Impact of Behavioral Intention on Effectiveness of Message Features Evidence From the Family Sun Safety Project

The effectiveness of messages with different logical styles might change, regardless of factual content, depending on receiver intent to practice prevention. Predictions based on reactance theory, postdecisional regret, and language expectancy theory were tested in a study altering logical style (inductive versus deductive) and language intensity in messages to parents advocating family sun safety. A prediction that deductively formatted messages would be inferior for parents not intending to act was confirmed in analyses of their reported sun protection, supporting a reactance theory explanation. For parents with mixed intentions to increase protection for themselves or their children, deductive messages were most effective, consistent with postdecisional regret processes. High language intensity enhanced both effects. Reactance effects among nonintenders completely disappeared in a follow-up survey, but language intensity effects remained. The influence of message features varies by stage of progression to action, which has practical implications for tailoring health communication to individual needs.     

Cognitive mechanisms of mindfulness: A test of current models

Existing models of mindfulness describe the self-regulation of attention as primary, leading to enhanced decentering and ability to access and override automatic cognitive processes. This study compared 23 experienced and 21 non-meditators on tests of mindfulness, attention, decentering, and ability to override automatic cognitive processes to test the cognitive mechanisms proposed to underlie mindfulness practice. Experienced meditators had significantly higher mindfulness and decentering than non-meditators. No significant difference between groups was found on measures of attention or ability to override automatic processes. These findings support the prediction that mindfulness leads to enhanced decentering, but do not support the cognitive mechanisms proposed to underlie such enhancement. Since mindfulness practice primarily involves internally directed attention, it may be the case that cognitive tests requiring externally directed attention and timed responses do not accurately assess mindfulness-induced cognitive changes. Implications for the models of mindfulness and future research are discussed.     

Individual social capital and the implementation of entrepreneurial intentions: The case of Russia

The current research hypothesized that individual social capital facilitates the implementation of one's intention to start a business. The research samples were drawn from a sample of 2061 adult respondents: a sub‐sample of 269 adults who stated their intention to start their own business during the next two years (‘intenders’) and a matching sub‐sample of 270 who said they did not intend to do so (‘non‐intenders’). The study shows that the ‘intenders’ possessed greater individual social capital. These resources had a positive indirect impact (through increased perceived behavioural control and attitude) on their intention to start their own business.     

To share or not to share: A theoretically guided investigation of factors predicting intentions to use fully automated shared passenger shuttles

This study applied the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to assess individuals’ intentions to use fully automated shared passenger shuttles when they become publicly available. In addition, perceived trust was assessed to examine the extent to which this variable could account for additional variance in intentions above the TPB constructs of attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control (PBC). Further, and also guided by the TPB, the study explored the differences in behavioural, normative, and control beliefs between individuals who reported high intentions to use automated passenger shuttles in the future (high intenders) and individuals who reported low intentions to use fully automated shared passenger shuttles in the future (low intenders). Participants (N = 438; 64% female) aged between 17 and 84 years (Mage = 35.42 years) were asked to complete an online questionnaire which took approximately 15 min. The findings revealed that attitudes, subjective norms, and PBC were significant positive predictors of intentions to use fully automated shared passenger shuttles when they become publicly available. When perceived trust was added to the hierarchical regression, this variable was shown to account for additional significant variance in intentions above the TPB constructs and was shown to be a significant positive predictor of intentions. Further, the results revealed significant differences in beliefs held by high and low intenders. Specifically, high intenders held significantly more positive beliefs towards fully automated shared passenger shuttles than low intenders. In turn, low intenders held significantly more negative beliefs towards these vehicles than high intenders. Overall, these findings provide support for the utility of the TPB in examining individuals’ intentions to use fully automated shared passenger shuttles when they become publicly available.     

Action Phases and Goal Setting: Being Optimistic After Decision Making Without Getting into Trouble

According to Gollwitzer's mindset theory, people in postdecisional action phases, who are about to implement a chosen action or goal, are supposed to be more optimistic than people in predecisional action phases, who are deliberating on different actions or goals (P. M. Gollwitzer, 1990). The present experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that postdecisional people are optimistic in a way that does not set them up for failure and disappointment. In three experiments it is shown that people who are in an implemental mindset neither set more demanding goals than do deliberative people nor do they inflate their performance predictions. Instead, they are more confident in reaching their goals and more cautious when predicting future performance. This behavior is interpreted in terms of a strategy that allows people to hold optimistic beliefs without facing the danger of exaggerated goal setting or a disconfirmation of their beliefs.     

A Goal‐Priming Approach to Cognitive Consistency: Applications to Judgment

A fundamental criterion of judgment is consistency among beliefs. To augment traditional methods for studying cognitive consistency, we treat it as a goal and present a priming method for increasing its activation. Three studies use three criteria to validate the method: an increase in the biased evaluation of incoming information, speed in a lexical decision task, and participants' direct reports of greater goal activation. The method is then used to verify the role of the consistency goal in three diverse judgment phenomena. Priming cognitive consistency increases the search for postdecisional supporting information (selective exposure to information), the agreement between preference and prediction (the desirability bias or wishful thinking), and the adjustment of a socially unacceptable implicit attitude to conform to the corresponding explicit attitude. One conclusion is that the cause of these phenomena is not only motivated reasoning (driven directionally by a desired outcome) but also the purely cognitive and nondirectional process of simply making beliefs more consistent. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cigarette smoking intentions and physical fitness: a multivariate study of high school males

This study was conducted to determine the extent to which several measures of physical fitness, treated compositely and individually, vary among adolescent males differentiated according to cigarette smoking status (i.e., strong intenders, mild intenders, and nonintenders). A total of 381 high school males were administered The Physical Performance Test for California to measure six traits of physical fitness, and a written questionnaire to assess smoking intentions and demographic data. As hypothesized, the teenage males who reported no intentions of smoking cigarettes were significantly more physically fit than were mild intenders and strong intenders, especially the latter. Etiological factors mediating the association are discussed within an underlying theme of prevention and cessation of the habit.     

Pre- versus postdecisional deliberation and goal commitment: The positive effects of defensiveness

Building on Gollwitzer's (1990) mindset theory of action phases, it is proposed that the effects of assigned balanced deliberation on subsequent goal commitment are moderated by people's pre- versus postdecisional status. A balanced deliberation and impartial assessment of pros and cons is expected to reduce goal commitment in predecisional individuals, whereas a distortion of the assigned balanced deliberation and a partial focus on the pros of goal pursuit should defend and strengthen goal commitment in postdecisional individuals. Indeed, in Study 1, assigned deliberation on the pros and cons of pursuing a focal goal promoted stronger reported goal commitment in participants who had decided to pursue this goal, but reduced goal commitment for people who had not yet made such a decision. In Study 2, the same pattern of results emerged when goal commitment was indicated by planning to act on the goal. Study 3 replicated findings using a different decision status manipulation and goal persistence as a measure of commitment. Finally, results of Study 4 suggested that the increase in commitment produced by defensive postdecisional deliberation is consequential as it was found to drive real-life behavior by promoting goal-directed action. Moreover, Study 2: deliberation effects on subsequent planning activity, Study 3: deliberation effects on goal persistence, Study 4: deliberation effects on real-life behavior explored the underlying process and provided evidence that it is the partial focus on the pros of goal pursuit, meant to defend existing goal commitment, that drives postdecisional deliberation's strengthening effects on goal commitment. Implications for mindset theory, goal commitment theory, and decision making are discussed.     

Repression-sensitization differences in responses to a decision

Repression-sensitization differences in postdecisional dissonance reduction were investigated. Repressors (who typically employ “avoidance” strategies for dealing with threatening stimuli) and sensitizers (who typically “approach” threatening stimuli) were allowed to choose and keep, as payment for participation in the experiment, one of two pairs of long-playing record albums. Control subjects indicated which pair of albums they preferred, but did not expect to keep the albums. Measures of postdecisional intellectualization (an “approach” strategy for dealing with dissonance, which involves separating affect from cognition) showed that experimental sensitizers intellectualized more than subjects in any other group. Measures of postdecisional attitude change, on the other hand, revealed no differences between any of the groups. The implications of these results for our understanding of repression-sensitization differences in responses to a decision were discussed.     

Apples and oranges? Comparing indirect measures of alcohol-related cognition predicting alcohol use in at-risk adolescents.

Recently, there has been increased interest in the role of implicit cognitive processes in the development of addictive behaviors. In this study, the authors compared 3 indirect measures of alcohol-related cognitions in the prospective prediction of alcohol use in at-risk adolescents. Implicit alcohol-related cognitions were assessed in 88 Dutch at-risk adolescents ranging in age from 14 to 20 years (51 males, 37 females) by means of varieties of word association tasks, Implicit Association Tests, and Extrinsic Affective Simon Tasks adapted for alcohol use. Alcohol use and alcohol-related problems were measured with self-report questionnaires at baseline and after 1 month. Results showed that the indirect measures predicted unique variance in prospective alcohol use after controlling for the direct measure of alcohol-related cognitions and background variables. The results indicate that the word association tasks were the best indirect measure of alcohol-related cognitions. These indirect measures appear to assess cognitive motivational processes that affect behavior in ways not reflected by direct measures of alcohol-related cognitions.     

On the Cognitive Benefits of Cultural Experience: Exploring the Relationship between Studying Abroad and Creative Thinking

Drawing from research that shows a positive relationship between multicultural experiences and creative cognition, the present study investigates creative thinking as a possible cognitive benefit gained from studying abroad. The domain generality and specificity of creative thinking is also explored. Undergraduate students completed a general measure and a culture specific measure of creative thinking. Performance on the two creative thinking tasks were compared between students who have studied abroad, students who are planning to study abroad, and students who have not and do not plan to study abroad. Results showed that students who studied abroad outperformed the two groups of students who did not study abroad on both the general and culture specific measures of creative thinking. Findings from this study provide evidence that studying abroad supports complex cognitive processes that underlie creative thinking in culture specific and domain general settings. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Decisions and revisions: the affective forecasting of changeable outcomes

People prefer to make changeable decisions rather than unchangeable decisions because they do not realize that they may be more satisfied with the latter. Photography students believed that having the opportunity to change their minds about which prints to keep would not influence their liking of the prints. However, those who had the opportunity to change their minds liked their prints less than those who did not (Study 1). Although the opportunity to change their minds impaired the postdecisional processes that normally promote satisfaction (Study 2a), most participants wanted to have that opportunity (Study 2b). The results demonstrate that errors in affective forecasting can lead people to behave in ways that do not optimize their happiness and well-being.     

An eye‐tracking study on information processing in risky decisions: Evidence for compensatory strategies based on automatic processes

Many everyday decisions have to be made under risk and can be interpreted as choices between gambles with different outcomes that are realized with specific probabilities. The underlying cognitive processes were investigated by testing six sets of hypotheses concerning choices, decision times, and information search derived from cumulative prospect theory, decision field theory, priority heuristic and parallel constraint satisfaction models. Our participants completed 40 decision tasks of two gambles with two non‐negative outcomes each. Information search was recorded using eye‐tracking technology. Results for choices, decision time, the amount of information searched for, fixation durations, the direction of the information search, and the distribution of fixations conflict with the prediction of the non‐compensatory priority heuristic and indicate that individuals use compensatory strategies. Choice proportions are well in line with the predictions of cumulative prospect theory. Process measures indicate that individuals thereby do not rely on deliberate calculations of weighted sums. Information integration processes seem to be better explained by models that partially rely on automatic processes such as decision field theory or parallel constraint satisfaction models. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding action control of resistance training among adults

BackgroundRegular muscle and bone strengthening activities through resistance training (RT) have been associated with numerous health benefits, particularly as adults age, yet participation is low. Effective promotion is likely founded on an understanding of theory-based correlates, yet almost all RT research has focused on college-aged convenience samples and employed social cognition models, which do not consider the intention-behavior gap. The purpose of this study was to explore RT from the perspective of the multi-process action control (M-PAC) framework in a large Canadian adult sample.MethodCanadian adults (N = 1338) completed M-PAC measures of reflective (instrumental attitude, affective attitude, perceived capability and opportunity), regulatory (planning and self-monitoring), and reflexive (habit, identity) processes as well as intention to engage in RT at baseline and RT behavior two-weeks later.ResultsThree intention-behavior profiles emerged: a) non-intenders who were not active (41.4%), b) unsuccessful intenders who failed to enact their positive intentions (32.9%), and c) successful intenders who engaged in RT (23.5%). A discriminant function analysis (p < .01) showed that instrumental and affective attitude, perceived opportunity and planning/self-monitoring distinguished between all three intention-behavior profiles, while perceived capability predicted the intention-RT profiles of females but not males (p < .01). By comparison, identity was particularly important to younger/middle-aged adults than older females (p < .01), while habit was associated with the intention-RT profiles of older adults but not younger/middle-aged adults (p < .01).ConclusionsThe findings support the importance of considering both intention formation and translation in RT. Behavior change techniques aimed at reflective, regulatory, and reflexive processes appear necessary. Additional considerations of targeting specific constructs by age and sex may maximize the potential effectiveness of RT interventions.     

Information distortion in self-other decision making

In both organizational and social arenas, individuals make decisions for themselves and for other individuals. But research in decision making has provided little input into whether or how these decisions are psychologically different. In this paper, I propose that decisions—depending on whom they are for—vary according to the extent of information distortion, such that, individuals who choose for themselves demonstrate more postdecisional distortion, yet less predecisional distortion than individuals who choose on behalf of others. To test this hypothesis, participants in an experiment made a decision between two restaurants. Attributes about each restaurant were presented sequentially, and preferences were measured following each attribute. As expected, participants who chose for themselves experienced more postdecisional distortion. However, among participants who chose on behalf of others, greater distortion of predecisional attribute information was observed. These findings shed light on the differences in self-other decision making, as well as on research concerning information distortion.     

Selection Tests for Firefighters: A Comprehensive Review and Meta-Analysis

This study reviewed and summarized the literature on the use of written tests in the selection of firefighters using a sample of 13,418 individuals drawn from 101 samples. For the prediction of job performance, cognitive tests showed substantial validity (.42), although mechanical comprehension tests showed even higher validity (.54). However, the best prediction was obtained by tests which were composites of cognitive and mechanical predictors (.56). Training criteria was best predicted by cognitive measures (.77), although mechanical comprehension predictors also showed substantial prediction value (.62). Tests which were composites of cognitive and mechanical measures showed validities equal to that of cognitive measures (.77).     

Inferring causality assessments from predictive responses: cue interaction without cue competition

The authors criticize the use of participants' predictive responses during a learning phase as a measure of causal assessments. Simulations demonstrate that a general aim to minimize error as required in the prediction task will produce results in accordance with those observed, in particular apparent cue interaction effects. It is argued that measures estimated from prediction responses do not reflect causal ratings, but are side-effects of learning explained by adaptation in strategy to changes in presented cell frequencies. The results are reinterpreted to be in line with a causal model view, not requiring dual processes or cue competition of lower level associative processes.     

Beyond Stages of Change: Multi-Determinant Continuum Models of Action Readiness and Menu-Based Interventions

The merits of modelling action readiness as a series of stages is discussed, focusing on the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) which postulates a motivational stage (for non‐intenders) and a volitional stage (for intenders). The HAPA helpfully clarifies that the relationship between self‐efficacy and action may be different for inexperienced intenders and experienced actors. This model also usefully distinguishes between different types of planning undertaken by intenders and it is suggested that further specification of planning tasks could explain why some intenders act while others do not. Despite the advantages of the HAPA, it is argued that the distinction between intenders and non‐intenders is fuzzy and unstable and that demarcation of the stage boundary is arbitrary. A multi‐determinant, multi‐goal continuum approach is recommended. Such modelling recognises graded discontinuities throughout the development of action readiness from attitude formation to behaviour change maintenance. It is argued that menu‐based interventions designed to deliver different messages and materials to people with different action‐readiness deficits may be more cost effective than stage‐tailored interventions. On discute de l’intérêt qu’il y a de modéliser la préparation à l’action en une série de stades à partir de l’Approche des Processus d’Action en faveur de la Santé (HAPA) qui pose l’existence d’une phase motivationnelle (pour ceux qui n’ont pas l’intention d’agir) et d’une phase volitionnelle (pour ceux qui l’ont). L’HAPA met utilement en évidence que la relation entre l’auto‐efficience et l’action peut différer selon que l’on a affaire à un acteur expérimenté ou à une personne sans expérience qui pense agir. Ce modèle fait aussi une distinction utile entre les différentes sortes de planification qui s’offrent à ceux qui ont l’intention d’agir et laisse entendre qu’un approfondissement de la planification des tâches pourrait expliquer pourquoi certains passent à l’action et d’autres pas. En dépit de l’intérêt de l’HAPA, on peut penser que la distinction entre l’intention et l’absence d’intention est floue et instable et que le découpage en stades est arbitraire. On recommande une approche retenant un continuum à déterminants et à buts multiples. Cette modélisation reconnaît l’existence de discontinuités échelonnées tout au long du développement de la préparation à l’action depuis la formation de l’attitude jusqu’au changement effectif du comportement. On défend l’idée que les interventions à la carte conçues pour procurer différents messages et fournitures aux gens qui présentent différentes carences de préparation à l’action peuvent être plus rentables que les interventions basées sur les stades.     

Cognitive Enhancement and Academic Misconduct: A Study Exploring Their Frequency and Relationship

We investigated the acceptability and use frequency of cognitive enhancement medication and three different types of academic misconduct (plagiarism, cheating, and falsifying/fabricating data). Data collected from a web-based survey of German university students were used in our analysis. Moral acceptability of cognitive enhancers was relatively low and moderate for academic misconduct. The correlation between these measures was moderately weak. The use frequency of cognitive enhancers was lower than for academic misconduct and was (very) lightly correlated with the occurrences of reported plagiarism and fabrication/falsification. A higher acceptability of each act was associated with a higher use frequency of each act.     

Argument structure, argument content, and cognitive change in children's peer interaction

In this experimental study, the author examined whether children's conversations play a role in the processes of influence between peers. Children, aged 8 to 10 years, who were at different levels of moral development participated. The conversations of 120 children were coded and analyzed in terms of argument structure and content. Results indicated that the differences in structure between boys' and girls' arguments are stylistic and do not influence conversation outcomes. The children's use of the structural features of conversations suggested that when a more advanced position is adopted, the arguments themselves appear to inspire cognitive change. However, when a less advanced position is adopted, the children who influence their peers invoke a particular and insistent conversational style. Results are discussed in terms of transmission and constructivist accounts of the role of social interaction in cognitive development.