Effect of memory perspective on retrospective causal attributions

Two studies examined whether people's retrospective causal attributions might be mediated by the visual perspective from which events are recalled. In Study 1, pairs of Ss participated in "get-acquainted" conversations and made a series of attribution ratings for their performance. They returned 3 weeks later to rerate their performance on the same attribution scales and to indicate the perspective from which they remembered their earlier conversation. Ss reported either "observer" memories in which they could "see" themselves from the outside or "field" memories in which their field of view matched that of the original situation. Study 2 was identical to Study 1 with the exception that Ss' memory perspectives were manipulated via verbal instructions. In both experiments, conversations that were recalled from an observer's perspective were attributed more dispositionally. These results suggest that the different perspectives from which events can be recalled function much like the divergent visual perspectives available to actors and observers in immediate, everyday experience. Discussion of these results focuses on how they further understanding of the contradictory findings reported in the literature on temporal shifts in attributions.     

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) know what can be seen from where

Visual perspective taking research has established that chimpanzees recognize what others can or cannot see in the presence of occluding barriers. Less is known about chimpanzees’ appreciation of what they themselves can or cannot see in similar situations. Additionally, it is unclear whether chimpanzees must rely on others’ gaze cues to solve such tasks or whether they have a more general appreciation of what can be seen from where. Hence, we investigated chimpanzees’ ability to anticipate what they would or would not be able to see from different visual perspectives. Food was hidden among arrays of open containers, with different containers providing visual access from unique viewing perspectives. Chimpanzees immediately adopted the correct perspective for each container type. Follow-up experiments showed that they were not simply moving to align themselves with visible openings. Our study thus suggests that chimpanzees have good visual perspective taking abilities with regard to themselves as well as others, and that both likely reflect a more general knowledge, at least implicit, of what can be seen from where.

The miscommunication of deception: An adaptive perspective

Undergraduates were videotaped as they told lies and truths about their last job. Later, these undergraduates viewed the videotape and tried to guess which of their fellow subject were lying. Monetary incentives had been offered for successful lying and lie detection. Our subjects showed a “demeanor bias”—some looked honest even when they were lying; others looked dishonest even when they were telling the truth. These differences in apparent honesty were the primary determinant of deception judgments; perceivers' detection skills played a lesser role. Honest-looking subjects were predisposed to perceive others as dishonest. In general, our liars used hand gestures, maintained eye contact, and refrained from smiling. Perceivers misconstrued these behaviors as signs of honesty and could not often detect deceit—unless the lie was being told by a subject who had earlier told the truth. We draw on sociobiological concepts and offer an adaptive perspective on human deceit.     

The wolfpack effect. Perception of animacy irresistibly influences interactive behavior

Imagine a pack of predators stalking their prey. The predators may not always move directly toward their target (e.g., when circling around it), but they may be consistently facing toward it. The human visual system appears to be extremely sensitive to such situations, even in displays involving simple shapes. We demonstrate this by introducing the wolfpack effect, which is found when several randomly moving, oriented shapes (darts, or discs with "eyes") consistently point toward a moving disc. Despite the randomness of the shapes' movement, they seem to interact with the disc--as if they are collectively pursuing it. This impairs performance in interactive tasks (including detection of actual pursuit), and observers selectively avoid such shapes when moving a disc through the display themselves. These and other results reveal that the wolfpack effect is a novel "social" cue to perceived animacy. And, whereas previous work has focused on the causes of perceived animacy, these results demonstrate its effects, showing how it irresistibly and implicitly shapes visual performance and interactive behavior.     

Visual working memory for global,object, and part-based information

We investigated visual working memory for novel objects and parts of novel objects. After a delay period, participants showed strikingly more accurate performance recognizing a single whole object than the parts of that object. This bias to remember whole objects, rather than parts, persisted even when the division between parts was clearly defined and the parts were disconnected from each other so that, in order to remember the single whole object, the participants needed to mentally combine the parts. In addition, the bias was confirmed when the parts were divided by color. These experiments indicated that holistic perceptual-grouping biases are automatically used to organize storage in visual working memory. In addition, our results suggested that the bias was impervious to top-down consciously directed control, because when task demands were manipulated through instruction and catch trials, the participants still recognized whole objects more quickly and more accurately than their parts. This bias persisted even when the whole objects were novel and the parts were familiar. We propose that visual working memory representations depend primarily on the global configural properties of whole objects, rather than part-based representations, even when the parts themselves can be clearly perceived as individual objects. This global configural bias beneficially reduces memory load on a capacity-limited system operating in a complex visual environment, because fewer distinct items must be remembered.     

A negativity bias in interpersonal evaluation

Two studies were conducted to demonstrate a bias toward negativity in evaluations of persons or their work in particular social circumstances. In Study 1, subjects evaluated materials written by peers. Those working under conditions that placed them in low status relative to the audience for their evaluations, or conditions that made their intellectual position within a group insecure, showed a clear bias toward negativity in those evaluations. Only individuals who believed their audience to be of relatively low status and at the same time believed their intellectual position to be secure did not show this bias. In Study 2, subjects viewed a videotape of a stimulus person and rated him on several intellectual and social dimensions. Again, subjects believed their audience to be of either relatively high or relatively low status. As a cross dimension, they were given instructions to focus on either the intellectual or the social abilities of the stimulus person while viewing the videotape. A strong main effect of audience status was demonstrated, but only in ratings of intellectual traits; subjects who believed their audience to be of relatively high status rated the stimulus person's intellectual qualities significantly more negatively. Moreover, this effect was independent of the instructional focus subjects had been given. The negativity bias is discussed in the context of previous demonstrations of biases toward weighting negative information more heavily than positive information, as well as previous demonstrations of seemingly pervasive positivity biases in memory and judgment.     

Playing dice with criminal sentences: the influence of irrelevant anchors on experts' judicial decision making

Judicial sentencing decisions should be guided by facts, not by chance. The present research however demonstrates that the sentencing decisions of experienced legal professionals are influenced by irrelevant sentencing demands even if they are blatantly determined at random. Participating legal experts anchored their sentencing decisions on a given sentencing demand and assimilated toward it even if this demand came from an irrelevant source (Study 1), they were informed that this demand was randomly determined (Study 2), or they randomly determined this demand themselves by throwing dice (Study 3). Expertise and experience did not reduce this effect. This sentencing bias appears to be produced by a selective increase in the accessibility of arguments that are consistent with the random sentencing demand: The accessibility of incriminating arguments was higher if participants were confronted with a high rather than a low anchor (Study 4). Practical and theoretical implications of this research are discussed.     

When the seemingly innocuous "stings": racial microaggressions and their emotional consequences

Commonplace situations that are seemingly innocuous may nonetheless be emotionally harmful for racial minorities. In the current article the authors propose that despite their apparent insignificance, these situations can be harmful and experienced as subtle racism when they are believed to have occurred because of their race. In Study 1, Asian Americans reported greater negative emotion intensity when they believed that they encountered a situation because of their race, even after controlling for other potential social identity explanations. Study 2 replicated this finding and confirmed that the effect was significantly stronger among Asian Americans than among White participants. These findings clarify how perceptions of subtle racial discrimination that do not necessarily involve negative treatment may account for the "sting" of racial microaggressions, influencing the emotional well-being of racial minorities, even among Asian Americans, a group not often expected to experience racism.     

Self-enhancement in Japan and America

North Americans view themselves in more positive terms than they view most other people. In the present paper, we report three studies showing that this bias is also found in Japan. For highly valued traits and abilities, Japanese students rated themselves and their best friends in more positive terms than they rated most other students (Study 1 and Study 2) and most other Japanese (Study 2). In Study 3, a sample of older Japanese displayed the same tendency when evaluating themselves and a member of their family. We discuss the theoretical importance of the findings.     

Myopic biases in strategic social prediction: why deadlines put everyone under more pressure than everyone else

Five experiments document biases in the way people predict the outcomes of interdependent social situations. Participants predicted that situational constraints would restrain their own behavior more than it would the behavior of others, even in situations where everyone faced identical constraints. When anticipating the effects of deadlines on outcomes of negotiations, participants predicted that deadlines would hinder their performance more than it would hinder the performance of others. The results shed light on the psychological processes by which people predict the outcomes of and select strategies in strategic social interaction. They extend prior findings, such as people believing themselves to be below average on difficult tasks, to highly interdependent situations. Furthermore, the article shows both how focusing can account for these effects and also how perspective taking can reduce their biasing influence.     

Visual perspective in autobiographical memories: Reliability,consistency, and relationship to objective memory performance

Visual perspective in autobiographical memories was examined in terms of reliability, consistency, and relationship to objective memory performance in a sample of 99 individuals. Autobiographical memories may be recalled from two visual perspectives—a field perspective in which individuals experience the memory through their own eyes, or an observer perspective in which individuals experience the memory from the viewpoint of an observer in which they can see themselves. Participants recalled nine word-cued memories that differed in emotional valence (positive, negative and neutral) and rated their memories on 18 scales. Results indicate that visual perspective was the most reliable memory characteristic overall and is consistently related to emotional intensity at the time of recall and amount of emotion experienced during the memory. Visual perspective is unrelated to memory for words, stories, abstract line drawings or faces.     

VIDEO-BASED TRAINING OF RESPITE CARE PROVIDERS: AN INTERACTIONAL ANALYSIS OF PRESENTATION FORMAT

We conducted two studies to evaluate a video-based instructional package for training respite care providers and the role of presentation format (viewing the videotapes alone, with a partner, and with structured group training) as a contextual variable. In Study 1, the results of a within-subjects Latin square design nested within a multiple baseline showed that performance during simulated (role-played) respite care situations improved in five of the six skill areas for the 12 trainees following presentation of the videotape, with no differences between presentation formats. Correct responding generalized to respite care situations involving a developmentally disabled child, and in most cases, acquired skills were maintained for up to 6 months. In Study 2, we conducted a clinical replication of Study 1 under conditions more closely approximating those in which the training program would be implemented by respite care agencies. Results of the between-groups analysis were consistent with the findings of Study 1.     

Believing what you’re told: Young children’s trust in unexpected testimony about the physical world

How do children resolve conflicts between a self-generated belief and what they are told? Four studies investigated the circumstances under which toddlers would trust testimony that conflicted with their expectations about the physical world. Thirty-month-olds believed testimony that conflicted with a naive bias (Study 1), and they also repeatedly trusted testimony that conflicted with an event they had just seen (Study 2)—even when they had an incentive to ignore the testimony (Study 3). Children responded more skeptically if they could see that the testimony was wrong as it was being delivered (Study 3), or if they had the opportunity to accumulate evidence confirming their initial belief before hearing someone contradict it (Study 4). Together, these studies demonstrate that toddlers have a robust bias to trust even surprising testimony, but this trust can be influenced by how much confidence they have in their initial belief.     

Do You Know What I Feel? Partners' Predictions and Judgments of Each Other's Emotional Reactions to Emotion-Eliciting Situations

The goal of the present study was to investigate empathic accuracy in couples, specifically the partners' ability to predict each other's emotional reactions to social situations. For this, 36 French Canadian couples aged from 18 to 34 years predicted their own reactions as well as their partner's reactions to a series of emotional situations. They then role-played these emotional situations while being videotaped. At a later time, the taped role-play segments were rated by the role-play actors themselves, by their partners, and by 5 individuals who did not know the actors. Results revealed high levels of empathic accuracy when we compared the partners' predictions of each other's reactions. However, when these predictions were compared with the participants' self-evaluations of their role-plays or with evaluations by individuals who did not know the actors, partners showed a positive bias in that they predicted more appropriate and fewer inappropriate reactions to the social situations for their partners than were self-rated by the partners themselves or rated by individuals who did not know the actors. Finally, the existence of couple-specific private meaning systems could not be confirmed in the present context as the evaluations of emotional expressions by unknown others, the actors' partners, and the actors themselves were largely congruent.     

Performance bias: Why judgments of learning are not affected by learning

Past research has shown a performance bias: People expect their future performance level on a task to match their current performance level, even when there are good reasons to expect future performance to differ from current performance. One explanation of this bias is that judgments are controlled by what learners can observe, and while current performance is usually observable, changes in performance (i.e., learning or forgetting) are not. This explanation makes a prediction that we tested here: If learning becomes observable, it should begin to affect judgments. In three experiments, after practicing a skill, participants estimated how they performed in the past and how they expected to perform in the future. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants knew they had been improving, as shown by their responses, yet they did not predict that they would improve in the future. This finding was particularly striking because (a) they did improve in the future and (b) as Experiment 3 showed, they did hold the conscious belief that past improvement predicted future improvement. In short, when learning and performance are both observable, judgments of learning seem to be guided by performance and not learning.     

Emotional expressivity in men and women: Stereotypes and self-perceptions

Three studies were conducted to assess prevalent stereotypes regarding men's and women's emotional expressivity as well as self-perceptions of their emotional behaviour. Emotion profiles were employed to assess both modal emotional reactions and secondary emotional reactions to hypothetical events and personal experiences. In Study 1 we asked how men and women in general would react to a series of hypothetical emotional events. In Study 2 we asked how participants themselves expected to react to these same situations and in Study 3 we asked participants to report a personal emotional event in narrative form. Two gender differences emerged across all three studies. Specifically, women were expected to be more likely to react with sadness to negative emotion-eliciting events in general. They also expected themselves to be more likely to react with sadness as well as to cry and to withdraw more when experiencing negative emotional events. Finally, women report more sadness when describing personal events. In contrast, men were expected to react with more happiness/serenity during negative emotional situations. Also, they expect themselves to react more frequently this way as well as to laugh and smile more and to be more relaxed in negative situations. Finally, men tend to report more happiness when describing negative personal events. In sum, the present study gives a more detailed portrayal of how men and women are expected and expect themselves to react to specific emotional situations and presents some evidence that these expectations may influence the way they reconstruct emotional events from their past.     

Camera perspective bias in videotaped confessions: experimental evidence of its perceptual basis

The camera perspective from which a criminal confession is videotaped influences later assessments of its voluntariness and the suspect's guilt. Previous research has suggested that this camera perspective bias is rooted in perceptual rather than conceptual processes, but these data are strictly correlational. In 3 experiments, the authors directly manipulated perceptual processing to provide stronger evidence of its mediational role. Prior to viewing a videotape of a simulated confession, participants were shown a photograph of the confessor's apparent victim. Participants in a perceptual interference condition were instructed to visualize the image of the victim in their minds while viewing the videotape; participants in a conceptual interference condition were instructed instead to rehearse an 8-digit number. Because mental imagery and actual perception draw on the same available resources, the authors anticipated that the former, but not the latter, interference task would disrupt the camera perspective bias, if indeed it were perceptually mediated. Results supported this conclusion.     

Positive illusions about the self: short-term benefits and long-term costs

Two studies addressed parallel questions about the correlates and consequences of self-enhancement bias. Study 1 was conducted in a laboratory context and examined self-enhancing evaluations of performance in a group-interaction task. Study 2 assessed students' illusory beliefs about their academic ability when they first entered college and then followed them longitudinally to test claims about the long-term benefits of positive illusions. Both studies showed that self-enhancement bias was related to narcissism, ego involvement, self-serving attributions, and positive affect. Study 2 found that self-enhancement was associated with decreasing levels of self-esteem and well-being as well as with increasing disengagement from the academic context. Self-enhancement did not predict higher academic performance or higher graduate rates. Thus, the findings suggest that self-enhancing beliefs may be adaptive in the short term but not in the long term.     

The observer perspective: biased imagery in social phobia, agoraphobia, and blood/injury phobia.

Clark and Wells' (1995): 'A cognitive model of social phobia'. In Social phobia: Diagnosis, assessment, and treatment (pp. 69-93), R. G. Heimberg, M. R. Liebowitz, D. A. & F. R. Hope (eds.); cognitive model of social phobia proposes that social phobics generate a negative impression of how they appear to others. This impression often occurs in the form of an image from an "observer" perspective in which social phobics can see themselves as if from another person's vantage point. This study investigated the specificity of the observer perspective among patients with social phobia, agoraphobia, and blood/injury phobia. All participants were asked to recall and imagine a recent anxiety-provoking social situation and a non-social/non-anxiety-provoking situation, and rate their perspective for each. Consistent with predictions only patients with social-evaluative concerns (social phobics and agoraphobics) reported observer perspectives for anxiety-provoking social situations. Only social phobics showed a significant shift from an observer to a field perspective across the two conditions. The clinical implications of these findings are briefly discussed.