Failures to induce implicit evaluations by means of approach–avoid training

Woud, Becker, and Rinck (2008) asked participants to repeatedly push pictures of certain faces away and to pull pictures of other faces towards them using a joystick. Performance in a subsequent affective priming task showed that previously pulled faces evoked more positive implicit evaluations then previously pushed faces. We report five studies in which we failed to find consistent evidence for the effect of approach–avoid training on implicit evaluations. We also failed to reproduce the effect reported by Woud et al. when reanalysing their data. An overall analysis that included our data, the data of Woud et al. and additional data provided by Woud and colleagues also did not reveal a significant effect of approach–avoid training on implicit evaluations. We conclude that the impact of approach–avoid training on implicit evaluations is subject to subtle boundary conditions.     

No face is an island: How implicit bias operates in social scenes

Social psychologists have mainly studied implicit attitudes toward faces presented one at a time, whereas, in real life, we often encounter people in the presence of others. These surrounding individuals may alter attitudes toward the focal target of attention. We employed a flanker-IAT task and found that, when black and white targets were presented in racially diverse contexts, bias was decreased. This decrease in bias occurred even when targets previously seen in diverse contexts were presented on their own, suggesting context-free evaluations of the targets had been formed. Experiment 2 showed that the effect of diverse contexts does not affect bias toward a racial category as a whole, but only the specific targets previously seen in the diverse contexts. Quad model analysis (Sherman et al., 2008) revealed that these effects were related to changes in automatic evaluations, and not to changes in inhibition. Implications for implicit bias change and prejudice reduction strategies are discussed.     

Make the manikin move: Symbolic approach–avoidance responses affect implicit and explicit face evaluations

The present research aimed to replicate and extend findings of Huijding, Muris, Lester, Field, and Joosse (2011), investigating whether symbolic approach–avoidance responses can induce implicit and explicit evaluation biases. Faces with a neutral expression were shown on a computer screen, and participants were instructed to repeatedly move a manikin towards some faces (approach) and away from other faces (avoidance). An affective priming task and a face rating task were used to assess training-compatible differences in implicit and explicit face evaluations, respectively. Results showed that the manikin training was successful: The priming task revealed more positive implicit evaluations of approached than avoided faces, and approached faces were rated more positively than avoided ones in the face rating task. These findings replicate those of Huijding and colleagues by demonstrating training effects on explicit evaluations, and they extend them by demonstrating effects on implicit evaluations.     

男性对女性面孔吸引力的认知偏好: 来自ERP的证据

运用事件相关电位(ERPs)技术, 采用学习-再认实验任务, 探讨了男性对有、无吸引力女性面孔图片进行判断和再认时脑内时程的动态变化。行为数据结果表明, 男性对有吸引力女性面孔的反应时更长, 再认正确率更高。ERP结果发现, 有、无吸引力面孔诱发的ERP早成分和晚成分都存在显著差异, 最强效应出现在大脑皮层的中前部。在判断任务和再认任务中, 有吸引力的女性面孔都比无吸引力的女性面孔诱发出更大的ERP成分(分别为N300、P350~550ms和P160、N300~500ms、P500~700ms)。结果表明, 男性对有吸引力的女性面孔的判断和再认存在偏好。     

Revisiting the revisit: added evidence for a social chemosignal in human emotional tears

In a study by Gelstein et al., we found that human emotional tears act as a social chemosignal. In the first of three different experiments in that study we observed that sniffing women’s emotional tears reduced the sexual attractiveness attributed by men to pictures of women’s faces. In a study partly titled “Chemosignaling effects of human tears revisited”, Gra?anin et al. claim failed replication of this effect in a series of experiments, one they described as “exactly the same procedure” as Gelstein. Given that Gra?anin et al. refused our extended offer to jointly replicate the experiment at our expense, we can merely comment on their effort. We find that Gra?anin, who are not a chemosignaling laboratory, used methodology that falls short of standards typically applied in chemosignaling research. Thus, their experiments were profoundly different from Gelstein. Finally, we found that in reanalysing their raw data we could in fact replicate the effect from Gelstein. Thus, we conclude that the failed replication in Gra?anin is neither a replication nor failed.     

Positive mood is associated with the implicit use of distraction

Previous research demonstrates that individuals in a positive mood are differentially distracted by irrelevant information during an ongoing task (Rowe et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci 104:383–388, 2007). The present study investigated whether susceptibility to distraction shown by individuals in a positive mood results in greater implicit memory for that distraction. Participants performed a similarity-judgment task on pictures that were superimposed with distracting words. When these previously distracting words could be used as solutions on a delayed implicit task administered several minutes later, performance was positively correlated with pleasantness of mood. Individuals in a positive mood are more likely than others to use previously irrelevant information to facilitate performance on a subsequent implicit task, a finding with implications for the relationship between positive mood and creativity.     

Blocking and pseudoblocking: the reply of Rattus norvegicus to Apis mellifera

Blaser, Couvillon, and Bitterman (2006) presented data obtained with honeybees that in principle challenged all traditional interpretations of blocking. They administered A + followed by either A + or + alone (where + indicates an unconditioned stimulus) and then tested on X. They observed less responding to X when they administered A + than when + alone was administered, a phenomenon they called "pseudoblocking". Here we examined pseudoblocking in a rat fear-conditioning preparation. In Experiment 1, using a control procedure that was similar to our usual blocking control, we obtained conventional blocking but failed to observe pseudoblocking in our analogue to Blaser et al.'s procedure. In Experiment 2, we used Blaser et al.'s control procedure and again failed to observe the pseudoblocking effect with rats when we used the experimental context as an analogue to the honeybee feeder used by Blaser et al. After reviewing their protocol and previously published studies from their laboratory, we hypothesized that the feeder that they treated as a training context probably served as a punctate cue. We also tested this possibility in Experiment 2, using a punctate cue as a surrogate feeder, and were now able to reproduce their pseudoblocking phenomena. Our results are consistent with a simple overshadowing account of pseudoblocking, within the framework of existing theories of associative learning, which is not applicable to the conventional blocking paradigm. Thus, blocking remains a real phenomenon that must be addressed by models of associative learning.     

Blocking and pseudoblocking: The reply of Rattus norvegicus to Apis mellifera

Blaser, Couvillon, and Bitterman (2006) presented data obtained with honeybees that in principle challenged all traditional interpretations of blocking. They administered A + followed by either A + or + alone (where + indicates an unconditioned stimulus) and then tested on X. They observed less responding to X when they administered A + than when + alone was administered, a phenomenon they called “pseudoblocking”. Here we examined pseudoblocking in a rat fear-conditioning preparation. In Experiment 1, using a control procedure that was similar to our usual blocking control, we obtained conventional blocking but failed to observe pseudoblocking in our analogue to Blaser et al.'s procedure. In Experiment 2, we used Blaser et al.'s control procedure and again failed to observe the pseudoblocking effect with rats when we used the experimental context as an analogue to the honeybee feeder used by Blaser et al. After reviewing their protocol and previously published studies from their laboratory, we hypothesized that the feeder that they treated as a training context probably served as a punctate cue. We also tested this possibility in Experiment 2, using a punctate cue as a surrogate feeder, and were now able to reproduce their pseudoblocking phenomena. Our results are consistent with a simple overshadowing account of pseudoblocking, within the framework of existing theories of associative learning, which is not applicable to the conventional blocking paradigm. Thus, blocking remains a real phenomenon that must be addressed by models of associative learning.     

Individuation training with other‐race faces reduces preschoolers’ implicit racial bias: a link between perceptual and social representation of faces in children

The present study examined whether perceptual individuation training with other‐race faces could reduce preschool children's implicit racial bias. We used an ‘angry = outgroup’ paradigm to measure Chinese children's implicit racial bias against African individuals before and after training. In Experiment 1, children between 4 and 6 years were presented with angry or happy racially ambiguous faces that were morphed between Chinese and African faces. Initially, Chinese children demonstrated implicit racial bias: they categorized happy racially ambiguous faces as own‐race (Chinese) and angry racially ambiguous faces as other‐race (African). Then, the children participated in a training session where they learned to individuate African faces. Children's implicit racial bias was significantly reduced after training relative to that before training. Experiment 2 used the same procedure as Experiment 1, except that Chinese children were trained with own‐race Chinese faces. These children did not display a significant reduction in implicit racial bias. Our results demonstrate that early implicit racial bias can be reduced by presenting children with other‐race face individuation training, and support a linkage between perceptual and social representations of face information in children.     

内隐和外显记忆的发展研究

采用Buchner等人（1995）提出的加工分离范式的修正模型,对内隐和外显记忆进行分离。结果表明：内隐记忆水平随年龄的变化不大．而外显记忆水平在12岁左右达到高峰;内隐记忆与外显记忆均不具有性别差异。     

Do we all look alike to computers?

People are better able to recognize faces of their own race than those of other races. One explanation is that this 'other-race effect' is caused by lifelong experience in which faces from some races are more common than other races. A recent article by Furl et al. tests experience-based accounts of the other-race effect by giving computer algorithms of face recognition training on preponderantly Caucasian faces. The only algorithms that reliably produced other-race effects were those that created face representations distorted to emphasize features that individuated faces.     

First demonstration of effective spatial training for near transfer to spatial performance and far transfer to a range of mathematics skills at 8 years

There is evidence that spatial thinking is malleable, and that spatial and mathematical skills are associated (Mix et al. [2016] Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145, 1206; Mix et al. [2017] Journal of Cognition and Development, 18, 465; Uttal et al. [2013] Psychological Bulletin, 139, 352). However, few studies have investigated transfer of spatial training gains to mathematics outcomes in children, and no known studies have compared different modes of spatial instruction (explicit vs. implicit instruction). Based on a sample of 250 participants, this study compared the effectiveness of explicit and implicit spatial instruction in eliciting near transfer (to the specific spatial skills trained), intermediate transfer (to untrained spatial skills) and far transfer (to mathematics domains) at age 8. Spatial scaling and mental rotation skills were chosen as training targets as previous studies have found, and proposed explanations for, associations between these skills and mathematics in children of this age (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145, 2016 and 1206). In this study, spatial training led to near, intermediate and far transfer of gains. Mental visualization and proportional reasoning were proposed to explain far transfer from mental rotation and spatial scaling skills respectively. For most outcomes, except for geometry, there was no difference in the effectiveness of implicit (practice with feedback) compared to explicit instruction (instructional videos). From a theoretical perspective, the study identified a specific causal effect of spatial skills on mathematics skills in children. Practically, the results also highlight the potential of instructional videos as a method of introducing spatial thinking into the classroom.     

Conditional reasoning with negations: Implicit and explicit affirmation or denial and the role of contrast classes

' We report two studies on the effect of implicitly versus explicitly conveying affirmation and denial problems about conditionals. Recently Evans and Handley (1999) and Schroyens et al. (1999b, 2000b) showed that implicit referencing elicits matching bias: Fewer determinate inferences are made, when the categorical premise (e.g., B) mismatches the conditional's referred clause (e.g., A). Also, the effect of implicit affirmation (B affirms not-A) is larger than the effect of implicit denial (B denies A). Schroyens et al. hypothesised that this interaction is due to uncertainty in the case-wise affirmation of the contrast class of negated elements involved in implicit affirmations. In Experiment 1 we tested this hypothesis by manipulating the set size of the conditional clauses. The results confirm that binary sets, where the contrast class is a singleton, eliminate the differential effect of implicit affirmation and denial. With non-binary sets the interaction is not modulated by the scope of the contrast class (3, 5, 9 elements). Experiment 2 further investigated the role of contrast classes by using class inclusion to construct implicit affirmations (Mammal vs Mammal or Monkey) and implicit denial (No-Mammal vs Mammal or Monkey), in addition to the standard implicit problems mediated by contrast-class inclusion [(No-)Mammal/No-Mammal; Reptile; Snake). Findings indicate that class inclusion (Mammal/Monkey; Reptile/ Snake) only marginally affects performance, and is independent of the type of problem. This would suggest that the implicitness problem-type interaction is dependent on constructing contrast classes. However, the experiment failed to replicate the interaction, even on the subset of problems repeating the abstract letter/number format of Experiment 1. Moreover, with the natural binary set-sizes (vowels/consonants) the implicitness effect was eliminated entirely.     

Nervous Instability and Genius: Military and Political Leaders

Participants (N = 106) performed an affective priming task with facial primes that varied in their skin tone and facial physiognomy, and, which were presented either in color or in gray-scale. Participants' racial evaluations were more positive for Eurocentric than for Afrocentric physiognomy faces. Light skin tone faces were evaluated more positively than dark skin tone faces, but the magnitude of this effect depended on the mode of color presentation. The results suggest that in affective priming tasks, faces might not be processed holistically, and instead, visual features of facial priming stimuli independently affect implicit evaluations.     

Collective narcissism and explicit and implicit collective self-esteem revisited: A preregistered replication and extension

Research on the positivity of collective narcissists’ in-group evaluation is scarce. So far, only one published study has shown that collective narcissists favorably evaluate their in-group at the explicit level but have negative (or, less positive) implicit in-group evaluations (Golec de Zavala et al., 2009, Study 4). The present preregistered replication study used a larger sample (N = 481), carefully constructed implicit association measures, and examined agentic and communal facets of collective narcissism and implicit collective self-esteem. Yet, our study did not replicate the core finding of Golec de Zavala et al. (2009, Study 4). Although our study does not support the mask model of collective narcissism, it provides further evidence for the distinctiveness of agentic and communal collective narcissism.     

The accuracy of memory for faces of personally known individuals

The present study was aimed at evaluating whether the very high accuracy of memory for familiar faces, demonstrated by Ge et al (2003, Perception 32 601-614) with a very familiar famous person, generalises to faces of personally known individuals. The accuracy of participants' perceptual memory for a close colleague's face and for their own face was evaluated by presenting original and manipulated pictures of these two targets. The manipulation consisted of increasing or decreasing the interocular distance. As in Ge et al's study, results indicated that proportions of correct recognition of the original faces, and just noticeable differences for the detection of alterations in the recognition task, were not significantly different from the corresponding measures in a perceptual discrimination task performed by a sample of participants who did not know the target persons at all. High accuracy of memory generalises to faces of personally known individuals.     

Contextual influences on implicit evaluation: a test of additive versus contrastive effects of evaluative context stimuli in affective priming

Drawing on two alternative accounts of the affective priming effect (spreading activation vs. response interference), the present research investigated the underlying processes of how evaluative context stimuli influence implicit evaluations in the affective priming task. Employing two sequentially presented prime stimuli (rather than a single prime), two experiments showed that affective priming effects elicited by a given prime stimulus were more pronounced when this stimulus was preceded by a context prime of the opposite valence than when it was preceded by a context prime of the same valence. This effect consistently emerged for pictures (Experiment 1) and words (Experiment 2) as prime stimuli. These results suggest that the impact of evaluative context stimuli on implicit evaluations is mediated by contrast effects in the attention to evaluative information rather than by additive effects in the activation of evaluative information in associative memory.     

Intact emotion–cognition interaction in schizophrenia patients and first-degree relatives: Evidence from an emotional antisaccade task

Schizophrenia patients have deficits in cognitive control as well as in a number of emotional domains. The antisaccade task is a measure of cognitive control that requires the inhibition of a reflex-like eye movement to a peripheral stimulus. Antisaccade performance has been shown to be modulated by the emotional content of the peripheral stimuli, with emotional stimuli leading to higher error rates than neutral stimuli, reflecting an implicit emotion processing effect. The aim of the present study was to investigate the impact on antisaccade performance of threat-related emotional facial stimuli in schizophrenia patients, first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients and healthy controls. Fifteen patients, 22 relatives and 26 controls, matched for gender, age and verbal intelligence, carried out an antisaccade task with pictures of faces displaying disgusted, fearful and neutral expressions as peripheral stimuli. We observed higher antisaccade error rates in schizophrenia patients compared to first-degree relatives and controls. Relatives and controls did not differ significantly from each other. Antisaccade error rate was influenced by the emotional nature of the stimuli: participants had higher antisaccade error rates in response to fearful faces compared to neutral and disgusted faces. As this emotional influence on cognitive control did not differ between groups we conclude that implicit processing of emotional faces is intact in patients with schizophrenia and those at risk for the illness.     

Configural information in gender categorisation

The role of configural information in gender categorisation was studied by aligning the top half of one face with the bottom half of another. The two faces had the same or different genders. Experiment 1 shows that participants were slower and made more errors in categorising the gender in either half of these composite faces when the two faces had a different gender, relative to control conditions where the two faces were nonaligned or had the same gender. This result parallels the composite effect for face recognition (Young et al, 1987 Perception 16 747-759) and facial-expression recognition (Calder et al, 2000 Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 26 527-551). Similarly to responses to face identity and expression, the composite effect on gender discrimination was disrupted by inverting the faces (experiment 2). Both experiments also show that the composite paradigm is sensitive to general contextual interference in gender categorisation.     

Neural circuitry of emotion regulation: Effects of appraisal,attention, and cortisol administration

Psychosocial well-being requires effective regulation of emotional responding in context of threat or stress. Neuroimaging studies have focused on instructed, volitional regulation (e.g., reappraisal or distancing), largely ignoring implicit regulation that does not involve purposeful effort to alter emotional experience. These implicit processes may or may not involve the same neural pathways as explicit regulatory strategies. We examined the neurobiology of implicit emotional regulation processes and the impact of the stress hormone cortisol on these processes. Our study task employed composite pictures of faces and places to examine neural activity during implicit emotional processing (of emotional faces), while these responses were implicitly regulated by attention shift away from the emotionally evocative stimuli, and while subjects reflectively appraised their own emotional response to them. Subjects completed the task in an fMRI scanner after random assignment to receive placebo or hydrocortisone (HCT), an orally administered version of cortisol. Implicit emotional processing activated insula/IFG, dACC/dMPFC, midbrain and amygdala. With attention shifting, we saw diminished signal in emotion generating/response regions (e.g., amygdala) and increased activations in task specific attention regions like parahippocampus. With appraisal of emotions, we observed robust activations in medial prefrontal areas, where activation is also seen in instructed reappraisal studies. We observed no main effects of HCT administration on brain, but males and females showed opposing neural effects in prefrontal areas. The data suggest that different types of emotion regulation utilize overlapping circuits, but with some strategy specific activation. Further study of the dimorphic sex response to cortisol is needed.