The analysis of intuition: Processing fluency and affect in judgements of semantic coherence

In semantic coherence judgements individuals are able to intuitively discriminate whether a word triad has a common remote associate (coherent) or not (incoherent) without consciously retrieving the common associate. A processing-fluency account for these intuitions is proposed, which assumes that (a) coherent triads are processed more fluently than incoherent triads, (b) this high fluency triggers a subtle positive affect, and (c) this affect may be experienced as a cognitive feeling and used in explicit judgement. In line with this account, it was shown that coherent triads (a) are processed faster than incoherent triads (Study 1), (b) serve as positive affective primes (Study 2), and (c) are liked more than incoherent triads (Study 3). When participants were provided with an irrelevant source of their affective reactions, they lost the ability to intuitively discriminate between coherent and incoherent triads (Study 4). Finally, an item-based analysis found that triads that are processed faster are liked more and are more likely to be judged coherent, irrespective of their actual coherence (Study 5).     

Scanning the "Fringe" of consciousness: what is felt and what is not felt in intuitions about semantic coherence

In intuitions concerning semantic coherence participants are able to discriminate above chance whether a word triad has a common remote associate (coherent triad) or not (incoherent triad). These intuitions are driven by increased fluency in processing coherent triads compared to incoherent triads, which in turn triggers a brief and short positive affect. The present work investigates which of these internal cues, fluency or positive affect, is the actual cue underlying coherence intuitions. In Experiment 1, participants liked coherent word triads more than incoherent triads, but did not rate them as being more fluent in processing. In Experiment 2, participants could intuitively detect coherence when they misattributed fluency to an external source, but lost this intuitive ability when they misattributed affect. It is concluded that the coherence-induced fluency by itself is not consciously experienced and not used in the coherence intuitions, but the fluency-triggered affective consequences.     

A Comparison of the Original and Revised Stanford-Binet Scales

Empirical evidence has abundantly demonstrated that people report an intermediate level of tension for triadic interpersonal relations of the classical Heiderian P-O-X type, when the P/O link is negative. Low tension is found in balanced triads and high tension in imbalanced ones when the P/O bond is positive. This paper postulates that the opposing forces of balance and of agreement found in all four P-O-X triads in which the P/O bond is negative, in addition to Newcomb's lack of engagement hypothesis, may also account for the intermediate level of tension found in practically all experiments in this area. Subjects were grouped as Hi and Lo Conformists according to the C Scale of the Comrey Personality Scales, and later asked to rate hypothetical triads with a negative P/O bond. The results confirmed the hypotheses that Hi Conformists, who supposedly value agreement with others more than Lo Conformists (or are less bothered by disagreement than the latter), report significantly less tension and less willingness to change P-O-X triads with agreement than those with disagreement, when such triads have a negative P/O bond.     

A note on the use of triads for paired comparisons

When scaling a large number of stimuli from comparative judgments, considerable savings in time and labor may be realized if stimuli are presented in triad form rather than in pairs. If, forN stimuli, the proper configuration of triads can be assembled so that all possible pairs appear once, the paired judgment matrix may be reproduced with one-third fewer judgments and two-thirds fewer presentations than would be required with complete pairing. A simple procedure is described for enumerating triad configurations for whichN is an odd multiple of three.     

Cognitive consistency and the formation of interpersonal attitudes: Cognitive balance affects the encoding of social information

Three studies investigated the role of cognitive balance in the formation of interpersonal attitudes. Experiment 1 found evidence for balanced triads when participants first formed an attitude about one person, and then learned about this person’s sentiments about another individual. Interestingly, balanced triads were obtained for both explicitly and implicitly assessed attitudes. Experiment 2 indicated that the pattern of interpersonal relations does not result in balanced triads, when participants first learn about the relationship between two neutral individuals, and then receive evaluative information about one of the two individuals. In this case, observed sentiments and evaluative information affected attitudes in an additive rather than interactive manner. Experiment 3 replicated these findings by manipulating valence, observed sentiments, and order of information acquisition in a single study. Taken together, these results suggest that cognitive balance influences the encoding of social information, rather than the retroactive construal of evaluative judgments.     

Cognitive triad: Relationship to depressive symptoms,parents' cognitive triad,and perceived parental messages

Evaluating the relationship between children's depressogenic thinking, children's depressive symptoms, parents' depressogenic thinking, and perceived parental messages about the self, world, and future was the primary objective of this investigation. Children (n =133) from grades 4 to 7 completed measures of depression and anxiety, including a semistructured clinical interview, a measure of their cognitive triad, and a measure of perceived parental messages about the self, world, and future. Mothers (n =112) and fathers (n =95) completed a measure of their own cognitive triad. Results of a series of regression analyses revealed that (1) children's views of self, world, and future (cognitive triad) are related to severity of depression; (2) mothers' but not fathers' cognitive triads are related to their children's cognitive triads; (3) perceived parental messages to the children about the self, world, and future are predictive of the children's cognitive triads and ratings of depression; and (4) the relationship between perceived parental messages and depression is completely mediated by children's cognitive triads. Analyses of covariance indicated that the obtained mediational relationship between children's views of self, world, and future, perceived parental messages, and children's depressive symptoms was specific to depressive versus anxious symptomatology. Impfications for existing theory and research are discussed.     

Balance Theory Applied to Service Quality: A Focus on the Organization, Provider, and Consumer Triad

As quality experts have focused primarily on manufacturing, theoretical frameworks for examining quality in the service sector are lacking. In order to fill this gap, Heider's (1958) balance theory is applied to explain how service organization, service provider, and consumer interrelationships influence service quality. Propositions are offered pertaining to: (a) how and why positive or negative relationships among the parties in this triad are developed, and (b) the consequences of these relationships on service quality, affective outcomes, and withdrawal behaviors. Examination of the service triangle within this framework can enhance understanding of quality service delivery and guide future research efforts in the continuous improvement domain.     

Causal relations and feature similarity in children's inductive reasoning

Four experiments examined the development of property induction on the basis of causal relations. In the first 2 studies, 5-year-olds, 8-year-olds, and adults were presented with triads in which a target instance was equally similar to 2 inductive bases but shared a causal antecedent feature with 1 of them. All 3 age groups used causal relations as a basis for property induction, although the proportion of causal inferences increased with age. Subsequent experiments pitted causal relations against featural similarity in induction. It was found that adults and 8-year-olds, but not 5-year-olds, preferred shared causal relations over strong featural similarity as a basis for induction. The implications for models of inductive reasoning and development are discussed.     

A New Approach To The Identification Of Cognitive Conflicts In The Repertory Grid: An Illustrative Case Study

The concept of cognitive conflicts and its relation to the success of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy are discussed. According to this model of therapy, patients should achieve insight into their conscious as well as unconscious conflicts. Therefore in the present study we assumed that demonstrable cognitive changes would occur over treatment for chronic pain, as measured by Kelly's (1955) Repertory Grid Test. Grids were analyzed with regard to conflicts on the basis of the concept of unbalanced triads. A triad may be described as unbalanced when logical inconsistencies can be demonstrated on the basis of a correlative comparison of three corresponding construct pairs. Construct systems were checked for unbalanced triads by means of a new computer program derived by the authors. A case study serves to demonstrate the possibilities for analysis and interpretation of unbalanced triads offered by this novel method. Results indicate that cognitive restructuring had indeed taken place during therapy and had decreased the relative number of cognitive conflicts.     

Virginia Satir's Triad Theory for Couples Therapy

SUMMARY

Virginia Satir's understanding of the fundamental building block of all human relationships, the triad, surpassed that of her colleagues. She went beyond their themes of conflict, opposition and pathology to emphasize the positive, constructive and nurturing potential of every human triadic interaction. Couples therapy is a triad and the author focuses on this specific context to illustrate some of the rich and varied uses of Satir s theory of triads.     

Pitch interactions in the perception of isolated musical triads

In previous work done in our laboratory, we have investigated the perceived pitch class of isolated musical triads. We have found that as the amount of musical training increased, listeners perceptions progress, from very confused percepts of pitch class, to analytic percepts corresponding to the pitch class of the highest note in the triad, and finally to synthetic percepts corresponding to the root note for the more harmonic triad types. In the present work, we used a pitch matching technique to determine the actual pitch, rather than merely the pitch class, perceived when listeners analytically "hear out" a particular note in a major triad. There was a strong tendency for the pitch of the analytically perceived note to be displaced by as much as 60 cents in the direction of the other notes in the triad. The magnitude of this effect decreased as musical training increased, and it was also affected by the relative salience of the individual triad notes. These results have implications for the mechanism of triad perception, and for claims regarding the harmonic equivalence of triad inversions.     

Implicit Transfer of Reversed Temporal Structure in Visuomotor Sequence Learning

Some spatio‐temporal structures are easier to transfer implicitly in sequential learning. In this study, we investigated whether the consistent reversal of triads of learned components would support the implicit transfer of their temporal structure in visuomotor sequence learning. A triad comprised three sequential button presses ([1][2][3]) and seven consecutive triads comprised a sequence. Participants learned sequences by trial and error, until they could complete it 20 times without error. Then, they learned another sequence, in which each triad was reversed ([3][2][1]), partially reversed ([2][1][3]), or switched so as not to overlap with the other conditions ([2][3][1] or [3][1][2]). Even when the participants did not notice the alternation rule, the consistent reversal of the temporal structure of each triad led to better implicit transfer; this was confirmed in a subsequent experiment. These results suggest that the implicit transfer of the temporal structure of a learned sequence can be influenced by both the structure and consistency of the change.     

Relations among categorization, induction, recognition, and similarity: comment on Sloutsky and Fisher (2004)

V. M. Sloutsky and A. V. Fisher reported 5 experiments documenting relations among categorization, induction, recognition, and similarity in children as well as adults and proposed a new model of induction, SINC (similarity, induction, categorization). Those authors concluded that induction depends on perceptual similarity rather than conceptual knowledge. Despite the useful contributions of this work, there are some important limitations. The experimental designs examined a limited range of phenomena that are not the most revealing about the use of nonperceptual information. The main results involved a simple triad task, for which the SINC model's predictions are equivalent to the predictions of previous models of inductive reasoning. It is also unclear whether the SINC model can account for the observed relations between similarity and recognition. Implications for future work on induction and related cognitive activities are discussed.     

Some models of balance applied to children's perceptions of international relations

Data obtained from four national samples of 6–11 year old children are presented, showing preference for four countries, perceived friendship of these countries with the subject's own country and perceived relationships among the target-countries. Two quantitative analogues of Heider's balance theory are used to examine the relations between these sets of data, one employing a multiplicative and the other a distance approach. Both models were found to fit the data adequately, further research being needed to discriminate between them. An explanation in terms of ‘ethnocentric correspondence’ is given to explain why prediction is noticeably better for British and Austrian than for Belgian and Greek samples.     

Arendt,Augustine And Evil

The publication of Hannah Arendt's doctoral these Love and Saint Augustine forces reappraisal of the view that Arendt's concept of evil originates in her experience of totalitarianism and coverage of the Eichmann trial. Augustine's account of the original nature of evil in the contexts of ontology, society and divine providence in fact provides the basis for Arendt's analysis of the banality of evil in the individual, the social, and the political spheres. Augustine's internal and external mental triads moreover contribute to Arendt's own thinking‐willing‐judging triad and allow a clearer understanding of its dynamics. The fact that Arendt's analysis derives much of its power from her appropriation of Augustinian theological concepts suggests a need for the increased diffusion of theological concepts in political thought.     

Social cliques as mental models

The present research investigates how a mental model derived from patterns of sentiment relations (mental clique model) interacts with social background information (membership in social categories). Testing memory for a set of sentiment relations, the data support the assumption that a strongly polarizing categorization interferes with a mental clique model derived from the learning of these sentiment relations. Such interference was claimed to occur whenever sentiment implications from the social categorization would contradict information contained in the mental clique model. In line with this reasoning, balanced triads were selectively impaired in memory as opposed to relations from unbalanced triads which did not allow construction of any clique model and which were not influenced by category interference.     

Politicized collective identity. A social psychological analysis

This article develops a social psychological model of politicized collective identity that revolves around 3 conceptual triads. The 1st triad consists of collective identity, the struggle between groups for power, and the wider societal context. It is proposed that people evince politicized collective identity to the extent that they engage as self-conscious group members in a power struggle on behalf of their group knowing that it is the more inclusive societal context in which this struggle has to be fought out. Next, 3 antecedent stages leading to politicized collective identity are distinguished: awareness of shared grievances, adversarial attributions, and involvement of society at large. This sequence culminates in the final triad because the intergroup power struggle is eventually triangulated by involving society at large or representatives thereof. Consequences of politicized collective identity are discussed.     

Perceptual integrality of major chord components

In the present study, an accuracy, rather than a reaction time, version of the Garner paradigm was used to evaluate the integrality or separability of major chord components. Tuned (prototype, or P) and mistuned (nonprototype, or NP) sets of root position C-major triads were constructed by holding the C constant in all stimuli and varying the E and G frequencies in 2- and 4-Hz steps. The P stimuli represent small systematic mistunings in the E and G notes relative to an equal-tempered C-major chord. The NP stimuli represent an equivalent range of frequency variation, but relative to a significantly out-of-tune C-major triad. In different experimental sessions, asame-different (AX) task was used to separately evaluate discrimination performance for the E and G frequencies as a function of whether the nontarget frequency (G or E) was fixed or varied in either a correlated or an orthogonal fashion (with the C frequency always held constant). Compared with a fixed baseline condition where only the target frequency changed, both chord components exhibited a significant redundancy gain in the correlated conditions and, to varying degrees, significant interference effects in the orthogonal condition, indicating that the chord components function largely in an integral fashion. Relative to the discrimination of G, discrimination of the E frequency was less influenced by variation in the nontarget (G) frequency, showing that attention, to some degree, could be selectively allocated to the E chord component. In addition, the results were consistent with previous findings that the functional prototype for the major chord category seems to act as a perceptual anchor, rather than as a magnet, and appears to be located in the physiologically defined area of just temperament, as opposed to the more experientially defined area ofequal temperament.     

Parents Don’t (Always) Know Their Children Have Been Bullied: Child‐Parent Discrepancy on Bullying and Family‐Level Profile of Communication Standards

Discrepancy between bullied victims’ experience and their parents’ understanding indicates underutilization of family support system, and thus presents an important risk factor. An online survey (N = 300 child‐father‐mother triads) was conducted to establish a framework that helps distinguish families with different child‐parent discrepancy levels. This family‐level variability was modeled by profiling child‐father‐mother triad’s family communication standard (FCS) orientations. This “FCS profile” indeed distinguished families with different levels of discrepancies. Further, SEM analyses revealed that those discrepancies presented a distinct risk factor vis‐à‐vis effects of bullying reports per se. Finally, FCS profile had an indirect association with victims’ well‐being via mediation by child‐parent discrepancy. These findings are discussed with regard to the role of family communication in bullied individuals’ coping processes.     

A comparison of the effects of formal similarity among trigrams and among word triads

The central question of this report concerned the role of formal similarity in free recall of lists of trigrams and lists of three-letter word triads. Similarity was manipulated among trigrams by duplicating letters and among triads by duplicating words. An initial study showed that lists of 16 letters were learned more rapidly than a list of 16 three-letter words. Therefore, in the major experiment, the Ss were given all appropriate elements on test trials so that only associative learning was required. Increases in formal similarity caused decreases in rate of learning for both types of lists, and the mechanisms of the interference seemed to be the same for both types of lists, However, the learning of the trigram lists was more rapid than the learning of the triad lists, the difference being maximal with low similarity.