Personal responsibility and salience of the request for help: Determinants of the relation between negative affect and helping behavior.

148 female undergraduates participated in 3 experiments. The hypothesis that attribution of responsibility to self for one's experimentally induced depressed mood would induce greater inclination to offer help when subsequently asked was tested in Exp I through a design that manipulated mood (negative vs neutral) and attribution of responsibility for it (internal vs external). The obtained opposite result seemed attributable to the low salience of the request for help. Exp II replicated Exp I using a highly salient request for help and confirmed the initial hypothesis. In Exp III, a negative mood was induced in all Ss, and attribution of responsibility (internal vs external) was crossed with salience of the helping request in a 2 by 2 factorial design. The obtained interaction confirmed the prediction that internal attribution of responsibility increases willingness to help (as measured either behaviorally or attitudinally) when the request is salient, but inhibits it when the request lacks salience. Self-focus, as measured by the Stroop Color-Word Test, was shown to mediate these effects. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Terror management theory and self-esteem: Evidence that increased self-esteem reduced mortality salience effects.

On the basis of the terror management theory proposition that self-esteem provides protection against concerns about mortality, it was hypothesized that self-esteem would reduce the worldview defense produced by mortality salience (MS). The results of Exps 1 (49 undergraduates) and 2 (50 undergraduates) confirmed this hypothesis by showing that individuals with high self-esteem (manipulated in Exp 1; dispositional in Exp 2) did not respond to MS with increased worldview defense, whereas individuals with moderate self-esteem did. The results of Exp 3 (48 undergraduates) suggested that the effects of the 1st 2 experiments may have occurred because high self-esteem facilitates the suppression of death constructs following MS. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Salience and the cognitive mediation of attribution.

Conducted 2 studies of the impact of salience and informational factors on attribution and memory, with a total of 191 undergraduates and graduate students. In Exp I, manipulations of the amount of thought Ss gave to their attributions and of a delay before responding to attribution questions did not diminish the effect of salience on attribution; in fact, the delay increased the effect. In Exp II, recall of the stimulus material was shown to be influenced by salience and by covariation information (consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency) and to be related to attributions. These findings and theory and data from the literature on comprehension and representation of linguistic material in memory are used to argue that salience is not simply a process by which people make attributions without giving much thought to them. Instead, salience effects reflect the close relationships among the processes of comprehension, remembering, and attribution, and the fact that attributional processing can take place at the time of the encoding and storage of information, as well as at the time of its retrieval from memory. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Salience, feature perturbations and localization errors on targets and location standards.

Examined the concept of salience (ease of localization) in 4 experiments, using 43 undergraduates. A test of the relative salience of stimuli used in Exps 2–4 was conducted in Exp 1. Exp 2 showed that a designated target (an H or a column of Hs) was used as the standard against which the designated standard for localization (a line end) was judged when the former was more salient than the latter. Exp 3 showed that thin lines similar to those in Exp 2 were judged as shorter than they were, which suggests a mislocalization toward fixation. In Exp 4, when standards covered the entire display background, a single H (but not columns of Hs) was mislocalized toward fixation. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dream recall and repression: Evidence for an alternative hypothesis.

Attempted to demonstrate a significant association between dream recall frequency and external locus of control, field dependence, and "poor inner life" in 5 experiments with undergraduates (N = 298). Instruments used included self-rating scales, a sociometric measure, and a battery of personality tests (e.g., Rotter's Internal-External Control Scale). Results of Exp I-III and previous studies do not provide strong support for the inner-rejectant (repression) formulation. Exp IV demonstrated that a brief, psychodynamically neutral postsleep distraction has a strong inhibitory effect on dream recall. Exp V included the same postsleep distraction and in addition used presleep dream attitude inductions designed to maximize (high salience) or minimize (low salience) a belief that dreams reveal personal problems. The inhibitory effect of the postsleep distraction was replicated. The high-salience induction did not inhibit dream recall, even for infrequent dream recallers. Results suggest that a distinction should be made between life-style variables conceptually related to repression that may correlate with dream recall frequency and factors unrelated to repression that directly determine the process of dream recall. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptual sensitivity, integral perception, and the similarity classifications of preschool children and adults.

Assessed the developmental role of the salience characteristics of dimensions. In Exp I, 40 children (mean age 4 yrs 5 mo, from upper-middle SES backgrounds were asked to classify compound stimuli according to their similarity. Perceptual sensitivity to the component dimensions of the compounds was varied by means of predisposed and distinctiveness-based salience to determine its effects on the accuracy of similarity classifications. In Exp II, 20 undergraduates completed the same task. Classifications of both the children and adults were more accurate when the salience of the solution-relevant dimension was high than when it was low. Furthermore, sensitization training on a classification-relevant dimension that was initially low in predisposed salience resulted in increasing the subsequent classification accuracy of 4-yr-olds. It was concluded that the similarity classifications of both young children and adults are affected by the salience characteristics of the dimensions of compound stimuli. (7 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Person perception in heterogeneous groups.

Conducted 2 experiments to examine the implications of gender and race salience for person organization and recall. Exp I examined the facilitating effects of group heterogeneity on categorization of social information during encoding. Exp II examined the effects of heterogeneity on the organization of information in retrieval. 24 undergraduates in Exp I and 32 undergraduates in Exp II were presented with verbal information and photographs describing groups differing in racial and sexual composition. Some of the groups were composed of members of the same gender and race (homogeneous groups), and other groups were racially and sexually mixed (heterogeneous groups). Ss in Exp I were required to sort the information sets by person, whereas Ss in Exp II were asked to read and recall the information sets. Analyses of sorting speed, person clustering, and total recall revealed the facilitating effects of race and gender salience. This was true even though the information was independent of the race and gender stereotypes. Overall results suggest that group heterogeneity resulted in increased person organization. Findings from Exp II establish that group heterogeneity was associated with increased recall. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of familiarity and aptness on metaphor processing.

A cross-modal priming paradigm was used to examine the comprehension of metaphors varying in familiarity and aptness. In Exps 1 and 2, high-familiar metaphors showed availability of the figurative meaning, but low-familiar (LF) metaphors did not. In Exp 3, only LF metaphors that had been rated highly apt showed evidence of figurative activation. Exp 4 showed evidence of figurative activation for most LF and moderate-apt metaphors. The locus of activation was investigated in Exp 5, in which the individual words of the metaphor (topic and vehicle) served as primes. Neither topic nor vehicle showed evidence of priming the metaphor target, suggesting that activation of the metaphorical target in Exps 1–4 was not caused by lexical activation of the words within the metaphors, but rather was due to activation of emergent properties of the metaphorical phrase. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impact of group consensus and social support on stimulus meaning: Mediation of conformity by cognitive restructuring.

Three experiments with a total of 163 undergraduates tested the hypothesis that a person reinterprets the meaning of the stimulus object when facing unpopular responses from a unanimous group and that this change in meaning leads to a shift in response toward the group's position. In Exp I, several opinion items were presented, and either Ss observed unpopular responses, supposedly made earlier by a unanimous group (UG) or by a group having 1 dissenter (social support), or they observed no response at all (control). Ss merely gave their interpretation of the meaning of a key word or phrase in each opinion statement—they did not give their own opinions. Results show that UG Ss gave more uncommon meanings to the stimuli than did Ss in the other 2 conditions. Exp II ruled out the possibility that the shift in meaning was due to Ss' adhering to the interpretation they assumed to be held by the majority. In Exp III, Ss were exposed to scores representing the meanings that were produced by the unanimous group and control conditions in Exp I. Results show that after observing the consensually produced meanings for these items, the Ss shifted their own opinions toward the position held by the UG in Exp I. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of context on the immediate interpretation of unambiguous nouns.

Effects of prior sentential context on the interpretation of unambiguous nouns were investigated in 2 cross-modal priming experiments. Exp 1 showed that a prior priming context affects word interpretation during lexical access by facilitating the recovery of contextually relevant aspects of meaning and inhibiting the recovery of irrelevant aspects. Exp 2 showed that lexical decision on a visual word related to an aspect of meaning of an unambiguous noun is facilitated only by a sentential context containing the noun and priming that aspect. Such facilitation occurs neither when the unambiguous noun is replaced by a substitute noun in the same sentential context, nor when the unambiguous noun occurs in a sentence priming an aspect of its meaning unrelated to the visual word. Furthermore, neither of these 2 conditions produced effects on lexical decision reliably different either from each other or from a sentential context completely unrelated to the visual word. Findings argue against the context-independent model of lexical access and support the hypothesis that lexical access may be affected by prior sentential context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personal involvement and the robustness of perceptual salience effects.

Conducted 2 experiments, using a total of 146 undergraduates, to examine the generalizability of perceptual salience effects. Previous research in social cognition established that "top of the head" processing is a robust inferential bias even in involving task situations. It was expected, however, that perceivers who were personally involved in an issue would be more motivated than less-involved perceivers to shift attention from salient cues to attitudinally congruent but nonsalient message cues. In both experiments, salience was manipulated by varying the visual prominence of discussants in a 2-person conversation. In Exp I, involvement was experimentally manipulated by varying whether perceivers would be personally affected by an issue. In Exp II, involvement was operationalized as a subject variable. The results suggest that personal involvement indeed constitutes a boundary condition for salience effects. As expected, ratings of highly involved perceivers reflected more systematic processing of message arguments, regardless of which discussant was visually salient, whereas ratings of less-involved perceivers reflected "top of the head" processing. The analogous influence of personal involvement in persuasion research and the role of individual difference variables in research on inferential biases are discussed. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of out-group cues in determining social identity.

Examined the role of out-group cues in determining social identity and guiding behavior in 2 experiments with 131 undergraduates. In Exp I, Ss were exposed to a cue either of an in-group (Ss' college), a relevant out-group (a rival college), or an irrelevant out-group (a baseball team). Ss examined a list of words and were later asked to recognize those they had seen from a larger list in which words related to the 3 groups were embedded. Results indicate that Ss made more false recognitions of in-group related words when a relevant out-group was salient than when an irrelevant out-group was salient. Exp II tested a behavioral implication of Exp I: Out-group salience increases adherence to an in-group norm. In the 1st phase of Exp II, Ss were divided into 2 groups and deliberated 2 civil suits. Ss' in-group favored the plaintiffs for both cases. Ss were divided into new groups for the 2nd phase, and the same procedure was followed. This time, however, the in-group favored the defendants. In the 3rd phase, Ss were exposed to a cue either of the out-group in Phase 1 or Phase 2. Ss' judgments for 2 new cases were biased in the direction of the norm of the in-group that was associated with the salient out-group. Ss favored the plaintiff (or defendant) when the 1st (or 2nd) out-group was salient. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The structure of attentional control: Contingent attentional capture by apparent motion, abrupt onset, and color.

Five spatial cuing experiments tested 2 hypotheses regarding attentional capture: (1) Attentional capture is contingent on endogenous attentional control settings, and (2) attentional control settings are limited to the distinction between dynamic and static discontinuities as proposed by C. L. Folk et al (see record 1993-12300-001). In Exps 1 and 2, apparent-motion precues produced significant costs in performance for targets signaled by motion but not for targets signaled by color or abrupt onset. Exp 3 established that this pattern is not due to differences in the difficulty of target discrimination. Exps 4 and 5 revealed asymmetric capture effects between abrupt onset and apparent motion related to stimulus salience. Results support the hypotheses of Folk et al and suggest that stimulus salience may also play a role in attentional capture. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Residual effects of food deprivation on food consumption and runway performance in the satiated rat.

2 experiments studied the residual effects of prior food deprivation in 35 female and 28 male Holtzman rats as measured by probability to eat and acquisition of a running response under satiated conditions. Although the effects were positively related to the severity of prior deprivation (Exp II), a drive-conditioning interpretation was questioned because of 3 findings: (a) effects were not dependent on exposure to the test situation when Ss were deprived (Exp I and II); (b) prolonged testing during satiation increased rather than decreased the effects (Exp I and II); and (c) the instrumental response decreased only when reward was withheld (Exp I). (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Arousal and causal attribution.

Two experiments involving a total of 114 male undergraduates investigated whether arousal increased the impact of salient information on causal attributions and decreased the impact of nonsalient information. In Exp 1, salience was manipulated by instructions that directed Ss' attention to different types of information. Arousal was manipulated by the presence or absence of white noise. As expected, the impact of salient information on causal attributions increased with arousal. In Exp 2, emotional arousal (anger) decreased the perceived impact of a nonsalient person in a social interaction. Both effects were most pronounced for Ss with lower chronic levels of arousal. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Causal attributions, sanctions, and normal mood variations.

Three experiments with a total of 288 undergraduates tested the causal-locus hypothesis (CLH), which asserts that persons making internal attributions for failure and external attributions for success experience more negative postoutcome moods than persons making the opposite attributions. Although outcomes consistently affected moods and attributions, attributions did not affect moods. Significant correlations consistent with the CLH were infrequently obtained. Another theory, the sanctioned-object hypothesis (SOH), was proposed for understanding how causal attributions lead to mood changes. The SOH asserts that the application of positive or negative sanctions to objects in the perceptual field is a central determinant of mood and that attributions affect mood when their content and salience activate sanctioning processes. Exp IV, with 96 undergraduates, evaluated the competing theories. Results support the SOH but not the CLH. Implications for understanding mood variations and the effects of moods on attributions and methodological alternatives are discussed. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rescuing neurons from trans-synaptic degeneration after brain damage: Helpful, harmful, or neutral in recovery of function?

Two experiments supported the hypothesis that muscimol (MC) spared substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNR) neurons by replacing gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) at the postsynaptic receptor. Exp 1 investigated behavioral impairments in 12 male rats who were given intraventricular infusions of MC or saline following unilateral axon-sparing damage to striatal cells. Exp 2 examined whether the detrimental effect on recovery caused by MC in Exp 1 was related to a protective effect on neurons in the SNR or to an effect of enhanced GABAergic activity in 16 rats assigned to diazepam (a GABA agonist) or vehicle groups. Behavioral impairments were assessed with tests of behaviors that included circling and forelimb adduction. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-image bias in person perception.

Conducted 3 experiments using a total of 283 male and female high school students. Exp I demonstrated that the more desirable the self-rating on a personality characteristic, the more central that characteristic is in perceiving others. This self-image bias in person perception was hypothesized to reflect the defense mechanism protecting high self-evaluation. In Exp II it appeared that, consistent with this defense interpretation, there was lower self-image bias among Ss in a condition that reduced defensiveness by using objective self-awareness techniques. Exp II also suggested an alternative to this defense explanation: a purely cognitive process whereby self-image mediates external evaluative stimuli and centrality of characteristics. Exp III attempted to test this alternative explanation; results support a cognitive interpretation of self-image bias in person perception. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Biased evaluation and persistence in gambling.

One reason that people continue to gamble despite persistent failure may be that gamblers evaluate outcomes in a biased manner. Specifically, gamblers may tend to accept wins at face value but explain away or discount losses. Exp I tested this hypothesis by recording 28 undergraduates' explanations of the outcomes of their bets on professional football games. Results support the hypothesis: Ss spent more time explaining their losses than their wins. A content analysis of these explanations revealed that Ss tended to discount their losses but "bolster" their wins. Ss also remembered their losses better during a recall test 3 wks later. Exps II and III, with 113 Ss, extended this analysis by demonstrating that a manipulation of the salience or existence of a critical "fluke" play in a sporting event had a greater impact on the subsequent expectations of those who had bet on the losing team than of those who had bet on the winning team. (48 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factors determining the effects of associative activation on habituation.

In 2 experiments, rats received flavor-aversion conditioning with two flavors, B and C, to which they had been preexposed. In both experiments, C was preexposed in compound with another flavor in a block of CX trials. In Experiment 1, B was presented in compound with Y, and BY trials were alternated with presentations of Y alone. In Experiment 2, B was presented in compound with X, and BX trials were alternated with presentations of X alone. No difference was detected in Experiment 1 between B and C in the ease with which they conditioned, but in Experiment 2 it was found that B conditioned more readily than C. This latter result is consistent with the hypothesis that experience with the associate of a target stimulus can act to maintain the effective salience of that stimulus; however, the results of Experiment 1 challenge this interpretation or indicate the operation of other factors that limit the effectiveness of this salience modulation process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)