment 4). These findings suggest that the part–set cuing effect in memory may be only one instantiation of a much broader phenomenon. And such a perspective might elicit a more satisfactory explanation of this puzzling effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Informational mood impact on effort-related cardiovascular reponse: The diagnostic value of mood counts.

Drawing on the mood-behavior model (G. H. E. Gendolla, 2000), 2 experiments examined moods' informational impact on effort-related cardiovascular response. After being induced into positive versus negative moods, participants performed a memory task (Experiment 1) or a letter-cancellation task (Experiment 2). Half the participants received a cue that their mood could have been manipulated. As expected, both studies found stronger reactivity of systolic blood pressure in a negative mood than in a positive mood when no cue was provided. This effect diminished in the cue conditions. Additionally, achievement corresponded to systolic blood pressure reactivity (Experiment 1), the cue manipulation had no effect on mood, and mood had a congruency effect on subjective task difficulty in the no-cue conditions (Experiment 2). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Can Language Do the Driving? The Effect of Linguistic Input on Infants' Categorization of Support Spatial Relations.

Two experiments explored the effect of linguistic input on 18-month-olds' ability to form an abstract categorical representation of support. Infants were habituated to 4 support events (i.e., one object placed on another) and were tested with a novel support and a novel containment event. Infants formed an abstract category of support (i.e., looked significantly longer at the novel than familiar relation) when hearing the word "on" during habituation but not when viewing the events in silence (Experiment 1) or when hearing general phrases or a novel word (Experiment 2). Results indicate that a familiar word can facilitate infants' formation of an abstract spatial category, leading them to form a category that they do not form in the absence of the word. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Temporal Construal Effects on Abstract and Concrete Thinking: Consequences for Insight and Creative Cognition.

Six studies investigate whether and how distant future time perspective facilitates abstract thinking and impedes concrete thinking by altering the level at which mental representations are construed. In Experiments 1-3, participants who envisioned their lives and imagined themselves engaging in a task 1 year later as opposed to the next day subsequently performed better on a series of insight tasks. In Experiments 4 and 5 a distal perspective was found to improve creative generation of abstract solutions. Moreover, Experiment 5 demonstrated a similar effect with temporal distance manipulated indirectly, by making participants imagine their lives in general a year from now versus tomorrow prior to performance. In Experiment 6, distant time perspective undermined rather than enhanced analytical problem solving. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Values as predictors of judgments and behaviors: The role of abstract and concrete mindsets.

This research makes strides toward reconciling mixed findings in the value-behavior relation by positing that values are abstract representations of ideal end states that are more likely to influence behavior when individuals think abstractly (vs. concretely) and focus on high- (vs. low-) level motivations for interpreting their actions. In 6 experiments, the authors measured the importance of values (or made them salient via a priming procedure) and simultaneously manipulated accessible mindsets (abstract vs. concrete), and assessed their effect on judgments and behaviors. An abstract (and not a concrete) mindset led participants to engage in judgments or behaviors that were consistent with a broad range of values, including power, benevolence, universalism, self-direction, individualism, and collectivism. These results support the notion that values are more likely to be expressed through value-congruent judgments and behaviors when individuals think abstractly about their actions, and not when they think concretely. Two of the experiments examined the process underlying these effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Teaching with concrete and abstract visual representations: Effects on students' problem solving, problem representations, and learning perceptions.

In 3 experiments, we examined the effects of using concrete and/or abstract visual problem representations during instruction on students' problem-solving practice, near transfer, problem representations, and learning perceptions. In Experiments 1 and 2, novice students learned about electrical circuit analysis with an instructional program that included worked-out and practice problems represented with abstract (Group A), concrete (Group C), or abstract and concrete diagrams (Group AC), whereby the cover stories were abstract in Group A and concrete in Groups C and AC. Experiment 3 added a 4th condition (C-A) with a concrete cover story and abstract diagrams. Group AC outperformed Groups A and C on problem-solving practice in Experiments 1 and 2 and outperformed Group C on transfer across the 3 experiments; Group AC also outperformed Group C-A in Experiment 3. Further, Group A outperformed Group C on transfer in Experiments 2 and 3 and outperformed Group C-A in Experiment 3. Transfer scores were positively associated with the quality of the diagrams and the number of abstract representations drawn during the transfer test. Data on students' learning perceptions suggest that the advantage of Group AC relies on the combined cognitive support of both representations. Our studies indicate that problem solving is fostered when learners experience concrete visual representations that connect to their prior knowledge and are enabled to use abstract visual representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social exclusion and early-stage interpersonal perception: Selective attention to signs of acceptance.

Social exclusion can thwart people's powerful need for social belonging. Whereas prior studies have focused primarily on how social exclusion influences complex and cognitively downstream social outcomes (e.g., memory, overt social judgments and behavior), the current research examined basic, early-in-the-cognitive-stream consequences of exclusion. Across 4 experiments, the threat of exclusion increased selective attention to smiling faces, reflecting an attunement to signs of social acceptance. Compared with nonexcluded participants, participants who experienced the threat of exclusion were faster to identify smiling faces within a “crowd” of discrepant faces (Experiment 1), fixated more of their attention on smiling faces in eye-tracking tasks (Experiments 2 and 3), and were slower to disengage their attention from smiling faces in a visual cueing experiment (Experiment 4). These attentional attunements were specific to positive, social targets. Excluded participants did not show heightened attention to faces conveying social disapproval or to positive nonsocial images. The threat of social exclusion motivates people to connect with sources of acceptance, which is manifested not only in “downstream” choices and behaviors but also at the level of basic, early-stage perceptual processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning the value of money from stochastically varying prices.

In 3 experiments, the authors investigated learning of the value of money from product prices in an unfamiliar currency when the prices are proportional to quantity. In support of the second stage of a hypothesized 2-stage process of learning, Experiment 1, in which 32 undergraduates participated, shows that response times for inferences of quantity are longer when participants are presented with quantity-price pairs than when they are presented with price-quantity pairs. Experiments 2 and 3, in which 54 and 34 undergraduates participated, respectively, show that (a) stochastic price variation causes systematic errors in the learning of unit prices from quantity-price pairs as a result of judgmental regression effects and (b) in support of the 2-stage learning hypothesis, inferences of quantity are the inverse of the learned unit prices. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Victim entitlement to behave selfishly.

Three experiments demonstrated that feeling wronged leads to a sense of entitlement and to selfish behavior. In Experiment 1, participants instructed to recall a time when their lives were unfair were more likely to refuse to help the experimenter with a supplementary task than were participants who recalled a time when they were bored. In Experiment 2, the same manipulation increased intentions to engage in a number of selfish behaviors, and this effect was mediated by self-reported entitlement to obtain positive (and avoid negative) outcomes. In Experiment 3, participants who lost at a computer game for an unfair reason (a glitch in the program) requested a more selfish money allocation for a future task than did participants who lost the game for a fair reason, and this effect was again mediated by entitlement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The referents of trait inferences: The impact of trait concepts versus actor–trait links on subsequent judgments.

The authors investigated the hypothesis that when trait inferences refer to abstract behavior labels they act as a general interpretation frame and lead to assimilation in subsequent judgments of an ambiguous target, whereas when they refer to a specific actor–trait link they will be used as a scale anchor and lead to contrast. Similar to G. B. Moskowitz and R. J. Roman's (see record 1992-31124-001) study, participants who were instructed to memorize trait-implying sentences showed assimilation, and participants who were instructed to form an impression of the actors in these sentences showed contrast. However, exposure to trait-implying sentences that described actors with real names and were accompanied with photos of the actors resulted in contrast under both memorization and impression instructions (Experiment 1). Furthermore, contrast ensued when trait-implying sentences were accompanied with information that suggested a person attribution, whereas assimilation ensued when that information suggested a situation attribution, independent of processing goals (Experiment 2). These findings are interpreted as support for referent-based explanations of the consequences of trait inferences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Muscarinic receptor antagonism of the nucleus accumbens core causes avoidance to flavor and spatial cues.

Pharmacological blockade of muscarinic receptors in the nucleus accumbens reduces food intake and instrumental behaviors that are reinforced by food delivery. Nucleus accumbens muscarinic antagonism may specifically suppress the hedonic or reinforcing effects of food, thus blocking its capacity to direct behavior. Alternatively, muscarinic receptor blockade may cause a negative hedonic state that interferes with appetitive learning and food intake. In these experiments, rats received infusions of scopolamine methyl bromide (10 μg/0.5 μl) into the nucleus accumbens core, following exposure to a novel flavor of liquid diet (Experiment 1) or prior to being placed into a place preference apparatus (Experiment 2). In both experiments, nucleus accumbens muscarinic receptor antagonism caused subsequent avoidance of the paired cue (flavor or spatial location). This effect was specific to cholinergic manipulation; no conditioned taste avoidance was observed after pairing the novel flavor with nucleus accumbens core antagonism of N-methyl-D-aspartate, dopamine D?, or opioid receptors (Experiment 3). These experiments confirm previous reports of a critical role for striatal acetylcholine in modulating goal-directed behaviors, but suggest caution when interpreting behavioral effects of pharmacological manipulation of striatal acetylcholine. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social Motives and Strategic Misrepresentation in Social Decision Making.

In 4 experiments, the authors studied the influence of social motives on deception and strategic misrepresentation. In a newly developed information provision game, individuals faced a decision maker whose decision would affect both own and other's outcomes. By withholding information or by giving (in)accurate information about payoffs, participants could try to influence other's decision making. Less accurate and more inaccurate information was given when the decision maker was competitive rather than cooperative (Experiment 1), especially when participants had a prosocial rather than selfish value orientation (Experiments 3 and 4). Accurate information was withheld because of fear of exploitation and greed, and inaccurate information was given because of greed (Experiment 2). Finally, participants engaged in strategic misrepresentation that may trick competitive others into damaging their own and increasing the participant's outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Embodiment of emotion concepts.

Theories of embodied cognition hold that higher cognitive processes operate on perceptual symbols and that concept use involves partial reactivations of the sensory-motor states that occur during experience with the world. On this view, the processing of emotion knowledge involves a (partial) reexperience of an emotion, but only when access to the sensory basis of emotion knowledge is required by the task. In 2 experiments, participants judged emotional and neutral concepts corresponding to concrete objects (Experiment 1) and abstract states (Experiment 2) while facial electromyographic activity was recorded from the cheek, brow, eye, and nose regions. Results of both studies show embodiment of specific emotions in an emotion-focused but not a perceptual-focused processing task on the same words. A follow up in Experiment 3, which blocked selective facial expressions, suggests a causal, rather than simply a correlational, role for embodiment in emotion word processing. Experiment 4, using a property generation task, provided support for the conclusion that emotions embodied in conceptual tasks are context-dependent situated simulations rather than associated emotional reactions. Implications for theories of embodied simulation and for emotion theories are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concreteness-dependent associative priming: Separate lexical organization for concrete and abstract words.

Four experiments used associated, unrelated, and neutral ({blank}–word) pairs that varied on prime and target concreteness. In Experiment 1, associated targets were named faster than neutral targets when primes and targets were homogeneous for concreteness (i.e., concrete–concrete or abstract–abstract), but not when they were heterogeneous (i.e., concrete–abstract or abstract–concrete). Experiments 2 and 3, using lexical decision, showed priming for all pairs irrespective of prime and target concreteness. In Experiment 4, the prime was presented for 16.7 ms, followed immediately by a 168-ms random letter mask. Lexical decision times showed priming similar to that in Experiment 1. If priming in Experiments 1 and 4 reflected lexical processes, whereas priming in Experiments 2 and 3 entailed postlexical processes, then lexical processes may be functionally distinct for concrete versus abstract words. These findings are more consistent with dual-coding than common-coding explanations of concreteness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concrete words are easier to recall than abstract words: Evidence for a semantic contribution to short-term serial recall.

Immediate serial recall and maximal speech rate were assessed for concrete and abstract words differing in length. Experiment 1 showed large advantages for spoken recall of concrete words that were independent of speech rate. Experiment 2 showed an equivalent effect with written, rather than spoken, recall. Experiment 3 showed that the concreteness effect was still present when recall was backward rather than forward. In all 3 experiments, concrete words enjoyed an advantage that was roughly constant across all serial positions (with the possible exception of the 1st and last items). Experiment 4 used a matching-span procedure and showed that when there was no requirement for linguistic output, the effect of concreteness (but not the effect of word length) was eliminated. It is argued that semantic coding exerts powerful effects in verbal short-term memory tasks that have generally been underestimated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Counterfactual thinking about actions and failures to act.

When people think counterfactually about how a situation could have turned out differently, they mentally undo events in regular ways (e.g., they focus on actions not failures to act). Four experiments examine the recent discovery that the focus on actions in the short term switches to inactions in the long term. The experiments show that this temporal switch occurs only for particular sorts of situations. Experiment I showed no temporal pattern to the agency effect when 112 participants judged emotional impact and frequency of "if-only" thoughts from both short- and long-term perspectives for an investment scenario. Experiment 2 showed no temporal pattern when 190 participants considered a college choice scenario with a good outcome. Experiment 3 showed no temporal pattern when 131 participants considered an investment scenario even when the situation for the actor and nonactor was bad from the outset. Experiment 4, with 113 participants, showed a focus on actions even when the investment loss was equal for both the actor and nonactor. The implications of the results are discussed in terms of what is explicitly available in the mental representation of actions and inactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evaluating Three Criteria for Establishing Cue-Search Hierarchies in Inferential Judgment.

The authors identify and provide an integration of 3 criteria for establishing cue-search hierarchies in inferential judgment. Cues can be ranked by information value according to expected information gain (Bayesian criterion), cue-outcome correlation (correlational criterion), or ecological validity (accuracy criterion). All criteria significantly predicted information acquisition behavior; however, in 3 experiments, the most successful predictor was the correlational criterion (followed by the Bayesian). Although participants showed sensitivity to task constraints, searching for less information when it was more expensive (Experiment 1) and when under time constraints (Experiment 2), concomitant changes in the relative frequency of acquisition of cues with different information values were not observed. A rational analysis illustrates why such changes in the frequency of acquisition would be beneficial, and reasons for the failure to observe such behavior are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)