Naturalistic social cognition: Empathic accuracy in mixed-sex dyads.

The research paradigm that W. Ickes and his colleagues (e.g., Ickes et al; see record 1986-27142-001) developed for the study of naturalistic social cognition was used to explore the phenomenon of empathic accuracy in the initial, unstructured interactions of 38 mixed-sex (male–female) dyads. The results indicated that an important aspect of empathic accuracy, content accuracy, could be measured reliably (α?=?.94) with the procedure used. The results further indicated that content accuracy was, to a large extent, an emergent product of social interaction processes occurring at the level of the dyad. Although many of the findings could be explained in informational terms, some significant motivational influences were observed as well. For example, content accuracy was influenced by the partner's physical attractiveness and, more generally, by the perceiver's apparent interest in the partner (as indexed by various thought/feeling measures). The individual difference variables of grade point average (GPA) and self-monitoring also predicted the subjects' levels of content accuracy; however, gender and self-report measures of empathic skills and empathic accuracy did not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of negative moods on self-enhancing cognitions: The role of reflective versus ruminative mood orientations.

This research program examined how self-focused attention to feelings affects the relation between mood negativity and self-enhancing thought. The primary hypothesis was that the particular manner in which people focus on their moods (reflective vs. ruminative) determines whether they reveal positive (i.e., mood-incongruent) or negative (i.e., mood-congruent) self-relevant thoughts in response to negative moods. Studies 1-4 revealed that social comparisons, temporal comparisons, and other self-enhancing cognitions (i.e., attributions, disidentification, relationship evaluations) are more likely to be mood incongruent when people adopt a reflective orientation to their negative feelings and more likely to be mood congruent when they adopt a ruminative orientation. Additionally, moods and mood orientations affected self-enhancing thoughts through the mediating influence of mood regulation goals and intentions (Studies 5 and 6). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of situational factors, sex, and attitude on affective self-disclosure and anxiety.

Examined the effects of sex of S and the situational factors of S role, type of feeling, and sex of best friend in relation to affective self-disclosure and self-reported anxiety of 20 male and 20 female undergraduates in simulated dyadic interactions. The relationship between attitude toward expressing feelings and affective self-disclosure behavior was also explored. The 2–4 repeated measures ANOVA for affective self-disclosure revealed significant main effects for all factors except S role. Significant interactions revealed that affective self-disclosure is sex-linked and situation specific, with females initiating positive feelings to their same-sex best friend being the most facilitative context for disclosure. Self-report anxiety results indicated that more anxiety was experienced when negative feelings were expressed. A significant correlation between Ss' attitude and performance scores was obtained, indicating that favorable attitudes toward expressing feelings are positively related to the expression of feelings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organization of knowledge about a relationship partner: Implications for liking and loving.

In close relationships, the association between negative beliefs about a partner and loving was found to be moderated by how that negative knowledge was organized. In general, evaluatively integrative organization (i.e., categorizing positive and negative beliefs together) was associated with more positive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward the partner when the negative content of beliefs was high and relationships were relatively long. Additional evidence suggests that compartmentalization (i.e., organizing positive and negative beliefs in separate categories) may be an effective strategy for handling negative beliefs about a partner in a new relationship. Findings for behavioral closeness raise the possibility that the nature of shared activities, as well as an individual's cognitive processes, may influence how knowledge about a relationship partner is organized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ease of retrieval effects in social judgment: The role of unrequested cognitions.

The present research explores a new mechanism for ease of retrieval effects in social judgment. It is suggested that in the most common ease of retrieval paradigm, when it is difficult for people to generate or retrieve the specific type of cognition requested (e.g., positive thoughts about an issue or memories of assertive behavior), they are more likely to spontaneously generate or retrieve unrequested cognitions (e.g., negative thoughts about the issue or memories of unassertive behavior), and the presence of these unrequested cognitions can affect social judgment. In 4 experiments, participants were asked to generate a high (difficult) or low (easy) number of cognitions in a given direction. Across experiments, when participants were asked to generate a high number of cognitions, they also had more unrequested cognitions, and these unrequested cognitions played a mediating role in the ease of retrieval effect on judgment. In the 3rd and 4th experiments, this mechanism was found to be independent of previously identified mediators. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intrinsic dynamics of social judgment.

Ss expressed their moment-to-moment feelings about a target on a computer screen. In the 1st study, the target was a positive, negative, or mixed-valence acquaintance; in the 2nd study, the target was a liked vs disliked acquaintance who committed a positive vs negative act. Several dynamic measures were derived from the positioning of the cursor (sampled 10 times per sec) over a 2-min period. The dimension of the structure underlying the observed dynamics was also assessed. Both sets of measures varied meaningfully across targets (e.g., feelings changed at a relatively fast and unstable rate for mixed-valence targets) and were correlated with self-report measures (e.g., instability in rate of movement was associated with self-reported uncertainty in feelings). Discussion centers on the viability and usefulness of framing social judgment in terms of dynamical systems concepts and principles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Smokers’ thoughts and worries: A study using ecological momentary assessment.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate smokers’ thoughts and worries about their smoking behavior. Researchers have sometimes asked smokers to make such self-assessments but typically using retrospective summary judgments. Design: Using ecological momentary assessment, community and student smokers reported five times daily during two separate 1-week intervals. Main Outcome Measures: Smokers reported their thoughts about smoking, worries about smoking, and level of contemplation to quit smoking. Results: Smokers reported thinking negatively about their smoking 26.8% of the time they had a cigarette. The most frequent thoughts reported by smokers related to immediate reinforcement of smoking (e.g., “How I smell like cigarettes”). However, smokers reported more intense worry about thoughts related to health concerns (e.g., “Symptoms I'm having because of smoking”). The occurrence of negative thoughts was significantly and positively related to contemplation about quitting, worry about smoking, and risk perceptions. Finally, self-reported worry intensity was more strongly related to contemplation of quitting than negative thought occurrence. Conclusion: Our results show that thoughts about smoking (i.e., cognitions) and feelings about smoking (i.e., worry) are loosely connected and it is feelings rather than cognitions that are most related to contemplation to quit. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Big Five predictors of behavior and perceptions in initial dyadic interactions: Personality similarity helps extraverts and introverts, but hurts “disagreeables”.

The authors used the unstructured dyadic interaction paradigm to examine the effects of gender and the Big Five personality traits on dyad members’ behaviors and perceptions in 87 initial, unstructured interactions. Most of the significant Big Five effects (84%) were associated with the traits of Extraversion and Agreeableness. There were several significant actor and partner effects for both of these traits. However, the most interesting and novel effects took the form of significant Actor × Partner interactions. Personality similarity resulted in relatively good initial interactions for dyads composed of 2 extraverts or 2 introverts, when compared with dissimilar (extravert–introvert) pairs. However, personality similarity resulted in uniquely poor initial interactions for dyads composed of 2 “disagreeables.” In summary, the Big Five traits predict behavior and perceptions in initial dyadic interactions, not just in the form of actor and partner “main effects” but also in the form of Actor × Partner interactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Accessibility Effects on Implicit Social Cognition: The Role of Knowledge Activation and Retrieval Experiences.

Performance on measures of implicit social cognition has been shown to vary as a function of the momentary accessibility of relevant information. The present research investigated the mechanisms underlying accessibility effects of self-generated information on implicit measures. Results from 3 experiments demonstrate that measures based on response compatibility processes (e.g., Implicit Association Test, affective priming with an evaluative decision task) are influenced by subjective feelings pertaining to the ease of retrieving relevant information from memory, whereas measures based on stimulus compatibility processes (e.g., semantic priming with a lexical-decision task) are influenced by direct knowledge activation in associative memory. These results indicate that the mediating mechanisms underlying context effects on implicit measures can differ as a function of the task even when these tasks show similar effects on a superficial level. Implications for research on implicit social cognition and the ease-of-retrieval effect are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of the Stepfamily Events Profile.

This project developed and examined the validity of a tailor-made life events checklist specific to the experiences of adolescents in stepfamilies (i.e., the Stepfamily Events Profile; STU). The STEP was developed from information gathered in focus groups and interviews and includes positive and negative events that are meaningful to adolescents in stepfamilies. The STEP was given to 90 adolescents residing with their biological mother and stepfather. Negative events were significantly related to adolescent report of maladjustment, and positive events were significantly related to mother and adolescent report of internalizing problems, above and beyond the effects of several covariates. Also, the effects of negative and positive events were uniquely predictive of adolescent maladjustment. Events reflecting interactions within the adolescent's dyadic family relationships were most strongly predictive of adolescent maladjustment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Receiving support as a mixed blessing: Evidence for dual effects of support on psychological outcomes.

Although social support is thought to boost feelings of closeness in dyadic relationships, recent findings have suggested that support receipt can increase distress in recipients. The authors investigated these apparently contrary findings in a large daily diary study of couples over 31 days leading up to a major stressor. Results confirm that daily support receipt was associated with greater feelings of closeness and greater negative mood. These average effects, however, masked substantial heterogeneity. In particular, those recipients showing greater benefits on closeness tended to show lesser cost on negative mood, and vice versa. Self-esteem was examined as a possible moderator of support effects, but its role was evident in only a subset of recipients. These results imply that models of dyadic support processes must accord a central role to between-individual heterogeneity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-knowledge and social inference: I. The impact of cognitive/affective and behavioral data.

Two studies investigated the sources of information that people would perceive as diagnostic of self. In Study 1, 40 undergraduates completed a questionnaire in which they rated private thoughts and feelings, other peoples' as well as their own, as far more informative and prototypic of self than overt actions. In Study 2, 48 undergraduate speakers participated in a structured interview during which they revealed either a sample of their past thoughts and feelings, a sample of their past behavior, or a mixture of these 2 types of information to 71 undergraduate observers who watched and listened from behind a 1-way mirror. The interviews offering cognitive/affective revelations were perceived, both by the speakers themselves and by observers, to be more informative than interviews offering behavioral revelations. Analyses from both studies, however, suggest that the tendency to weight cognitive/affective information more heavily than behavioral information may be stronger and more consistent for self-perception than social perception. Study 2, in particular, indicates that speakers made more extreme dispositional inferences based on cognitive/affective interviews, whereas observers did not. Ratings of interpersonal liking closely paralleled ratings of perceived informativeness for the questionnaire responses in Study 1 but not for the responses to explicit revelations of thoughts and feeling vs behavior in Study 2. Sex differences were also observed on several measures. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interpretations of parental control by Asian immigrant and European American youth.

Although studies have reported ethnic and cultural differences in the effects of parenting on adolescent well-being, rarely have they included specific examinations of the cultural processes underlying these differences. This study examined adolescents’ affective interpretations of parents’ control (i.e., feelings of anger toward control) and how these interpretations may moderate the relationship between control and adolescents’ behavioral adjustment. The study comprised 1,085 immigrant youth of Chinese, Korean, and Filipino descent, and also European American youth from high schools in the greater Los Angeles area. Differences were found between European American and Asian immigrant youth in the effects of both behavioral control and psychological control. Furthermore, among European Americans only, as adolescents’ feelings of anger increased, the beneficial consequences of behavioral control decreased, whereas the negative effects of psychological control on behavior problems decreased. The results suggest that feeling anger toward parents’ use of psychological control may serve a protective function for European American youth but not for Asian immigrant youth. In contrast, feeling angry about behavioral control seems to reduce the beneficial consequences of control among European Americans but not Asian immigrants. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality, attentional focus, and novelty effects: Reactions to peers with disabilities.

Tested the hypothesis that common reactions to people with disabilities are partly due to the attentional consequences of novelty and explored the impact of personality on nondisabled individuals' reactions. Three hundred and fifty one college students completed personality measures (social anxiety, shyness, public self-consciousness, self-monitoring) and indicated their feelings, self and other-focused thoughts, and behavioral intentions concerning a hypothetical encounter with an "average" student or with 2 types of novel peers: student with a disability and an all-round outstanding individual. Implications of the findings, which indicate that (1) novelty provides a partial explanation of interaction problems between nondisabled and disabled peers and (2) personality factors have a different impact on thoughts and feelings about encounters with peers who are novel than on those who are not, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit affective cues and attentional tuning: An integrative review.

A large and growing number of studies support the notion that arousing positive emotional states expand, and that arousing negative states constrict, the scope of attention on both the perceptual and conceptual levels. However, these studies have predominantly involved the manipulation or measurement of conscious emotional experiences (e.g., subjective feelings of happiness or anxiety). This raises the question: Do cues that are merely associated with benign versus threatening situations but do not elicit conscious feelings of positive or negative emotional arousal independently expand or contract attentional scope? Integrating theoretical advances in affective neuroscience, positive psychology, and social cognition, the authors propose that rudimentary intero- and exteroceptive stimuli may indeed become associated with the onset of arousing positive or negative emotional states and/or with appraisals that the environment is benign or threatening and thereby come to moderate the scope of attention in the absence of conscious emotional experience. Specifically, implicit “benign situation” cues are posited to broaden, and implicit “threatening situation” cues to narrow, the range of both perceptual and conceptual attentional selection. An extensive array of research findings involving a diverse set of such implicit affective cues (e.g., enactment of approach and avoidance behaviors, incidental exposure to colors signaling safety vs. danger) is marshaled in support of this proposition. Potential alternative explanations for and moderators of these attentional tuning effects, as well as their higher level neuropsychological underpinnings, are also discussed along with prospective extensions to a range of other situational cues and domains of social cognitive processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Validity of video-mediated recall procedures for mothers' emotion and child ratings.

The validity of video-mediated recall (VR) measures of mothers' experience of emotion and appraisals of their children's behavior was evaluated. While viewing videotapes of their immediately preceding interactions, 97 mothers used a dial to continuously rate their toddlers' behavior and then their own emotion. Mothers' appraisals, emotion, and autonomic responses measured as averages across each VR condition were associated with their autonomic responses and their children's misbehavior measured during the live interactions. Less correspondence was found when similar relations were assessed in 10-s intervals. Additional tests supported concurrent and discriminant validity of the averaged VR measures. Taken together, the results suggest acceptable construct validity, but that the timing of mothers' thoughts and feelings may differ between live interactions and VR. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marginal and mindful: Deviants in social interactions.

Master status people's behavior, physical appearance, or life circumstance is statistically unusual and centrally defining (e.g., the physically attractive, the obese, the intellectually gifted, the facially scarred, the talented, the athletic, Blacks, gays, the wealthy, rape and incest victims). These individuals were paired with people without such conditions. Each pair was left alone on a pretext and covertly videotaped. Pairs were then separated; each member spontaneously recalled information about her partner and the experimental room and provided a record of her thoughts and feelings during the interaction. As hypothesized, all master status Ss were particularly likely to be mindful in social interactions; they recalled detailed information about the situation and often took their partner's perspective during the interaction. The positive or negative connotations of the master status conditions were irrelevant in predicting Ss cognitions (mindfulness) but were critical in determining Ss behaviors (interaction strategies). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Situational determinants of social anxiety in clinic and nonclinic samples: Physiological and cognitive correlates.

Compared the level of physiological reactivity and frequency of negative cognitions in 26 nonclinic, socially anxious (SA) Ss (mean age 20.8 yrs), 17 clinic SA patients (mean age 40.8 yrs), and 26 nonsocially anxious (NSA) Ss (mean age 22.0 yrs) to investigate the consistency of cognitive and physiological reactivity in the assessment of social anxiety. A social interaction self-statement test served as the cognitive measure. Physiological reactivity was monitored continuously throughout Ss' completion of the following behavioral tasks: an unstructured interpersonal interaction with an opposite-sex confederate, a similar interaction with a same-sex confederate, and an impromptu talk on a topic selected by the S. The clinic and nonclinic samples of SA Ss differed significantly from the NSA Ss in level of physiological reactivity and type of cognition. There were no significant differences between the 2 anxious groups. The results indicate that both thoughts and physiological reactivity were influenced by situational parameters. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depression, schizophrenia, and social attraction.

J. C. Coyne (see PA, Vol 56:02455 and 61:1146) has shown that after interacting with depressed patients, Ss report feeling depressed themselves and rejecting toward the depressed person. In the present study, measures (e.g., Mood Adjective Check List, Interpersonal Check List) were obtained from 216 undergraduates who listened to tapes of interviews with either hospitalized depressive, hospitalized schizophrenics, or normal hospital staff. Results show that schizophrenics aroused dysphoric feelings similar although not identical to those feelings aroused by depressives, and in the case of males they were equally rejected. In addition, the schizophrenics and, to a lesser extent, the depressives were seen as weak, submissive, and less capable of offering a positive relationship. Modifications of the Coyne position are suggested. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A state space analysis of emotion and flexibility in parent-child interactions.

Negative emotion has been shown to reduce flexibility in cognition and behavior. We examined interpersonal flexibility during negative emotional episodes within parent-child interactions. Fifty-five mothers and early-adolescent daughters were observed during a positive discussion, a negative (conflict) discussion, and another positive discussion. Codes of moment-to-moment changes in emotion expression were used to create state space grids from which measures of emotional valence and flexibility were derived. As expected, mean flexibility was lowest during the conflict discussion when negative emotion peaked, suggesting that interpersonal flexibility decreases with increasing negative emotion. Sub-groups identified as low or high in stress were also compared. Dyads with girls reporting more stressful events showed lower flexibility during the first positive discussion. However, dyads expressing more negative emotion during the conflict discussion were also more flexible, suggesting that flexible dyadic styles permit more negative emotion. These individual difference findings are discussed in terms of the suppression versus expression of negative emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)