Up north and down south: Implicit associations between topography and cardinal direction

Route planners show a reliable tendency to select south- relative to north-going routes between two horizontally (east/west) aligned landmarks, suggesting the application of a north-is-up heuristic (Brunyé, Mahoney, Gardony, & Taylor, 2010). The source of this north-is-up bias remains unknown, and there is no strong evidence to suggest that it is due to explicit strategy use. In four experiments, we attempt to further elucidate the source of this effect by testing whether it can be attributed to implicit associations between cardinal direction (north/south) and topography (mountainous/level terrain). Experiments 1 and 2 used an adapted Implicit Association Test and demonstrate automatically activated judgements that associate north with mountainous and south with relatively level terrain. Experiment 3 rules out the possibility that this effect is due to the local topography of New England by replicating in participants from the topographically dissimilar Midwestern United States. Finally, Experiment 4 tests the relative contribution of implicit versus explicit associations between cardinal direction and topography in predicting route-planning asymmetries; we show that implicit associations are a stronger predictor of southern route biases than explicit processes. Overall, results demonstrate that the conceptualization of space can be driven by physically unfounded implicit associations between cardinal directions and topographical features, and these associations are at least partially responsible for southern route preferences.     

Up north and down south: Implicit associations between topography and cardinal direction

Route planners show a reliable tendency to select south- relative to north-going routes between two horizontally (east/west) aligned landmarks, suggesting the application of a north-is-up heuristic (Brunyé, Mahoney, Gardony, & Taylor, 2010). The source of this north-is-up bias remains unknown, and there is no strong evidence to suggest that it is due to explicit strategy use. In four experiments, we attempt to further elucidate the source of this effect by testing whether it can be attributed to implicit associations between cardinal direction (north/south) and topography (mountainous/level terrain). Experiments 1 and 2 used an adapted Implicit Association Test and demonstrate automatically activated judgements that associate north with mountainous and south with relatively level terrain. Experiment 3 rules out the possibility that this effect is due to the local topography of New England by replicating in participants from the topographically dissimilar Midwestern United States. Finally, Experiment 4 tests the relative contribution of implicit versus explicit associations between cardinal direction and topography in predicting route-planning asymmetries; we show that implicit associations are a stronger predictor of southern route biases than explicit processes. Overall, results demonstrate that the conceptualization of space can be driven by physically unfounded implicit associations between cardinal directions and topographical features, and these associations are at least partially responsible for southern route preferences.     

Picture-word differences and conceptual frequency judgments

Recent evidence suggests that while pictures are more easily recognized, discriminated, associated, and recalled than their corresponding verbal labels, this is not the case in concept acquisition/utilization tasks. If such evidence is interpreted in terms of a "frequency theory" perspective, one would expect the typically obtained frequency judgment differences between pictures and words to be reduced if "conceptual" frequency judgments are required. This expectation was confirmed in three experiments.     

Hemispheric differences in semantic-relatedness judgments

Subjects judged the semantic relatedness of word pairs presented to the left or right visual field. The word pairs were presented one below the other. On critical trials, the words' referents had a typical spatial relation, with one referent oriented above the other (e.g. ATTIC/BASEMENT). The spatial relation of the words either matched or mismatched the spatial relation of their referents. When presented to the left hemisphere, the match or mismatch did not have an effect. However, there was a reliable mismatch effect for pairs presented to the right hemisphere. The results are interpreted in the context of perceptual theories of mental representation.     

Sex differences in duration judgments: A meta-analytic review

We quantitatively reviewed human sex differences in the magnitude and variability of duration judgments. Data from 4,794 females and 4,688 males yielded 87 effect size estimates of magnitude and 28 of variability. The overall sex difference in duration judgment magnitude was small but statistically significant. It was moderated by whether study participants knew in advance (prospective paradigm) or only later (retrospective paradigm) that they would be required to judge duration. Although prospective judgments showed no overall sex effect, some levels of moderator variables showed a small but statistically significant effect. Retrospective judgments showed a larger subjective-to-objective duration ratio for females than for males, and several variables moderated this effect. Females' judgments also showed more intersubject variability than did males' judgments. Relative to males, females sustain attention to time more in the prospective paradigm and have better episodic memory in the retrospective paradigm.     

Affective influences on individual and group judgments

Do emotional states influence the social judgments made by groups and individuals? Based on affect-cognition theories and research on group judgmental shifts, we predicted that group discussion will enhance positive mood effects on judgments, but inhibit affectively-based distortions in dysphoric moods. Positive, neutral and negative moods were induced using audiovisual presentations. Individual and group consensus judgments of nine person categories on three judgmental dimensions (evaluation, competence and self-confidence) were obtained in two experimental sessions separated by a two-week interval. Results showed that individuals made more positive judgments when happy, and more negative judgments when sad than did controls. Group discussion resulted in a further polarization of positive judgments, and the attenuation of negative judgments. The findings are interpreted as evidence for the important role affect plays in mediating both individual cognitive processes and interactive social behaviours. The implications of the results for contemporary affect-cognition theories and models of group behaviour are considered.     

Independence and interdependence of group judgments: Xenophobia and minority influence

A first experiment examined the effects of two methods of dividing resources between Swiss nationals and foreign residents in a study involving 118 subjects. Subjects gave judgments involving either interdependent allocation (resources allocated to the outgroup cannot be allocated to the ingroup) or independent allocation. The results indicated that the socio-cognitive functioning preferred by subjects varies as a function of their view of outsiders. Interdependence of judgments was more characteristic of the most xenophobic subjects, whereas the least xenophobic were more likely to reason in terms of independence. On the other hand, intermediate subjects (those who were clearly neither for nor against outsiders) were sensitive to these modalities of judgment: interdependence engendered an ingroup favoritism, while independence counteracted this bias. A second experiment further analysed the influence of a more or less imperative minority argument on the attitudes of 109 more xenophobic subjects. Independent as compared to interdependent judgment facilitated a latent influence by the source, especially when the source employed a more imperative rhetoric to urge a more favourable attitude to foreigners.     

Response selection strategies and realism of confidence judgments

Two studies were conducted to examine how response selection strategy is related to confidence ratings and to performance on general knowledge questions. In both studies subjects were asked to answer 80 general knowledge questions and to rate their confidence in the correctness of the answer selected. A pilot study, in which subjects thought aloud while answering general knowledge questions, was carried out to identify different response selection strategies. In the first study, 40 subjects were asked to indicate which of four strategies (immediate recognition, inference, intuition, or guessing) they used for selecting an answer. In Study 2, think aloud reports from 20 subjects were coded into the same four strategies. The distribution of strategies differed between the studies, but there were very similar relations among strategy, confidence, and correctness of answer in the two studies. Response selection strategy was related to correctness of answer when confidence was partialed out. More specifically, immediate recognition was associated with higher proportion correct than with the other strategies. It was also found that ratings of how difficult the knowledge questions were to fellow students of the subjects were on a much more realistic level than the confidence ratings were. It is concluded that people could improve their confidence judgments by taking into account (a) how difficult a question is to other people, and (b) the response selection strategy used for answering the question.     

Effects of surface markings on judgments of motion direction

The effects of surface markings on perceived motion direction were examined for a rotating sphere in a structure-from-motion display. The markings were dot patterns representing separate line segments or intersecting line segments (crosses) covering the surface of the sphere. The orientation of the surface markings and their intersection angles affected the perceived direction of motion, suggesting that the markings were not interpreted as geodesics or planar cuts on the surface. The perceived direction of motion was biased towards the mean orientation of the markings over the visible area of the surface. A similar bias was observed for translating planar stimuli covered with crosses, suggesting that the bias is not specific to curved surfaces or motion in depth. The deviation between the simulated motion direction and the external horizontal and vertical axes also affected the perceived motion direction. These results suggest that the average orientation of surface contours with respect to an external reference frame influences the perceived direction of motion.     

Confidence judgments in studies of individual differences

This paper examines psychometric properties of scores derived from calibration curves (overconfidence, calibration, resolution, and slope) and an analogue of overconfidence that is based on a posttest estimate of the proportion of correctly solved items. Four tests from the theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence were used, and two of these tests employed both sequential and simultaneous methods of item presentation. The results indicate that the overconfidence score not only has the highest reliability, but is the only score with a reliability normally considered adequate for use in individual differences research. There is some, albeit weak, difference in subjects' level of overconfidence between sequential and simultaneous methods of item presentation. Correlational evidence confirms our previous findings that overconfidence scores from perceptual and ‘knowledge’ tasks define the same factor. In agreement with the results of Gigerenzer, Hoffrage and Kleinbolting (1991), subjects' post-test estimates of their performance showed lower levels of overconfidence than did the traditional measures based on subjects' confidence judgment responses to individual items. Also, after controlling for the actual test performances, the post-test performance estimates and average confidence ratings were only slightly positively correlated, suggesting that different psychological processes may underlie these two measures. Finally, our results suggest that average confidence over all items in the test may be a more useful measure in individual differences research than scores derived from calibration curves.     

Developmental differences in frequency judgments of words and pictures

Children in kindergarten, third, and fifth grades were presented a list of either pictures or words (with items presented for varying numbers of times on the study trial). In both picture and word conditions, half of the Ss estimated how many times each item had been presented (absolute judgments) and the other half judged which of two items had occurred more often on the study trial (relative judgments). The primary finding was that while frequency judgment performance improved with age for both pictures and words, there was relatively greater improvement for pictures (i.e., the picture-word difference increased with age). These results lend strong support to the frequency theory of discrimination learning and, in particular, may be useful in accounting for effects associated with age and with age by stimulus mode interactions.     

Actor-observer differences in realism in confidence and frequency judgments

Taking a social psychological approach to metacognitive judgments, this study analyzed the difference in realism (validity) in confidence and frequency judgments (i.e., estimates of overall accuracy) between one's own and another person's answers to general knowledge questions. Experiment 1 showed that when judging their own answers, compared with another's answers, the participants exhibited higher overconfidence, better ability to discriminate correct from incorrect answers, lower accuracy, and lower confidence. However, the overconfidence effect could be attributable to the lowest level of confidence. Furthermore, when heeding additional information about another's answers the participants showed higher confidence and better discrimination ability. The overconfidence effect of Experiment 1 was not found in Experiment 2. However, the results of Experiment 2 were consistent with Experiment 1 in terms of discrimination ability, confidence, and accuracy. Finally, in both experiments the participants gave lower frequency judgments of their own overall accuracy compared with their frequency judgments of another person's overall accuracy.     

Impact of planned movement direction on judgments of visual locations

The present study examined if and how the direction of planned hand movements affects the perceived direction of visual stimuli. In three experiments participants prepared hand movements that deviated regarding direction (“Experiment 1” and “2”) or distance relative to a visual target position (“Experiment 3”). Before actual execution of the movement, the direction of the visual stimulus had to be estimated by means of a method of adjustment. The perception of stimulus direction was biased away from planned movement direction, such that with leftward movements stimuli appeared somewhat more rightward than with rightward movements. Control conditions revealed that this effect was neither a mere response bias, nor a result of processing or memorizing movement cues. Also, shifting the focus of attention toward a cued location in space was not sufficient to induce the perceptual bias observed under conditions of movement preparation (“Experiment 4”). These results confirm that characteristics of planned actions bias visual perception, with the direction of bias (contrast or assimilation) possibly depending on the type of the representations (categorical or metric) involved.     

Happiness as a belief system: individual differences and priming in emotion judgments

Three studies involving 104 undergraduates sought to examine how an individual's level of life satisfaction organizes their knowledge concerning the self's emotions. Participants judged the self's positive and negative emotions within a computerized task. Key results sought to determine whether judging two positive emotions in a consecutive sequence speeds the second judgment--a pattern of priming that would suggest a tighter, more interconnected structure in semantic memory related to one's positive emotions. As expected, individual differences in life satisfaction predicted the magnitude of this priming effect (Studies 1 & 2), which appeared to be unique to judgments of the self's emotions (Study 3). The results indicate that happy, relative to less happy, individuals organize information concerning their positive emotions in a qualitatively different and tighter semantic manner.     

Sex differences in clinical judgments of male and female therapists

This study asked whether clinicians would judge a case differently if the patient were male or female. One hundred and three clinical social workers were given a clinical vignette with age and sex randomly varied. Clinicians were asked to evaluate the patient's functioning and to make treatment recommendations. As predicted, the female was rated more favorably than the male, suggesting that participants used different mental health standards for men and women. Predictions that the female would be seen as more organic and more in need of medication were not supported. Therapist gender effects emerged: female (but not male) therapists saw psychodynamic issues as less important for the older patient, and especially the older woman. Implications of these findings are discussed.The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of April E. Fallon, Ph.D., to this study.     

Hemisphere differences and judgments of simultaneity of brief light flashes

A series of experiments was conducted to investigate the possibility of hemispheric specialization for judgments of the simultaneity of two light flashes. Right-handed subjects adjusted two light flashes until they appeared simultaneous. The comparison of measures derived from the two possible orders of the light flashes suggested that the right hemisphere of right-handed subjects performed the function of ordering visual stimuli in time. Two further experiments examined an alternative explanation, that of a left-to-right scanning mechanism, the results of which also suggested a hemisphere explanation. The results of these experiments are discussed in terms of previous research and theories which located a temporal ordering mechanism in the speech hemisphere.     

Sex differences in judgments of physical attractiveness: a social relations analysis

Men and women rated the physical attractiveness of other men and women who were sitting nearby and were rated by them in return. They also provided meta-perceptions of how they thought those others rated them. Attractiveness ratings were partly a function of both the target being rated and the perceiver providing the ratings regardless of the sex of the perceiver or target, but the highest levels of consensus occurred when men judged the attractiveness of women and the highest levels of idiosyncrasy occurred when men rated other men. Meta-perceptions were also idiosyncratic; some believed that they were consistently considered attractive, whereas others thought they were seen as unattractive. People were aware of what others thought of them and, in particular, women's meta-perceptions were highly related to men's judgments of them. People agree about others' attractiveness, and those who are attractive to others know they are pretty or handsome.     

The effect of edge orientation and movement direction on the apparent misalignment of collinear bars

Four experiments on apparent misalignment of oblique collinear bars are reported. The data from the first three experiments showed that the misalignment was slight but significant when no direction other than that of the bars themselves was delineated and about double when the vertical was delineated by movements of the adjustable bar. When the vertical was delineated by both these movements and the ends of the bars (or by vertical parallel lines), the misalignment was more than six times greater. Conversely, it was reduced when the bar ends delineated the vertical and bar movements delineated the direction at right angles to the bars. The data from a fourth experiment showed that the inner pair of edges were closely involved in apparent misalignment and that the outer ends were not. The relationship between the misalignment effect with bars and the Poggendorif figure (oblique lines separated by parallels), the delineation of direction by edges and movement, and the implications of these data for an explanation are discussed.     

Upper and lower visual field differences in categorical and coordinate judgments

Kosslyn (1987) theorized that the left and right hemispheres differ in processing categorical and coordinate spatial relationships, respectively. Previc (1990) hypothesized that the upper and lower visual fields are functionally specialized for visual search and visuomotor manipulations, respectively. Conceptual similarities between these two theories suggested possible upper visual field advantages for categorical judgments and lower visual field advantages for coordinate judgments. In the present two experiments, subjects made either categorical or coordinate judgments to stimuli in the upper left, upper right, lower left, or lower right visual fields. The first experiment manipulated categorical/coordinate judgments as a between-subjects variable. The second experiment manipulated categorical/coordinate judgments as a within-subjects variable. In the first experiment, reaction times (RTs) for categorical judgments were equal in all visual fields except the lower left, in which RTs were slower. For coordinate judgments, RTs were equal in all visual fields except the lower left, in which RTs were faster. In general, these effects were replicated in the second experiment. However, there appeared to be consequences associated with manipulating the categorical/coordinate variable in a within-subjects fashion. The requirements of visual search versus visuomotor processes appear to map onto the nature of categorical versus coordinate processing, respectively, suggesting possible upper-lower visual field differences in categorical versus coordinate processing.