Attitudes about antidepressants: influence of information about weight-related side effects

Antidepressant drugs are frequently prescribed for women and have various side effects, including potential effects on body weight. This experiment examined the effects of information about the weight-related side effects of antidepressants on women's attitudes toward the drugs. 60 college women were randomly assigned to read about one of two drugs, fluoxetine (Prozac) or imipramine (Tofranil). Participants were either told or not told about veridical weight-related side effects, namely, weight loss for Prozac and weight gain for Tofranil. As hypothesized, weight-gain information lowered the personal acceptability of Tofranil, and weight-loss information enhanced the acceptability of Prozac. Although research with clinical populations is required, undergraduate women's decisions about the use of antidepressant medications may be influenced by societal body-image ideals.     

Inferences about the morality of an aggressor: the role of perceived motive

The research investigated perceivers' inferences about the morality of target persons who engaged in aggressive behavior. Across several experiments, inferences about the morality of an aggressor were based more on the perceived motives of the target than on the presence of facilitating situational forces. For example, when a target's aggression was facilitated by personal rewards for aggression (instrumental aggression), perceivers inferred more negative motives and attributed lower morality to the target than when the target's aggression was facilitated by situational provocation (reactive aggression). The results suggest that perceived motives play an important role in dispositional inference and pose a problem for models that focus primarily on perceived causality, assumptions about base rates (consensus), or diagnosticity.     

Ain't misbehavin': the effects of age and intentionality on judgments about misconduct

In 2 person perception experiments, young and older perceivers read a scenario about a young or old female target who leaves a store without paying for a hat. In Experiment 1, the target claims she forgot she was wearing the hat when questioned by the manager. Perceivers thought the manager would have greater sympathy, less anger, and would recommend less punishment when the target was old. In Experiment 2, the target clearly forgot to pay for the hat, clearly stole it, or had ambiguous intentions. In the ambiguous condition, perceivers attributed the young target's behavior more to stealing and the old target's behavior more to forgetting. In the forget condition, young perceivers had equal sympathy for the young and old targets and held them similarly responsible, but older perceivers had greater sympathy for the forgetful old target and held her less responsible than they did the forgetful young target.     

The higher they are,the harder they fall: The effects of wrongdoer status on observer punishment recommendations and intentionality attributions

In two studies, we explore whether the status of a wrongdoer affects observers’ attributions for the wrongdoer’s actions and opinions about the wrongdoer’s deserved punishment. We find that observers attribute greater intentionality to the actions of high status wrongdoers than the identical actions of low status wrongdoers, and consequently recommend more severe punishments for the former than the latter. Additionally, we find that the relationship between a wrongdoer’s status and observers’ attributions is driven by observers’ perceptions of the wrongdoer’s underlying social motives: high status wrongdoers are presumed to be more interested in their own welfare (self-concerned), and less interested in the welfare of others (other-concerned), than low status individuals. These findings have implications for the psychology of retributive justice, and suggest that punitive reactions may be influenced as much by characteristics of the criminal as they are by characteristics of the crime.     

On the transformative character of collective intentionality and the uniqueness of the human

Current debates on collective intentionality focus on the cognitive capacities, attitudes, and mental states that enable individuals to take part in joint actions. It is typically assumed that collective intentionality is a capacity which is added to other, pre-existing, capacities of an individual and is exercised in cooperative activities like carrying a table or painting a house together. We call this the additive account because it portrays collective intentionality as a capacity that an individual possesses in addition to her capacity for individual intentionality. We offer an alternative view according to which the primary entity to which collective intentionality has to be ascribed is not the human individual, but a “form of life.” As a feature of a form of life, collective intentionality is something more than the specific capacity exercised by an individual when she cooperates with others. Collective intentionality transforms all the capacities of the bearers of this specific form of life. We thus call our proposal the transformative account of collective intentionality.     

When authorities' commands backfire: attributions about consensus and effects on deviant decision making

The perception of consensus typically produces conformity, but specific attributional circumstances may produce deviance instead. Ironically, the command of an authority figure may create one such circumstance. Participants were presented with scenarios in which they had to make a choice between 2 options. Prior to their decision, they observed others all making a single choice. In some conditions, this consensus occurred following an authority's explicit command to make that choice. Results revealed the hypothesized effect--the authority's command led participants to make deviant decisions-and revealed that this effect was moderated by the authority's continued presence, expertise, the target(s) of the command, and the ability of perceivers to use their cognitive resources.     

On Mixed Inferences and Pluralism about Truth Predicates

A familiar view concerning sentences about the ethical or comical is that they are not truth-apt – not capable of being true or false. Against this view Peter Geach famously noted that such sentences may figure in true (or false) conditionals and so must thereby be truth-apt. In response to Geach's argument, Crispin Wright proposed a pluralism about truth predicates, a pluralism which sees Geach's conditional clauses as being true in a sense that avoids realism about the entities involved. I defend Wright's proposal against an interesting recent attack by Christine Tappolet, and show that, pace Tappolet, Wright's proposed pluralism is compatible with the Tarskian idea that validity is necessary truth-preservation.     

Inferences about mechanisms that mediate pattern and flicker sensitivity

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics - Visual sensitivity to a flickering, sinusoidal grating was assessed in multiple sclerosis patients and control observers. It was found that losses in...     

Judgments of cause and blame: the effects of intentionality and foreseeability

What are the factors that influence everyday attributions of cause and blame? The current studies focus on sequences of events that lead to adverse outcomes, and examine people's cause and blame ratings for key events in these sequences. Experiment 1 manipulated the intentional status of candidate causes and their location in a causal chain. Participants rated intentional actions as more causal, and more blameworthy, than unintentional actions or physical events. There was also an overall effect of location, with later events assigned higher ratings than earlier events. Experiment 2 manipulated both intentionality and foreseeability. The preference for intentional actions was replicated, and there was a strong influence of foreseeability: actions were rated as more causal and more blameworthy when they were highly foreseeable. These findings are interpreted within two prominent theories of blame, [Shaver, K. G. (1985). The attribution of blame: Causality, responsibility, and blameworthiness. New York: Springer-Verlag] and [Alicke, M. D. (2000). Culpable control and the psychology of blame. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 556-574]. Overall, it is argued that the data are more consistent with Alicke's model of culpable control.     

Second-order beliefs about intention and children's attributions of sociomoral judgment

Predicting how another person will evaluate the intention underlying an action involves consideration of second-order mental states. Children (ages 5-10 years) and college students (N=105) predicted an observer's belief about an actor's intention and evaluated the actor from both their own perspectives and the perspective of the observer. Younger children were more likely than older children and adults to attribute a belief to the observer that mismatched the actor's prior intention. Attributed beliefs about intention were more likely to match negative prior intentions than to match positive prior intentions and were also more likely to match prior intentions when the observer knew the actor's prior intention than when the observer did not know the actor's prior intention. The judgments attributed to the observer were based on the beliefs about intention attributed to the observer, showing use of second-order mental states to infer another's sociomoral judgments.     

Inferences about guessing and knowing by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

The visual perspective-taking ability of 4 chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) was investigated. The subjects chose between information about the location of hidden food provided by 2 experimenters who randomly alternated between two roles (the guesser and the knower). The knower baited 1 of 4 obscured cups so that the subjects could watch the process but could not see which of the cups contained the reward. The guesser waited outside the room until the food was hidden. Finally, the knower pointed to the correct cup while the guesser pointed to an incorrect one. The chimpanzees quickly learned to respond to the knower. They also showed transfer to a novel variation of the task, in which the guesser remained inside the room and covered his head while the knower stood next to him and watched a third experimenter bait the cups. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that chimpanzees are capable of modeling the visual perspectives of others.     

Some evidence about character and mate selection

The authors conducted four studies (total N = 292) about character and mate desirability. In Study 1, undergraduates judged stimuli for attractiveness-physically and as a casual or longterm date. The target was described as faithful, having cheated but stayed with mates, or having cheated and left. Contrary to the hypothesis, men and women were equally affected by both kinds of cheaters. Study 2 replicated Study 1 with nonstudent adults. In Study 3, undergraduates rated a stimulus on the same attractiveness variables. This target had $14 million from winning a lottery or selling a dot-com company. Women, but not men, found the dot-com creator to be more physically attractive than the lottery winner. In Study 4, undergraduates rated someone who sold a cookie-making company or profited from a lucky real estate transaction. Both men and women preferred the cookie-company seller on all three measures of attractiveness.     

Distinguishing between perceiver and wearer effects in clothing color-associated attributions

Recent studies have noted positive effects of red clothing on success in competitive sports, perhaps arising from an evolutionary predisposition to associate the color red with dominance status. Red may also enhance judgments of women's attractiveness by men, perhaps through a similar association with fertility. Here we extend these studies by investigating attractiveness judgments of both sexes and by contrasting attributions based on six different colors. Furthermore, by photographing targets repeatedly in different colors, we could investigate whether color effects are due to influences on raters or clothing wearers, by either withholding from raters information about clothing color or holding it constant via digital manipulation, while retaining color-associated variation in wearer's expression and posture. When color cues were available, we found color-attractiveness associations when males were judged by either sex, or when males judged females, but not when females judged female images. Both red and black were associated with higher attractiveness judgments and had approximately equivalent effects. Importantly, we also detected significant clothing color-attractiveness associations even when clothing color was obscured from raters and when color was held constant by digital manipulation. These results suggest that clothing color has a psychological influence on wearers at least as much as on raters, and that this ultimately influences attractiveness judgments by others. Our results lend support for the idea that evolutionarily-derived color associations can bias interpersonal judgments, although these are limited neither to effects on raters nor to the color red.     

Asymmetrical effects of reward and punishment on attributions of morality

The authors found that 3 experiments revealed that compliance with a pro-social request for an anticipated reward as opposed to a threatened punishment resulted in greater inferences of personal morality. In Experiment 1, participants received information about a teaching assistant (TA) who was either promised a reward or threatened with a punishment when asked for compliance. The participants perceived the TA as more moral for complying given the positive incentive as opposed to the negative incentive. Experiment 2 replicated this finding in a different culture, using different vignettes and incentives. Last, in Experiment 3, the results revealed that a perceived actor's real intentions mediated the effect of incentive valence on dispositional causation. That is, given a reward relative to a punishment, participants were more likely to assume that the agent would have helped even if no incentive had been offered.     

Exploring attributions in natural settings: Gender and self-esteem effects

Two studies investigated the attributions of undergraduates for the outcomes of satisfying and dissatisfying achievement events that occurred naturally over the course of a 3-week period. In both studies, women with low performance self-esteem gave less ego-enhancing attributions than high self-esteem women, high self-esteem men, or low self-esteem men. Also, in Study 2 high self-esteem subjects attributed greater stability to causes of satisfying events than to causes of dissatisfying events, whereas low self-esteem subjects gave both types of events equivalent stability ratings. Both studies provide evidence of consistent individual differences in attributional style across occasions and situations. The gender differences were interpreted in the context of sex-role socialization factors and Anderson and Slusher's (1986) two-stage model of the attribution process.     

Main and interactive effects of controllability and generalisability attributions upon self-efficacy

ObjectivesThis study examined main effects of controllability and interactive effects of controllability and generalisability attributions upon self-efficacy.DesignA cross-sectional study design was employed with pre-competition self-efficacy assessed at least one week prior to attributions and subsequent self-efficacy.MethodParticipants (N=360; mean age 21.64, SD=6.96 years) completed measures of pre-competition self-efficacy (1 h prior to competition 1), attributions (1 h after competition 1) and subsequent self-efficacy (at least one week following competition 1 and 1 h prior to competition 2). All measures were completed in reference to sport competitions.ResultsDemographic variables and pre-competition self-efficacy were entered as control variables in moderated hierarchical regression analyses. Results demonstrated that individuals who perceived performance as more successful, had higher subsequent self-efficacy when they generalised (ΔR²=.34, p<.01) causes of performance across time (stability: b=.44, p<.01), and/or across situations (globality: b=.47, p<.01), and/or perceived causes to be unique to themselves (universality: b=−.45, p<.01). Individuals who perceived performance as less successful, had higher subsequent self-efficacy when they viewed causes of performance as controllable (ΔR²=.08, b=.23, p<.01); an interaction (ΔR²=.06, p<.05) for controllability and globality (b=.20, p<.01) demonstrated that if causes were perceived to be global, higher levels of controllability were associated with higher levels of subsequent self-efficacy.ConclusionThis study provides evidence, following more successful performances, that attributions to generalisability (stability, globality and universality) affect self-efficacy; following less successful performances, globality (a generalisability dimension) moderates the effect of controllability upon self-efficacy.     

Inferences about the femininity of competent women and their implications for likability

Male (N=59) and female (N=60) college students were given a written protocol describing a competent, achievement-oriented female stimulus person (SP) with either a masculine or feminine pattern of vocational and avocational interests. Three groups were given a masculine-pattern protocol and one group was given a feminine-pattern one. They were then asked to rate the SP on likability in work and social settings, femininity, and a number of other personal attributes. Two groups given the masculine-pattern protocol were also supplied with the SP's responses to items from a “personality” test answered in a predominantly feminine (Masculine—Feminine SP) or masculine (Masculine-Masculine SP) direction. The remaining groups (Masculine-Neutral and Feminine-Neutral SPs) were given no additional information. In agreement with previous findings, the Masculine-Neutral SP was liked more in social settings than was the Feminine-Neutral one. It was hypothesized and confirmed that the Masculine-Neutral SP would be perceived as similar to the Masculine-Feminine SP in femininity and likability and that both these SPs would be judged to be higher on these characteristics than the Masculine-Masculine. Complex results were obtained from the ratings of other attributes. Overall, they indicated that the Masculine-Feminine SP, in whom femininity was explicitly suggested, received the weakest ratings on a series of achievement-related attributes and the Masculine-Neutral SP the strongest.     

No blank slates: Pre-existing schemas about pharmaceuticals predict memory for side effects

Objectives: Attribution of symptoms as medication side effects is informed by pre-existing beliefs about medicines and perceptions of personal sensitivity to their effects (pharmaceutical schemas). We tested whether (1) pharmaceutical schemas were associated with memory (recall/recognition) for side effect information (2) memory explained the attribution of a common unrelated symptom as a side effect.

Design: In this analogue study participants saw the patient leaflet of a fictitious asthma drug listing eight side effects.

Main outcome measures: We measured recall and recognition memory for side effects and used a vignette to test whether participants attributed an unlisted common symptom (headache) as a side effect.

Results: Participants who perceived pharmaceuticals as more harmful in general recalled fewer side effects correctly (r_{Correct Recall} = ?.273), were less able to differentiate between listed and unlisted side effects (r_{Recognition Sensitivity} = ?.256) and were more likely to attribute the unlisted headache symptom as a side effect (r_{side effect attribution} = .381, ps < .01). The effect of harm beliefs on side effect attribution was partially mediated by correct recall of side effects.

Conclusion: Pharmaceutical schemas are associated with memory for side effect information. Memory may explain part of the association between pharmaceutical schemas and the attribution of unrelated symptoms as side effects.