The recall and use of belief statements as bases for judgments: Some determinants and implications

When people are asked to report their beliefs in a (target) statement, they may search memory for other, “informational” propositions that bear on its validity, and may use their beliefs in these propositions as bases for their judgments. Several factors were hypothesized to affect the particular propositions that subjects are likely to recall under such conditions. Subjects first familiarized themselves with a list of informational and target propositions. Then, they reported either their beliefs in these propositions or their attitudes toward them. In a second session 1 week later, they recalled as many of the propositions as they could. Both informational and target statements were better recalled when the informational propositions were unlikely to be true. In addition, the target statements were better recalled when the informational propositions associated with them had unclear implications for their validity. Recall of one proposition was more likely to cue the recall of the other when subjects had previously reported belief in the target proposition (rather than attitudes toward it). However, it was more likely to occur when subjects had reported attitudes toward the informational proposition (rather than beliefs in it). The effects of these variables were interpreted in terms of their mediating influence on the strength of association between the informational proposition and both (a) the target proposition and (b) contextual and environmental cues in the situation where target beliefs are reported.     

The cognitive representation of persons and groups and its effect on recall and recognition memory

A conceptualization of the manner in which trait and behavioral information is organized in memory is proposed and applied in predicting both the recall and recognition of information about persons and groups. Three information presentation conditions were considered: (1) Subjects are told to form an impression of a target (person or group) on the basis of the target's behaviors, and are given a trait-based concept of what the target is like before learning about these behaviors. (2) Subjects are told to form an impression of the target, but a general traitbased concept of the target is not induced until after they learn about the target's behaviors. (3) Subjects receive information about the target's behaviors with instructions to remember the information, and only subsequently are told to form an impression and are given more general information about the target's traits. The proposed model accounted for between-condition differences in both the recall and recognition of behaviors that were consistent and inconsistent with a general trait-based concept of the target, and for contingencies of these differences on whether the target was a single person or a group.     

The role of logical and nonlogical factors in making inferences about category membership

Three postulates are proposed concerning the manner in which persons infer the validity of propositions that do not necessarily follow logically from the information available. These postulates assume that subjects first attempt to identify the propositions that are most and least likely to follow from the information given. They then use their beliefs in these propositions as anchors, relative to which the validity of other propositions is evaluated on the basis of both logical and nonlogical criteria. Two experiments are reported in which these postulates are used successfully to diagnose the logical and nonlogical factors that underlie inferences based upon both single statements and sets of syllogistically related propositions. The implications of the proposed postulates for existing formulations of social inference and cognitive organization are discussed.     

Apparent impropriety and procedural fairness judgments

Variation in decision making and allocation procedures has been shown to affect judgments of the fairness of the procedure and its outcome, but such effects have always been studied in the context of properly enacted procedures. It was hypothesized that the appearance of impropriety in the enctment of a fair procedure would increase the extent to which the procedure is judged in terms of its outcome. One hundred twenty undergraduate males and females were placed in the role of either defendant or observer with respect to an adversary procedure trial. Appearance of impropriety was manipulated during the trial by either including or not including evidence of a friendly personal relationship between the judge and the plaintiff's lawyer. The defendant was said to have either won or lost the case. A significant impropriety × outcome interaction on ratings of procedural fairness, unqualified by higher order effect, supported the hypothesis: a favorable outcome increased and an unfavorable outcome decreased the fairness of the procedure more when the impropriety was present. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for future investigation and theory on procedural justice and for practical issues.     

The effects of alternatives on the salience of reward allocation norms

In a dyadic bargaining situation there is considerable evidence that the alternative outcomes of the bargainers (if they cannot reach agreement) have important effects on bargaining outcomes. Under the assumption that situational factors affect the nature of the relation between the alternatives of the bargainers and bargaining outcomes, the effects of two factors were assessed: the relative size of the reward to be negotiated (excess of prize minus alternatives) and the magnitude of the difference in the alternatives of the two bargainers. Using college students as subjects, the predictions of two models were also contrasted: the equal excess model and Shapley-w. The relative size of the prize did not have a significant effect on the accuracy of the two models, but the magnitude of the difference in alternatives had marked effects. The results also suggest that the Shapley-w model may be more accurate when the bargainers are relatively inexperienced and cooperatively oriented, whereas the equal excess model may be more accurate when the bargainers are relatively sophisticated and competitively oriented.     

The effect of context on the structure of categories

Three experiments examined the effect of context on the representativeness ordering of exemplars of a category. Experiments 1 and 2 employed an online reading time paradigm to examine the effect of context on the time it takes to establish an anaphoric reference between an exemplar and a category term. Experiment 1 demonstrated that context can change the relation between a category term and an exemplar at the time of comprehension. Experiment 2 showed that category terms presented in context generate graded goodness-of-example distributions of exemplars that are different from the distributions generated in the absence of explicit context. These distributions cannot be derived by assuming that the exemplar most strongly suggested by the context serves as the category representation. Experiment 3 employed a membership verification paradigm. Response time was found to be a function of degree of relatedness to the contextdependent category representation. Typicality, as determined in the absence of explicit context, had no effect on decision time. Several models, including some extensions of current semantic memory theories, are developed to account for the results of these experiments.     

Effects of alternatives in coalition bargaining

A critical factor in bargaining and coalition formation is the alternative outcomes of the bargainers if an agreement cannot be reached. In some situations bargainers have individual alternatives while in other situations their alternatives must be negotiated with others. The purpose of this study was to contrast the effects of one-person and two-person alternatives on coalition outcomes. The second purpose of the study was to contrast the predictions of four theories of coalition formation: bargaining theory, equal excess model, Shapley value, and a special case of equity theory. The results indicate that one-person alternatives enhance the bargaining strength of the stronger players more than two-person alternatives. The predictions of the equal excess model and the Shapley value were more accurate than the predictions of bargaining theory and equity theory. However, the greater accuracy of the equal excess model and the Shapley value may be restricted to situations in which the bargainers have one-person rather than two-person alternatives.     

An informational analysis of actors' and observers' belief attributions in a role-playing situation

An actor's belief in a proposition was inferred by both the actor himself and an observer on the basis of information concerning (a) the actor's preparation and delivery of a speech on the proposition to an unseen audience, and (b) the audience's belief in the proposition. The availability of this information to judges was systematically varied. The position advocated by the actor in his speech and the audience's opinion affected both the actor's belief in the test proposition and the belief attributed to the actor by a disinterested observer. However, neither effect depended upon whether or not other belief-relevant information was also available. These results were interpreted as more consistent with a summative model of information integration than with an averaging model. Actors' behavior had similar effects upon both actors' estimates of how the audience would judge their beliefs and observers' actual estimates of these beliefs. However, these effects were both greater than the effect of their behavior on their own estimates of their beliefs. The apparent strength of the audience's belief in the target proposition had a positive influence upon both actors' beliefs in the proposition and observers' estimates of actors' beliefs, but had a negative, or contrast effect upon actors' expectancies for how the audience would judge their beliefs. Results were more consistent with the differential perspective hypothesis of actor-observer differences proposed by Jones and Nisbett than with the hypothesis that actors and observers differentially weight the implications of their past experience in formulating their judgments. Results had additional implications for the assumptions that persons make when using their behaviors as indications of their beliefs.     

Intervening causation and the mitigation of responsibility for harm doing II. The role of limited mental capacities

The present study investigated (i) the conditions under which the proximal cause of an event affects judgments of a distal cause, (ii) the capacities persons need to be held responsible for their actions, and (iii) the relationship between judgments of causation, blame, and restitution. Subjects read about situations in which an initial act, in combination with a later behavior by a second person, produced harm. The age and mental state of the second person were varied. It was found that cause and blame assigned to the initial action was greater when the second person was a child or mentally disturbed, as compared to a sane adult. Causal and moral responsibility were related to the understanding, reasoning capacity, and ability to control behavior of the person judged. Finally, support was obtained for an entailment model of the relations between judgments of causation, blame, and restitution.     

The role of control processes and structural constraints in models of memory and social judgment

Six experiments examining a recent model of memory and social judgment are reported. In particular, the theoretical concept of a Work Space is examined in terms of both its structural properties and a variety of control processes that govern its operation. In Experiment 1, subjects were given information about a stimulus person and told that they would later be asked to recall it as well as possible. The length of the actual delay before recall and the length of the anticipated delay were factorially varied. Under short delay conditions, subjects anticipating a short delay recalled more of the information than those anticipating a long delay. The reverse was true under actual long delay conditions. Other results suggest that the anticipated length of the delay has an effect on processes related to both encoding and storage/retrieval. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrate that, relative to no delay conditions, a long actual delay or a long anticipated delay produces polarization in social judgments. Both of these results are predicted by the model. Experiments 4–6 examine the effect of interpolated cognitive activity on memory and social judgment. As predicted by the model, relatively complicated cognitive activity leads to lower levels of recall and a greater polarization of judgments than less complicated intervening cognitive activity. It is argued that all of these results can be accounted for by the concept of a Work Space as a temporary repository devoted to the current information processing activities of the subject. It is thought that such a concept must be kept theoretically distinct from long-term memory. Implications of the results for models of memory and social judgment are discussed.     

A model of fixed activation time scheduling

A model for the fixed activation time scheduling of events is presented. Activation time is defined as the time needed for an event to regain dominance in the stream of events measured from the point in time at which it lost dominance. The fixed activation time scheduling rule states that some event must be ongoing at all times, that an ongoing event will continue until interrupted by another event, that every event has a predetermined activation time and that fulfilling the activation time requirement is the necessary and sufficient condition for an event to interrupt an ongoing event. The last condition sets this rule apart from those employed in quequeing theory since it does not allow events to be completed or queues to form. Derivations from the model concerning the dynamic organization of the stream of events, written in terms of the frequency and duration of events and the transitions between pairs of events, are given. Special attention is paid to issues that arise in deciding on the coding of events. It is suggested that the fixed activation time scheduling rule will apply to a wide variety of settings, environmental and behavioral, and this is illustrated by a detailed application of the model to observations on the stream of free behavior.     

Physiological and behavioral concomitants of mild stress: The effects of accuracy of temporal information

Sixty human subjects were exposed to a mild auditory stress after a fixed anticipatory period during which they performed a reaction time task. Suspense subjects were correctly informed of the time of onset of stress; Surprise subjects were told to expect the stress 10 min. later than it actually occurred. Subjects were provided with elapsed time information either automatically or on demand. Suspence subjects showed larger anticipatory electrodermal responses and smaller responses to stress than Surprise subjects but the two groups did not differ in their ratings of the unpleasantness of the stress. Female subjects showed greater anticipatory responses and consistently slower reaction times than males. The data are discussed in terms of explanations of the negative preception effect.     

Habituation,memory, and the evaluative dimension of meaning

Two groups of subjects were exposed to a series of 20 either positively evaluated words (E⁺ group) or negatively evaluated words (E^? group). On the twenty-first trial, half the subjects in E⁺ group (the E^+? group) received a negatively evaluated word while the other half of the subjects received a further positively evaluated word (E⁺⁺ group). A similar subdivision was made with the E^? group to yield E^?+ and E^?? groups. Skin conductance responses to all stimulus words were measured. The responses of the E^+? and E^?+ groups were compared to those of their control groups (E⁺⁺ and E^??) for stimulus words 21 and 22. The results of these analyses, and the data concerning responses prior to stimulus word 21, indicated that subjects habituated to semantic stimuli of the same evaluative meaning. Memory for the words was assessed postexperimentally and its relationship to the orienting response in discussed.