Judgments of social justice: Compromises between equality and efficiency.

Political economists agree that a trade-off exists between equality and efficiency. Using a hypothetical society paradigm, the mean income (representing efficiency) and income variability (representing equality) of distributions of wealth and the correlation between wealth and effort within a society were manipulated. Ss made all pairwise comparisons of distributions within societies of differing meritocracy. A "maximin" principle best described trade-off resolution strategies when effort and outcome were weakly linked: People maximized the minimum standard of living within a society. A compromise principle best described preferences when income was tightly linked to effort: People rejected distributions in which some citizens fell below the "poverty line" but maximized efficiency above this constraint. Ideological polarization was pronounced under moderate meritocracy; here liberals could focus on the role of chance and conservatives on the role of effort and ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Accountability: A social magnifier of the dilution effect.

This research demonstrated that accountability can not only reduce judgmental bias, but also exacerbate it—in this case, the dilution effect. Ss made predictions from either diagnostic information alone or diagnostic information plus mixtures of additional data (nondiagnostic information, additional diagnostic data pointing to either the same conclusion or the opposite conclusion). Relative to unaccountable Ss, accountable Ss (a) diluted their predictions in response to nondiagnostic information and (b) were more responsive to additional diagnostic information. The accountability manipulation motivated subjects to use a wide range of information in making judgments, but did not make them more discriminating judges of the usefulness of that information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive style and political belief systems in the British House of Commons.

Used the integrative complexity coding system to analyze confidential interviews with 89 members of the British House of Commons. The primary goal was to explore the interrelation between cognitive style and political ideology in this elite political sample. Results indicate that moderate socialists interpreted policy issues in more integratively complex or multidimensional terms than did moderate conservatives who, in turn, interpreted issues in more complex terms than extreme conservatives and extreme socialists. The latter 2 groups did not differ significantly from each other. These relations between integrative complexity and political ideology remained significant after controlling for a variety of belief and attitudinal variables. Results are interpreted in terms of a value pluralism model that draws on M. Rokeach's (1973, 1979) 2-value analysis of political ideology and basic principles of cognitive consistency theory. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Supreme Court decision making: Cognitive style as a predictor of ideological consistency of voting.

An integrative complexity coding system was used to explore the relations between cognitive style and political ideology among US Supreme Court justices who served on the Court between 1964 and 1978. The integrative complexity of case opinions that Ss authored during their 1st terms on the Court and the overall liberalism–conservatism of their voting records throughout their tenure were assessed. Consistent with past work on cognitive style and political ideology, Ss with liberal and moderate voting records exhibited more integratively complex styles of thought in their early case opinions than did those with conservative voting records. Unexpectedly, these relationships between cognitive style and ideology were more powerful on cases involving economic conflicts of interest than on cases involving civil liberties and rights issues. Results remain significant after controlling for a variety of demographic and background characteristics of the Ss (e.g., age, religion, quality of law school attended) and characteristics of the judicial opinions scored for integrative complexity (unanimous or split-Court, majority–minority status of opinion). Possible explanations for the results and processes that limit the cross-issue generality of relationships between cognitive style and ideology are discussed. (60 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impression management versus intrapsychic explanations in social psychology: A useful dichotomy?

Impression management refers to the behavioral strategies that people use to create desired social images or identities. The current status of impression management explanations in social psychology is discussed, and it is argued that the common practice of referring to impression management theory is misleading. Many potential theories of impression management exist, each based on distinct assumptions. Methodological strategies that investigators have used to distinguish between impression management and intrapsychic explanations for a variety of research findings are reviewed. Although empirical confrontations between impression management and intrapsychic explanations have stimulated innovative research, there are serious limits on the discriminability of the 2 classes of explanation. Possible conceptual frameworks are discussed for integrating the psychological processes described by both impression management and intrapsychic explanations. (60 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stability and change in the complexity of senatorial debate: Testing the cognitive versus rhetorical style hypotheses.

Tested the cognitive vs rhetorical style hypothesis (conservatives have more simplistic rhetorical, not cognitive styles than liberals or moderates) by assessing the integrative complexity of 10 paragraph-sized statements of 81 senators in 5 US Congresses: 3 dominated by liberals and moderates (the 82nd, 94th, and 96th Congresses) and 2 dominated by conservatives (the 83rd and 97th Congresses). Results show that liberals and moderates were more complex than conservatives in the 82nd, 94th, and 96th Congresses but that these differences among ideological groups were much less pronounced in the 83rd and 97th Congresses. The change in pattern was due to sharp declines in the complexity of liberals and, to a lesser extent, moderates in conservative-dominated sessions, not to an increase in the complexity in conservatives. Conservatives displayed more traitlike stability in integrative complexity both within and across Congressional sessions. It is suggested that the integrative complexity of senatorial debate may be a joint product of relatively context-specific styles of political impression management and relatively stable cognitive styles of organizing the political world. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social and cognitive strategies for coping with accountability: Conformity, complexity, and bolstering.

This experiment tested predictions derived from a social contingency model of judgment and choice that identifies 3 distinctive strategies that people rely on in dealing with demands for accountability from important interpersonal or institutional audiences. The model predicts that (a) when people know the views of the audience and are unconstrained by past commitments, they will rely on the low-effect acceptability heuristic and simply shift their views toward those of the prospective audience, (b) when people do not know the views of the audience and are unconstrained by past commitments, they will be motivated to think in relatively flexible, multidimensional ways (preemptive self-criticism), and (c) when people are accountable for positions to which they feel committed, they will devote the majority of their mental effort to justifying those positions (defensive bolstering). The experiment yielded results supportive of these 3 predictions. The study revealed some evidence of individual differences in social and cognitive strategies for coping with accountability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A value pluralism model of ideological reasoning.

Tested the value pluralism model, which asserts that people are likely to think about an issue domain in integratively complex ways to the degree that issue domain activates conflicting values that people perceive as (a) important and (b) approximately equally important. The relations between the value hierarchies endorsed by 145 undergraduates (measured by the Rokeach Value Survey) and the policy preferences they expressed on issues designed to activate conflicts between different pairs of basic social/political values (e.g., the question of whether one is willing to pay higher taxes to assist the poor activates a conflict between concern for personal prosperity and social equality). Regression analyses revealed that (a) policy preferences could be best predicted from knowledge of which of the conflicting values Ss deemed more important and (b) the integrative complexity of people's reasoning about policy issues could be best predicted from knowledge of the similarity of the importance rankings of the conflicting values, the mean importance ranking of the 2 conflicting values, and the interaction of these 2 terms. It is concluded that the value pluralism model provides a flexible theoretical framework for predicting Ideology Issue interactions in both the content and structure of policy reasoning. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pre- to postelection shifts in presidential rhetoric: Impression management or cognitive adjustment.

Used content analysis to assess the conceptual or integrative complexity of pre- and post-election policy statements of 20th-century American presidents. Two hypotheses were tested. According to the impression management hypothesis, presidents present issues in deliberately simplistic ways during election campaigns but in more complex ways upon assuming office when they face the necessity of justifying sometimes unpopular decisions to skeptical constituencies. According to the cognitive adjustment hypothesis, presidents gradually become more complex in their thinking during their tenure in office as they become increasingly familiar with high-level policy issues. Results support only the impression management position. The complexity of presidential policy statements increased sharply immediately after inauguration but did not increase with length of time in office. Complexity of policy statements also significantly declined in reelection years. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transparency should trump trust: Rejoinder to McConnell and Leibold (2009) and Ziegert and Hanges (2009).

The rebuttals offered by the authors whose data we reanalyzed (see record 2009-06703-001)—A. R. McConnell & J. M. Leibold (see record 2001-11532-008); J. C. Ziegert & P. J. Hanges (see record 2005-05102-011)—address secondary issues that do not alter our primary message: The evidence for the predictive validity of the race Implicit Association Test is too fragile to support the strong claims that have been made about the pervasiveness of prejudice and the linkages between Implicit Association Test scores and discriminatory behavior. Greater caution in both the legal and scientific communities is warranted. Most importantly, scientific research on implicit bias needs greater transparency and willingness to open raw data to critical scrutiny, not greater trust and deference among researchers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)