On the process relationship between person and situation judgments in attribution.

Ss were timed in 3 experiments as they answered 2 consecutive questions about stimulus sentences. The measure of interest was the extent to which answering the 1st question speeded-up answering the 2nd. The order of questions about person and situation influences on behavior was manipulated. Results indicated that the person judgment facilitated the situation judgment significantly more than the situation judgment facilitated the person judgment. The pattern of facilitation was reversed when Ss answered questions about themselves. Results are consistent with a model of concurrent resource allocation to person and situation information in conditions where the primary judgment task involves salient information. However, they are not consistent with a unidimensional or automatic view of person and situation judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Using response latency to increase lead time in election forecasting.

Examined ways of increasing lead time in forecasting in the context of the 1993 Canadian Federal Election. The aim was to test if the accessibility of voting intentions, as indexed by the time taken by 461 respondents to express a voting preference in a preelection study, can be used to identify respondents whose intentions are likely to change as election day nears. Three models were examined: (1) a standard model that allocates a full unit of support to the party for whom the respondent intends to vote, (2) a weighted vote model (WVM) that allocates decreasing support to the chosen party as response latency to expressing a voting intention for that party increases, and (3) a split vote model that allocates decreasing support to the chosen party as response latency increases and allocates the rest of the support to the respondent's second choice. An improvement in the accuracy of forecasting was made by using the WVM, but this improvement did not extend beyond 2 mo prior to the election. Augmenting the WVM with information about respondents' second choices not only did not result in further improvement, but also resulted in a reversal of the previous improvements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion recognition: The role of facial movement and the relative importance of upper and lower areas of the face.

In an experiment with 20 undergraduates, video recordings of actors' faces covered with black makeup and white spots were played back to the Ss so that only the white spots were visible. The results demonstrate that moving displays of happiness, sadness, fear, surprise, anger, and disgust were recognized more accurately than static displays of the white spots at the apex of the expressions. This indicates that facial motion, in the absence of information about the shape and position of facial features, is informative about these basic emotions. Normally illuminated dynamic displays of these expressions, however, were recognized more accurately than displays of moving spots. The relative effectiveness of upper and lower facial areas for the recognition of the 6 emotions was also investigated using normally illuminated and spots-only displays. In both instances, the results indicate that different facial regions are more informative for different emotions. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Promotion and prevention orientations in the choice to attend lectures or watch them online

When presented with the option to use a new instructional technology, students often face an approach–avoidance conflict. This study explored promotion and prevention orientations, concepts linked to approach and avoidance in Higgins's regulatory focus theory, in the choice to attend lectures or watch them online. Openness, a core disposition in the Big Five Model of personality, and positive attitudes towards the utility of the Internet, reflect promotion orientations that are potentially related to the choice to watch lectures online. By contrast, neuroticism, another core disposition in the Big Five Model, and anxiety about the Internet as a computer technology, reflect a prevention orientation that is potentially related to the choice of attending lectures in class. The results illustrate that both promotion and prevention are at work in the choice to attend lectures or to watch them online. Neuroticism and anxiety about the Internet as a computer technology were related to the choice to attend lectures in class, whereas the perceived utility of the Internet was related to the choice to watch lectures online. Instructional mode choice was not related to examination performance, suggesting that the choice to attend lectures or watch them online has more to do with individual differences in promotion and prevention orientations than with pedagogical characteristics that impact learning.     

Meta-judgmental versus operative indexes of psychological attributes: The case of measures of attitude strength.

Meta-attitudes are impressions of properties of one's attitudes. This article distinguishes between meta-attitudinal indexes of attitude strength and operative indexes that are derived from the judgment process or its outcomes. Measures of both types were tested against criteria of attitude pliability and stability. The results revealed that the meta-attitudinal and operative measures formed distinct clusters and that the operative index accounted for unique variance in the criteria, whereas the meta-attitudinal one did not. The author argues that operative measures of strength provide a relatively nonreactive means of assessing properties of strength that can be unconscious, whereas meta-attitudinal measures are particularly susceptible to extraneous influences that can undermine their validity. The one advantage of meta-attitudinal measures is their semantic specificity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The minority slowness effect: Subtle inhibitions in the expression of views not shared by others.

Five studies revealed that people who hold the minority opinion express that opinion less quickly than people who hold the majority opinion. The difference in speed in the expression of the minority and majority opinions grew as the difference in the size of the minority and majority grew. Also, those with the minority view were particularly slow when they assumed the majority to be large, whereas the opposite was true for those with the majority view. The minority slowness effect was not found to be linked to attitude strength, nor was it influenced by anticipated public disclosure of the attitude. The effect is discussed in the context of implicit conformity pressures and the limited buffering effect of false consensus assumptions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reactions of Asymmetric Bis-(p-alkoxyphenyl) ethylenes with dimethylaniline

1,1-Bis-[p-methoxy(or ethoxy)phenyl]ethylene 1 gave in boiling dimethylaniline in the presence of hydrogen chloride or zinc chloride 1,1-bis-[p-methoxy(or ethoxy)phenyl]-1-p-dimethylaminophenylethane 2 1,1-bis-[p-methoxy(or ethoxy)phenyl]ethane, 1,1-bis-[p-hydroxyphenyl]-ethane and bis-[p-dimethylaminophenyl]methane. The structure of the triarylethanes 2 was proven by synthesis. The isomeric 1,1-bis-[p-methoxy(or ethoxy)phenyl]-2-p-dimethylaminophenylethane 6 was also synthesised.