Conceptual complexity and preferred coping strategies in anticipation of temporally predictable and unpredictable threat.

Conceptualized the coping strategies of vigilance and avoidance as information search patterns, which were viewed from an information-processing perspective. Conceptual complexity (measured here by the Paragraph Completion Test) was examined as a mediator of response to environmental stress. The major issues of interest were whether (1) the choice of a vigilant or avoidant coping strategy would be related to individual differences in conceptual complexity level, (2) differences in complexity level would be related to patterns of physiological arousal and subjective anxiety, and (3) the cognitive performance of conceptually complex and simple Ss would be differentially affected by variations in environmental threats. 120 female undergraduates served as Ss. Contrary to expectation, the results indicate that when anticipating a temporally unpredictable shock, conceptually simple Ss were more vigilant (behaviorally and cognitively) and reported more subjective anxiety than conceptually complex Ss. Results also indicate that the conceptually complex Ss exhibited higher levels of skin conductance overall than the conceptually simple Ss. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An impression management interpretation of the self-handicapping strategy.

Explored the impression-management underpinnings of the self-handicapping strategy of S. Berglas and E. E. Jones (see record 1979-05889-001). 64 male undergraduates were given success feedback after completing soluble or insoluble analogies. While anticipating a 2nd test, Ss were allowed to choose between drugs that would enhance or encumber their performance. Ss who had worked on insoluble problems chose the debilitating drug, but only when the experimenter (E) witnessed the choice. They were most likely to choose the debilitating drug when the E was present and when they believed that the E would have access to their score on the anticipated 2nd test. The data are cautiously interpreted as consistent with an impression management view of self-handicapping. The authors suggest that although it appears that self-handicapping is an impression management strategy at least under some circumstances, the exact nature of the strategy needs further specification. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of interpersonal orientation and the sex-type of the task on choosing to work alone or in groups.

The preferences of men and women for working alone or with others were examined. 150 undergraduates were presented with masculine and feminine tasks and were offered the choice of working alone or with others on the tasks. A cognitive model predicted that the congruence between gender and the sex-type of the task would affect expectancies of success, which, in turn would affect choice. From an individual difference perspective, it was predicted that interpersonal orientation would affect choice. The cognitive perspective model was supported, whereas interpersonal orientation had little effect on choice. The results were discussed in terms of their implications for task perceptions and gender differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Picture memory: Recognizing added and deleted details.

When people are presented simple and complex pictures and then tested in a same–changed recognition test with a simple or complex form of each, d′ is greater for the simple than the complex picture (Pezdek & Chen, 1982). The results of three experiments confirm the robustness of this "asymmetric confusability effect" and test a model of the processes underlying this effect. According to the model, pictures are schematically encoded such that the memory representation of both simple and complex pictures is similar to the simple form of each. In Experiment 1, a sentence was presented that described the central schema in the picture prior to subjects' viewing each picture. This manipulation exaggerated the asymmetric confusability effect; schematic processing thus underlies the effect. Results of Experiment 2 refute the hypothesis that the effect results from subjects erroneously anticipating a recall test rather than a recognition test. Furthermore, although some of the nonschematic elaborative information in complex pictures is stored in memory, it is difficult to retrieve to verify that something is missing when complex presentation pictures are changed to simple test pictures (Experiment 3). Thus, although people are able to distinguish large sets of old pictures from new distractor pictures, their ability to detect missing elaborative visual details is more limited. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic ambiguity effects in word identification.

The influence of semantic ambiguity on word identification processes was explored in a series of word naming and lexical-decision experiments. There was no reliable ambiguity effect in 2 naming experiments, although an ambiguity advantage in lexical decision was obtained when orthographically legal nonwords were used. No ambiguity effect was found in lexical decision when orthographically illegal nonwords were used, implying a semantic locus for the ambiguity advantage. These results were simulated by using a distributed memory model that also produces the ambiguity disadvantage in gaze duration that has been obtained with a reading comprehension task. Ambiguity effects in the model arise from the model's attempt to activate multiple meanings of an ambiguous word in response to presentation of that word's orthographic pattern. Reasons for discrepancies in empirical results and implications for distributed memory models are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Initial impression versus missing information as explanations of the set-size effect.

The averaging model of information integration generally predicts a decelerating set-size effect (SSE), because it assumes that an "initial neutral impression" is always averaged with the information items that are presented. However, a modified averaging model, called the path-analytic averaging (PAA) model, predicts that the SSE will not always occur. What is considered the "initial impression" in the averaging model is reconceptualized as "inferred missing information" in the PAA model. When the number of presented items equals the number of items deemed important and both increase together, the PAA model predicts that there will be no SSE because there is no missing information. When the number of presented items increases, so that the added items provide information previously missing, a SSE should occur. These predictions of the PAA model were tested in an experiment in which 36 undergraduates rated the desirability of candidates for secretarial positions based on 1, 2, or 3 items of information. For most Ss, the PAA predictions were confirmed; for some Ss, however, the results are inconsistent with both the PAA model and the usual averaging model predictions. The latter Ss were distinguished from the others by their apparent use of scores less than the scale midpoint when they inferred information that was considered important but missing. (6 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Vicarious instigation and conditioning of facial expressive and autonomic responses to a model's expressive display of pain.

In 2 experiments, 35 undergraduates participated in the application of a long-interstimulus-interval differential conditioning paradigm with a confederate's videotaped expression of pain serving as the UCS. Facial EMG signals and skin conductance were recorded. Clear evidence of vicarious autonomic instigation and some evidence of facial excitation were obtained in Exp I, but vicarious autonomic and facial muscle conditioning were obtained only for the 50% of the Ss who were aware of the contingency between the CS+ and the model's pain. In Exp II, steps were taken to increase awareness of the contingency, and significant autonomic and facial muscle instigation and conditioning occurred. Both the vicariously instigated and conditioned autonomic responses involved skin conductance increases, but facial responses to the model's pain were different from conditioned facial responses. Autonomic and facial muscle data suggest that Ss were behaving as though they were anticipating shock when the CS+ was displayed to the model, and as though they were in pain when the model was being shocked. Vicariously aroused emotional reactions thus appear to be similar to those that would be elicited if the S were directly anticipating and receiving shock. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in choice satisfaction: A positivity effect in decision making.

The authors tested the possibility that older adults show a positivity effect in decision making, by giving younger and older adults the opportunity to choose 1 of 4 products and by examining the participants' satisfaction with their choice. The authors considered whether requiring participants to explicitly evaluate the options before making a choice has an effect on age differences in choice satisfaction. Older adults in the evaluation condition listed more positive and fewer negative attributes than did younger adults and were more satisfied with their decisions than were younger adults. There were no age differences among those who did not evaluate options. This evaluation-dependent elevation of satisfaction among older adults was still present when participants were contacted 2 weeks after the experiment. Age did not influence the accuracy with which participants predicted how their satisfaction would change over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disclose or conceal? Strategies of information management in persons with epilepsy

PURPOSE: When handling information about their disease in their social contacts, persons with epilepsy try to avoid or limit stigmatization. We report two basic strategies of information management: general concealment and preventive disclosure. To test whether persons with epilepsy apply a strategy of preventive disclosure, we hypothesized that they would disclose their epilepsy when anticipating that their disease would make them conspicuous in social contacts and when believing that they would be able to forestall stigmatizing attribution processes through disclosure. METHODS: One hundred nineteen outpatients at the Bethel Epilepsy Center, Bielefeld, Germany, aged 16-74 years responded to a questionnaire assessing willingness to disclose their epilepsy in various fictitious daily scenarios, the perceived risk that the interaction partner might find out about their epilepsy (risk of detection), as well as the anticipated positive and negative social consequences of disclosure in these social situations. RESULTS: Willingness to disclose varied across the different scenarios, and only a few respondents rejected disclosure categorically. Willingness to disclose depended on the subjectively perceived risk of detection and the anticipated consequences of disclosure: Respondents were more willing to disclose their epilepsy the more they feared that their interaction partner would detect their disease or find out about it in another way and the more they anticipated that disclosure would enable them to exert a favorable impact on their partner's social judgment formation. CONCLUSIONS: Many persons with epilepsy appear to apply a strategy of preventive disclosure with which they strive to influence social judgment formation in their environment by purposefully disclosing their disease to forestall possible stigmatization processes.     

A procedure for combining sample standardized mean differences and vote counts to estimate the population standardized mean difference in fixed event models.

Missing effect-size estimates pose a difficult problem in meta-analysis. Conventional procedures for dealing with this problem include discarding studies with missing estimates and imputing single values for missing estimates (e.g., 0, mean). An alternative procedure, which combines effect-size estimates and vote counts, is proposed for handling missing estimates. The combined estimator has several desirable features: (a) It uses all the information available from studies in a research synthesis, (b) it is consistent, (c) it is more efficient than other estimators, (d) it has known variance, and (e) it gives weight to all studies proportional to the Fisher information they provide. The combined procedure is the method of choice in a research synthesis when some studies do not provide enough information to compute effect-size estimates but do provide information about the direction or statistical significance of results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relatively fast! Efficiency advantages of comparative thinking.

Comparisons are a ubiquitous process in information processing. Seven studies examine whether, how, and when comparative thinking increases the efficiency of judgment and choice. Studies 1-4 demonstrate that procedurally priming participants to engage in more vs. less comparison influences how they process information about a target. Specifically, they retrieve less information about the target (Studies 1A, 1B), think more about an information-rich standard (Study 2) about which they activate judgment-relevant information (Study 3), and use this information to compensate for missing target information (Study 4). Studies 2-5 demonstrate the ensuing efficiency advantages. Participants who are primed on comparative thinking are faster in making a target judgment (Studies 2A, 2B, 4, 5) and have more residual processing capacities for a secondary task (Study 5). Studies 6 and 7 establish two boundary conditions by demonstrating that comparative thinking holds efficiency advantages only if target and standard are partly characterized by alignable features (Study 6) that are difficult to evaluate in isolation (Study 7). These findings indicate that comparative thinking may often constitute a useful mechanism to simplify information processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comprehension strategies in the development of a mental model.

It is generally assumed that the comprehension strategy used in the development of a mental model for narrative texts focuses on information that is relevant to the protagonist. Exps 1a and 1b confirmed that readers remain sensitive to the location of the protagonist even when strategies based on text-base level representations predict this information should not be active. Exps 2 and 3 tested the stronger claim that readers adopt the perspective of the protagonist. Ss did not notice information that was contradictory from the perspective of the protagonist unless explicitly instructed to adopt that perspective. It was concluded that, at the level of the mental model, readers focus on information relevant to the protagonist but that they do not adopt the perspective of the protagonist unless characteristics of the text induce such a strategy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential Access to Information and Anticipated Group Interaction: Impact on Individual Reasoning.

Two studies examined the impact of relative differences in access to information and anticipated group interaction on individual reasoning. On 2 different reasoning tasks (P. C. Wason's [1966] selection task and D. Kahneman & A. Tversky's [1973] lawyer-engineer problem), participants sensing that they knew more in anticipation of group interaction or knew less when not anticipating interaction were less susceptible to typical cognitive biases demonstrated by these tasks. Study 2 also showed that the effect of these social contexts was contingent on the task presentation format. Thus, knowing more in anticipation of group interaction and knowing less when not anticipating group interaction seemingly compensated for task features that enhance suboptimal reasoning strategies. These results illustrate the importance of the social context in which reasoning is situated and are discussed in terms of cognitive tuning, social comparison, and social motivations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Driven by power? Probe question and presentation format effects on causal judgment.

It has been proposed that causal power (defined as the probability with which a candidate cause would produce an effect in the absence of any other background causes) can be intuitively computed from cause-effect covariation information. Estimation of power is assumed to require a special type of counterfactual probe question, worded to remove potential sources of ambiguity. The present study analyzes the adequacy of such questions to evoke normative causal power estimation. The authors report that judgments to counterfactual probes do not conform to causal power and that they strongly depend on both the probe question wording and the way that covariation information is presented. The data are parsimoniously accounted for by an alternative model of causal judgment, the Evidence Integration rule. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Doctors, patients, and perceived job image: an empirical study of stress and nurses in Singapore

The acceptance and sensory characteristics of standard and reduced-fat cookies were evaluated either with or without fat-content information by pre-adolescent children. Results indicate that acceptance ratings were not affected by the fat content or information about fat content when evaluated on nine-point scales. However, when asked to choose which cookie they liked better and to predict how many cookies they would eat (in forced-choice questions), fat content and information about fat content had a significant effect on cookie preference and prospective intake. When no information was available, subjects preferred the cookie with the higher fat content; when information was presented, subjects' preference shifted to the reduced-fat cookie. When asked which cookie they would choose to eat for dessert with hypothetical lunches, a similar shift in choice was observed following a low-fat lunch. The low-fat label was also associated with an increase in perceived healthiness relative to the high-fat label, as indicated on "good for me" scales. The effects of fat content information on cookie preference and prospective consumption were seen in pre-adolescents who indicated a "high concern" for the health consequences of dietary fat. Cookie preference and prospective intake of subjects who indicated a "low concern" were not affected by fat content labeling. Results suggest that fat content and information about fat content may affect food preference and intake in pre-adolescent children.     

Making choices impairs subsequent self-control: A limited-resource account of decision making, self-regulation, and active initiative.

The current research tested the hypothesis that making many choices impairs subsequent self-control. Drawing from a limited-resource model of self-regulation and executive function, the authors hypothesized that decision making depletes the same resource used for self-control and active responding. In 4 laboratory studies, some participants made choices among consumer goods or college course options, whereas others thought about the same options without making choices. Making choices led to reduced self-control (i.e., less physical stamina, reduced persistence in the face of failure, more procrastination, and less quality and quantity of arithmetic calculations). A field study then found that reduced self-control was predicted by shoppers' self-reported degree of previous active decision making. Further studies suggested that choosing is more depleting than merely deliberating and forming preferences about options and more depleting than implementing choices made by someone else and that anticipating the choice task as enjoyable can reduce the depleting effect for the first choices but not for many choices. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attitudes to current oral contraceptive use and future developments: the women's perspective

OBJECTIVES: The study was planned to determine current trends in contraceptive usage and to examine the attitudes, needs and preferences of women with respect to oral contraceptives. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were carried out with women (n = 1201, aged 16-45 years) in Germany, the UK and France. RESULTS: The study revealed that oral contraceptives were the most popular method of contraception employed, followed by condoms, and that the majority of respondents were aged 16-19 years when they first used an oral contraceptive. An important finding of the study was that an oral contraceptive was first used only after having sexual intercourse for the first time (within 1 year), emphasizing the importance of effective contraceptive information and education for adolescents. Regarding non-contraceptive health benefits, protection from ovarian and endometrial cancer was perceived by respondents to be of the greatest importance; however, few women were spontaneously aware of this benefit. When given a number of different oral contraceptive intake options to assess, the established 'once daily for 21 consecutive days' option remained the most popular, although a 'once weekly' alternative was cited by many women. When asked about the preferred frequency of menstrual bleeding, there was a polarization between women favoring the normal monthly bleed and those wanting a 'no-bleed' regimen. CONCLUSION: Women are poorly informed about oral contraceptive use, and are largely unaware of the important long-term non-contraceptive benefits. Many women would prefer alternative pill intake options and a significant number would favor a 'no-bleed' regimen.     

Unsettling questions about semantic ambiguity in connectionist models: Comment on Joordens and Besner (1994).

S. Joordens and D. Besner (see record 1995-07873-001) described an attempt to simulate a semantic ambiguity advantage in lexical decision using a connectionist model (Masson, 1991) that was based on a Hopfield (1982) network. The question of the validity of the ambiguity advantage is briefly considered, and the assumptions behind the simulation results reported by Joordens and Besner are critically examined. The model used by Joordens and Besner is compared with other connectionist models, and alternative methods of simulating lexical decisions with this class of models are discussed. It is concluded that further empirical evidence is required and that a number of modeling alternatives need to be explored before strong conclusions can be made about the validity of the semantic ambiguity advantage and about the best way to model the effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Feeling "holier than thou": Are self-serving assessments produced by errors in self- or social prediction?

People typically believe they are more likely to engage in selfless, kind, and generous behaviors than their peers, a result that is both logically and statistically suspect. However, this oft-documented tendency presents an important ambiguity. Do people feel "holier than thou" because they harbor overly cynical views of their peers (but accurate impressions of themselves) or overly charitable views of themselves (and accurate impressions of their peers)? Four studies suggested it was the latter. Participants consistently overestimated the likelihood that they would act in generous or selfless ways, whereas their predictions of others were considerably more accurate. Two final studies suggest this divergence in accuracy arises, in part, because people are unwilling to consult population base rates when predicting their own behavior but use this diagnostic information more readily when predicting others'. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)