Active search,mediation, and the manipulation of cue dimensions: Emotion attribution in the false feedback paradigm

The present experiments investigated the mechanism(s) that produce the false feedback effect. Although the present studies replicated the basic phenomenon, previously proposed mediators of attention and arousal did not appear related to the effects obtained. In Experiment 1, change feedback slides were rated significantly higher than no-change feedback slides (F(1, 39)=11.88,p<.01). Correlations showed that both arousal and nonarousal feedback cues produced active search and influenced stimulus ratings. Attention or arousal differences between change and no-change feedback should not result in equal cue effects. In Experiment 2, feedback rating differences were eliminated by presenting less differentially ambiguous situational stimuli. These findings suggested that important factors in the emotion attribution process may be the relative ambiguity and subjective salience of both situational and physiological cues.     

Two experiments on the relation between psychoticism and response uncertainty in normal subjects

Previous studies have suggested that schizophrenics are affected by response uncertainty to a greater degree than normals or other psychiatric groups. Two studies examined whether a similar pattern of performance would be produced in normal Ss scoring high on questionnaire measures presumed to measure psychotic predisposition. The Psychoticism (P) scales from the EPQ and the unpublished PEN Inventory were employed; and response uncertainty was varied using a card-sorting procedure. In Experiment 1 males were more affected by increases in response uncertainty than females, but there was no difference between Ss scoring high and low on the P scales. Experiment 2 included a condition in which guide-cards were randomly reordered between trials. There was a highly significant tendency for Ss scoring high on the PEN P scale to be more affected by response uncertainty in this experiment. Again males were more influenced by uncertainty than females, but this was due largely to their performance under the condition where guide-cards were varied. Ss high on EPQ P also showed decremental performance under this condition. The data provided partial support for the validity of the P scales, particularly the PEN version of the scale, as indices of schizophrenic predisposition.     

Response-outcome contingency: Behavioral and judgmental effects of appetitive and aversive outcomes with college students

In two experiments, positive, negative, and zero response-outcome contingencies were responded to and rated by college students under a free-operant procedure. In Experiment 1, outcomes were either neutral or were associated with point gain. In Experiment 2, subjects were administered different outcome treatments: neutral outcomes, outcomes associated with money gain, or outcomes associated with money loss. In both experiments, subjects' judgments of response-outcome contingency and their operant responses were each strong linear functions of ΔP, the difference between the probability of an outcome given a response and the probability of an outcome given no response. Appetitive and aversive outcomes produced opposite and symmetrical response patterns. In Experiment 1, no differences in ratings occurred with neutral or appetitive outcomes; however, in Experiment 2, more potent appetitve outcomes led to somewhat more extreme ratings than either neutral or aversive outcomes. Increasing outcome probability produced only a slight bias in ratings of noncontingent problems in Experiment 1 and no bias in Experiment 2. Contrary to predictions derived from an analysis of superstitious behavior, increasing outcome probability in noncontingent problems decreased operant responding when outcomes were appetitive and increased operant responding when outcomes were aversive. Trend analyses revealed that Δ P was superior to several other metrics in predicting subjects' estimates of contingency and the behavioral effects of contingency. Operant responding was in closer accord with matching predictions than with maximizing predictions.     

Situationism, Moral Responsibility and Blame

In Moral philosophy meets social psychology, Gilbert Harman argues that social psychology can educate folk morality to prevent us from committing the ‘fundamental attribution error,’ i.e. ‘the error of ignoring situational factors and overconfidently assuming that distinctive behaviour or patterns of behaviour are due to an agent’s distinctive character traits’ (Harman, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 99, 315–331, 1999). An overview of the literature shows that while situationists unanimously agree with Harman on this point, they disagree on whether we also tend to commit a kind of fundamental attribution error with respect to moral responsibility and blame. Do we also tend to ignore situational factors and overconfidently assume that people are morally responsible and blameworthy for their distinctive patterns of wrongful behaviour? Very few scholars have addressed this issue, and none has ever given a comprehensive account of moral responsibility and blame from a situationist perspective. In this paper, I argue that situationist social psychology impugns subjective theories of responsibility and blame which focus on the agent’s inner states and supports an objective theory—namely, the standard of the reasonable person. I defend this standard as a tool for moral appraisal, and then I refute the common misperception that this approach lets most perpetrators off the hook and poses a threat to society.     

Adaptive thinking: Can adaptive dispositional attributions protect against the harmful effects of maladaptive situational attributions?

ObjectivesThe study was designed to examine if dispositional team-referent attributions moderate relationships between situational team-referent attributions and collective efficacy.DesignIn this cross-sectional design investigation, team athletes completed measures of dispositional team-referent attributions, situational team-referent attributions, and collective efficacy. Team outcome (i.e., win-loss status) was recorded.MethodAthletes (N = 163) on sport teams (K = 17) completed a measure of dispositional team-referent attributions (i.e., attributional style). They also completed a measure of situational team-referent attributions in reference to their most recent team competition and a measure of collective efficacy in reference to their next upcoming team competition.ResultsFollowing team victory, simple slopes analysis revealed a moderating effect such that adaptive dispositional team-referent attributions appeared to protect against the effects of maladaptive situational team-referent attributions on collective efficacy. This trend was demonstrated across stability and globality attribution dimensions. Following team defeat, no significant interaction effects were observed.ConclusionsThe results suggest that developing adaptive dispositional attributions after success may protect athletes from experiencing deleterious effects of maladaptive situational attributions. Future research is needed to confirm these results and understand how these results can be applied to attributional retraining interventions in sport.     

Motivational bases of choice in three-choice decomposed games

Subjects were presented a series of decomposed games that permitted them to select alternatives that maximize one or more of the following motivational dispositions: (1) own gain (individualism), (2) joint gain (cooperation), (3) relative gain (competition), or (4) minimization of other's gain (aggression). There were two types (cases) of games. Case 1 games permitted the S the same or a greater number of points than the other player across all alternatives; Case 2 games afforded the same or fewer points than the other player across all alternatives. It was found: (1) the motive of minimization of other's gain was negligibly reflected in Ss' choices; (2) the other motives were present and affecting Ss' choices; (3) more competitive and fewer cooperative choices occurred in Case 2 than in Case 1 games; (4) sex of subject affected choice behavior in only one game, where males tended to be more cooperative and females more individualistic; and (5) though information on choice and outcome of others was highly limited, some behavioral imitation occurred within dyads.     

Toward an understanding of the fundamental attribution error: Essay diagnosticity in the attitude attribution paradigm

The observer error in attitude attribution was examined, focusing upon the perceiver's conception of the relationship between a writer's attitude and the quality of performance on an essay task. Subjects appear to have invested essays, written under assignment, with diagnostic value on the presumption of a correlation between the quality or strength of the essay and the writer's attitude. When subjects were given essays varying in direction, strength, and constraint, their attributions indicated a reversal of correspondent inference for weak essays produced under high constraint, replicating an earlier, conceptually important result (E. E. Jones, S. Worchel, G. R. Goethals, & J. Grumet, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1971, 7, 59–80). It was suggested that the attribution error need not reflect general misunderstandings about, or the low salience of, situational factors, but rather is based on the perceiver's inclination to adopt a diagnostic judgmental set in the attitude attribution paradigm.     

Do the right thing: The assumption of optimality in lay decision theory and causal judgment

Human decision-making is often characterized as irrational and suboptimal. Here we ask whether people nonetheless assume optimal choices from other decision-makers: Are people intuitive classical economists? In seven experiments, we show that an agent’s perceived optimality in choice affects attributions of responsibility and causation for the outcomes of their actions. We use this paradigm to examine several issues in lay decision theory, including how responsibility judgments depend on the efficacy of the agent’s actual and counterfactual choices (Experiments 1–3), individual differences in responsibility assignment strategies (Experiment 4), and how people conceptualize decisions involving trade-offs among multiple goals (Experiments 5–6). We also find similar results using everyday decision problems (Experiment 7). Taken together, these experiments show that attributions of responsibility depend not only on what decision-makers do, but also on the quality of the options they choose not to take.     

Information availability,goodness of outcome,and attributions of causality

H. H. Kelley's (American Psychologist, 1973, 28, 107–128) framework for studying attribution processes is introduced as a means of accounting for characteristic asymmetries in success/failure attributions. It is argued that while success/failure asymmetries should occur in the presence of single-observation information, asymmetries should be eliminated when individuals are allowed to observe the covariation between their own actions and outcomes. Subjects participated in a 15-trial stock market simulation in which type of information (single-observation or covariation) and goodness of outcome (relative success or failure) were manipulated. The obtained results supported the experimental hypotheses. Given single-observation information, subjects were more likely to accept personal responsibility for good than for poor outcomes. However, subjects' attributions were not affected by goodness of outcome when they were provided with covariation information. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the current debate between motivational and information-processing explanations of asymmetries in success/failure attributions.     

When faces and voices come together: Face width-to-height ratio and voice pitch contribute independently to social perception

Prior research has shown that the face's width-to-height ratio (fWHR) and the voice's pitch influence social perception. Yet, the relative contribution of either cue has been largely unexplored. We examined the simultaneous effects of fWHR and pitch on social evaluations. Experiment 1 (N = 102) tested how such cues shaped global impressions. Experiment 2 (N = 121) tested fWHR and pitch's effect on behavioural affiliative intentions, framing social interaction as a physical or an intellectual competition. Experiment 3 (N = 57) assessed whether variations in fWHR and pitch could influence trait attribution (i.e., physical formidability and intelligence). Individuals with large faces or low-pitched voices elicited negative impressions, positive behavioural intentions in a physical competition, and the attribution of stronger formidability but lower intelligence. Across the studies, cues exerted independent effects. The implications of these findings for research on cross-modal social perception are discussed.     

Effects of the temporal relationship of feedback and stimulus information upon discrimination-learning strategies

Second grade Ss and college students were tested under three conditions of the temporal relationship of feedback and stimulus information. In one condition (/+3) feedback was delivered immediately upon S's response while the stimuli were still in view. In another (/0) feedback was also immediate but stimuli were extinguished immediately upon S's response. In the third condition (/?3), stimuli were extinguished immediately upon response and feedback was delayed 3 sec. Major findings among the children were (a) Ss of all conditions coded information at the same (high) average efficiency, (b) Ss of conditions /0 and /?3 recoded with significantly less efficiency than those of /+3, and (c) Ss in condition /+3 manifested primarily efficient information-processing strategies, those in condition /0 showed intermediate performance, and those of condition /?3 showed relatively primitive stereotyped behavior. Among adult Ss performance was uniformly high with little effect on any response measure investigated.     

The role of overt activity in children's sentence production

Nursery schooler's abilityto associate pairs of toys was assessed under four experimental conditions: (1) control, (2) S manipulating the toys, (3) S generating a sentence, and (4) S generating a sentence while manipulating the toys. All three S-involvement conditions produced significantly better recognition performance than the control but contrary to initial predictions, the difference between the sentence-only and sentence-plus-manipulation conditions was not significant. In contrast to previous research, Ss in the sentence-only conditions had little difficulty producing sentences when asked. Of interest was the finding that the quality of sentence production was poorer in the sentence-plus-manipulation condition than in the sentence-only condition. Results are discussed in terms of the possible “conflict” produced when the child is required to engage in more than one overt activity simultaneously.     

Positive contrast obtained in reacquisition following interpolation of nonreinforced or partially reinforced trials

Two experiments investigated the effects of shifting from either nonreinforcement or partial reinforcement (PRF) to continuous reinforcement conditions (CRF). In the first experiment, three groups of rats were given food reinforcement under CRF conditions in a runway followed by regular extinction trials (RE), extinction trials where Ss were delayed for 30 sec before entering the empty goal box (DE), or CRF trials where Ss were delayed for 30 sec before entering the baited goal box (DF). Then all Ss were run on the delayed reinforcement condition (DF). In the final delayed reinforcement condition, group DE ran significantly faster than group DF, reflecting positive contrast. In the second experiment, four groups of rats were trained in a runway to receive either 4% or 18% sucrose reinforcers under either PRF or CRF conditions. Then all Ss were transferred to a Skinner box and bar presses were continuously reinforced, with each S continuing to receive the same sucrose concentration as before. The former PRF Ss, regardless of the reinforcer, bar pressed at a significantly higher rate in the Skinner box than the former CRF Ss. The evidence seemed to favor the view that the effectiveness of a reinforcer is not an absolute, unchanging quantity but rather depends on the historical context in which the reinforcer occurs.     

Competition and men’s face preferences

Several studies have examined potentially adaptive shifts and sources of individual differences in women’s face preferences, but relatively few studies have looked for similar findings in men. Evidence suggests that men of higher mate-value may be better placed to compete for relationships with higher-quality women, and that contest competition may influence men’s perceptions of dominance. Here, we looked at the effects of winning/losing in male–male competition on men’s face preferences. Participants were randomly and unknowingly assigned to either win or lose the first-person shooter video game Counter-Strike: Source against an unseen male confederate who could control the outcome through game cheats. We found that, compared to men assigned to the losing condition, men assigned to the winning condition had significantly (p = 0.012) higher preferences for women’s facial femininity. Results suggest that the outcomes of male–male competition may alter men’s mate preferences.     

The rapid-smoking technique: Subject characteristics and treatment outcome

There is a lack of consistency in findings regarding subject (S) characteristics and the effects of smoking-control programmes. Research workers appear to assume that abstinence and reduction in smoking rate are merely different points in the same continuum, and therefore seek to correlate S variables with percentage reductions in smoking rate. It is argued that abstinence and reduced smoking are more appropriately viewed as potentially discrete outcomes. Conceptualizing outcome in this manner, a discriminant function analysis was employed to determine whether it is possible to differentiate between Ss who do, or do not, abstain following participation in a treatment programme involving rapid-smoking. It was found that it is possible to discriminate between the two groups of Ss. Advantages deriving from this approach to the investigation of S characteristics and treatment outcome are discussed.     

Compatibilism can be natural

Compatibilism is the view that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism. Natural compatibilism is the view that in ordinary social cognition, people are compatibilists. Researchers have recently debated whether natural compatibilism is true. This paper presents six experiments (N = 909) that advance this debate. The results provide the best evidence to date for natural compatibilism, avoiding the main methodological problems faced by previous work supporting the view. In response to simple scenarios about familiar activities, people judged that agents had moral responsibilities to perform actions that they were unable to perform (Experiment 1), were morally responsible for unavoidable outcomes (Experiment 2), were to blame for unavoidable outcomes (Experiments 3–4), deserved blame for unavoidable outcomes (Experiment 5), and should suffer consequences for unavoidable outcomes (Experiment 6). These findings advance our understanding of moral psychology and philosophical debates that depend partly on patterns in commonsense morality.     

Training cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma

Female Ss' choices in two types of mixed-motive game situations were used to select Ss who had predominantly Own Gain and Ss who had predominantly Relative Gain goals. On the basis of simple reward notions, it was predicted that the former but not the latter would change from competitive to cooperative responding in decomposed Prisoner's Dilemma game situations when interacting with a conditionally cooperative other. Corresponding yoked controls were not expected to become cooperative. The availability of social comparison with an outcome which was smaller than the mutually cooperative outcome but larger than the mutually competitive out-come was expected to lead Own Gain Ss to more rapid learning of cooperation but not to affect the responses of corresponding yoked controls or of Relative Gain Ss. A 2 × 2 × 2 × 5 factorial design was used in which the factors were goal orientation (Own Gain vs Relative Gain), strategy of the other (conditionally cooperative vs yoked control), the availability vs unavailability of the social comparison, and trials. The results strongly supported each of the expectations. The results were discussed in terms of how the operation of the reward mechanism would be affected by the operation of some other social psychological processes.     

Attributions of responsibility and affective reactions to decision outcomes

Immediate affective reactions to outcomes are more intense following decisions to act than following decisions not to act. This finding holds for both positive and negative outcomes. We relate this "actor-effect" to attribution theory and argue that decision makers are seen as more responsible for outcomes when these are the result of a decision to act as compared to a decision not to act. Experiment 1 (N = 80) tests the main assumption underlying our reasoning and shows that affective reactions to decision outcomes are indeed more intense when the decision maker is seen as more responsible. Experiment 2 (N = 40) tests whether the actor effect can be predicted on the basis of differential attributions following action and inaction. Participants read vignettes in which active and passive actors obtained a positive or negative outcome. Action resulted in more intense affect than inaction, and positive outcomes resulted in more intense affect than negative outcomes. Experiment 2 further shows that responsibility attributions and affective reactions to outcomes are highly correlated; that is, more extreme affective reactions are associated with more internal attributions. We discuss the implications for research on post-decisional reactions.     

Perceptions of Forgetfulness in Adulthood

Abstract

In two experiments, we examined younger and older participants’ appraisals of memory failures in fictitious characters portrayed as younger (in their 20’s to 30’s) or older (in their 60’s to 70’s) adults. Participants read vignettes where forgetful behavior had minor or more severe consequences for the target character (Experiment 1) or for the character and others in the social environment (Experiment 2). Participants rated potential causes of the forgetfulness and opinions concerning the target character’s cognitive health. In Experiment 1, an age-based double standard was observed, where both age groups rated ability as a cause of forgetting more often for older than younger characters. Ratings of forgetfulness as a sign of mental difficulty, need for memory training, and professional evaluation were also higher for older compared to younger characters. In Experiment 2, the Attribution Type by Target Age interaction effect was replicated. Ability and effort contributed to the significance of the interaction, confirming the reliability and generalizability of the age-based double standard. Forgetfulness was rated as a sign of mental difficulty more often for the older than younger characters, replicating Experiment 1. In both experiments, the consequences of the forgetting had a large impact on the attribution and opinion ratings for younger and older forgetful characters. These data suggest that people of all ages evaluate forgetful characters in light of situational outcomes as well as ageist presumptions of cognitive frailty in later life.