Reactance versus rationalization: divergent responses to policies that constrain freedom

How do people respond to government policies and work environments that place restrictions on their personal freedoms? The psychological literature offers two contradictory answers to this question. Here, we attempt to resolve this apparent discrepancy. Specifically, we identify the absoluteness of a restriction as one factor that determines how people respond to it. Across two studies, participants responded to absolute restrictions (i.e., restrictions that were sure to come into effect) with rationalization: They viewed the restrictions more favorably, and valued the restricted freedoms less, compared with control participants. Participants responded in the opposite way to identical restrictions that were described as nonabsolute (i.e., as having a small chance of not coming into effect): In this case, participants displayed reactance, viewing the restrictions less favorably, and valuing the restricted freedoms more, compared with control participants. We end by discussing future research directions.     

Infants' visual and auditory communication when a partner is or is not visually attending

In the current study we investigated infants' communication in the visual and auditory modalities as a function of the recipient's visual attention. We elicited pointing at interesting events from thirty-two 12-month olds and thirty-two 18-month olds in two conditions: when the recipient either was or was not visually attending to them before and during the point. The main result was that infants initiated more pointing when the recipient's visual attention was on them than when it was not. In addition, when the recipient did not respond by sharing interest in the designated event, infants initiated more repairs (repeated pointing) than when she did, again, especially when the recipient was visually attending to them. Interestingly, accompanying vocalizations were used intentionally and increased in both experimental conditions when the recipient did not share attention and interest. However, there was little evidence that infants used their vocalizations to direct attention to their gestures when the recipient was not attending to them.     

Consequences of the American States’ Legislative Action on Immigration

Over the past decade, US states have responded to federal inaction on comprehensive immigration reform by increasing their output of immigrant policies, both beneficial and restrictive. Although there is a growing empirical literature focused on predicting such activity by states, less is known, especially on a broad scale, about the state-level consequences associated with the policy tone states adopt toward immigrants. To better understand the consequences of restrictive immigrant policies, we created a restrictive score for each state year between 2005 and 2014 and employed linear regression with panel-corrected standard errors to investigate effects on immigrant-related demographics, economic factors, and political participation. We found that states with higher restrictive policy tones do experience reductions in the number of foreign-born residents, including Hispanics and those with limited English proficiency, a goal of many state legislators who favor restrictive policies. States with restrictive policy tones showed reductions in unemployment and poverty rates as well, which are also professed goals for restrictive policy activity. Mediation analyses suggested that the effects of restrictive policy scores on economic conditions are indirect, being exerted through the percentage of a state’s population that is foreign born. Finally, though much attention is focused on the expected increase in Latino political clout, restrictive policy tone was not predictive of increased voter registration or voting in states that pass these types of policies. If anti-immigrant policies are inducing those who oppose these policies to mobilize politically, it must be in an arena outside of voting.     

Promotional Games: Trick or Treat?

Some marketers use game settings to offer deals. Though research has studied the conditions under which consumers engage in such games, we know little about how they respond to deal offers won through the gaming process. We hypothesize that when faced with deal offers from games, such as scratch cards or trivia quizzes, consumers who are high (vs. low) in choice freedom needs often feel reactance and reject the offer. We find converging evidence for this prediction in both controlled experiments (studies 1 and 3) and in a field study (study 2), when using ethnic backgrounds as a proxy for participants’ choice freedom needs (study 1), when directly measuring these needs (study 2), and when manipulating beliefs about the importance of free choice (study 3).     

Reactance,the self,and its group: When threats to freedom come from the ingroup versus the outgroup

We investigated the assumption that independent versus interdependent self‐construals yield different manifestations of psychological reactance in different group contexts. We expected collectivists (interdependent) to value the collective freedom of an ingroup more in face of an outgroup threat than individualists (independent) who should be protective of their individual freedom especially within an ingroup. In Study 1, we showed that collectivists (Taiwanese students) did not show reactance when a threat to their freedom of choice originated in the ingroup, but they did show reactance when it originated in an outgroup. In Study 2, Austrian students showed more reactance the more interdependent their self‐construal was when confronted with an outgroup restriction. However, the more independent Austrian students' self‐construal was, the more reactance they showed when the threat came from the ingroup. Priming an independent (versus interdependent) self‐construal in Study 3, we again observed more reactance when freedom was restricted by the ingroup. The findings underline the importance of understanding psychological reactance as a socially situated phenomenon. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fear of Infection or Justification of Social Exclusion? The Symbolic Exploitation of the Ebola Epidemic

Public discourse in Western countries on the 2014 Ebola epidemic provided a unique natural opportunity to study the relationship between a disease's sociocultural representation and health policy support. Our main prediction stated that among Western citizens, support for restrictive health policies (e.g., mandatory quarantining) would be determined more through preexisting prejudice towards African immigrants than fears of Ebola infection. A questionnaire study with time‐lagged measurement of predictor and criterion variables employing a German sample (N = 218) that was heterogeneous in terms of gender, age, profession, political orientation, and income level provided clear support for this assumption. Although variables related to fear‐of‐infection were significant predictors, prejudice‐related variables explained several times more variance in participants’ support for restrictive policies. Moreover, the degree to which participants adopted prevalent beliefs regarding the sociocultural origins of Ebola (e.g., eating bushmeat) further intensified the impact of prejudice‐related variables.     

Fighting for independence: Significant others' goals for oneself incite reactance among the powerful

We tested the prediction that power increases people's tendencies to act against the goals their close significant others have for them. Participants in Study 1 all reported in a pre-test that their mother wanted them to achieve, but that they themselves were relatively less interested in achieving. A week later, high-power (but not neutral-power) participants who were reminded of their mother were subsequently less likely to pursue an achievement goal. Study 2 replicated this pattern of results with romantic partners and showed that the effects were strongest when individuals were personally less interested in pursuing a goal they believed their significant other held for them. In Study 3, we looked at mothers and healthy eating goals, and found that the predicted pattern only emerged for close significant others. Further, feelings of reactance mediated high-power participants' tendencies to act against significant-other goals that they themselves held less strongly.     

Judgments About Sexism: A Policy Capturing Approach

Different definitions of sexism have been usedby different experimenters and little attention has beengiven to the possibility that participants' definitionsof sexism might vary across individuals and across situations, just as the definitions ofinvestigators vary. Judgments about sexism areinextricably based on individual perceptions, values,and beliefs. It would seem reasonable, therefore toexamine individual conceptions of what constitutessexism. A total of 95 primarily middle-class Caucasianparticipants (68 females, 27 males) participated inthree studies investigating what information people use in deciding whether or not a male actor issexist. Six specific categories of information (or cues)were examined: (1) comments (or lack thereof) by theactor on a female target's physical appearance, (2) unwanted or inappropriate physical contact(or lack thereof), (3) assumptions (or lack thereof)about the target's work, personality, etc., based on hergender, (4) the target being interrupted (or not) by the actor, (5) an apparent powerdifferential (or lack thereof) between the actor and thetarget, and (6) assumptions by the actor aboutappropriate gender role behaviors. A policy capturingmethodology was employed in which three different sets ofscenarios, each describing a number of interactions(called profiles) between a target and an actor, werepresented to male and female participants who rated the degree of sexism exhibited by the actor ineach scenario. Policy capturing represents anideographic approach to research in which the primaryfocus is on establishing statistical parameter estimates that describe each individual's behavior in avariety of environmental situations. Only when that isaccomplished does the researcher examine the possiblenomothetic aggregations across participants. Thus many fewer participants are required than intraditional nomothetic approaches. Each profile set useda different subset of the cues which contained eithersubtle (Study 1), overt (Study 2), or very overt (Study 3)levels of the cues. Multipleregression analysis revealed that when relatively overtacts of sexism were described, most participants hadreliable policies; that is, their judgments werepredictable from the cues. However, when relatively subtleacts of sexism were described, most participants did nothave reliable policies; that is, their judgments werenot very predictable from the cues. There were large individual differences in howparticipants weighted the importance of various cues,especially with subtle cue levels, and in participants'mean sexism ratings.     

Rebel Without a (Conscious) Cause: Priming a Nonconscious Goal for Psychological Reactance

Psychological Reactance is typically studied using conscious manipulations and individual-difference measures. We hypothesized that, similar to other goals, a reactance motive can be primed nonconsciously. In this experiment, participants were given an explicit expectation that a pill would improve their performance on an accuracy task, or they were not given this expectation. Participants also received a reactance or neutral prime. On a subsequent accuracy task, participants given both the reactance prime and the explicit accuracy expectation committed the most errors. The findings suggest that reactance can be nonconsciously primed, generating behavioral effects. Evidence supporting the goal-priming interpretation is also presented.     

On predicting others’ words: Electrophysiological evidence of prediction in speech production

The present study investigated whether lexical processes that occur when we name objects can also be observed when an interaction partner is naming objects. We compared the behavioral and electrophysiological responses of participants performing a conditional go/no-go picture naming task in two different conditions: individually and jointly with a confederate participant. To obtain an index of lexical processing, we manipulated lexical frequency, so that half of the pictures had corresponding names of high-frequency and the remaining half had names of low-frequency. Color cues determined whether participants should respond, whether their task-partner should respond, or whether nobody should respond. Behavioral and ERP results showed that participants engaged in lexical processing when it was their turn to respond. Crucially, ERP results on no-go trials revealed that participants also engaged in lexical processing when it was their partner’s turn to act. In addition, ERP results showed increased response inhibition selectively when it was the partner’s turn to act. These findings provide evidence for the claim that listeners generate predictions about speakers’ utterances by relying on their own action production system.     

Support for rejection and reception policies toward asylum seekers in Italy: The role of conservative ideologies and legitimizing myths

ABSTRACT

Based on Social Dominance Theory (SDT), this study investigates the relationships between ideologically conservative attitudes (social dominance orientation, SDO; right-wing authoritarianism, RWA), legitimizing myths (false belief in asylum seekers as bogus; perception of in-group threats), and citizens’ support for restricted reception and rejection of asylum policies. A sample of 539 people living in Italy filled in an anonymous questionnaire administered using a cross-sectional design. The results support the expectations, showing that people high in SDO and RWA were more likely to hold the belief that asylum seekers are making false claims and to perceive that the latter pose a threat to the in-group, which in turn increased support for both of restrictive policies. Findings suggest that conservative ideologies can positively affect citizens’ support for restrictive asylum seeker policies based on both rejection and restricted reception by supplying ideological justification for not accommodating them in the host society.     

Faking revisited: Exerting strategic control over performance on the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure

Across four studies, we demonstrate that effects obtained from the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure, like those obtained from other indirect procedures, are not impervious to strategic manipulation. In experiment 1, we found that merely informing participants to “fake” their performance without providing a concrete strategy to do so did not eliminate, reverse, or in any way alter the obtained outcomes. However, when those same instructions orientated attention toward the core parameters of the task, participants spontaneously derived a strategy that allowed them to eliminate their effects (experiment 2). When the participants were provided with a viable response strategy, they successfully reversed the direction of their overall Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure effect (experiment 3). By refining the nature of those instructions, we managed to target and alter individual trial‐type effects in isolation with some success (experiment 4).     

Effects of anxiety on attentional allocation and task performance: An information processing analysis

An information processing signal detection methodology was employed to examine attentional allocation and its correlates in both normal comparison (NC) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) participants. In particular, the impact of neutral distractor and negative feedback cues on performance of an attention vigilance task was investigated. Individuals with GAD (N = 15) evidenced impaired performance on an attention vigilance task relative to NC participants (N = 15) when neutral distractor cues were presented. Contrary to prediction, no group differences in performance were detected under conditions in which participants were presented negative feedback cues they were told were relevant to their performance. Instead, GAD participants exhibited improvement during the experimental task such that their performance was equivalent to NC participants. Across trials, the clinically anxious group endorsed significantly higher levels of worry and negative affectivity; however, they failed to respond with concomitant physical arousal (e.g. increased muscle tension). These data are discussed within the context of Eysenck and Calvo's (1992, Cognition and Emotion, 6, 409–434) processing efficiency theory. Additionally, the results of this investigation provide support for Barlow's (1988, Anxiety and its disorders: The nature and treatment of anxiety and panic) conceptualization of anxiety as requiring the interaction of cognitive schema and physiological arousal.     

Natural scene categorization with minimal attention: evidence from negative priming

Research has demonstrated that objects in natural scenes are categorized without the deployment of attention. However, in these types of studies, participants were required to directly respond to peripherally presented scenes, which might lead some participants to move their attention. If this is the case, the above conclusion concerning natural scenes may not be valid. We investigated this issue by using a negative priming (NP) paradigm in which participants did not directly respond to peripheral stimuli. Our results showed NP effect from ignored stimuli in natural scene categorization, but neither in letter discrimination (Experiment 1) nor in line-drawing categorization (Experiment 2). In addition, NP effects were observed even when probe stimuli were words (Experiments 3A and 3B). These findings suggest that people can categorize objects in natural scenes with minimal attention, that this process is specific to natural scenes, and that it is based on the semantic information of the images.     

Aging affects the balance between goal-guided and habitual spatial attention

Visual clutter imposes significant challenges to older adults in everyday tasks and often calls on selective processing of relevant information. Previous research has shown that both visual search habits and task goals influence older adults’ allocation of spatial attention, but has not examined the relative impact of these two sources of attention when they compete. To examine how aging affects the balance between goal-driven and habitual attention, and to inform our understanding of different attentional subsystems, we tested young and older adults in an adapted visual search task involving a display laid flat on a desk. To induce habitual attention, unbeknownst to participants, the target was more often placed in one quadrant than in the others. All participants rapidly acquired habitual attention toward the high-probability quadrant. We then informed participants where the high-probability quadrant was and instructed them to search that screen location first—but pitted their habit-based, viewer-centered search against this instruction by requiring participants to change their physical position relative to the desk. Both groups prioritized search in the instructed location, but this effect was stronger in young adults than in older adults. In contrast, age did not influence viewer-centered search habits: the two groups showed similar attentional preference for the visual field where the target was most often found before. Aging disrupted goal-guided but not habitual attention. Product, work, and home design for people of all ages––but especially for older individuals––should take into account the strong viewer-centered nature of habitual attention.     

Yes,we have no bananas: Consumer responses to restoration of freedom

When stockouts restrict consumers' freedoms, two independent responses can occur: product desirability, or a reactance-based increase in the desire for the unavailable option, and source negativity, or general frustration with the source of the restriction. In four studies, we provide a novel investigation of consumer responses to stockout-restoration and examine how these two forces combine to affect consumer responses after freedoms are restored. To do so, we investigate two moderators that influence the activation and strength of product desirability and source negativity, respectively: trait reactance and attributions. While all consumers experience source negativity in response to stockouts, only consumers high in reactance experience product desirability, leading to differential responses to stockout-restoration. Compared to an in-stock condition, high reactance consumers respond positively to stockout-restoration, while low reactance consumers respond negatively to stockout-restoration, in terms of store and product evaluations and store choice. However, when high reactants attribute a stockout to the store, thereby increasing source negativity relative to product desirability, they respond negatively to stockout-restoration.     

Tied to expectations: Predicting features speeds processing even under adverse circumstances

When participants predict the upcoming stimulus in a randomized choice reaction task, a match between prediction and stimulus increases processing speed at a level similar to that observed in cueing studies with highly valid cues. This might be taken to suggest that people cannot help but fully use their self-generated, verbalized predictions for preparing task processing. Thus, we tested how flexibly participants can control formation and implementation of predictions. In Experiment 1, we varied validity and response-relevance of predictions. We observed that prediction effects on RT can be boosted by increasing validity, but prevail under adverse circumstances. This was not the case in a control group who read rather than predicted the feature words, suggesting that the effect was specific to predictions as such. Experiment 2 provided further evidence for limited control of participants over implementing and forming predictions. Participants were provided with practice on stimuli occurring with varying frequency, but neither learned to strategically choose predictions to maximize the number of match trials, nor did they reduce the amount of prediction-based preparation when predicting an infrequent stimulus. As sequential aftereffects of prediction match did not vary with validity, they were identified as an independent effect of verbalizing a response-relevant stimulus feature. The results are consistent with the view that the predicted stimulus feature is represented in the focus of attention in working memory and that the amount of implementation can be subject to weighting.     

Causal explanation in the face of contradiction

Previous work has shown that predictions can be mediated by mechanistic beliefs. The present study shows that such mediation only occurs in the face of contradictory, and not corroborative, evidence. In four experiments, we presented participants with causal statements describing a common-cause structure (E₁←C→E₂). Then we informed them of the states of C and E₁ and asked them to judge the likelihood of E₂. In Experiments 1 and 2, we manipulated whether the mechanisms supporting the two effects were the same or different, and whether the evidence presented confirmed or contradicted the participants’ expectations. The relation between the mechanisms only influenced predictions when evidence contradicted the expectations, but not when it was consistent. In Experiments 3 and 4, we used a common-cause structure with identical mechanisms. We manipulated the order in which predictions were made. When confirmatory predictions were made before contradictory predictions, mechanistic modulation was not observed in the confirmatory case. In contrast, the modulation was found when confirmatory predictions were made after contradictory ones. The results support the contradiction hypothesis that causal structure is revised during prediction, but only in the face of unexpected evidence.     

Health care and the poor: psychological implications of restrictive policies

Medicaid proposals increasingly focus on cost-saving strategies that restrict clients' control over where and when they may receive services. This study used a field experiment in an urban welfare office to examine the possible effects of two aspects of restrictive policies: the loss of choice of providers and adverse patient mix (i.e., when the majority of a provider's clients are Medicaid beneficiaries). Results indicate that health care presented within the context of not having a choice is derogated and that choice and patient mix combine to influence intentions to seek care. Persons who did not choose the health plan in a simulated choice, who had fewer choices than expected, and who did not accept restricted choice also had negative perceptions.