The efficiency of binding spontaneous trait inferences to actors’ faces

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that the process of binding spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) to actors’ representations is relatively independent of attentional resources. Participants were presented with faces paired with single behaviors. Binding of STIs to actors was revealed by a higher false recognition of implied traits paired with actors’ faces than of implied traits randomly paired with other familiar faces. This effect replicated when each face-behavior pair was presented for 2 s (Experiment 1), when the processing of the information was shallow (Experiment 2), and when participants performed a secondary task during the presentation of behaviors (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 showed that explicit on-line trait judgments of the actor, but not explicit behavior judgments, predicted the false recognition of implied traits in the context of the actor. The possibility that the process of binding STIs to actors’ representations is automatic is discussed.     

The effects of managerial regulatory fit priming on reactions to explanations

We investigated the interactive effects of regulatory focus priming and message framing on the perceived fairness of unfavorable events. We hypothesized that individuals’ perceptions of fairness are higher when they receive a regulatory focus prime (promotion versus prevention) that is congruent with the framing of an explanation (gain versus loss), as opposed to one that is incongruent. We also hypothesized that these effects are mediated by counterfactual thinking. Three studies revealed that primed regulatory fit (promotion/gain or prevention/loss) led to higher levels of justice perceptions than regulatory misfit (promotion/loss or prevention/gain). Additionally, “could” and “should” counterfactuals partially mediated the relationship between regulatory fit and interactional justice (Study 3).     

Syntax and intentionality: An automatic link between language and theory-of-mind

Three studies provided evidence that syntax influences intentionality judgments. In Experiment 1, participants made either speeded or unspeeded intentionality judgments about ambiguously intentional subjects or objects. Participants were more likely to judge grammatical subjects as acting intentionally in the speeded relative to the reflective condition (thus showing an intentionality bias), but grammatical objects revealed the opposite pattern of results (thus showing an unintentionality bias). In Experiment 2, participants made an intentionality judgment about one of the two actors in a partially symmetric sentence (e.g., “John exchanged products with Susan”). The results revealed a tendency to treat the grammatical subject as acting more intentionally than the grammatical object. In Experiment 3 participants were encouraged to think about the events that such sentences typically refer to, and the tendency was significantly reduced. These results suggest a privileged relationship between language and central theory-of-mind concepts. More specifically, there may be two ways of determining intentionality judgments: (1) an automatic verbal bias to treat grammatical subjects (but not objects) as intentional (2) a deeper, more careful consideration of the events typically described by a sentence.     

Naturals and strivers: Preferences and beliefs about sources of achievement

To understand how talent and achievement are perceived, three experiments compared the assessments of “naturals” and “strivers." Professional musicians learned about two pianists, equal in achievement but who varied in the source of achievement: the “natural” with early evidence of high innate ability, versus the “striver” with early evidence of high motivation and perseverance (Experiment 1). Although musicians reported the strong belief that strivers will achieve over naturals, their preferences and beliefs showed the reverse pattern: they judged the natural performer to be more talented, more likely to succeed, and more hirable than the striver. In Experiment 2, this “naturalness bias” was observed again in experts but not in non-experts, and replicated in a between-subjects design in Experiment 3. Together, these experiments show a bias favoring naturals over strivers even when the achievement is equal, and a dissociation between stated beliefs about achievement and actual choices in expert decision-makers.     

The contextual and systematic nature of life satisfaction judgments

Five studies were conducted to examine the nature of life satisfaction judgments. When the category of “excitement” was made accessible experimentally, individuals based their life satisfaction judgments more heavily on the frequency of excitement, in comparison to a “peaceful” condition in Study 1 and to both “neutral priming” and “no-priming” conditions in Study 2. A 7-day diary study (Study 3) showed that as “excitement” became naturally more accessible on weekends, the correlations between excitement and daily satisfaction also increased significantly. Study 3 thus illustrated a systematic contextual shift in the bases of life satisfaction judgments. Study 4 showed that high sensation seekers, for whom “excitement” should be chronically accessible, based their life satisfaction judgments more heavily on the frequency of excitement than did low sensation seekers. Finally, Study 5 demonstrated that the chronic accessibility of “excitement” measured at Time 1 predicted the degree to which individuals based their life satisfaction judgments on the frequency of excitement at Time 2. Altogether, these five studies highlight the contextually sensitive, yet systematic nature of life satisfaction judgments.     

Children’s causal inferences from indirect evidence: Backwards blocking and Bayesian reasoning in preschoolers

Previous research suggests that children can infer causal relations from patterns of events. However, what appear to be cases of causal inference may simply reduce to children recognizing relevant associations among events, and responding based on those associations. To examine this claim, in Experiments 1 and 2, children were introduced to a “blicket detector,” a machine that lit up and played music when certain objects were placed upon it. Children observed patterns of contingency between objects and the machine’s activation that required them to use indirect evidence to make causal inferences. Critically, associative models either made no predictions, or made incorrect predictions about these inferences. In general, children were able to make these inferences, but some developmental differences between 3- and 4-year-olds were found. We suggest that children’s causal inferences are not based on recognizing associations, but rather that children develop a mechanism for Bayesian structure learning. Experiment 3 explicitly tests a prediction of this account. Children were asked to make an inference about ambiguous data based on the base rate of certain events occurring. Four-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds were able to make this inference.     

Not all contrast effects are created equal: extent of processing affects contrast strength

Prevailing theories of judgmental contrasts propose mechanisms ranging from relatively low versus high degrees of thought. The present research tests the hypothesis that the degree of thought involved in producing judgmental contrast has important implications. In three experiments, participants' ability or motivation to engage in effortful thinking was manipulated. In Experiment 1, varying personal relevance produced equivalent contrast effects, but these judgments differed in certainty. In two additional studies, despite equivalent amounts of contrast, a manipulation of the order of the standards and target of comparison led to differences in certainty (Experiment 2) and attitude–behavioral intention correspondence (Experiment 3). This is the first research to show that amount of thinking has implications for the strength and consequences of the judgment.     

What Is Social about Justice? Inclusive Identity and Group Values as the Basis of the Justice Motive

Three studies tested the claim that the justice motive is based on commitment to the perceived values of the “primary category” of potential recipients of an allocation. In Study 1, participants who identified more strongly with their group regarded a member who represented the group's strengths as more entitled to a common profit. In Study 2, participants judged their own entitlement versus that of a member who represented the group's strengths. Members who identified more strongly with their group were less likely to display self-interest in their judgments. In Study 3, participants judged the entitlement of an in-group member representing out-group strengths versus an out-group member representing in-group strengths. When identification with the primary category (including in-group and out-group) was strong, members who identified more strongly with their in-group viewed the out-group member representing in-group values as more deserving.     

Exploring the impact of social judgeability concerns on the interplay of associative and deliberative attitude processes

Some recent research applying dual-systems logic suggests that different attitude measures reflect independent modes of evaluation with explicit measures primarily affected by deliberative processes and implicit measures primarily affected by automatic processes. In the current work we hypothesized that explicit attitude measures often do not reflect the outcome of automatic or associative processing because social judgeability concerns prevent people from reporting consciously inexplicable “gut feelings” towards the attitude object. To explore this possibility, we simultaneously presented participants with associative and deliberative information about a target person and manipulated their sensitivity to social judgeability concerns with different sets of task instructions. Although an explicit attitude measure was unaffected by subliminally presented associative information following a standard instruction set, this content did impact explicit judgments when social judgeability concerns were assuaged with a “go with your gut” instruction set.     

The compatibility heuristic in non-categorical hypothetical reasoning: Inferences between conditionals and disjunctions

A new theory explains how people make hypothetical inferences from a premise consistent with several alternatives to a conclusion consistent with several alternatives. The key proposal is that people rely on a heuristic that identifies compatible possibilities. It is tested in 7 experiments that examine inferences between conditionals and disjunctions. Participants accepted inferences between conditionals and inclusive disjunctions when a compatible possibility was immediately available, in their binary judgments that a conclusion followed or not (Experiment 1a) and ternary judgments that included it was not possible to know (Experiment 1b). The compatibility effect was amplified when compatible possibilities were more readily available, e.g., for ‘A only if B’ conditionals (Experiment 2). It was eliminated when compatible possibilities were not available, e.g., for ‘if and only if A B’ bi-conditionals and exclusive disjunctions (Experiment 3). The compatibility heuristic occurs even for inferences based on implicit negation e.g., ‘A or B, therefore if C D’ (Experiment 4), and between universals ‘All A’s are B’s’ and disjunctions (Experiment 5a) and universals and conditionals (Experiment 5b). The implications of the results for alternative theories of the cognitive processes underlying hypothetical deductions are discussed.     

Mutual influences between the implicit and explicit self-concepts: The role of memory activation and motivated reasoning

Whereas previous research has predominantly focused on dissociations between the explicit and implicit self-concepts, the current research investigates how these aspects of self-representation come into correspondence through the activation of information about the self in memory. Experiment 1 provides evidence for a “bottom-up” process of self-construal in which information activated in the implicit self-concept produces congruent changes in the explicit self-concept. Experiment 2 provides evidence for a “top-down” process of self-construal in which the motivated assertion of a propositional belief in the explicit self-concept leads, via a process of confirmatory hypothesis testing, to the activation of substantiating information in the implicit self-concept. These two processes of self-concept change are integrated within a framework that specifies how the explicit and implicit self-concepts are related within an overall, dynamic self-system. Possibilities for expanding the framework to account for self-concept dissociations are discussed.     

Beyond procedure's content: the role of accessibility experiences and personal uncertainty in procedural justice judgements

Procedural justice concerns play a critical role in economic settings, politics, and other domains of human life. Despite the vast evidence corroborating their relevance, considerably less is known about how procedural justice judgments are formed. Whereas earlier theorizing focused on the systematic integration of content information, the present contribution provides a new perspective on the formation of justice judgments by examining the influence of accessibility experiences. Specifically, we hypothesize that procedural justice judgments may be formed based on the ease or difficulty with which justice-relevant information comes to mind. Three experiments corroborate this prediction in that procedures were evaluated less positively when the retrieval of associated unfair aspects was easy compared to difficult. Presumably this is because when it feels easy (difficult) to retrieve unfair aspects, these are perceived as frequent (infrequent), and hence the procedure as unjust (just). In addition to demonstrating that ease-of-retrieval may influence justice judgments, the studies further revealed that reliance on accessibility experiences is high in conditions of personal certainty. We suggest that this is because personal uncertainty fosters systematic processing of content information, whereas personal certainty may invite less taxing judgmental strategies such as reliance on ease-of-retrieval.     

The paradox of moral focus

When we evaluate moral agents, we consider many factors, including whether the agent acted freely, or under duress or coercion. In turn, moral evaluations have been shown to influence our (non-moral) evaluations of these same factors. For example, when we judge an agent to have acted immorally, we are subsequently more likely to judge the agent to have acted freely, not under force. Here, we investigate the cognitive signatures of this effect in interpersonal situations, in which one agent (“forcer”) forces another agent (“forcee”) to act either immorally or morally. The structure of this relationship allowed us to ask questions about both the “forcer” and the “forcee.” Paradoxically, participants judged that the “forcer” forced the “forcee” to act immorally (i.e. X forced Y), but that the “forcee” was not forced to act immorally (i.e. Y was not forced by X). This pattern obtained only for human agents who acted intentionally. Directly changing participants’ focus from one agent to another (forcer versus forcee) also changed the target of moral evaluation and therefore force attributions. The full pattern of judgments may provide a window into motivated moral reasoning and focusing bias more generally; participants may have been motivated to attribute greater force to the immoral forcer and greater freedom to the immoral forcee.     

I see what you’re saying: Voice signals influence children’s judgments of direct and averted gaze

Adults use gaze and voice signals as cues to the mental and emotional states of others. We examined the influence of voice cues on children’s judgments of gaze. In Experiment 1, 6-year-olds, 8-year-olds, and adults viewed photographs of faces fixating the center of the camera lens and a series of positions to the left and right and judged whether gaze was direct or averted. On each trial, participants heard the participant-directed voice cue (e.g., “I see you”), an object-directed voice cue (e.g., “I see that”), or no voice. In 6-year-olds, the range of directions of gaze leading to the perception of eye contact (the cone of gaze) was narrower for trials with object-directed voice cues than for trials with participant-directed voice cues or no voice. This effect was absent in 8-year-olds and adults, both of whom had a narrower cone of gaze than 6-year-olds. In Experiment 2, we investigated whether voice cues would influence adults’ judgments of gaze when the task was made more difficult by limiting the duration of exposure to the face. Adults’ cone of gaze was wider than in Experiment 1, and the effect of voice cues was similar to that observed in 6-year-olds in Experiment 1. Together, the results indicate that object-directed voice cues can decrease the width of the cone of gaze, allowing more adult-like judgments of gaze in young children, and that voice cues may be especially effective when the cone of gaze is wider because of immaturity (Experiment 1) or limited exposure (Experiment 2).     

Audiovisual semantic interference and attention: Evidence from the attentional blink paradigm

In the present study we investigate the role of attention in audiovisual semantic interference, by using an attentional blink paradigm. Participants were asked to make an unspeeded response to the identity of a visual target letter. This target letter was preceded at various SOAs by a synchronized audiovisual letter-pair, which was either congruent (e.g. hearing an “F” and viewing an “F”) or incongruent (e.g. hearing an “F” and viewing a “Z”). In Experiment 1, participants were asked to match the members of the audiovisual letter-pair. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to ignore the synchronized audiovisual letter-pairs altogether and only report the visual target. In Experiment 3, participants were asked to identify only one of the audiovisual letters (identify the auditory letter, and ignore the synchronized visual letter, or vice versa). An attentional blink was found in all three experiments indicating that the audiovisual letter-pairs were processed. However, a congruency effect on subsequent target detection was observed in Experiments 1 and 3, but not in Experiment 2. The results indicate that attention to the semantic contents of at least one modality is necessary to establish audiovisual semantic interference.