Autonomy and defensiveness: Experimentally increasing adaptive responses to health-risk information via priming and self-affirmation

Health information is often ineffective in motivating health-behaviour change. One way to improve information effectiveness might be to highlight autonomy, which is associated with less defensiveness and more adaptive psychological functioning. Three studies assessed whether experimentally elevating autonomy led to adaptive responses to risk information about alcohol consumption. In Study 1 (N?=?104), participants completed either an autonomy prime or a neutral prime task and read either risk information about the dangers of alcohol consumption or neutral information. Among high-risk participants in the autonomy prime condition, those who read risk information reported greater autonomous motivation towards moderate alcohol consumption than did those in the neutral information condition. Study 2 (N?=?157) compared two types of autonomy prime tasks with a neutral condition. For high-risk participants who read risk information, the autonomy prime tasks elicited greater autonomous motivation, more positive attitudes and greater intentions to drink in moderation than did the neutral prime task. Study 3 (N?=?130) found that for high-risk participants who read risk information, autonomy prime participants reported less subsequent alcohol consumption than did neutral prime participants. The results are discussed in terms of the benefits of autonomy for adaptive responses to risk information.     

Autonomy and reactions to health-risk information

It has been suggested that autonomy promotes enhanced reflection on novel information and reduces defensive or biased information processing. This study investigated how autonomy affected people's reactions to known versus novel health-risk information in relation to three behaviours: sun exposure, alcohol consumption and salt intake. Participants (N = 321) completed a measure of autonomy, read either known or novel health-risk information and reported their relative autonomous motivation, attitudes, perceived behavioural control, subjective norm and intentions towards reducing the health-risk behaviour concerned. In line with our hypotheses, the results showed that higher autonomy participants reported greater relative autonomous motivation towards reducing health-risk behaviours than did lower autonomy participants; this effect was mediated by perceptions of the information as less freedom-threatening. The expected interaction between Autonomy and Information Type was not observed. The results indicate that autonomy is associated with greater relative autonomous motivation to engage in health behaviours, and that autonomous motivation may subsequently influence intentions to reduce health-risk behaviour following exposure to health-risk information.     

Electrophysiological responses to evaluative priming: the LPP is sensitive to incongruity

Previous studies examining event-related potentials and evaluative priming have been mixed; some find evidence that evaluative priming influences the N400, whereas others find evidence that it affects the late positive potential (LPP). Three experiments were conducted using either affective pictures (Experiments 1 and 2) or words (Experiment 3) in a sequential evaluative priming paradigm. In line with previous behavioral findings, participants responded slower to targets that were evaluatively incongruent with the preceding prime (e.g., negative preceded by positive) compared to evaluatively congruent targets (e.g., negative preceded by negative). In all three studies, the LPP was larger to evaluatively incongruent targets compared to evaluatively congruent ones, and there was no evidence that evaluative incongruity influenced the N400 component. Thus, the present results provide additional support for the notion that evaluative priming influences the LPP and not the N400. We discuss possible reasons for the inconsistent findings in prior research and the theoretical implications of the findings for both evaluative and semantic priming.     

Energetic and motor responses to increasing force requirements

The effects of increasing work (force) requirements on energy expenditure and response topography were examined in 7 rats pressing a beam to earn food. For the 1st 16 days, the force requirement was 5.52 x 10(-2) N (5.625 g). This increased by 4.91 x 10(-2) N (5 g) every 7th session until Ss had experienced 10 upward shifts. Following the 54.57 x 10(-2) N (55.625 g) condition, the original criterion was reinstated. During the augmented phase. Ss maintained stable reinforcement rates across conditions by increasing the peak force of beam pressing. These higher forces, occurring within 20 reinforcements of changing the force criterion, were produced primarily by increases in the rate of change of force (delta F/delta T). Also, while the rate of work performed on the beam increased, the overall energy expenditure fell. In contrast to these rapid adjustments, reinstating the original 5.52 x 10(-2) N (5.625 g) criterion resulted in only gradual alterations in motor performance.     

Biased reasoning: adaptive responses to health risk feedback

The present study examined reactions toward repeated self-relevant feedback. Participants in a community health screening received feedback about their cholesterol level on two separate occasions. Reactions to the first feedback were examined with regard to feedback valence and expectedness. The findings showed that negative feedback was devalued, but only when it was unexpected. Feedback consistency was incorporated into analyses of the second feedback. Again, results showed that negative feedback was not always devalued-only when it was inconsistent with the first feedback. Furthermore, positive feedback was not unconditionally accepted. When receiving unexpected positive feedback of low consistency, recipients were doubtful about its accuracy. Conversely, expected positive feedback was accepted regardless of its consistency. These results suggest that negative or unexpected positive feedbacks evoke greater sensitivity to feedback consistency, indicating elaborate cognitive processing. Theoretical accounts of these findings are discussed.     

Threats to autonomy: motivational responses to risk information

Two studies considered the role of autonomy in people's motivational response to health‐risk information. In Study 1, ‘non‐smoker’ participants (N = 59) completed a measure of autonomy and read either health‐risk information about smoking or neutral information. Those who read the health‐risk information reported less autonomous motivation for not smoking than did those who read the neutral information. However, level of autonomy moderated this effect: lower autonomy participants reported less autonomous motivation after reading the health‐risk information than after reading the neutral information but there was no such effect for higher autonomy participants. Study 2 (N = 100) supported the results of Study 1 using a sample of smokers, with a significant interaction between autonomy and health‐risk condition predicting autonomous motivation. Higher autonomy participants reported greater autonomous motivation to quit smoking after reading health‐risk information than after reading neutral information. There was no effect of condition for lower autonomy participants. Autonomous and controlled motivation was also considered in relation to the antecedents of intention outlined in the TPB. The findings are discussed in relation to the differential motivational impact of risk information on people with higher or lower autonomy. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Delighted and distracted: positive affect increases priming for irrelevant information

Emotional states are known to influence how people process relevant information. Here, we address the impact of emotional state on irrelevant information. In this experiment, participants were randomly assigned to a neutral or positive mood induction, and then completed a task that involved viewing a sequence of overlapping pictures and words. They were instructed to attend to the pictures and ignore the distracting words. Following a filled interval, implicit memory for the distracting words was tested using a word fragment completion task. Individuals in the positive mood group showed increased implicit memory for previously irrelevant information compared to those in the neutral mood group. These findings are consistent with the view that positive mood broadens attention to include encoding of irrelevant information in the environment, and this can impact subsequent performance.     

Calibrating the response to health warnings: limiting both overreaction and underreaction with self-affirmation

Self-affirmation, reflecting on one's defining personal values, increases acceptance of threatening information, but does it do so at the cost of inducing undue alarm in people at low risk of harm? We contrast an alarm model, wherein self-affirmation simply increases response to threat, with a calibration model, wherein self-affirmation increases sensitivity to the self-relevance of health-risk information. Female seafood consumers (N = 165) completed a values self-affirmation or control task before reading a U.S. Food and Drug Administration brochure on mercury in seafood. Findings support the calibration model: Among frequent seafood consumers, self-affirmation generally increased concern (reports of depth of thought, personal message relevance, perceived risk, and negative affect) for those high in defensiveness and reduced it for those low in defensiveness. Among infrequent consumers of seafood, self-affirmation typically reduced concern. Thus, self-affirmation increased the sensitivity with which women at different levels of risk, and at different levels of defensiveness, responded cognitively and affectively to the materials.     

Letter position information and printed word perception: the relative-position priming constraint

Six experiments apply the masked priming paradigm to investigate how letter position information is computed during printed word perception. Primes formed by a subset of the target's letters facilitated target recognition as long as the relative position of letters was respected across prime and target (e.g., "arict" vs. "acirt" as primes for the target "apricot"). Priming effects were not influenced by whether or not absolute, length-dependent position was respected (e.g., "a-ric-t" vs. "arict"/"ar-i-ct"). Position of overlap of relative-position primes (e.g., apric-apricot; ricot-apricot; arict-apricot) was found to have little influence on the size of priming effects, particularly in conditions (i.e., 33 ms prime durations) where there was no evidence for phonological priming. The results constrain possible schemes for letter position coding.     

Anxiety and impression formation: Direct information rather than priming explains affect-congruity

Both affect-priming and affect-as-information theories predict that when people are anxious they will form affect-congruent impressions of others, but via different mechanisms. Affect-priming asserts that memory mediates the influence of anxiety on judgement, whereas affect-as-information asserts that people attribute anxiety to the target of judgement. As these theories predicted, anxious participants in Study 1 found an impression-formation target to be more threatening than did control participants. However, this effect was not mediated by memory, and was attenuated in Study 2 when anxious participants attributed their affect to a source other than the target. These findings suggest that anxious people form affect-congruent impressions of others because they attribute their anxiety to the impression-formation target rather than because anxiety primes affect-congruent memory.     

Implicit and explicit attitudes respond differently to increasing amounts of counterattitudinal information

This research examined the processes by which explicit and implicit attitudes changed to systematically differing levels of counterattitudinal (CA) information. Explicit attitudes changed quickly in response to relatively small amounts of CA information, reflecting rule‐based reasoning. On the other hand, implicit attitudes changed more slowly in the face of CA information, reflecting the progressive accretion of evaluation‐attitude object pairings. Thus, explicit attitudes were extremely malleable and changed quickly when CA information was presented, however, implicit attitudes revealed a slow, linear change trajectory resulting from the on‐going accrual of information about the attitude object. Implications for the processes underlying implicit and explicit attitudes are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gender and priming differences in speed of processing of information relating to social structure

Previous research has shown that women and men’s different interactional contexts result in selective differences in retention of information (e.g., Gabriel & Gardner, 1999). This study tested the hypothesis that there should be broad gender-related differences in latencies of retrieval of information focused on groups or dyads, with women processing the latter more rapidly, and men processing the former more rapidly. Participants were given a diary reading task with explicit recall instructions. Results showed that although no difference was found in overall retention of items, women responded more rapidly to items referring to dyads, while men responded more rapidly to items referring to groups. In addition, a strong effect of the gender of the protagonist of the diary was found. Participants of both gender responded more rapidly to dyadic items when the protagonist was female but responded more rapidly to group items when the protagonist was male. These results indicate that gender differences in social structure result in differences in encoding and retrieval of broad classes of information that are not accountable for by selective retention.     

Evaluative priming of naming and semantic categorization responses revisited: a mutual facilitation explanation

The evaluative priming effect (i.e., faster target responses following evaluatively congruent compared with evaluatively incongruent primes) in nonevaluative priming tasks (such as naming or semantic categorization tasks) is considered important for the question of how evaluative connotations are represented in memory. However, the empirical evidence is rather ambiguous: Positive effects as well as null results and negatively signed effects have been found. We tested the assumption that different processes are responsible for these results. In particular, we argue that positive effects are due to target-encoding facilitation (caused by a congruent prime), while negative effects are due to prime-activation maintenance (caused by a congruent target) and subsequent response conflict. In 4 experiments, we used a negative prime-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) to minimize target-encoding facilitation and maximize prime maintenance. In a naming task (Experiment 1), we found a negatively signed evaluative priming effect if prime and target competed for naming responses. In a semantic categorization task (i.e., person vs. animal; Experiments 2 and 3), response conflicts between prime and target were significantly larger in case of evaluative congruence compared with incongruence. These results corroborate the theory that a prime has more potential to interfere with the target response if its activation is maintained by an evaluatively congruent target. Experiment 4a/b indicated valence specificity of the effect. Implications for the memory representation of valence are discussed.     

Sequence and priming in 15 month-olds' reactions to brief arm restraint: evidence for a hierarchy of anger responses

Brief, gentle arm restraint is widely used in experimental studies of children's anger, but the pattern of responses generated by such restraint has been incompletely described. We now describe a hierarchy of responses within trials as well as an escalation across trials that have both methodological and theoretical significance. Mothers of 87 15-month olds prevented them from playing with a toy by restraining their arms on two consecutive 30 sec trials. Physical struggling was the first and most frequent response; children who struggled were significantly more likely to vocalize, and those who vocalized were significantly more likely to show facial expressions of anger. The children's responses became more probable, rapid, and intense during Trial 2 restraint. Overall, the hierarchy was orderly enough to meet criteria for Guttman scalability. The particular sequence observed suggests situational, as opposed to bio-energetic, ordering of responses. Methodologically, the two trial paradigm is a simple, ecologically valid model for studying anger escalation that parallels the "attack priming" of aggression in other species. The magnitude and persistence of anger priming may provide novel measures of anger regulation. Theoretically, the existence of an orderly response hierarchy is consistent with previous observations suggesting that, within a situational context, the sequential appearance of specific behaviors may indicate progressive increases in anger intensity.     

Stereotype priming in face recognition: interactions between semantic and visual information in face encoding

The accuracy with which previously unfamiliar faces are recognised is increased by the presentation of a stereotype-congruent occupation label [Klatzky, R. L., Martin, G. L., & Kane, R. A. (1982a). Semantic interpretation effects on memory for faces. Memory & Cognition, 10, 195-206; Klatzky, R. L., Martin, G. L., & Kane, R. A. (1982b). Influence of social-category activation on processing of visual information. Social Cognition, 1, 95-109]. For example, providing the label 'criminal' both during encoding and test improves recognition for previously unfamiliar faces that look like the stereotypical criminal. Experiments 1 and 2 both replicate this effect and show that the label exerts its influence during the encoding of stereotypical faces and has little influence at test. These findings indicate that semantic information that is congruent with novel stereotypical faces facilitates their encoding.     

Alexithymia and the automatic processing of affective information: Evidence from the affective priming paradigm

In Study 1, we examined the moderating impact of alexithymia (i.e., a difficulty identifying and describing feelings to other people and an externally oriented cognitive style) on the automatic processing of affective information. The affective priming paradigm was used, and lower priming effects for high alexithymia scorers were observed when congruent (incongruent) pairs involving nonverbal primes (angry face) and verbal target were presented. The results held after controlling for participants' negative affectivity. The same effects were replicated in Studies 2 and 3, with trait anxiety and depression entered as additional covariates. In Study 3, no moderating impact of alexithymia was found for verbal-facial pairs suggesting that the results cannot be merely explained in terms of transcoding limitations for high alexithymia scorers. Overall, the present results suggest that alexithymia could be related to a difficulty in processing and automatically using high arousal emotional information to respond to concomittant behavioural demands.     

Autonomy and Conjugal Love: A Reply to Golash

In my response to Golash I distinguish between two steps in my original argument. The first relates to the special value of conjugal (two-person) love relationships. I defend this step against criticisms, arguing that the two-person relationship provides a form of recognition that is of special importance to us and cannot be found in other sorts of relationship. The two-person relationship is one that, at least as private individuals, we have special reason to pursue. The second step concerns the claim that the special value of such relationships tends to promote the autonomy of those who have them. It is this second step that is important for the argument that a liberal state – one, at any rate, that takes itself to be in the business of safeguarding the pre-conditions of autonomy – could have reason to favour marriage or some form of civic partnership over other forms of intimate adult tie. However, I admit that Golash puts forward plausible – if anecdotal – arguments against this second step. I therefore agree that I need to be more tentative about this step than I was in the original paper.