Active and passive observers' attraction to a self-disclosing other

Active observer (participant) subjects were induced to make either a high or a low intimacy disclosure about themselves to a partner. Their (videotaped confederate) partner then disclosed either intimately or non-intimately in return. The impressions and attributions of these subjects were compared to the predictions of passive observer subjects (non-participants) who were each furnished with the original instructions, heard a tape recording of a different active observer's disclosure, and watched the same videotape of the confederate that person had seen. As expected, both active observers' responses and passive observers' predictions indicated a preference for the intimate partner. In addition, passive observers' attraction predictions were less positive than active observers' reports. But contrary to the hypotheses, passive observers predicted that active observers would attribute the partner's disclosure more to personalistic causes than was actually the case, and guessed inaccurately that active observers would interpret the partner's intimacy as an indicator of attraction. The methodological implications of these active-passive observer differences for research in self-disclosure and relationships are discussed.     

The impact of neighborhoods and schools on young people’s occupational aspirations

In this paper we examine young Germans’ occupational aspirations and the significance of neighborhoods and schools in explaining these aspirations. We aim to show (i) which of the two contexts is more significant in this regard and (ii) by which mechanisms characteristics of these contexts become relevant for youths’ actions or, more precisely, anticipated actions. We conduct our analyses by means of multilevel models. Merging data from Germany’s National Educational Panel Study on 9th grade students with micro-geographic data on residential quarters allows us to consider characteristics of the micro- as well as the meso- and macro-levels. The results show that the school context is considerably more influential on young people’s aspirations than the neighborhoods where they live. This probably reflects the selection of young people into different school types that is characteristic of Germany, a country with a highly stratified school system. Schools do not only shape youths’ career expectations; they are also important places of secondary socialization in that they have an impact on youths’ preferences for particular occupations. Furthermore, we found evidence that the social pressure to aspire high status occupations varies by social composition of the school as well as of the neighborhood context; the effect of neighborhoods, however, is rather weak.     

Moral Luck and Liability Lotteries

Adversaries of Moral Luck (AMLs) are at pains to explain why wrongdoers are liable to bear burdens (punishment, compensation etc.) which are related to the harm they cause, because the consequences of what we do are a matter of luck. One attempt to solve this problem suggests that wrongdoers who cause more harm are liable to bear a greater burden not because they are more blameworthy but rather because they get the short straw in a liability lottery (represented by the apparently indeterminate causal process). In this paper I argue that this attempt fails on several grounds. Apart from the fact that it is hard to see how the implementation of liability lotteries can be motivated and the fact that such scheme presupposes a political order (whereas the notion of liability does not seem to presuppose one), detaching liability from the outcomes of a culpable action undermines whichever justifications there were for imposing liability in the first place. Moreover, relying on the determination of the causal process as a good indication of the wrongdoer’s degree of culpability is mistaken, because the luck brought about through the causal process is not necessarily the only element involved in cases of harmful conduct which lies beyond the wrongdoers’ control.     

Portrait of a narcissist: Manifestations of narcissism in physical appearance

Narcissism is characterized in part by an acute concern for one’s appearance. Despite this fundamental aspect of narcissism, little is known about whether narcissism is manifested in features of physical appearance. Can you tell if someone is narcissistic just by looking at them? Our results indicate that snap judgments of narcissism based on full-body photographs are at least as accurate as snap judgments of any of the big five personality traits. Narcissists are more likely to wear expensive, flashy clothing, have an organized, neat appearance requiring a lot of preparation, and (in females) wear makeup and show cleavage. Furthermore, observers’ judgments correlate with the presence of these cues, suggesting that they are drawing on the correct information when making their judgments. Finally, observers’ judgments are associated with three of the four facets of narcissism and capture the unique constellation of personality traits typical of narcissists (i.e., high extraversion and low agreeableness). These findings suggest that physical appearance reflects narcissists’ personality, preoccupation with good looks, and desire to be the center of attention, and serves as a vehicle with which to promote their status.     

The devil you know: the effects of identifiability on punishment

Prior research has confirmed Thomas Schelling's observation that people are more sympathetic and hence generous toward specific identified victims than toward “statistical” victims who are yet to be identified. In the study presented in this article we demonstrate an equivalent effect for punitiveness. We find that people are more punitive toward identified wrongdoers than toward equivalent, but unidentified, wrongdoers, even when identifying the wrongdoer conveys no meaningful information about him or her. To account for the effect of identifiability on both generosity and punitiveness, we propose that affective reactions of any type are stronger toward an identified than toward an unidentified target. Consistent with such an account, the effect of identifiability on punishing behavior was mediated by self‐reported anger. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Figural emphasis and person perception

Based on Jones and Nisbett's (1972) proposition that actor-observer differences in causal attributions derive from differences in attentional focus, it was hypothesized that observers' focus of attention would influence their causal attributions for an actor's behavior. More specifically, it was predicted that the behavior of an actor who was the focus of attention by virtue of some salient physical attribute would be attributed by observers more to dispositional causes and less to situational causes than would the behavior of a less physically salient actor. The manipulations of physical salience were based upon Gestalt laws of figural emphasis in object perception. They included brightness (Study I), motion (Study II), pattern complexity (Study III), and contextual novelty (Studies IV and V). The results revealed that the salinece of the actors' environments (i.e., the other people present) rather than the salience of the actor him/herself had the most consistent influence on causal attributions. When environmental salience was high, behavior was attributed relatively more situationally than when it was low. Prior research findings are considered in light of the proposition that causal attributions for an actor's behavior vary only with the salience of his/her environment, and additional implications of this phenomenon are suggested. Some ambiguities in the application of Gestalt principles to the perception of people are discussed.     

Self-evaluative effects of temporal and social comparison

Social and temporal comparisons are two fundamental information sources for evaluating one’s characteristics and abilities. The current study demonstrates that when social comparison (where people’s performance stood in the overall distribution) and temporal comparison (whether performance improved or deteriorated over time) information are both provided, each independently influences actors’ self-evaluations of task performance and ability. In contrast, yoked observer participants paid virtually no attention to temporal comparison information, preferring to evaluate actors based solely on their status relative to others. Furthermore, when the feedback actors received suggested that they were getting worse, their self-evaluation ratings were approximately equal to that of the observers who had access to the same information. However, when their fortunes improved over time, actors used this temporal information as a basis for evaluating themselves more favorably than observers. We argue that both egocentrism and self-enhancement account for the differences between actors’ and observers’ performance evaluations.     

The Role of Hardiness in Moderating the Relationship Between Global/Specific Attributions and Actions Against Discrimination

In this study, we proposed that individual differences in hardiness may moderate the relationship between global attributions and actions against discrimination. Specifically, global attributions were expected to predict decreased endorsement of actions to combat discrimination among low hardy women. In contrast, global attributions were expected to predict increased endorsement of actions among high hardy women. High and low hardy women were exposed to a laboratory situation of discrimination, and their attributions for, and responses to, discrimination were then assessed. Results showed the expected interaction, but in the opposite direction: among low hardy women, global attributions predicted stronger endorsement of action. Among high hardy women, specific attributions predicted stronger endorsement of action. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Reducing Road Rage: An Application of the Dissonance‐Attribution Model of Interpersonal Forgiveness1

Recent research ( Takaku, 2001; Takaku, Weiner, & Ohbuchi, 2001 ) tested and supported the hypothesis that injured parties' motivation to forgive their wrongdoers could be enhanced through inducing hypocrisy‐dissonance by making the injured parties aware of their own past wrongdoing. The present study tested and supported the model's applicability to people's road‐rage experiences by showing that individuals who were aware of their own past reckless driving generated more hypocrisy‐induced dissonance, more positive attributions, and less negative emotional reactions than individuals who were not aware of their own past reckless driving. Implications for future research and possible applications of the model in reducing road rage are discussed.     

Group Status and Hierarchy Legitimacy Effects on Effort Versus Ability Attributions for Ingroup and Outgroup Failures

Previous research has shown that people have a tendency to explain various outcomes in ways that favour their ingroup. However, there is also some evidence that this tendency may be moderated by perceptions of group status and hierarchy legitimacy. In this study, we experimentally test the combined effects of group status and hierarchy legitimacy on effort and ability attributions for ingroup and outgroup failures. It was predicted that participants assigned to an illegitimately low status condition would attribute ingroup but not outgroup failure more to a lack of effort than ability. Conversely, participants assigned to a legitimately high status group were expected to attribute ingroup but not outgroup failure more to a lack of effort than ability. Results supported these predictions and also showed outgroup failure was attributed more to a lack of effort than ability when ingroup status was either legitimately low or illegitimately high. We conclude that intergroup attributions are constrained by perceptions about relative group status and the legitimacy of the status hierarchy.     

Nameless + harmless = blameless: When seemingly irrelevant factors influence judgment of (un)ethical behavior

People often make judgments about the ethicality of others’ behaviors and then decide how harshly to punish such behaviors. When they make these judgments and decisions, sometimes the victims of the unethical behavior are identifiable, and sometimes they are not. In addition, in our uncertain world, sometimes an unethical action causes harm, and sometimes it does not. We argue that a rational assessment of ethicality should not depend on the identifiability of the victim of wrongdoing or the actual harm caused if the judge and the decision maker have the same information. Yet in five laboratory studies, we show that these factors have a systematic effect on how people judge the ethicality of the perpetrator of an unethical action. Our studies show that people judge behavior as more unethical when: (1) identifiable vs. unidentifiable victims are involved and (2) the behavior leads to a negative rather than a positive outcome. We also find that people’s willingness to punish wrongdoers is consistent with their judgments, and we offer preliminary evidence on how to reduce these biases.     

Professed impressions: What people say about others affects onlookers’ perceptions of speakers’ power and warmth

During a conversation, it is common for a speaker to describe a third-party that the listener does not know. These professed impressions not only shape the listener’s view of the third-party but also affect judgments of the speaker herself. We propose a previously unstudied consequence of professed impressions: judgments of the speaker’s power. In two studies, we find that listeners ascribe more power to speakers who profess impressions focusing on a third-party’s conscientiousness, compared to those focusing on agreeableness. We also replicate previous research showing that speakers saying positive things about third parties are seen as more agreeable than speakers saying negative things. In the second study, we demonstrate that conscientiousness-power effects are mediated by inferences about speakers’ task concerns and positivity-agreeableness effects are mediated by inferences about speakers’ other-enhancing concerns. Finally, we show that judgments of speaker status parallel judgments of agreeableness rather than of power, suggesting that perceivers use different processes to make inferences about status and power. These findings have implications for the literatures on person perception, power, and status.     

Cognitive consequences of affirming the self: The relationship between self-affirmation and object construal

Previous research suggests that affirming one’s important values is a powerful way of protecting one’s general self integrity, allowing non-defensive processing of self-relevant information. In a series of four studies linking self-affirmation with construal level, we find that in addition to any self buffering effect, thinking about one’s values and why they are important more generally shifts cognitive processing towards superordinate and structured thinking. Self-affirmation leads participants to perceive a greater degree of structure within their selves (Study 1), to increasingly identify actions in terms of their end-states (Study 2), to more strongly distinguish between primary and secondary object features (Study 3) and to perform better on tasks requiring abstract, structured thinking than those requiring detail-oriented, concrete thinking. Together, these findings suggest that thinking about important values helps individuals to structure information and focus on the big picture.     

Attribution and reconstructive memory

Two experiments were conducted to test the effects of making an attribution on later memory for the event that gave rise to the attribution. Subjects in Experiment 1 observed a scenario in which an actor's behavior was associated with high or low variance (distinctiveness) across situations, and high or low congruence (consensus) to the actions of others. Subjects either made attributions for the actor's behavior immediately following the scenario or not. One week later, subjects were asked to recall consensus and distinctiveness for the actor's original behavior. Subjects who made attributions were significantly better at estimating the high-high and low-low combinations of consensus and distinctiveness than were their no-attribution counterparts. It was suggested that making an attribution may allow for a reconstructed memory for the original event, but not enhance direct access to the original event information. A second experiment tested this concept further by having subjects view an edited version of the scenario in which either the distinctiveness or the consensus information was deleted and having subjects make attributions or not. One week later, subjects were asked to indicate their certainty that consensus and distinctiveness information was a part of the original scenario and to estimate the levels of consensus and distinctiveness. Subjects who made attributions were more confident and accurate in estimating the level of consensus or distinctiveness that was given in the original scenario than were no-attribution subjects. However, attribution subjects were also more confident that consensus information or distinctiveness information was contained in the scenario (when it was not) than were the noattributio subjects. Results of the two experiments suggest that eliciting attributions can distort subsequent memory for the event on which the attributions were based.     

Turning observers into actors: Differential causal attributions as a function of “empathy”

After being instructed either to “empathize with the actor” or to “picture the events clearly,” two groups of observers read a story describing an actor's behavior, and then gave free-response explanations of that behavior, and rated the importance of personal and situational causal factors. The hypothesis that causal attributions of empathizing observers would be less personal and more situational than those of nonempathizing observers received strong support, both from subjects' free responses and from their scale ratings. These findings provide evidence for an information-processing explanation of actor/observer attributional differences. Some practical applications of increasing the situationality of observers' causal attributions are discussed. The results also suggest a novel operational definition of “empathy”; and are interpreted as evidence for the effectiveness of “interpersonal simulations”.     

The susceptibility of young preschoolers to source similarity effects: Confusing story or video events with reality

This study examined children’s tendency to confuse events that varied in source similarity, which was manipulated using different media of event presentation. In Experiment 1, children in two age groups (3- and 4-year-olds and 5- and 6-year-olds) experienced a live presentation of an event, and another event was either heard from a story (low similarity group) or seen on a video (high similarity group). Immediately afterward, the children were asked to monitor the source of the events. The children in the low similarity group produced higher source discrimination scores than did the children in the high similarity group. Overall, the older children were better at source monitoring than were the younger children. In Experiment 2, the procedure was replicated except that the children’s source monitoring was tested after a 4-day delay. When attributing the source of the story or video events, both 3- and 4-year-olds and 5- and 6-year-olds in the low similarity group produced more accurate story or video attributions than did their age mates in the high similarity group. However, when attributing the source of the live events, only the 3- and 4-year-olds evidenced this effect of source similarity. The 5- and 6-year-olds in both the low and high similarity groups performed at ceiling levels for live discriminations.     

Culture-contingent signs of trust in emergent relationships

This study develops a culture-contingent model of trust formation in emergent relationships by comparing how trust-warranting signs shape attributions of trustworthiness to unfamiliar trustees in collectivist versus individualist cultures. We predict and find that the effectiveness of dispositional and contextual signs varies systematically depending on trustors’ national culture. Collectivists tend to rely less on dispositional signs and more on situational signs than individualists. This difference fosters distinct trust-building pathways. Individualists bestow trust based on a trustee’s perceived ability and integrity, collectivists’ trusting choices depend to a greater extent on predictable, benevolent interactions with a potential partner. These findings suggest that, in cross-cultural encounters, signs aligned with trustors’ cultural expectations hasten trust production. Mismatched signs are impotent, even off-putting.     

Curvature affects haptic length perception

One possible way of haptically perceiving length is to trace a path with one’s index finger and estimate the distance traversed. Here, we present an experiment in which observers judge the lengths of paths across cylindrically curved surfaces. We found that convex and concave surfaces had qualitatively different effects: convex lengths were overestimated, whereas concave lengths were underestimated. In addition, we observed that the index finger moved more slowly across the convex surface than across the concave one. As a result, movement times for convex lengths were longer. The considerable correlation between movement times and length estimates suggests that observers take the duration of movement as their primary measure of perceived length, but disregard movement speeds. Several mechanisms that could underlie observers’ failure to account for speed differences are considered.     

Procedural justice and intragroup status: Knowing where we stand in a group enhances reactions to procedures

The current research investigates the role of relative intragroup status as a moderator of people’s reactions to procedural justice. Based on a review of the procedural justice literature, the authors argue that information about intragroup status influences people’s reactions to variations in procedural justice. In correspondence with predictions, two experiments show that reactions of people who have been informed about their intragroup status position (either low, average, or high) are influenced more strongly by voice as opposed to no-voice procedures than people who are not informed about their intragroup status. It is concluded that knowing where we stand in a group enhances reactions to procedural justice.     

Telling what they want to know: participants tailor causal attributions to researchers' interests

Based on a conversational analysis of experimental procedures and consistent with the principle of relevance, we predicted that participants' verbal responses will be influenced by their tacit inferences about the researcher's epistemic goals, derived from their knowledge of the researcher's academic affiliation. We tested this prediction in a core area of social‐personality and cultural psychology, causal attribution. University students provided causal attributions about mass murder cases, while the questionnaire identified the researcher either as a social scientist or a personality psychologist. The results indicated that attributions were overall more situational than dispositional, and as predicted, this main effect was qualified by an interaction between conversational cue and type of attribution. Thus, participants gave relatively more situational explanations when the letterhead of the questionnaire identified the researcher as a social scientist compared to when the researcher was identified as a personality psychologist. The reverse pattern emerged for dispositional attributions. Methodological and conceptual implications are discussed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.