Vengefully ever after: destiny beliefs, state attachment anxiety, and forgiveness

Two studies examined how destiny beliefs (that potential relationships are or are not "meant to be") interact with state attachment anxiety to predict forgiveness tendencies. In Study 1, participants experienced an experimental manipulation of attachment anxiety (vs. security) before indicating the degree to which they would forgive a series of hypothetical partner offenses. In Study 2, participants reported every 2 weeks for 6 months (14 waves in total) on offenses enacted by their partner and indicated the degree to which they forgave the partner, both concurrently and 2 weeks later. Consistent with predictions, results revealed Destiny Beliefs x State Attachment Anxiety interaction effects: Strong (relative to weak) destiny beliefs predicted reduced forgiveness tendencies for individuals experiencing state attachment anxiety, but such beliefs were not associated with forgiveness for individuals experiencing state attachment security. Results from Study 2 suggest that this interaction effect was significantly mediated through trust in the partner.     

Family of origin and interpersonal contributions to the interdependence of dating partners' trust

The purpose of the present investigation was to further the study of factors that contribute to trust in relation to a dating partner. Specifically, this study investigated the interdependence of dating partner trust using a nonrecursive path model that included present-day family-of-origin experience. The most reliable data available suggest that self-disclosure and trust from the other partner are significant contributors to trust (cf. Butler, 1986; Haas, 1981; Larzelere & Huston, 1980; Rubin, 1975). However, these do not appear to explain completely the ability to trust another. Using these findings and theoretical linkages between trust and family-of-origin experiences, a model was specified with a reciprocal path between male partner and female partner trust. The reciprocal paths were not significant. However, male partner trust was best explained by his emotional reactivity toward his parents, and female partner trust was best explained by her comfort with self-disclosure. These results are discussed in relation to previous research.     

经济人信念对信任的影响:信任主题的调节作用

研究者发现经济人信念会破坏一般信任。由于不同的活动领域有不同的交往规则,信任主题可能会调节经济人信念对信任的影响。基于所属领域(经济与社会)与风险程度(高与低)两个维度,本研究分析了借钱、消费、捐赠、选举等主题对经济人信念影响信任的调节作用。结果发现,对经济人信念的直接学习(研究1)和间接激活(研究2)都只破坏了消费主题下的信任,经济人信念对经济领域中风险程度较低的主题下的信任有破坏作用。     

Impression management in behavior toward handicapped patients]

A previous study (Tr?ster, 1989) showed that nonhandicapped persons preferred a physically handicapped interaction partner to a nonhandicapped partner in an attributionally unambiguous situation. In order to test whether this "sympathy effect of physical handicap" is based on tendencies of impression management, 48 female subjects had to choose to sit next to either a physically handicapped or nonhandicapped female interaction partner in order to view a film together. Attributional ambiguity was varied by either confounding the choice of an interaction partner with a second, socially acceptable alternative (attributionally ambiguous situation: a choice between two films) or not confounding it (attributionally unambiguous situation: no choice between films). Public responsibility was manipulated by informing the subjects about their freedom to choose where they wished to sit either in public (public responsibility) or in private (no public responsibility). The results supported the impression management hypothesis: The handicapped interaction partner (in a wheelchair) was only preferred when the subjects had to anticipate that observers would deduce a preference of the chosen partner from the subjects' choices because of the attributionally unambiguous situation and the public announcement of their freedom of choice. Results suggest that the nonhandicapped strive to exhibit positive and nondiscriminative behavior toward the handicapped in order to avoid creating a disadvantageous impression in an observer.     

"Eating lightly" and the self-presentation of femininity

In Experiment 1, male and female subjects were given an opportunity to snack as they participated in a "get-acquainted study" with a same-sex or opposite-sex partner (confederate) whose social desirability was manipulated. Consistent with the hypothesis that women may eat less when motivated to present themselves in a feminine light, female subjects ate significantly less with a desirable male partner than in the remaining three conditions. In contrast, male subjects did not eat more (or less) with a desirable woman, although they did show an overall tendency to eat less with female (vs. male) partners. In Experiment 2, female subjects snacked as they got acquainted with a desirable male partner (confederate). Before this interaction, subjects received feedback indicating that they had either very masculine or very feminine interests. In addition, subjects believed either that their male partner was aware of their gender feedback or that he was unaware. Consistent with predictions derived from Schlenker's (1982) analytic-identity theory of social conduct, subjects in the partner-aware conditions ate less when they had received masculine (vs. feminine) feedback, whereas subjects in the partner-unaware conditions ate less when they had received feminine (vs. masculine) feedback. Implications for understanding eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia are discussed.     

Beliefs and inferences—a test of a rational-emotive hypothesis: 3. On expectations about enjoying a party

Ninety-six subjects were asked to imagine that they were going to a party. They were further asked to imagine (a) that they adhered to a rational or an irrational belief; (b) that they had jilted or been jilted by a partner with whom they were having an intimate relationship; and (c) that they knew or did not know other friends who would be going to the party. Whilst in role, subjects were asked to make inferences about various aspects of their enjoyment of the party. The results supported the hypothesis that holding an irrational belief leads to more negatively distorted inferences than holding a rational belief, and that having been jilted by a partner would have a similar effect. There was only limited support for the hypothesis that the second two independent variables would have a moderating or amplifying effect on the negativity of inferences through interaction with the belief variable. The implications of these findings for counselling are discussed, especially with respect to challenging irrational beliefs.     

Trust, Confidence, and Expertise in a Judge-Advisor System

The relationship between trust, confidence, and expertise in Judge-Advisor Systems is examined in two experiments with Judge-Advisor pairs, one with strangers and another with participants in ongoing relationships. There was expertise asymmetry so that Judges had less expertise than their Advisors. The dyads could receive money for accurate Judge decisions. Either the Judge or Advisor had the power to allocate this money between dyad members, before task interaction in study one and after task completion in study two. Because Judges were more dependent on Advisors than vice versa, it was predicted that trust would be more important to Judges. Results were supportive. Judges had higher and more variable ratings of trust in their partner than did Advisors, suggesting that Judges were more motivated to evaluate trust. High confidence by Advisors had a positive impact on Judges' ratings of trust and tendency to follow their advice. Judges' trust in their Advisors was significantly related their taking the advice and being confident in their final decisions. Although participants in study two had higher levels of trust in their partners, they allocated less money to them. The implications for establishing trust are discussed.     

Is self disclosure by a physically handicapped proband reciprocated by the interaction partner? An experimental study of the effect of physical handicap on interaction behavior with non-handicapped interaction partners

An experimental study tested whether an able-bodied person's positive disposition toward a disabled interaction partner was effective in the amount of reciprocation given to the disabled partner's self-disclosure. Sixty female subjects were confronted with either a disabled or nondisabled conversation partner who showed either a high or a low amount of self-disclosure. We anticipated that a "sympathy" effect of disablement in the amount of the subjects' self-disclosure would result from the nondisabled partner's overcompensation. This arises from an effort to compensate the negative, stereotyped attitudes to the disabled in actual behavior toward a single, disabled person by more strongly reciprocating the self-disclosure of a disabled interaction partner compared to a nondisabled one. Results showed that, contrary to expectations, self-disclosure was equally reciprocated with both a disabled and a nondisabled partner. However, a "sympathy" effect was found in the impression judgments on the disabled partner who had shown a high amount of self-disclosure in the previous conversation. The lack of a "sympathy" effect in the amount of self-disclosure was possibly the result of (1) the reciprocation of self-disclosure not being exclusively determined by intentional control processes; and/or (2) the evaluative significance of the amount of self-disclosure not being clear to the subjects in the interaction studied. It is concluded that the efforts of the nondisabled to show an unprejudiced attitude toward a disabled interaction partner are mostly effective in other aspects of behavior than the amount of self-disclosure.     

Interaction between varying social ties on health: Perceived partner responsiveness and institutional trust

The interplay between different forms of social relationships, that is, perceived partner responsiveness and institutional trust, on subjective health evaluations was examined for the first time. There were 1241 respondents who had a romantic relationship. After adjusting for the covariates, findings suggested that greater perceived partner responsiveness and institutional trust led respondents to report better subjective health. The positive link between perceived partner responsiveness and subjective health was more pronounced among the respondents reporting a lower level of institutional trust. Such an interaction could be an indicator pointing out the compensatory role of close relationship dynamics. Given that finding, public health authorities and practitioners could be encouraged to be aware of the adaptive function of social ties on health and focus on maintaining the strength of intimate social ties and building trust between authority gradients. This suggestion could especially be adaptive not only during “normal” times but also during post-disaster circumstances (e.g., COVID-19).     

Longer-term consequences of anger expression in negotiation: Retaliation or spillover?

Negotiators often concede to angry partners. But what happens when they meet again? According to the spillover hypothesis, negotiators demand less from previously angry partners because they perceive them as tough. According to the retaliation hypothesis, negotiators demand more from previously angry partners because of negative impressions and a desire to get even. Experiment 1 showed that participants demanded less in later negotiations when their partner in a previous negotiation had expressed anger (rather than no emotion) and the later negotiation was with the same (rather than a different) partner. Consistent with the spillover hypothesis, this effect was mediated by inferences regarding the partner’s toughness. Experiment 2 showed that apologies reduce the negative effects of anger on impressions and desire for future interaction. Behavioral reactions were moderated by social value orientation: extending the established might/morality effect, prosocial participants responded cooperatively to an apology, whereas proselfs responded competitively.     

The Importance of Risk in Determining the Extent to Which Attitudes Affect Intentions to Wear Seat Belts1

Stasson and Fishbein (1990) reported findings indicating that college students' intentions to wear seat belts in low-risk situations were attitudinally controlled, while their intentions to wear seat belts in high-risk situations were normatively controlled. If these findings are valid, manipulations of attitude (toward wearing a seat belt) should have a greater impact on intentions to wear a seat belt in a safe situation than on intentions to wear a seat belt in a risky situation. Three experiments provided strong support for this hypothesis. The implications of these findings for defining behavior and for designing interventions to increase seat-belt use are discussed.     

我会在谁面前舍弃利益?——博弈对象的能力与社会距离对名利博弈倾向的影响

通过构造虚拟的捐献情境及贸易情境,结合博弈任务,以大学生为被试探讨了名利博弈对象的能力和社会距离对名利博弈中博弈者的博弈行为倾向的影响。结果表明,在捐献情境下,被试在高能力的名利博弈对象面前比在低能力的名利博弈对象面前更倾向于做出接近自己半数报酬的捐献行为,牺牲利益以获取好名声。在贸易情境下存在名利博弈对象的能力与社会距离的交互作用,被试仅在面对低能力的名利博弈对象时会考虑社会距离因素,在社会距离近的名利博弈对象面前比在社会距离远的名利博弈对象面前提出更低的售价,牺牲自己的利益以获得好名声。研究结果初步证实名利博弈对象能力与社会距离对名利博弈具有重要影响以及个体在名利博弈中具有策略性。     

When Implicitly and Explicitly Measured Racial Attitudes Align: The Roles of Social Desirability and Thoughtful Responding

This set of studies compares the effects of choice among partners versus assignment to partner in an outcome-dependent context. In both studies, White participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions. In the first condition participants were assigned to a White partner, in a second condition they were assigned to a Black partner, and in a third condition they were given a choice between a Black and a White partner. Regardless of condition, all participants read essentially equivalent information about the targets. Results showed that participants given a choice generally preferred the White partner (especially if they held negative attitudes toward Blacks in general) and, rated her more favorably, whereas those assigned to a partner tended to rate their assigned partner more favorably regardless of race. Those given a choice of partner also construed their chosen partner more positively and rated her as more similar to themselves. In contrast, however, those assigned to a partner tended not to construe their partners in these ways. Results were discussed in terms of motivated reasoning theory.     

Friend or foe: the effect of implicit trustworthiness judgments in social decision-making

The human face appears to play a key role in signaling social intentions and usually people form reliable and strong impressions on the basis of someone's facial appearance. Therefore, facial signals could have a substantial influence on how people evaluate and behave towards another person in a social interaction, such as an interactive risky decision-making game. Indeed, there is a growing body of evidence that demonstrates that social behavior plays a crucial role in human decision-making. Although previous research has demonstrated that explicit social information about one's partner can influence decision-making behavior, such as knowledge about the partner's moral status, much less is known about how implicit facial social cues affect strategic decision-making. One particular social cue that may be especially important in assessing how to interact with a partner is facial trustworthiness, a rapid, implicit assessment of the likelihood that the partner will reciprocate a generous gesture. In this experiment, we tested the hypothesis that implicit processing of trustworthiness is related to the degree to which participants cooperate with previously unknown partners. Participants played a Trust Game with 79 hypothetical partners who were previously rated on subjective trustworthiness. In each game, participants made a decision about how much to trust their partner, as measured by how much money they invested with that partner, with no guarantee of return. As predicted, people invested more money in partners who were subjectively rated as more trustworthy, despite no objective relationship between these factors. Moreover, the relationship between the amount of money offered seemed to be stronger for trustworthy faces as compared to untrustworthy faces. Overall, these data indicate that the perceived trustworthiness is a strong and important social cue that influences decision-making.     

Putting the brakes on aggression toward a romantic partner: the inhibitory influence of relationship commitment

Why do people behave aggressively toward romantic partners, and what can put the brakes on this aggression? Provocation robustly predicts aggression in both intimate and nonintimate relationships. Four methodologically diverse studies tested the hypothesis that provocation severity and relationship commitment interact to predict aggression toward one's romantic partner, with the aggression-promoting effects of provocation diminishing as relationship commitment increases. Across all four studies, commitment to one's romantic relationship inhibited aggression toward one's partner when individuals were severely (but not mildly) provoked. Study 4 tested the hypothesis that this Partner Provocation × Commitment interaction effect would be strong among individuals high in dispositional tendencies toward retaliation but weak (perhaps even nonexistent) among individuals low in such tendencies. Discussion emphasizes the importance of understanding instigating, impelling, and inhibiting processes in the perpetration of aggression toward intimate partners.     

Orientation,Outcome, and Other-Serving Attributions

In this research, I examined the role of a communal orientation in producing other-serving attributional biases often found in jointly produced performance tasks. I hypothesized that the other-serving attributional responses, which are commonly found in dyadic decision-making tasks, originate from dispositional qualities that reflected an other-oriented construal of the self. Subjects completed a Communal Orientation Scale that purports to measure a dispositional tendency toward communal relationships with others. Next, they participated in a joint decision-making task with a partner for which they were given success or failure feedback. Then, subjects attributed responsibility for that performance. Results support the dispositional orientation hypothesis. Subjects who scored high in a communal orientation toward others gave more credit to their partners after a successful performance and blamed them less following failure. Attributions to the self remained unaffected by communal orientation. Implications of these data for future work in the areas dyadic interaction and cross-cultural attributions are considered.     

Responses to the Stigmatized: Disjunctions in Affect, Cognitions, and Behavior

This study examined affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses to members of a stigmatized group – homosexual men. Male participants were placed in a situation in which they anticipated interacting with a gray or a non-stigmatized conversation partner. The topic of the impending conversation was either potentially threatening or non-threatening. Participants in the gay conversation partner condition sat either farther away from the conversation partner (in the threat condition) or closer to the conversation partner (in the no-threat condition) than they did from non-stigmatized conversation partners. There were no differences in attitudes toward the conversation partner as a function of experimental condition. The results were interpreted in terms of predictions based on ambivalence-amplification theory, aversive racism theory, and the integrated threat theory.     

Achievement Goals in Social Interactions: Learning with Mastery vs. Performance Goals

Little work has studied achievement goals in social interaction situations. The present experiment aimed at contributing to this matter by showing the potential of social interaction (in particular disagreement) to moderate the effects of achievement goals on learning. Participants were led to think they interacted with a partner, sharing opinions about a text that they were studying. Mastery and performance goals were manipulated. During the “interaction,” they received either disagreement or agreement from this bogus partner. Results showed that a condition in which mastery goals were induced led to better learning than a performance goal condition only when the partner disagreed. No differences between goal conditions were observed when the partner agreed. Implications for achievement goal research are discussed. Part of this work was conducted during Céline Darnon’s doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Fabrizio Butera, and was written during Céline Darnon’s post-doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, thanks to a Fulbright fellowship.     

THE DISCLOSURE-LIKING RELATIONSHIP

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of a perceiver's own disclosure on attraction for self-disclosing others. In Experiment 1, female undergraduates selected two topics and disclosed information on them to a confederate partner. This disclosure occurred either before or after the confederate disclosed information on three different topics that were either high or low in intimacy. Based on self-perception theory, it was predicted and found that intimacy of the subject's self-disclosure would be positively correlated with attraction for the confederate when the subject disclosed before her partner but not when she disclosed after her partner. A second prediction that subjects would be attracted toward a highly intimate partner only if they had previously disclosed was not confirmed. Instead, attraction for the confederate was greater when she had disclosed before the subject and when she had disclosed intimately. Experiment 2 varied the intimacy of the response of a partner to the subject's initial self-disclosure and whether this response dealt with the same topics or different topics. It was found that attraction was greater for an intimate than a nonintimate partner when topics for disclosure were the same. When disclosure topics were different, there was no significant difference in attraction for the intimate and nonintimate partner. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the disclosure-liking hypothesis.     

Trust and responsiveness in strain-test situations: a dyadic perspective

In this behavioral observation study, the authors tested predictions derived from various trust models concerning how individuals who are high vs. low in chronic trust perceive and behave during strain-test discussions with their romantic partners. Partners in 92 married/cohabitating couples identified and discussed 2 major strain-test issues in their relationship. Each partner (when in the role of asker) identified something she or he really wanted to do or accomplish that required the greatest sacrifice by his or her partner (in the responding role). Each videotaped discussion was then rated by trained coders. The results revealed that (a) high trust responders were more accommodating during the strain-test discussions than low trust responders; (b) high trust askers were more open/collaborative with the accommodation they received during the discussions than low trust askers; (c) high trust askers overestimated the amount of accommodation they received from their responding partners (relative to coder's ratings); (d) when in discussions that were more threatening, high trust askers showed a correction effect by reporting larger pre- to postdiscussion increases in state trust; and (e) when asked to make larger sacrifices, high trust responders showed a similar correction effect by displaying greater accommodation. These findings are discussed in terms of mutual responsiveness processes in relationships.