Social judgeability: The impact of meta-informational cues on the use of stereotypes.

According to a social judgeability analysis, a crucial determinant of impression formation is the extent to which people feel entitled to judge a target person. Two experiments, with a total of 113 undergraduates, tested the impact of the subjective availability of individuating information on a social judgment independent of its actual presence. In Exp 1, Ss made a stereotypical judgment when they believed individuating information was present even if no information was in fact given. In Exp 2, Ss who thought they received individuating information made more extreme and confident judgments than Ss who thought they received category information. This indicates that Ss' judgments were not simply a function of implicit demand: The illusion of receiving individuating information led Ss to believe they possessed the necessary evidence for legitimate decision making. This result supports the existence of rules in the social inference process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Uncertainty-reducing properties of achievement tasks.

Two experiments with 114 male candidates for officers' training school in Israeli armed forces tested the idea that choice among achievement tasks depends on the extent to which performance outcomes are expected to reduce uncertainty about one's ability. Two determinants of expected uncertainty reduction were investigated: the diagnosticity of the task at each zone on the ability scale and the person's uncertainty regarding the ability levels in each zone. As in previous research, the preference for a task increased with its overall diagnosticity, i.e., its diagnosticity over the entire ability scale. Furthermore, among tasks of equal overall diagnosticity, Ss preferred tasks that were the most diagnostic at the zone where most of their uncertainty was concentrated, irrespective of the location of this zone on the ability scale. It is concluded that Ss selected tasks that would maximize expected reduction of uncertainty about their standing on the ability scale. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inferences of personal characteristics on the basis of information retrieved from one's memory.

Conducted 4 experiments with a total of 331 undergraduates to investigate inferences about another person's attributes (e.g., his or her political attitudes) on the basis of information (e.g., the person's voting behavior) retrieved by Ss from their own memory. The inference task required integration of 2 kinds of uncertainty: uncertainty generated by imperfect diagnosticity of the information regarding the attributes under consideration. Results show that Ss relied almost exclusively on the diagnosticity of the information retrieved. The reliability with which the information was retrieved had a small and inconsistent effect on judgment. As a result, the inferences were considerably more extreme than those justified by normative considerations. Findings are interpreted in terms of D. Kahneman and A. Tversky's (see record 1974-02325-001) "representativeness heuristic," and implications of the results with regard to overconfidence in attributing personality traits are discussed. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Confidence-Accuracy Calibration in Absolute and Relative Face Recognition Judgments.

Confidence-accuracy (CA) calibration was examined for absolute and relative face recognition judgments as well as for recognition judgments from groups of stimuli presented simultaneously or sequentially (i.e., simultaneous or sequential mini-lineups). When the effect of difficulty was controlled, absolute and relative judgments produced negligibly different CA calibration, whereas no significant difference was observed for simultaneous and sequential mini-lineups. Further, the effect of difficulty on CA calibration was equivalent across judgment and mini-lineup types. It is interesting to note that positive (i.e., old) recognition judgments demonstrated strong CA calibration whereas negative (i.e., new) judgments evidenced little or no CA association. Implications for eyewitness identification are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Belief revision in children: Serial judgment in social cognition and decision-making domains.

Belief revision in 5- to 9-year-olds was studied with an information integration approach. In the social task, children judged niceness of story children, having heard about their good and bad deeds. In the decision task, of parallel structure, they judged what proportion of a group of turtles' catch of starfish was red or gold. In both tasks, 4–5 samples were presented successively, with children adjusting their judgment after each. All ages took sample composition into account, and judgments could be described by a serial integration model previously supported for adults. Recency effects were found as well and were stronger for younger children and in the social task. Further model analysis showed, however, that much of this recency was short-lived and that a stable opinion, to which early and later informers contributed more evenly, developed underneath. Overall, similar processes may underlie serial belief formation across the age range and across domains. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When comparisons arise.

People acquire information about their abilities by comparison, and research suggests that people restrict such comparisons to those whom they consider sources of diagnostic information. We suggest that diagnosticity is often considered only after comparisons are made and that people do not fail to make nondiagnostic comparisons so much as they mentally undo them. In 2 studies, participants made nondiagnostic comparisons even when they knew they should not, and quickly unmade them when they were able. These results suggest that social comparisons may be relatively spontaneous, effortless, and unintentional reactions to the performances of others and that they may occur even when people consider such reactions logically inappropriate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Processes of successful intentional forgetting.

Presents a framework, based on directed forgetting and social judgment research, for understanding compliance with overt instructions to disregard particular information. The success of intentional forgetting depends on how one originally encoded the to-be-forgotten information, the scope of the forget instruction, and the type of retrieval task done later. Memory-based processes of segregation and retrieval inhibition can lead to successful forgetting when Ss may forget all of the prior information. However, they are insufficient when Ss must forget only part of it. In this case, one "forgets" (i.e., limits expression of forget-cued information) by altering one's decision processes later. Successful intentional forgetting occurs only when one intentionally retrieves information from a particular learning episode, not when the task does not expressly require this (e.g., implicit memory tasks). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motivational influences on impression formation: Outcome dependency, accuracy-driven attention, and individuating processes.

How might being outcome dependent on another person influence the processes that one uses to form impressions of that person? We designed three experiments to investigate this question with respect to short-term, task-oriented outcome dependency. In all three experiments, subjects expected to interact with a young man formerly hospitalized as a schizophrenic, and they received information about the person's attributes in either written profiles or videotapes. In Experiment 1, short-term, task-oriented outcome dependency led subjects to use relatively individuating processes (i.e., to base their impressions of the patient on his particular attributes), even under conditions that typically lead subjects to use relatively category-based processes (i.e., to base their impressions on the patient's schizophrenic label). Moreover, in the conditions that elicited individuating processes, subjects spent more time attending to the patient's particular attribute information. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the attention effects in Experiment 1 were not merely a function of impression positivity and that outcome dependency did not influence the impression formation process when attribute information in addition to category-level information was unavailable. Finally, Experiment 3 manipulated not outcome dependency but the attentional goal of forming an accurate impression. We found that accuracy-driven attention to attribute information also led to individuating processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Looking for truth in all the wrong places? Asymmetric search of individuating information about stereotyped group members.

Two experiments examined how category-based expectancies (CBEs) influence individuating information sought when trying to make accurate judgments about the attitudes of targets who were members of social categories that strongly or weakly implied the judged attitude. CBEs produced marked asymmetries in the number and content of participants' questions. Specifically, participants addressed fewer questions to stereotyped targets (STs) than to nonstereotyped targets (NSTs), thus acquiring relatively little individuating information about STs prior to judgment. Questions asked STs were diagnostically asymmetric—a response could better confirm than disconfirm the expected attitude, but questions to NSTs were diagnostically symmetric—a response could equally confirm or disconfirm the attitude. The authors discuss asymmetric search as a mechanism that may protect CBEs against disconfirmation independent of biased processing of acquired information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sagacious judgment via word association.

Based on K. E. Scheibe's (1979) concepts of the mask and the prediction mode of sagacity, 4 experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that awareness of subtle cues accounts for success on a judgment task that requires recognizing the implications of target persons' word associations. Preliminary studies with 7 undergraduates identified word associations but not facial expressions or reaction times as relevant to success on the task. Thus, it was hypothesized that successful judges would be more accurate than unsuccessful judges in assessing the diagnosticity of word association clues. 30 undergraduate social welfare majors participated in Exp I; Exp II was a replication of Exp I using 73 high school students. Both Exps I and II involved a video presentation. Exp III involved a pencil-and-paper version of the judgment task used in Exps I and II. Ss were 76 undergraduates. Exp IV tested the generalizability of the previous results across S groups. 12 American and 14 foreign-born undergraduates (e.g., Malaysian, Taiwanese, Colombian, and Nigerian) served as Ss. Overall findings show that the predicted relation emerged in all 4 studies, despite variations in the task and S groups (varying in age, nationality, and amount of psychology-related training). Results are generally consistent with expectations based on Scheibe's analysis of sagacity and provide a basis for research on the judgment task in terms of personality correlates of cue utilization, individual differences in depth of processing, and ability to draw pragmatic implications. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of global versus local processing styles on assimilation versus contrast in social judgment.

The authors propose a global/local processing style model (GLOMO) for assimilation and contrast effects in social judgment. GLOMO is based on Schwarz and Bless' (1992, 2007) inclusion-exclusion model, which suggests that when information is included into a category, assimilation occurs, whereas when information is excluded from a category, contrast occurs. According to GLOMO, inclusion versus exclusion should be influenced by whether people process information globally or locally. In 5 experiments, using both disambiguation and social comparison, the authors induced local versus global processing through perceptual tasks and time perspective and showed that global processing produced assimilation, whereas local processing produced contrast. The experiments showed that processing styles elicited in one task can carry over to other tasks and influence social judgments. Furthermore, they found that hemisphere activation and accessibility of judgment-consistent knowledge partially mediated these effects. Implications for current and classic models of social judgment are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex stereotypes and social judgment.

Tested the assumption that sexual stereotypic beliefs affect the judgments of individuals in an experiment with 98 male and 97 female undergraduates. No evidence was found for effects of stereotypes on Ss' judgments about a target individual. Instead, Ss judgments were strongly influenced by behavioral information about the target. To explain these results, it is noted that the predicted effects of social stereotypes on judgments conform to Bayes' theorem for the normative use of prior probabilities in judgment tasks, inasmuch as stereotypic beliefs may be regarded as intuitive estimates for the probabilities of traits in social groups. Research in the psychology of prediction has demonstrated that people often neglect prior probabilities when making predictions about people, especially when they have individuating information about the person that is subjectively diagnostic of the criterion. An implication of this research is that a minimal amount of subjectively diagnostic target case information should be sufficient to eradicate effects of stereotypes on judgments. Results of a 2nd experiment with 75 female and 55 male undergraduates support this argument. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modeling drivers' visual attention allocation while interacting with in-vehicle technologies.

In 2 experiments, the authors examined how characteristics of a simulated traffic environment and in-vehicle tasks impact driver performance and visual scanning and the extent to which a computational model of visual attention (SEEV model) could predict scanning behavior. In Experiment 1, the authors manipulated task-relevant information bandwidth and task priority. In Experiment 2, the authors examined task bandwidth and complexity, while introducing infrequent traffic hazards. Overall, task priority had a significant impact on scanning; however, the impact of increasing bandwidth was varied, depending on whether the relevant task was supported by focal (e.g., in-vehicle tasks; increased scanning) or ambient vision (e.g., lane keeping; no increase in scanning). The computational model accounted for approximately 95% of the variance in scanning across both experiments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On people's understanding of the diagnostic implications of probabilistic data

Two lines of prior research into the conditions under which people seek information are examined in light of two statistical definitions of diagnosticity. Five experiments are reported. In two, subjects selected information in order to test a hypothesis. In the remaining three, they selected information in order to convince someone else of the truth of a known hypothesis. A total of 567 university students served as subjects. The two primary conclusions were as follows: (1) When the task is highly structured by the environment, subjects select information diagnostically, and (2) when the task is less structured, so that subjects must seek relevant information not manifest, they select information pseudodiagnostically. Possible relations to other laboratory inference tasks and to clinical judgment are discussed.     

What do people desire in others? A sociofunctional perspective on the importance of different valued characteristics.

Humans, as discriminately social creatures, make frequent judgments about others' suitability for interdependent social relations. Which characteristics of others guide these judgments and, thus, shape patterns of human affiliation? Extant research is only minimally useful for answering this question. On the basis of a sociofunctional analysis of human sociality, the authors hypothesized that people highly value trustworthiness and (to a lesser extent) cooperativeness in others with whom they may be interdependent, regardless of the specific tasks, goals, or functions of the group or relationship, but value other favorable characteristics (e.g., intelligence) differentially across such tasks, goals, or functions. Participants in 3 studies considered various characteristics for ideal members of interdependent groups (e.g., work teams, athletic teams) and relationships (e.g., family members, employees). Across different measures of trait importance and different groups and relationships, trustworthiness was considered extremely important for all interdependent others; the evidence for the enhanced importance of cooperativeness across different interdependence contexts was more equivocal. In contrast, people valued other characteristics primarily as they were relevant to the specific nature of the interdependent group or relationship. These empirical investigations illuminate the essence of human sociality with its foundation of trust and highlight the usefulness of a theoretically derived framework of valued characteristics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Determining important tasks within jobs: A policy-capturing approach.

The job holders' process for judging overall task importance was analyzed using a policy-capturing approach. Sixty incumbents of four jobs rated their respective tasks on five dimensions (e.g., task difficulty) and on the criterion, overall task importance. The results indicated that incumbents' judgments of importance were primarily reflective of task criticality and difficulty of learning the task. Composites of task importance formed from these two component dimensions were found to be more reliable and convergent with average ratings of overall importance than holistic judgments of importance or judgments of relative time spent. In addition, a Q-mode factor analysis indicated that most incumbents used a linear combination of task criticality and difficulty of learning the task regardless of the job they held, suggesting that a composite of these two measures may be generalizable across jobs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Explaining the enigmatic anchoring effect: Mechanisms of selective accessibility.

Results of 3 studies support the notion that anchoring is a special case of semantic priming; specifically, information that is activated to solve a comparative anchoring task will subsequently be more accessible when participants make absolute judgments. By using the logic of priming research, in Study 1 the authors showed that the strength of the anchor effect depends on the applicability of activated information. Study 2 revealed a contrast effect when the activated information was not representative for the absolute judgment and the targets of the 2 judgment tasks were sufficiently different. Study 3 demonstrated that generating absolute judgments requires more time when comparative judgments include an implausible anchor and can therefore be made without relevant target information that would otherwise be accessible. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Judgment by quantity.

Presents 5 studies that demonstrate the influence of computationally simple quantity information on judgment and the regulation of behavior. Study 1 revealed that 38 undergraduate Ss used the height of a pile of pages of text to judge their proofreading performance, even when pile size was obviously not determined by the amount of text proofread. In Studies 2 and 3, 109 undergraduate Ss also used nondiagnostic size information to regulate the amount of time and effort they spent on the task. In Study 4, 98 undergraduate Ss regulated the amount of effort they spent on a complex essay-writing task by using nondiagnostic page length information. In Study 5, with 24 undergraduates, nondiagnostic size information dominated objective performance information, but only when the completed task was in full view of the S. A linguistic mechanism is suggested to explain the use of a judgment by quantity strategy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discretionary task interleaving: Heuristics for time allocation in cognitive foraging.

When participants allocated time across 2 tasks (in which they generated as many words as possible from a fixed set of letters), they made frequent switches. This allowed them to allocate more time to the more productive task (i.e., the set of letters from which more words could be generated) even though times between the last word and the switch decision ("giving-up times") were higher in the less productive task. These findings were reliable across 2 experiments using Scrabble tasks and 1 experiment using word-search puzzles. Switch decisions appeared relatively unaffected by the ease of the competing task or by explicit information about tasks' potential gain. The authors propose that switch decisions reflected a dual orientation to the experimental tasks. First, there was a sensitivity to continuous rate of return--an information-foraging orientation that produced a tendency to switch in keeping with R. F. Green's (1984) rule and a tendency to stay longer in more rewarding tasks. Second, there was a tendency to switch tasks after subgoal completion. A model combining these tendencies predicted all the reliable effects in the experimental data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relationship between memory and judgment depends on whether the judgment task is memory-based or on-line.

Five alternative information processing models that relate memory for evidence to judgments based on the evidence are identified in the current social cognition literature: independent processing, availability, biased retrieval, biased encoding, and incongruity-biased encoding. A distinction between 2 types of judgment tasks, memory-based vs online, is introduced and is related to the 5 process models. In 3 experiments, using memory-based tasks where the availability model described Ss' thinking, direct correlations between memory and judgment measures were obtained. In a 4th experiment, using online tasks where any of the remaining 4 process models may apply, prediction of the memory–judgment relationship was equivocal but usually followed the independence model prediction of zero correlation. It is concluded that memory and judgment will be directly related when the judgment was based directly on the retrieval of evidence information in memory-based judgment tasks. (61 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)