Gender stereotypes and social inferences: A developmental study.

Investigated changes between childhood and adulthood in reliance on gender stereotypes when making inferences about another person. 36 children from each of 3 age groups (kindergarten [mean age 5 yrs 8 mo], 3rd grade [mean age 8 yrs 9 mo], and 6th grade [mean age 11 yrs 8 mo]) and 36 college students were told that a boy or a girl had chosen activities consistent or inconsistent with gender stereotypes. Ss were asked to predict the actor's future behavior, rate the actor on several traits, and estimate the actor's popularity with peers. College students predicted that the actor's future behavior would be approximately as consistent (or inconsistent) with gender stereotypes as their past behavior. College students' ratings of the actor's traits and their judgments about the popularity of boys were also influenced by the actor's past behavior. Sixth graders showed a similar pattern of social inferences, but the effects of the actor's past behavior were weaker than at college age. By contrast, 3rd graders predicted that the actor's future behavior would be stereotypical, even if his or her past behavior was not. Past behavior had some effect on 3rd graders' trait ratings but not on their popularity judgments. At kindergarten, only predictions for a girl's future behavior were affected by past-behavior information. The age differences are discussed in the context of current models of the development and functioning of gender stereotypes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of behavioral intentions and consequences on judgments of the actor and other: An S-V-O analysis.

Used an extension of H. F. Gollob's (1974) subject–verb–object (S–V–O) model of social inference to investigate the effects of information about behavioral intentions and consequences on judgments of both an actor and the person toward whom the behavior is directed. In Exp I, 48 undergraduates received one or more pieces of information about an attribute of the actor, the actor's intentions to help or hinder the other, the actual consequences of this action (whether the other is helped or hindered), and an attribute of the other. Judgments of actors' admirableness increased with the favorableness of the adjectives describing them, the favorableness of both their intentions and the consequences of their actions, the justness of their intentions and of the consequences of their actions, and their ability to produce the consequences they intended. Behavioral consequences appeared to affect judgments of both the actor and the other independently of the actor's intentions. Exp II, with 51 undergraduates, demonstrated that the effects of information on judgments of the actor depended on the dimension of judgment in predictable ways and suggested that judgments of admirableness may be mediated by perceptions of both virtuousness and competence. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's reactions to apologies.

In 2 experiments, 221 kindergartners and 1st, 4th, and 7th graders judged actors who committed a transgression under conditions of low or high responsibility and low or high consequences. The actor's motives were good or bad and the act was intended or accidental. The actor then either did nothing or employed 1 of 3 increasingly elaborate apologies. As hypothesized, the actor's predicament was most severe, producing the harshest judgments when (a) the actor had high responsibility for committing an inadvertent act that produced high consequences, and (b) the act was the result of a bad rather than good motive or was intended rather than accidental. More elaborate apologies produced less blame and punishment and more forgiveness, liking, positive evaluations, and attributions of greater remorse. The judgments of the 7th graders were more affected by the actor's apology than those of the younger Ss. These age differences reflect the younger Ss' poorer ability to integrate social information and appreciate the implications of social conventions. However, the younger Ss' judgments were similar to those of older Ss. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Suspicion of ulterior motivation and the correspondence bias.

Three studies examined the hypothesis that when perceivers learn of the existence of multiple, plausibly rival motives for an actor's behavior, they are less likely to fall prey to the correspondence bias than when they learn of the existence of situational factors that may have constrained the actor's behavior. In the 1st 2 studies, Ss who learned that an actor was instructed to behave as he did drew inferences that corresponded to his behavior. In contrast, Ss who were led to suspect that an actor's behavior may have been motivated by a desire to ingratiate (Study 1), or by a desire to avoid an unwanted job (Study 2), resisted the correspondence bias. The 3rd study demonstrated that these differences were not due to a general unwillingness on the part of suspicious perceivers to make dispositional inferences. The implications that these results have for understanding attribution theory are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The spyglass self: A model of vicarious self-perception.

Self-perception theory posits that people sometimes infer their own attributes by observing their freely chosen actions. The authors hypothesized that in addition, people sometimes infer their own attributes by observing the freely chosen actions of others with whom they feel a sense of merged identity--almost as if they had observed themselves performing the acts. Before observing an actor's behavior, participants were led to feel a sense of merged identity with the actor through perspective-taking instructions (Study 1) or through feedback indicating that their brainwave patterns overlapped substantially with those of the actor (Studies 2-4). As predicted, participants incorporated attributes relevant to an actor's behavior into their own self-concepts, but only when they were led to feel a sense of merged identity with the actor and only when the actor's behavior seemed freely chosen. These changes in relevant self-perceptions led participants to change their own behaviors accordingly. Implications of these vicarious self-perception processes for conformity, perspective-taking, and the long-term development of the self-concept are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The perceiver as perceived: Everyday intuitions about the correspondence bias.

This research examined people's intuitions about the correspondence bias, or the tendency to favor dispositional rather than situational explanations of behavior. In 3 studies, constrained actors overestimated the magnitude of observers' correspondent inferences. Additional studies indicated that this overestimation is due to people's oversimplified theories about the attributional processes of others. In one, Japanese participants, whose culture places greater emphasis on situational explanations of behavior, did not overestimate the correspondent inferences of observers. In other studies, participants indicated that they thought others' attributions are more influenced by an actor's behavior than by the factors constraining the behavior. Discussion focuses on whether people believe others are more prone to the correspondence bias than they are themselves and on the consequences of overestimating the correspondence bias in everyday interaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sequential analysis of social interaction: Assessing internal versus social determinants of behavior.

Predictability and controllability of events influence attributions and affect in many research domains. In face-to-face social interaction, behavior is predictable from actor's own past behavior (internal determinants) and from partner's past behavior (social determinants). This study assessed how affect ratings are related to predictability of vocal activity from internal and social determinants. Time and frequency domain analysis of on–off vocal activity from 55 dyadic getting-acquainted conversations provided indexes of predictability from internal and social determinants. Greater predictability of vocal activity patterns from both internal and social determinants was associated with more positive affect. Future research should take internal as well as social determinants of behavior into account. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Power relationships and group decision making in organizations.

Reviews theory and research on the distribution of power in organizations. Theories stressing power centralization are contrasted with the contemporary emphasis on the sharing of decision-making power. A situational-process approach to power relationships and group decision making integrates previous research and directs future study. This approach views power relationships as intervening processes in organizational development, with multiple determinants and outcomes. The group decision process is characterized as a multiphased process, in which participation, multiple bases of power, and interaction dynamics affect power relationships. Linkages between decision processes and power, and between power and organizational consequences, are mediated by characteristics of the organizational environment, decision tasks, and individual motives. (89 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Terror Management in the Courtroom: Exploring the Effects of Mortality Salience on Legal Decision Making.

This article reviews legally oriented research guided by terror management theory. An analysis of terror management, a social psychological theory that explicates the central role of mortality concerns in human social behavior, is applied to domains associated with legal decision making. This article reviews research demonstrating that reminders of death instigate pervasive efforts to defend culturally derived belief systems. Next, the authors introduce empirical inquiry that has explicitly examined how mortality salience affects judgments toward criminal offenders, due process concerns, and compliance with judicial admonitions. Finally, the article explores implications for understanding potential bias in trial strategy, deliberation, and outcomes, as well as the psychological consequences of different punishments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Resolving ambiguous behavioral intentions by means of involuntary prioritization of gaze processing.

Anticipation of others' actions is of paramount importance in social interactions. Cues such as gaze direction and facial expressions can be informative, but can also produce ambiguity with respect to others' intentions. We investigated the combined effect of an actor's gaze and expression on judgments made by observers about the end-point of the actor's head rotation toward the observer. Expressions of approach gave rise to an unambiguous intention to move toward the observer, while expressions of avoidance gave rise to an ambiguous behavioral intention (as the expression and motion cues were in conflict). In the ambiguous condition, observers overestimated how far the actor's head had rotated when the actor's gaze was directed ahead of head rotation (compared to congruent or lagging behind). In the unambiguous condition the estimations were not influenced by the gaze manipulation. These results show that social cue integration does not follow simple additive rules, and suggests that the involuntary allocation of attention to another's gaze depends on the perceived ambiguity of the agent's behavioral intentions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The attributional norm of internality and depressive sensitivity to social information.

Two experiments with 209 undergraduates examined the existence in an achievement-related context of a social norm favoring internal explanations for task performances. In Exp I, Ss' reactions to a male actor's high, moderate, or low self-attribution of causal responsibility for his negative performance outcome on an ostensibly standardized aptitude test were assessed. Results indicate that the actor was evaluated more positively to the degree that he accepted more personal responsibility for his performance. In Exp II, Ss were classified as depressed or nondepressed, based on their scores on the Beck Depression Inventory. Ss' reactions to an actor's high or low self-attributions of causal responsibility for his poor performance on a test of analytical ability were assessed. On the basis of the notion that the chronic lack of control and resultant uncertainty, presumably characteristic of depressed persons, motivates attributional information processing, it was expected that depressed Ss would be more sensitive to the actor's violation of the norm of internality and would respond with more social disapproval than nondepressed Ss. Results are generally consistent with this reasoning. Findings are discussed in terms of the interpersonal implications of expressed attributions. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cultural variation in correspondence bias: The critical role of attitude diagnosticity of socially constrained behavior.

Upon observing another's socially constrained behavior, people often ascribe to the person an attitude that corresponds to the behavior (called the correspondence bias [CB]). The authors found that when a socially constrained behavior is still diagnostic of the actor's attitude, both Americans and Japanese show an equally strong CB. A major cultural difference occurred when the behavior was minimally diagnostic. Demonstrating their persistent bias toward dispositional attribution, Americans showed a strong CB. But Japanese did not show any CB (Study 1). Furthermore, a mediational analysis revealed that this cross-cultural difference was due in part to the nature of explicit inferences generated online during attitudinal judgment (Study 2). Implications for the cultural grounding of social perception are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Power, approach, and inhibition.

This article examines how power influences behavior. Elevated power is associated with increased rewards and freedom and thereby activates approach-related tendencies. Reduced power is associated with increased threat, punishment, and social constraint and thereby activates inhibition-related tendencies. The authors derive predictions from recent theorizing about approach and inhibition and review relevant evidence. Specifically, power is associated with (a) positive affect, (b) attention to rewards, (c) automatic information processing, and (d) disinhibited behavior. In contrast, reduced power is associated with (a) negative affect; (b) attention to threat, punishment, others' interests, and those features of the self that are relevant to others' goals; (c) controlled information processing; and (d) inhibited social behavior. The potential moderators and consequences of these power-related behavioral patterns are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the decision to be assertive.

Examines the applicability of an expectancy/decision model to assertiveness in a nonclinical population of 111 college students. Assertiveness, defined as refusal to comply with an unreasonable request, has been researched extensively from the viewpoint of behavior theory, which prescribes anxiety reduction and skill acquisition for the training of assertive behaviors. However, little has been done to investigate the reasons why assertive behavior occurs in one situation and not in another. Results suggest that the Ss, irrespective of their scores on standard measures of assertiveness and of anxiety (Rathus Assertion Inventory and the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory Trait Scale), considered the consequences of being assertive when making a decision about how to behave. Moreover, it was found that the difference between Ss who chose an assertive response and those who did not lies in the formers' assessments of the probabilities that bad consequences will occur and good consequences will not rather than in their evaluations of how bad or how good those consequences would be. Results imply that training programs should take into account the participant's perceptions of the risks involved in being assertive and that the focus should be on changing these perceptions rather than on attempting to change his or her values or focusing solely on specific assertive behaviors. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of intent and harm in judgments of prejudice and discrimination.

Four experiments examined how an actor's intent and the harm experienced by a target influence judgments of prejudice and discrimination. The presence of intent increased the likelihood that participants judged an actor as prejudiced and the actor's behavior as discriminatory. When intent was uncertain, harm influenced judgments of the behavior, which in turn influenced judgments of the actor, and participants were more cautious in their judgments about an actor than an actor's behavior. Harm also played a stronger role in targets' than observers' judgments. Understanding the role of intent and harm on perceptions of prejudice can help explain variations in targets' versus observers', and possibly targets' versus actors', judgments of discrimination and prejudice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The perceptual and inferential effects of situational inducements on dispositional attribution.

On the basis of a two-stage attribution model (Trope, 1986), we predicted that behavioral ambiguity increases the situation's contextual effect on the perception of behavior but decreases the situation's subtractive effect on the attribution of behavior. Three experiments with undergraduate subjects were designed to test these predictions. In Experiment 1 we presented ambiguous and unambiguous emotional reactions to different emotion-eliciting situations and measured subjects' emotion identification and dispositional attribution. In Experiment 2 we extended the test of the model to attribution of causality to the situation and to the actor's personality. In Experiment 3 we tested the predictions with respect to voluntary action. Subjects heard an actor's ambiguous or unambiguous evaluative statements about a likable or a dislikable person. On the basis of this information, subjects indicated their perceptions and attributions of the actor's evaluative statements. Despite differences in stimulus materials, design, and measures, results of all three experiments confirmed the predictions of the two-stage model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multichannel nonverbal communication: Evidence for combinatory rules.

Tested the hypothesis that Ss who view certain combinations of nonverbal behaviors in 3 channels—eye contact, posture, and distance—agree strongly about the specific meanings of these combinations. However, other combinations of these same channels, as well as unichannel behaviors, will result in little agreement about their meanings. An actor's nonverbal behaviors were filmed simultaneously by 4 cameras. One camera recorded behaviors in all 3 channels, but each of the other cameras filmed the behavior of a single channel. The Ss, 320 undergraduates, assigned meanings to the filmed behaviors by selecting from a list of 20 adjectives those that best described the actor's behavior. A panel of judges had previously found that these adjectives portrayed one of the following meanings: deprivation of status or esteem, deprivation of love or affection, provision of love or affection, provision of status or esteem. Five adjectives were selected from each class of meaning. In general, the results support the hypothesis. Some deviations were found and are discussed. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Making research apply: High stakes public policy in a regulatory environment.

The experiences of 3 social psychologists asked to evaluate (and improve) a series of large-scale programs designed to change energy-related attitudes and behavior are described. The research generated significant change but also substantial conflict involving both the utility companies being evaluated and the state agency that commissioned the evaluation. This experience is reviewed with an eye to maximizing the usefulness of future efforts to apply social psychology in complex and potentially conflicted public policy arenas. The difference between influence and power models of applied research is discussed, and possible remedies are examined for social psychologists undertaking future research similar in scale, policy consequences, or potential controversy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

From Power to Action.

Three experiments investigated the hypothesis that power increases an action orientation in the power holder, even in contexts where power is not directly experienced. In Experiment 1, participants who possessed structural power in a group task were more likely to take a card in a simulated game of blackjack than those who lacked power. In Experiment 2, participants primed with high power were more likely to act against an annoying stimulus (a fan) in the environment, suggesting that the experience of power leads to the performance of goal-directed behavior. In Experiment 3, priming high power led to action in a social dilemma regardless of whether that action had prosocial or antisocial consequences. The effects of priming power are discussed in relation to the broader literature on conceptual and mind-set priming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Judgments of causation, responsibility, and punishment in cases of harm-doing.

Examined the relationship between attribution of causation and attribution of moral responsibility. 60 college students completed questionnaires on hypothetical cases in 2 experiments that examined the necessary and sufficient conditions of causation, and the mitigating effects of voluntariness, foreseeability, and intervening cause. If an actor's behavior was presented as a necessary condition for harm, he/she was more likely to be judged as the cause of the harm, as morally responsible for the harm, and as deserving of punishment than if his/her behavior was presented as not necessary for harm. Information on whether an actor's behavior constituted a sufficient condition for harm marginally affected punishment judgments. In Exp II, where an actor's behavior was considered to be a necessary condition for harm, it was found that if the omission was less than voluntary, the actor was rated as less the cause, as less morally responsible, and as less deserving of punishment than if the omission was fully voluntary. If the harm was not foreseeable, judgments of moral responsibility, but not causation and punishment, were somewhat diminished as compared to cases of forseeable harm. Path analyses confirmed that relations between judgments of causation and punishment were more remote than relations between judgments of either causation and responsibility or responsibility and punishment. (44 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)