Whom would you rather help: an acquaintance not responsible for her plight or a responsible sibling?

When 2 persons--an acquaintance who could not have avoided a problem and a close relative who is responsible for her own plight--ask for help, attribution theory and sociobiology conflict about who will receive help. Attribution theorists assume that the nonresponsible acquaintance will be supported, but sociobiologists argue that the responsible sibling will receive help. The authors tested the hypothesis that characteristics of the situation affect which theory better predicts help giving. The results confirmed that in situations that do not affect life and death, a nonresponsible acquaintance would receive more help than a responsible sibling. But in life-or-death situations, inasmuch as the reproductive fitness of the person in need is in danger, a responsible sibling would be supported more than a nonresponsible acquaintance.     

Secular or nonreligious? Investigating and interpreting generic ‘not religious’ categories and populations

In research dealing with religious affiliation, generic nonreligious categories – ‘no religion’, ‘not religious’, ‘nonreligious’, ‘nones’ – are frequently used to measure secularity and secularisation processes. Analysis of these categories is, however, problematic because they have not received dedicated methodological attention. Using qualitative research conducted in the UK, this article investigates what nonreligious categories measure and, specifically, whether they indicate non-identification or disaffiliation as assumed or an alternative form of cultural affiliation. Findings suggest that generic nonreligious categories are sometimes used to express substantive positions and public identities, and that these are diverse. These findings flatten distinctions between religious and nonreligious categories as ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ respectively and indicate problems therefore in using nonreligious identification to measure secularity and secularisation. They suggest nonreligious identification is, however, a useful indicator of the advance of nonreligious cultures and the ‘nonreligionisation’ of societies.     

On the limits of advance preparation for a task switch: do people prepare all the task some of the time or some of the task all the time?

This study investigated the nature of advance preparation for a task switch, testing 2 key assumptions of R. De Jong's (2000) failure-to-engage theory: (a) Task-switch preparation is all-or-none, and (b) preparation failures stem from nonutilization of available control capabilities. In 3 experiments, switch costs varied dramatically across individual stimulus-response (S-R) pairs of the tasks-virtually absent for 1 pair but large for others. These findings indicate that, across trials, task preparation was not all-or-none but, rather, consistently partial (full preparation for some S-R pairs but not others). In other words, people do not prepare all of the task some of the time, they prepare some of the task all of the time. Experiments 2 and 3 produced substantial switch costs even though time deadlines provided strong incentives for optimal advance preparation. Thus, there was no evidence that people have a latent capability to fully prepare for a task switch.     

Does assimilation into schemas involve systems or cellular consolidation? It’s not just time

A comment by Rudy and Sutherland [Rudy, J. R., &; Sutherland, R. J. (2008). Is it systems or cellular consolidation? Time will tell. An alternative interpretation of the Morris Group’s recent Science Paper. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory] has suggested an alternative account of recent findings concerning very rapid systems consolidation as described in a recent paper by Tse et al [Tse, D., Langston, R. F., Kakeyama, M., Bethus, I., Spooner, P. A., &; Wood, E. R., et al. (2007). Schemas and memory consolidation. Science, 316, 76–82]. This is to suppose that excitotoxic lesions of the hippocampus cause transient disruptive neural activity outside the target structure that interferes with cellular consolidation in the cortex. We disagree with this alternative interpretation of our findings and cite relevant data in our original paper indicating why this proposal is unlikely. Various predictions of the two accounts are nonetheless outlined, together with the types of experiments needed to resolve the issue of whether systems consolidation can occur very rapidly when guided by activated neural schemas.     

If I'm not hot, are you hot or not? Physical attractiveness evaluations and dating preferences as a function of one's own attractiveness

Prior research has established that people's own physical attractiveness affects their selection of romantic partners. This article provides further support for this effect and also examines a different, yet related, question: When less attractive people accept less attractive dates, do they persuade themselves that the people they choose to date are more physically attractive than others perceive them to be? Our analysis of data from the popular Web site http://HOTorNOT.com suggests that this is not the case: Less attractive people do not delude themselves into thinking that their dates are more physically attractive than others perceive them to be. Furthermore, the results also show that males, compared with females, are less affected by their own attractiveness when choosing whom to date.     

Why are you looking at me? It’s because I’m talking,but mostly because I’m staring or not doing much

Our attention is particularly driven toward faces, especially the eyes, and there is much debate over the factors that modulate this social attentional orienting. Most of the previous research has presented faces in isolation, and we tried to address this shortcoming by measuring people’s eye movements whilst they observe more naturalistic and varied social interactions. Participants’ eye movements were monitored whilst they watched three different types of social interactions (monologue, manual activity, active attentional misdirection), which were either accompanied by the corresponding audio as speech or by silence. Our results showed that (1) participants spent more time looking at the face when the person was giving a monologue, than when he/she was carrying out manual activities, and in the latter case they spent more time fixating on the person’s hands. (2) Hearing speech significantly increases the amount of time participants spent looking at the face (this effect was relatively small), although this was not accounted for by any increase in mouth-oriented gaze. (3) Participants spent significantly more time fixating on the face when direct eye contact was established, and this drive to establish eye contact was significantly stronger in the manual activities than during the monologue. These results highlight people’s strategic top-down control over when they attend to faces and the eyes, and support the view that we use our eyes to signal non-verbal information.     

Delay or travel time information? The impact of advanced traveler information systems on drivers’ behavior before freeway work zones

Peak travel times contribute to congestion formation at freeway work zones. Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) can inform drivers in real-time about the delays and travel times en-route and can provide information about an alternative route to a destination. Different ATIS display strategies are available; however, road authorities lack insights into how time display methods and sign characteristics influence the driving behavior (decelerations, lateral position), the drivers’ attention allocation ability and the subsequent route choice before the freeway diversion. A driving simulator study was conducted with 80 drivers in the State of Qatar to investigate drivers' behavior and voluntary route choices when encountering total travel time (default setting) or delay time updates for two freeway routes on Variable Message Signs (VMS) and Graphical Route Information Panels (GRIP). The GRIPs are a graphical alternative to conventional VMS that can provide drivers with a visual map of the most direct route or an alternative less congested route to a destination using different color schemes. The time difference ratio between the two routes was kept constant to compare the effectiveness of the information designs and investigate the drivers’ attention towards the signs with an eye-tracker. The results showed that the display of zero delays for a detour did influence 74–83% of the drivers to take the alternative route when being displayed on a VMS and a GRIP with free flow attribute framing. When displaying equal total travel times, the GRIP did influence 25% more drivers to follow the alternative route than the VMS. Generally, displaying zero delays for the alternative route resulted in an efficient attention allocation to the first ATIS location and fewer mean decelerations before the repeated ATIS location nearing the diversion. Road authorities are advised to activate the display of delay times to support efficient route choices among freeway drivers.     

Toward an understanding of students’ allocation of study time: Why do they decide to mass or space their practice?

Two recent studies have led to discrepant findings regarding students’ decisions to mass or space practice of to-be-learned items: Son (2004) reported that participants chose to mass practice of difficult items more than that of easy items, whereas Benjamin and Bird (2006) reported the opposite. To resolve this apparent discrepancy, we had participants study items during an initial trial and then decide whether the next study trial would be massed or spaced. Across three experiments, we systematically varied factors that differed across these studies. In general, the participants more often chose to space than to mass practice, but they did favor massed practice when items were very difficult to learn. Moreover, although previous hypotheses implicated metamemory causes for these effects, the present results indicate that nonmetamemory causes are also responsible, such as using spaced practice as a default and deciding to mass practice for items that had not been fully perceived during an initial study trial.     

How fast can you (possibly) do it,or how long will it (certainly) take? Communicating uncertain estimates of performance time

Recent research on verbal probability statements has revealed that some expressions (e.g., possible) are especially appropriate for describing outcomes in the high end of a distribution, whereas other expressions (e.g., certain) are more appropriate for describing low-end values. However, some dimensions appear to be reversible, with higher achievements sometimes associated with high and sometimes with low values, depending on frame. We report three experiments where this “reframing effect” is studied in communications of estimated performance time, both from a speaker's and from a listener's perspective. We hypothesize that statements describing tasks as “taking time” suggest a duration frame, and find accordingly that statements about how many hours that possibly will be spent on a task, or the time a task possibly takes, lead to high time estimates. Statements focusing on the actor's role suggest, in contrast, a speed frame, thus statements about what the actor can possibly do lead to low time estimates. Estimates of the time a task certainly takes or when it is certainly done follow the opposite pattern. The results are in line with approaches that see production and comprehension of language as a dynamical and context-driven process.     

Should I just listen to you or change your mind too? Target's perceived efficacy of agents’ interpersonal affect improvement strategies

People shape and influence others’ emotions every day. If these attempts are perceived as successful, they may have a positive effect on people's relationships and well-being. Across two studies, targets’ perceived efficacy of regulation strategies to improve their sadness and anxiety/stress has been investigated. In Study 1, participants (n = 120) were provided with two scenarios depicting sadness and anxiety/stress and asked to imagine themselves in these situations. Afterwards, they were provided with different regulation strategies and asked to rate their perceived efficacy to downregulate their sadness and anxiety. In Study 2, participants (n = 120) were asked to describe a situation where they felt sad and another one where they felt anxious. They were then provided with strategies aimed at reducing their sadness and anxiety. Results from both studies showed that whereas for sadness higher perceived efficacy was predicted by affective engagement, for anxiety/stress was predicted by cognitive engagement.