Where did you park your car? Analysis of a naturalistic long-term recency effect

Abstract

Three experiments studied the long-term retention of parking locations. In Experiment 1, members of the Applied Psychology Unit (MU) attempted to recall where they had parked during the morning and afternoon of each of the previous 12 working days. A marked recency effect was observed. In Experiment 2, members of the APU Subject Panel were invited for a single test session, and asked where they had parked after a delay of 2 hours, 1 week or 1 month. Recall was excellent and did not differ as a function of delay, allowing a simple trace decay interpretation to be ruled out. A third experiment invited subjects to attend on two occasions separated by a 2-week interval. The subjects were then required to recall their parking locations some 4 weeks after either their first visit or their second visit. Performance in both groups was inferior to that observed in Experiment 2, and declined over time. A temporal discrimination model, based on laboratory studies of both long-term and short-term recency in free recall, offers a plausible explanation of our results.     

The rule of reality and the reality of the rule (on Soviet ideology and its “shift”)

Studies in East European Thought - The present article is a critical engagement with Aleksei Yurchak’s Everything Was Forever until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. It contends...     

The effects of emotion on younger and older adults’ monitoring of learning

Age-related differences in memory monitoring appear when people learn emotional words. Namely, younger adults’ judgments of learning (JOLs) are higher for positive than neutral words, whereas older adults’ JOLs do not discriminate between positive versus neutral words. In two experiments, we evaluated whether this age-related difference extends to learning positive versus neutral pictures. We also evaluated the contribution of two dimensions of emotion that may impact younger and older adults’ JOLs: valence and arousal. Younger and older adults studied pictures that were positive or neutral and either high or low in arousal. Participants made immediate JOLs and completed memory tests. In both experiments, the magnitude of older adults’ JOLs was influenced by emotion, and both younger and older adults demonstrated an emotional salience effect on JOLs. As important, the magnitude of participants’ JOLs was influenced by valence, and not arousal. Emotional salience effects were also evident on participants’ free recall, and older adults recalled as many pictures as did younger adults. Taken together, these data suggest that older adults do not have a monitoring deficit when learning positive (vs. neutral) pictures and that emotional salience effects on younger and older adults’ JOLs are produced more by valence than by arousal.     

Will the real grandmother please stand up? The psychological reality of dual meaning representations

Two types of meaning representation are described, symptom and criterion, and it is argued that both have psychological status in mental representations of kinship terms. Certain symptoms, such as old age and biofocals for grandmothers, are likely indicators of grandmotherhood, but they do not reliably pick out all positive instances, nor do they indicate negative ones. Criteria specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for grandmotherhood: having a grandchild. The psychological reality of these two representations was demonstrated by asking children and adults to select kin-term exemplars from pictures in which both age and reciprocal kin symptoms are displayed, and to justify their selections. In both tasks, there was change with age away from using typical age as the sole basis for performance; older subjects selected pictures displaying reciprocal kin, and justified their choices by referring to the criterion. More important, at each age level, there was evidence for dual representation: Even subjects who selected pictures based on the age symptom often gave criterial justifications, and subjects who selected pictures based on the reciprocal kin symptom still preferred pictures displaying age symptoms in addition to the reciprocal kin.     

Flattery will get you somewhere,sometimes? The effect of flattery and hotel segments on a hotel guests' green behavior

Considering the importance of the hotel guests' behavioral support for the hotels' green corporate social responsibility (CSR), this research examined the persuasive power of flattery in promoting guests' green behaviors. Study 1 revealed that a flattery message significantly increased the hotel guests' towel reuse intentions during their stay and this effect was mediated by their perceptions of the hotel's CSR motives. Study 2 further showed that a feeling of guilt served as another key mediator in the relationship between a flattery message and the guests' responses (i.e., perceived CSR motives, hotel image, attitudes toward a hotel, towel reuse intentions), which was moderated by hotel segment (economy vs. mid-priced vs. luxury). This research provides meaningful insights into the understanding of the consumers' pro-environmental decisions in the service consumption context and explains the underlying cognitive process. Moreover, this research offers an empirical message strategy by hotel segments to effectively promote the hotel guests' green behavior and achieve successful marketing outcomes.     

The homophily and centrality of LGBQ youth: A new story?

Social Psychology of Education - The social acceptance of LGBQ individuals changed dramatically over the past several decades, which calls into question extant research suggesting that LGBQ youth...     

When's your birthday? The self‐reference effect in retrieval of dates

Material encoded with reference to the self is better remembered. One interpretation of this effect is that the self operates to organise retrieval of memories. We were motivated to find out whether this organisational principle extended to everyday information and for material not explicitly related to the self. Participants generated friends' birthdays from memory and then gave their own birthday. We found that participants were particularly likely to recall birthdays from on or around the date of their own birthday. Thus, memory for birthdays clusters around self‐relevant information, even when there is no specific attempt to recall self‐related material. Birthdays clustered somewhat around the time of testing, important dates in the calendar, and for a close other, but not to the extent of the participants' birthdays. We suggest this is a demonstration of the organisational structure of the self in memory. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of laughter on discomfort thresholds: does expectation become reality?

Distraction and relaxation have been controlled in previous studies as possible mechanisms for the effectiveness of mirthful laughter in coping with pain and discomfort. The purpose of this study is to control expectation of benefit from laughter. Discomfort thresholds for a blood pressure cuff at the upper dominant arm were recorded immediately before and after exposure to either a humorous or a relaxation video. Instructional sets led participants to believe that the video would either increase or decrease their sensitivity to discomfort. A 5th group watched the humorous video without manipulation of expectation. All participants completed A. Ziv's (1979) Sense of Humor Questionnaire (SHQZ). Humor and relaxation videos raised discomfort thresholds, and the effect of both video types was enhanced by expectations. Humorous personality trait (SHQZ) did not moderate effects. The larger issue of whether mirthful laughter has any unique benefit for pain or discomfort control beyond the effects of relaxation, distraction, or expectation is discussed.     

When is your partner willing to help you? The role of daily goal conflict and perceived gratitude

Motivation to provide help might vary from day-to-day. Previous research showed that autonomously motivated help (i.e., helping because you enjoy/value this behavior), compared with controlled motivated help (i.e., helping because you feel you should do so), has beneficial effects for both the help provider and recipient. In a sample of chronic pain patients and partners (N?=?64 dyads), this diary study examined whether (1) same- and prior day perceived gratitude (i.e., received appreciation for providing support) in partners and (2) same- and prior day goal conflicts in partners (i.e., amount of interference between helping one’s partner in pain and other goals) predicted partners’ helping motivation. Partners provided more autonomously motivated help on days that they perceived more gratitude from their partner and when they experienced less goal conflicts. Lagged analyses indicated that perceived gratitude (but not goal conflict) even predicted an increase in autonomous helping motivation the next day. Implications are discussed in the context of Self-Determination Theory.     

Friendly or just polite? The effect of self-esteem on attributions

Studied the effect of a person's self-esteem on his inferences about another person's feelings toward him. Fifty-six mule and female college student subjects of high or low chronic self-esteem (median split; modified version of Janis and Field's ‘Feelings of Inadequacy Scale’) received either a negative or a positive evaluation of themselves. They were told that the evaluation had been written by another subject who had acted either under ‘sincere’ instructions, which allowed him to give his own opinion, or under ‘role-playing’ instructions, which assigned him to write either a positive or a negative evaluation. The subject's take was to decide under which instruction his evaluation had been written. It was predicted from a self-concistency logic that low self-esteem subjects would attribute negative evaluations to ‘sincere’ and positive evaluations to ‘role-playing’ instructions, while high self-esteem subjects would make the reverse attributions. A significant self-esteem × evaluation positivity interaction (p <.01) supported this prediction.     

Whatever? The effect of social exclusion on adopting persuasive messages

The aversive state of social exclusion can result in a broad range of cognitive deficits. Being unable or unmotivated to process relevant information, we assumed that social exclusion would also affect the success of persuasive attempts. We hypothesized that socially excluded people would adopt attitudes regardless of persuasion quality. In three studies using different manipulations of social exclusion and persuasion, we showed that participants who were socially excluded adopted persuasive messages regardless of argument quality. In contrast, this undifferentiated response was not shown by socially included participants who were more persuaded by high- compared to low-quality arguments. In Study 3, we moreover revealed that this pattern could only be replicated in reliable situations—that is, when the communicator appeared credible. These findings support the assumption that social exclusion can lead to reduced processing of information.     

Hard to decide? The effect of imagery perspective and construal level on decision difficulty

This research designed three experiments to investigate the mechanism of how imagery perspective influences decision difficulty, which increases consumers' willingness to postpone making choices based on the construal level. Studies 1, 2, and 3 demonstrated that imagining from the actor's perspective lowers one's construal level, and thus leads to greater decision difficulty and willingness to postpone making choices. In comparison, those taking the observer perspective represent things at higher construal levels and have less difficulty making decisions or willingness to postpone making choices. Moreover, the derived results showed the need for cognition to moderate the relationship between imagery perspective and construal level. The findings herein extended the physical buying situation to online consumption, providing implications for marketers to further explore consumer behavior.     

Which cheek to turn? The effect of gender and emotional expressivity on posing behavior

Nicholls et al. (1999, Proc. Royal Soc. B, 266, 1517-1522) demonstrated that models turn their left or right cheeks when expressing or concealing emotion, respectively. This study examined whether emotionally expressive individuals are more likely to turn their left cheek when posing for a photograph than less emotionally expressive individuals. One hundred twenty-four normal participants completed an Emotional Expressivity Scale (EES) and posed for a photograph. Females had a higher EES than males and there was a trend for left cheek posers to have a higher EES than right cheek posers. Females were more likely to turn their left cheek than were males. Results support our argument that emotionally expressive individuals turn their left cheek when posing. The higher incidence of leftward poses in females than males may reflect the higher EES for females. These results support the proposition that the leftward bias in painted portraits is related to a desire to capture the emotive qualities of the left side of the face.     

Who do you trust? The impact of facial emotion and behaviour on decision making

During social interactions, we use available information to guide our decisions, including behaviour and emotional displays. In some situations, behaviour and emotional displays may be incongruent, complicating decision making. This study had two main aims: first, to investigate the independent contributions of behaviour and facial displays of emotion on decisions to trust, and, second, to examine what happens when the information being signalled by a facial display is incongruent with behaviour. Participants played a modified version of the Trust Game in which they learned simulated players’ behaviour with or without concurrent displays of facial emotion. Results indicated that displays of anger, but not happiness, influenced decisions to trust during initial encounters. Over the course of repeated interactions, however, emotional displays consistent with an established pattern of behaviour made independent contributions to decision making, strengthening decisions to trust. When facial display and behaviour were incongruent, participants used current behaviour to inform decision making.     

Do you see what I see? The effect of members’ cognitive styles on team processes and errors in task execution

This research investigates the effect of members’ cognitive styles on team processes that affect errors in execution tasks. In two laboratory studies, we investigated how a team’s composition (members’ cognitive styles related to object and spatial visualization) affects the team’s strategic focus and strategic consensus, and how those affect the team’s commission of errors. Study 1, conducted with 70 dyads performing a navigation and identification task, established that teams high in spatial visualization are more process-focused than teams high in object visualization. Process focus, which pertains to a team’s attention to the details of conducting a task, is associated with fewer errors. Study 2, conducted with 64 teams performing a building task, established that heterogeneity in cognitive style is negatively associated with the formation of a strategic consensus, which has a direct and mediating relationship with errors.     

Do your high potentials have potential? The impact of individual differences and designation on leader success

We propose an integrated model of leadership potential, the high‐potential designation process, and leader success that is intended to clarify the theoretical and practical relationships among these concepts. Drawing on research in the areas of social judgment and cognition, cognitive abilities, personality, leadership development, and motivation and on practice‐oriented observations and writings, we propose a process model of potential, the designation of individuals as high potential, and the antecedent and moderating variables that combine to impact success. We conclude that by using this model we can understand better the individual, social, and organizational factors that impact potential and the high‐potential identification process, and help develop more successful leaders and organizations.     

Claiming best or better? The effect of target brand's and competitor's puffery on holistic and analytic thinkers

Previous empirical studies have yielded contradictory results about how consumers react to puffed claims in advertisements. This study addresses this issue by considering how consumers' thinking style and competitors' puffery interact to influence consumers' brand attitude in terms of product puffery. Drawing upon experiments using fictitious and real brand names, three studies provide converging evidence that holistic thinkers will form a more positive brand attitude when exposed to the target brand's low‐puffery (vs. no puffery or high puffery) claims. In contrast, analytic thinkers are less sensitive to puffery, and their brand attitude will not change. Further, holistic thinkers are more sensitive to the presence of competitor's puffery. Holistic thinkers exposed to competitor's high‐puffery (vs. low) claims form a more positive brand attitude toward the target brand. For analytic thinkers, competitor's puffery level will not significantly affect their attitude toward the target brand. Our findings shed fresh light on the inconclusive results of prior studies and offer practical implications for marketing puffery.     

The effect of S− on observing behavior

Eight pigeons were run on a one-key, discrete-trials observing procedure. Pecks during a trial produced S⁺ and S^?, colored key lights which signalled whether the trial would end with response-independent grain reinforcement or nonreinforcement. S⁺ and S^? were produced on a VI schedule which began operating at the onset of the trial. In the main experimental condition, only a response preceded by at least 6 sec of nonresponding could produce S^? on nonreinforced trials; any response which satisfied the VI requirement produced S⁺ on reinforced trials. This procedure allowed the birds to produce S⁺ on reinforced trials with or without producing S^? on nonreinforced trials. The subjects learned to produce fewer S^?s over sessions, indicating that S^? had a punishing effect on observing. The results were taken as evidence for the conditioned reinforcement hypothesis of observing and against the uncertainty reduction hypothesis.