On the automatic evaluation of end-states

The author's research examined automatically activated attitudes toward desired end-states. Across 4 studies, participants' automatic attitudes toward goals (i.e., thinness, egalitarianism) significantly predicted their goal pursuit, including behaviors, intentions, and judgments. Such attitudes predicted behavior and judgments that are difficult to monitor and control (i.e., restrained eating, subtle prejudice), but not judgments that are easy to monitor and control (i.e., blatant prejudice). Automatic attitudes toward goals also possessed unique predictive validity compared with explicit measures of motivation and with automatic attitudes toward more physical, "graspable" objects. The findings are discussed with regard to the predictive validity of automatic attitudes, the use of automatic attitudes toward goals as an implicit measure of motivation, and the role of automatic evaluative processes in goal-pursuit and self-regulation.     

The role of prefrontal cortex in resolving distractor interference

We investigate the hypothesis that those subregions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) found to support proactive interference resolution may also support delay-spanning distractor interference resolution. Ten subjects performed delayed-recognition tasks requiring working memory for faces or shoes during functional MRI scanning. During the 15-sec delay interval, task-irrelevant distractors were presented. These distractors were either all faces or all shoes and were thus either congruent or incongruent with the domain of items in the working memory task. Delayed-recognition performance was slower and less accurate during congruent than during incongruent trials. Our fMRI analyses revealed significant delay interval activity for face and shoe working memory tasks within both dorsal and ventral PFC. However, only ventral PFC activity was modulated by distractor category, with greater activity for congruent than for incongruent trials. Importantly, this congruency effect was only present for correct trials. In addition to PFC, activity within the fusiform face area was investigated. During face distraction, activity was greater for face relative to shoe working memory. As in ventrolateral PFC, this congruency effect was only present for correct trials. These results suggest that the ventrolateral PFC and fusiform face area may work together to support delay-spanning interference resolution.     

Affective flexibility: evaluative processing goals shape amygdala activity

ABSTRACT— Although early research implicated the amygdala in automatic processing of negative information, more recent research suggests that it plays a more general role in processing the motivational relevance of various stimuli, suggesting that the relation between valence and amygdala activation may depend on contextual goals. This study provides experimental evidence that the relation between valence and amygdala activity is dynamically modulated by evaluative goals. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, participants evaluated the positive, negative, or overall (positive plus negative) aspects of famous people. When participants were providing overall evaluations, both positive and negative names were associated with amygdala activation. When they were evaluating positivity, positive names were associated with amygdala activity, and when they were evaluating negativity, negative names were associated with amygdala activity. Evidence for a negativity bias was found; modulation was more pronounced for positive than for negative information. These data suggest that the amygdala flexibly processes motivationally relevant evaluative information in accordance with current processing goals, but processes negative information less flexibly than positive information.     

Neuroimaging evidence for agenda-dependent monitoring of different features during short-term source memory tests

A short-term source monitoring procedure with functional magnetic resonance imaging assessed neural activity when participants made judgments about the format of 1 of 4 studied items (picture, word), the encoding task performed (cost, place), or whether an item was old or new. The results support findings from long-term memory studies showing that left anterior ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) is engaged when people make source attributions about reflectively generated information (cognitive operations, conceptual features). The findings also point to a role for right lateral PFC in attention to perceptual features and/or familiarity in making source decisions. Activity in posterior regions also differed depending on what was evaluated. These results provide neuroimaging evidence for theoretical approaches emphasizing that agendas influence which features are monitored during remembering (e.g., M. K. Johnson, S. Hashtroudi, & D. S. Lindsay, 1993). They also support the hypothesis that some of the activity in left lateral PFC and posterior regions associated with remembering specific information is not unique to long-term memory but rather is associated with agenda-driven source monitoring processes common to working memory and long-term memory.     

After-affects: How automatic evaluations influence the interpretation of subsequent, unrelated stimuli

Findings from three experiments suggest that participants’ automatic evaluations of subliminally presented objects influenced how they interpreted subsequent, unrelated objects. Participants defined homographs (Experiment 1), categorized objects and people (Experiment 2), and made person judgments (Experiment 3) that all could be disambiguated in either a positive or negative way. Participants’ responses to the ambiguous targets were evaluatively consistent with their automatic evaluations of preceding, semantically unrelated objects. The findings suggest that one’s automatic evaluations can influence deliberate judgments of subsequent stimuli, even when the only shared dimension between the initially evaluated objects and the judged objects is an evaluative one. The implications of these findings are discussed with regard to possible mechanisms of evaluative priming as well as previous research concerning evaluative priming effects on social judgment.     

Effects of mood states on information processing strategies: Two studies of automatic and controlled processing using misattribution paradigms

To test the hypothesis that a positive mood facilitates automatic processing and a negative mood facilitates controlled processing, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, after positive or negative mood was induced, participants rated the attractiveness of products while listening to a music tape that they were told would have the effect of inducing a positive, negative, or neutral mood. As predicted, augmentation effects were clearer in the negative mood condition than in the positive mood condition. In Experiment 2, participants were first presented with lists of names of non-famous Japanese companies either once or four times. One or two days later, they were presented with these names again, together with new names, and were asked to judge whether those names were famous or-non-famous. As predicted, subjects in a positive mood showed more false fame judgments than those in a negative mood because those in a positive mood did not control their feeling of familiarity correctly. These results indicated that those in positive moods are more likely to engage in automatic processing.     

The more you ignore me the closer I get: An ERP study of evaluative priming

We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the various mental processes contributing to evaluative priming—that is, more positive judgments for targets preceded by affectively positive, as opposed to negative, prime stimuli. To ensure ecological validity, we employed a priori meaningful landscape pictures as targets and emotional adjectives as visual primes and presented both primes and targets for relatively long durations (>1 s). Prime-related lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) revealed response priming as one source of the significant evaluative priming effect. On the other hand, greater right-frontal positive slow wave in the ERP for pictures following negative, as compared with positive, primes indicated altered impression formation, thus supporting automatic spreading activation and/or affect misattribution accounts. Moreover, target LRPs suggested conscious counter-control to reduce the evaluative priming net effect. Finally, when comparing prime ERPs for two groups of participants showing strong versus weak evaluative priming, we found strong evidence for the role of depth of prime processing: In the weak-effect group, prime words evoked an increased visual P1/N1 complex, a larger posterior P2 component, and a greater left-parietal processing negativity presumably reflecting semantic processing. By contrast, a larger medial-frontal P2/N2 complex in the strong-effect group suggested top-down inhibition of the prime’s emotional content. Thus, trying to ignore the primes can actually increase, rather than decrease, the evaluative priming effect.     

Moral judgments and the role of social harm: Differences in automatic versus controlled processing

The social intuitionist model has served as an important corrective to the earlier dominance of rational deliberation in moral psychology. Yet the relationship between intuition and deliberation in moral judgments remains largely unexplored. Three studies were conducted to explore the role of automatic and controlled processes in moral judgments. Results suggest that controlled processing is attuned to instances of social harm. Immoral acts (i.e., cases of serious academic dishonesty) that involved diffuse harm in the form of flouting societal rules did not result in increased moral censure under deliberation. In contrast, similar dishonest acts that involved direct social harm to others resulted in harsher, more punitive moral judgments under deliberation, providing evidence of augmentation of automatic responses under controlled processing. The results suggest that the intuitionist sensitivity to direct physical harm has parallels in the controlled processing system, which seems sensitive to non-physical instances of social harm, such as over-benefiting the self at the expense of deserving others.     

See what you think: reappraisal modulates behavioral and neural responses to social stimuli

The social environment requires people to quickly form contextually appropriate social evaluations. Models of social cognition suggest that this ability depends on the interaction of automatic and controlled evaluative systems. However, controlled processes, such as reappraisal of an initial response, have rarely been studied in the context of social evaluation. In the two studies reported here, participants reappraised or simply observed angry or neutral faces. In Study 1, reappraisal modulated evaluations of angry faces on explicit as well as implicit behavioral levels. In Study 2, reappraisal altered both early and late phases of evaluative electrocortical processing. These studies suggest that controlled processes, such as reappraisal, can quickly and substantially modulate early evaluative processes in the context of biologically significant social stimuli.     

Maintenance versus manipulation of information held in working memory: an event-related fMRI study.

One model of the functional organization of lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) in primates posits that this region is organized in a dorsal/ventral fashion subserving spatial and object working memory, respectively. Alternatively, it has been proposed that a dorsal/ventral subdivision of lateral PFC instead reflects the type of processing performed upon information held in working memory. We tested this hypothesis using an event-related fMRI method that can discriminate among functional changes occurring during temporally separated behavioral subcomponents of a single trial. Subjects performed a delayed-response task with two types of trials in which they were required to: (1) retain a sequence of letters across the delay period (maintenance) or (2) reorder the sequence into alphabetical order across the delay period (manipulation). In each subject, activity during the delay period was found in both dorsolateral and ventrolateral PFC in both types of trials. However, dorsolateral PFC activity was greater in manipulation trials. These findings are consistent with the processing model of the functional organization of working memory in PFC.     

ELECTROCORTICAL DIFFERENTIATION OF EVALUATIVE AND NONEVALUATIVE CATEGORIZATIONS

Abstract— The evaluative categorizations that underlie affective and attitudinal judgments have often been equated with non-evaluative categorizations despite the central importance of evaluative processes for survival In the present experiment, a late positive potential (LPP) of the event-related brain potential elicited when participants evaluatively categorized food items as positive or nonpositive was compared with the LPP elicited when participants semantically (i e., nonevaluatively) categorized food items as vegetable or nonvegetable Results revealed that evaluative categorizations evoked an LPP that was relatively larger over the right than the left scalp regions compared with the LPP evoked by nonevaluative categorizations. This finding provides evidence regarding the differences in neural and cognitive processes involved in evaluative and nonevaluative categorizations.     

Neural correlates of evaluation associated with promotion and prevention regulatory focus

Higgins (1997, 1998) proposed two self-regulatory or motivational systems—one sensitive to gains (promotion) and one sensitive to losses (prevention). To examine the interaction of motivation and cognition, participants made good/bad or abstract/concrete judgments about concepts during fMRI scanning. After scanning, participants rated the extent to which each stimulus was good and bad and completed a questionnaire that measured promotion/prevention orientation. For each participant, contrast maps were generated representing the association between neural processing and stimulus valence (good/bad), and these factors were then regressed against participants’ promotion and prevention focus scores. For the good/bad but not for the abstract/concrete task, promotion focus was associated with greater activity in the amygdala, anterior cingulate, and extrastriate cortex for positive stimuli, and prevention focus was associated with activity in the same regions for negative stimuli; these results are consistent with the hypothesis that the way in which evaluative information is processed is influenced by individual differences in self-regulatory focus.     

Moderators of the relationship between implicit and explicit evaluation

Automatic and controlled modes of evaluation sometimes provide conflicting reports of the quality of social objects. This article presents evidence for 4 moderators of the relationship between automatic (implicit) and controlled (explicit) evaluations. Implicit and explicit preferences were measured for a variety of object pairs using a large sample. The average correlation was r=.36, and 52 of the 57 object pairs showed a significant positive correlation. Results of multilevel modeling analyses suggested that (a) implicit and explicit preferences are related, (b) the relationship varies as a function of the objects assessed, and (c) at least 4 variables moderate the relationship: self-presentation, evaluative strength, dimensionality, and distinctiveness. The variables moderated implicit-explicit correspondence across individuals and accounted for much of the observed variation across content domains. The resulting model of the relationship between automatic and controlled evaluative processes is grounded in personal experience with the targets of evaluation.     

False prospective memory responses as indications of automatic processes in the initiation of delayed intentions

To analyze the role of automatic processes in the fulfilment of delayed intentions, we extended a typical prospective memory setting with a context signal to indicate whether the intended action is to be carried out or not. Building on dual-process models of cognition, we hypothesized that automatic and controlled processes are in opposition when the action is to be suppressed, because automatic processes trigger the associated response whereas controlled processes exert inhibition. Experiment 1 demonstrates the occurrence of false prospective memory responses to cues with the "suppress" signal. Experiment 2 shows that the rate of false prospective memory responses is sensitive to a manipulation that strengthens the role of automatic processes in prospective memory. The findings support the use of false prospective memory responses for the study of automatic processes in the execution of delayed intentions.     

Phonological cues influence sex decisions about novel names

Investigations of first names in English have found that male and female names are distinguished by different phonological characteristics. This paper reports on findings that suggest native speakers of English rely on those same cues when making judgments about the sex of names with which they are unfamiliar. When presented with 40 novel, i.e., "invented" names, 25 university undergraduates judged one-syllable names and consonant-final names as male names; however, they judged two-syllable names and vowel-final names as female names. These findings indicate that certain phonological features are strong enough predictors of sex that they can be used to designate sex even with names never before encountered.     

A Multistage,Multiprocess Analysis of Consumer Judgment: A Selective Review and Conceptual Framework

Although numerous dual‐process models have been brought to bear on the cognitive operations that underlie consumer judgment, they are typically limited in their ability to capture the processes that occur at different stages of cognitive activity and to specify how these processes interface. In many (if not most) cases, a mix of both automatic and controlled processes underlies judgments and decisions. We suggest a theoretical framework that potentially provides an integration of these processes and review representative research and theory that might be conceptualized in terms of this framework.     

A process-dissociation analysis of semantic illusions

We examine semantic illusions from a dual-process perspective according to which the processes that go into failing or succeeding to detect such illusions can be decomposed into controlled processes (checking the facts in the sentence against the information in memory) and automatic processes (the impression of truth that comes from the semantic associations between the elements in the sentence). These processes, we argue, make largely independent contributions to truth judgments about semantic-illusory sentences. The Process Dissociation Procedure was used to obtain estimates of these two kinds of processes. In Study 1, participants judged whether sentences were true or false while under high or low cognitive load. Cognitive load increased the rate of semantic illusions by specifically affecting controlled processing but not automatic processing. In Study 2, a previous paired-associate learning task also increased the rate of semantic illusions, but it did so by specifically affecting automatic processing, not controlled processing.     

Dissociating automatic associations: Comparing two implicit measurements of race bias

Weak correspondence across different implicit bias tasks may arise from the contribution of unique forms of automatic and controlled processes to response behavior. Here, we examined the correspondence between estimates of automatic and controlled processing derived from two sequential priming tasks with identical structure and timing designed to separately measure stereotypic (Weapons Identification Task; WIT) and evaluative (Affective Priming Task; APT) associations. Across two studies using predominantly White samples, three consistent patterns emerged in the data: (a) stereotypic bias was stronger for Black targets, whereas evaluative bias was stronger for White targets; (b) overall response accuracy bias correlated modestly across the two tasks; and (c) multinomial processing tree estimates of controlled processing corresponded much more strongly than estimates of automatic processing. These findings support models positing distinct learning and memory systems for different forms of race bias, and suggest that these differing forms contribute to estimates of automatic associations.