Action, control judgments, and the structure of control experience.

Argues that individuals influence the amount of control they subjectively experience by means of their own actions. A review of the empirical evidence shows that (a) systematic interindividual differences exist in probability of action, implying that action can affect control judgments across a wide range of situations; and (b) the action–outcome data used in making control judgments are best described as confirming and disconfirming cases, implying that subjective control experience consists mainly of conjoint probability information. Simple probability theory leads to the conclusion that probability of action contributes to subjective control experience by directly affecting the probability of confirming and disconfirming cases. Implications are discussed in relation to individual difference and task factor determinants of control beliefs, discrepancies between control beliefs and objective conditions, and stability and development of control beliefs across the life span. (99 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stuck in the Dark Ages: Supreme Court Decision Making and Legal Developments.

In the latter quarter of the 20th century, the United States Supreme Court has generally refused to narrow the procedural and substantive conditions under which adults may be sentenced to death for capital murder. The current status of social science evidence is briefly reviewed to evaluate the Court's treatment of 3 specific categories of evidence: the death-qualified jury, prejudicial capital sentencing, and juror comprehension of capital-sentencing instructions. The role of perceptions of public opinion in the perseverance of capital punishment statutes is considered. It appears that the Court, in general, does not place much weight on social science evidence. Suggestions are made for future areas of research and practice for social scientists interested in capital punishment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affective-cognitive consistency and thought-induced attitude polarization.

70 undergraduates whose preexperimental attitudes toward either capital punishment or censorship were identified as either high or low in affective-cognitive consistency wrote 2 essays, one on the topic for which consistency had been assessed (relevant essay) and the other on the unassessed topic (distractor essay). Findings indicate that in accord with the hypothesis that thought-induced attitude polarization requires the presence of a well-developed knowledge structure, high-consistency Ss evidenced greater polarization than low-consistency Ss only on the relevant topic after writing the relevant essay. Content analyses of Ss' relevant essays supported A. Tesser's (1978) ideas regarding mediation: High (vs low) consistency Ss expressed a greater proportion of cognitions that were evaluatively consistent with their prior affect toward the attitude object and a smaller proportion of evaluatively inconsistent and neutral cognitions. High-consistency Ss evidenced a greater tendency to assimilate discrepant information by generating refutational thoughts that discredited or minimized the importance of inconsistent information than did low-consistency Ss. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Capital Punishment, the Moratorium Movement, and Empirical Questions: Looking Beyond Innocence, Race, and Bad Lawyering in Death Penalty Cases.

This article briefly explores the underpinnings of the contemporary capital punishment moratorium movement and examines executive and legislative responses to calls for a halt to executions, including suggestions for studying the death penalty process. Although most investigations focus on select issues like innocence, ineffective counsel, and race bias, this article suggests that a wide-ranging constellation of issues should be investigated in any legitimate attempt to evaluate the administration of the death penalty. The article canvasses this broader sweep of issues, discusses related research evidence, and then considers the policy implications of conducting such a thorough empirical assessment of the administration of capital punishment in this country. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The auto-verification of social hypotheses: Stereotyping and the power of sample size.

In the literature on social hypothesis testing, the co-occurrence of 2 principles is often held responsible for hypothesis confirmation. The first is positive testing (e.g., looking for covert rather than overt aggression when testing the stereotype that female aggression is covert), and the second is a cooperative social environment that will often acquiesce and provide positive answers (i.e., positive examples for covert female aggression). However, it is argued that the co-occurrence of 1-sided questions and confirming answers does not logically verify a hypothesis. A theoretical framework is presented that explains why a constant ratio of confirming to disconfirming evidence has more impact when based on a large than on a small sample of observations. In 2 experiments, a constant affirmation rate led to auto-verification of the hypothesis that was represented by the larger sample. The enhanced significance of large samples is shown to be independent of stereotypical expectancies and unconfounded with diagnosticity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Confirming and Disconfirming Theories About Ideomotor Compatibility in Dual-Task Performance: A Reply to Greenwald (2005).

Because small dual-task costs with ideomotor-compatible tasks do not necessarily indicate the absence of a bottleneck, M.-C. Lien, R. S. McCann, E. Ruthruff, and R. W. Proctor (see record 2005-01366-010) considered additional sources of evidence regarding bottleneck bypass. This evidence argued against complete bottleneck bypass and, instead, supported an engage-bottleneck-later model in which early bottleneck substages are bypassed but late substages are not. A. G. Greenwald (see record 2005-01366-017), however, contended that M.-C. Lien et al. did not use the procedures needed to produce complete bottleneck bypass and that a complete bottleneck bypass hypothesis, combined with additional assumptions, could explain their data. The authors contend that this disagreement stems from Greenwald's focus on confirming predictions of complete bottleneck bypass (small dual-task costs) without disconfirming predictions of bottleneck presence. In particular, Greenwald neglects to consider the possibility that a latent bottleneck limitation could also produce small dual-task costs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Claiming a large slice of a small pie: Asymmetric disconfirmation in negotiation.

Three studies show that negotiators consistently underestimate the size of the bargaining zone in distributive negotiations (the small-pie bias) and, by implication, overestimate the share of the surplus they claim (the large-slice bias). The authors explain the results by asymmetric disconfirmation: Negotiators with initial estimates of their counterpart's reservation price that are "inside" the bargaining zone tend to behave consistently with these estimates, which become self-fulfilling, whereas negotiators with initial "outside" estimates revise their perceptions in the face of strong disconfirming evidence. Asymmetric disconfirmation can produce a population-level bias, even when initial perceptions are accurate on average. The authors suggest that asymmetric disconfirmation has implications for confirmation bias and self-fulfilling-prophecy research in social perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How patients coach their therapists in psychotherapy.

Examines coaching behavior in the therapeutic relationship from the perspective of control mastery theory. The expanded concept of coaching presented here views the patient as actively engaged throughout therapy in prompting, instructing, and educating the therapist to relevant aspects of the patient's plan for disconfirming pathogenic beliefs and attaining treatment goals. Three therapy situations encountered when coaching is prominent are identified and illustrated with clinical vignettes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Political attitudes as social categories: A new look at selective memory.

Tested the selectivity hypothesis against the bipolar model of memory using 110 undergraduates. The selectivity hypothesis asserts a tendency to remember confirming rather than disconfirming statements about in- and out-group attitude members. The bipolar hypothesis argues that attitude labels serve to organize and enhance memory for both confirming and disconfirming information. Ss, divided into for, against, and neutral on abortion, formed impressions of pro- and antitarget groups by reading favorable, unfavorable, and nonvalence items about them. Ss were later asked to recognize the items and their associated attitude categories. Signal-detection analysis supported the bipolar model: Category members recognized more favorable and unfavorable information than did neutrals. Neutrals' performance was attributable to item-category confusion, not to item inattention. Possible explanations for the absence of selectivity effects are offered. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Real and perceived attitude agreement in social networks.

It is often asserted that friends and acquaintances have more similar beliefs and attitudes than do strangers; yet empirical studies disagree over exactly how much diversity of opinion exists within local social networks and, relatedly, how much awareness individuals have of their neighbors' views. This article reports results from a network survey, conducted on the Facebook social networking platform, in which participants were asked about their own political attitudes, as well as their beliefs about their friends' attitudes. Although considerable attitude similarity exists among friends, the results show that friends disagree more than they think they do. In particular, friends are typically unaware of their disagreements, even when they say they discuss the topic, suggesting that discussion is not the primary means by which friends infer each other's views on particular issues. Rather, it appears that respondents infer opinions in part by relying on stereotypes of their friends and in part by projecting their own views. The resulting gap between real and perceived agreement may have implications for the dynamics of political polarization and theories of social influence in general. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Death is Different: An Editorial Introduction to the Theme Issue.

Capital punishment has once again become the focus of intense national debate in the United States. There is increasingly widespread public concern over the propriety of state-sanctioned executions and the legal processes by which they are accomplished. Even in political arenas, where little more than a decade ago commentators'could quip that "[t]he electric chair has replaced the American flag as your all-purpose campaign symbol," many elected officials are voicing second thoughts about capital punishment. The American Bar Association (ABA), among other prestigious groups, has called for a moratorium on executions until, at least, the procedural flaws in the legal process through which death sentencing takes place--what the ABA analysts characterized as a "haphazard maze of unfair practices"--have been identified and remedied. Recent assessments of the scope and seriousness of the problems that plague this process suggest that the task of reforming the system of capital punishment will prove to be a daunting one. Several of the remaining articles in this theme issue are devoted to capital jury decision making. All of the articles in this theme issue share the implicit assumption that numerous aspects of the system of death sentencing in the Unites States must continue to be subjected to careful and critical empirical scrutiny. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discrepant role expectations and interviewee behavior: A reply to Pope, Siegman, Blass, and Cheek.

In a previous study, B. Pope, et al (see record 1973-21581-001) concluded that exposing a person to interviewer behavior that is incongruent with that person's expectations creates "strain" and disruption in the interview, which is manifest in several ways including decreases in verbal productivity. In the present study with 48 undergraduates differences were found in verbal productivity due to the Ss' expectations of a directive or nondirective therapist, but confirming or disconfirming such expectations had no effect. In light of these data, the findings of Pope, et al are reexamined. The generality of their conclusions is questioned, along with the utility of such global concepts as "strain" and (unspecified) "expectations." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parenting influences from the pulpit: Religious affiliation as a determinant of parental corporal punishment.

This study examined religious affiliation as a source of differences in beliefs about and reported use of corporal punishment by 132 mothers and fathers of 3-year-old children. Conservative Protestants reported using corporal punishment more than parents of other religious groups, but no religious differences were found in parents' reported use of 8 other disciplinary techniques. Conservative Protestants' belief in the instrumental benefits of corporal punishment was associated with their frequency of corporal punishment use. More than parents of other religious affiliations, Conservative Protestants intended to use corporal punishment for children's moral, social, prudential, and escalated misbehaviors and expected it to prevent future transgressions. Religious affiliation, particularly a Conservative Protestant one, appears to have a strong and consistent effect on child rearing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subtyping versus subgrouping processes in stereotype representation.

Participants were instructed to organize information about group members either by distinguishing stereotype-consistent from stereotype-inconsistent individuals (subtyping instructions), by dividing the individuals into multiple groups on the basis of similarities and differences (subgrouping instructions), or with no explicit organizing instructions. Participants given the subtyping instructions showed greater perceived stereotypicality and homogeneity and perceived a greater difference in how typical the confirming versus disconfirming group members were, relative to subgroup participants. Study 2 demonstrated natural variation among participants in the perceived atypicality of the disconfirming relative to confirming individuals when learning about a gay activist group. Atypicality predicted perceptions of this group, even when prejudice and strength of stereotyping toward gays as a whole were statistically controlled. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conformity as a function of birth order, payoff, and type of group pressure.

First-born and later-born adolescents were tested in an Asch situation. By introducing a small or a large "payoff" for each correct judgment the amount of yielding was reliably affected. A small payoff led to decreased yielding for both first-born and later-born Ss; whereas a large payoff led to increased yielding only for the later-born Ss. These findings were interpreted as confirming the hypothesis that first-born persons are more dependent on others for social support whereas later-born persons rely more on others for validation of their beliefs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Enhancing student academic and health functioning: A self-regulatory perspective.

Discusses a program of research on students' self-regulation of their academic and health functioning from initial operational definitions to training and intervention studies. This body of evidence has shown that students' use of self-regulatory processes, such as learning strategies, goal setting, self-monitoring, and self-efficacy beliefs, predict academic and health success and self-motivation. From a social cognitive perspective, students' development of self-regulation begins initially with social modeling and imitation and shifts to self-directed sources of control. Deficiencies in self-regulation are linked to student's health and academic problems. Implications for school psychologists are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An inertia effect (resistance to change) in the revision of opinion.

Earlier studies have reported a reluctance of Ss to reduce their confidence in a decision following disconfirming information. This inertia effect may be due to a commitment process, or to the fact that Ss expect some disconfirming information to occur. To test the commitment hypothesis, 5 groups of Ss, with 15 male undergraduates each, were run in a sequential decision-making task, under conditions of varying levels of commitment to preliminary confidence judgments. An inertia effect, measured directly, or through an increase in confidence as a function of sample size, was present in Ss who gave confidence judgments that were displayed or could easily be recalled. In other Ss the effect was absent. It is concluded that the inertia effect was the result of Ss' commitment to their initial judgments. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Positive test strategies and confirmatory retrieval processes in the evaluation of personality feedback.

Cognitive-response analysis was carried out to investigate people's acceptance of personality feedback. In 3 studies with 223 male and female college students 18–38 years old, participants generated more confirming than disconfirming evidence for personality feedback. Availability of confirmatory evidence was found to be closely related to the rated accuracy of the feedback. Both rated accuracy and amount of confirmatory evidence were greater for general than specific and for true than false feedback. Analyses of covariance showed that availability of confirmatory evidence accounted for the effects of general versus specific and true versus false feedback on rated accuracy. Findings are discussed in terms of the use of positive test strategies and the influence of confirmatory evidence retrieval on working self-concepts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Moral reasoning and attitudes toward capital punishment.

Addressed 3 aspects of L. Kohlberg's (1981, 1984) theory of moral development, specifically the relationship between (1) levels of moral reasoning used to support opposing positions on a moral problem (the structure issue); (2) moral stage, conceptual complexity, and attitudes about capital punishment (the form/content issue); and (3) moral orientations and attitudes about capital punishment (the orientation/content issue). A sample of 72 students (aged 17–45 yrs) completed a paragraph completion test (assessing conceptual complexity), wrote an essay on capital punishment (assessing moral stage and orientations), and responded to a capital punishment questionnaire (assessing attitudes). Results indicate that Ss at higher moral stages were increasingly complex and tended to oppose capital punishment. Ss did not always use higher moral reasoning to substantiate their own position on capital punishment; rather they used higher reasoning to oppose capital punishment. Also, Ss expressed considerations reflecting different orientations when supporting opposite positions on this moral problem. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)