Field and laboratory studies of littering

Four studies are reported. In the first, it was shown that littering rates vary substantially across areas of a large urban region and that the rate for a particular area is correlated with the amount of litter already present. It was also found that males litter more than females and young people more than old. In the second study, a laboratory experiment, a causal relationship between the amount of litter in an area and the likelihood it will be littered was demonstrated. A third study replicated this latter finding, but did not find a relationship between the amount of stress experienced by a subject and the likelihood that he or she would litter. In the fourth study, a field experiment, subjects who were approached and asked to sign a petition about clean streets littered less than control subjects.     

Response to Bill of Rights Paraphrases as Influenced by the Hip or Straight Attire of the Opinion Solicitor1

A sample of 375 white middle class residents of suburban Sacramento was randomly distributed among 3 experimental conditions of exposure to paraphrases of the Bill of Rights. The paraphrases were in the form of letters to the “Subcommittee on Crime and Disorder” of the California State Senate. A far greater proportion of subjects would endorse a “negative”, somewhat authoritarian version of the Bill of Rights than would sign either a “real” paraphrase of the original text or a rather equivocal “wishy-washy” bill. A minority of those shown the “real” bill would sign it. Solicitors dressed as “straights” were more likely to elicit signatures from subjects than were “hips”. The latter effect was observable, however, only for subjects in the negative and to a lesser extent the wishy-washy bill conditions. When the “real” bill was presented the attire of the solicitor made no difference. While an alternative interpretation was viable, the results were explained in terms of reactance (Brehm, 1966) and Rokeach's (Rokeach & Mezei, 1966) hypothesis that liking is mediated by inferred congruity of beliefs.     

Upward versus Downward Anchoring in Frequency Judgments of Social Facts

Frequency estimation of social facts in two methods of judgment elicitation was investigated. In the “narrow-range” condition, subjects answered questions in the format: “Out of 100 incidents, how many belong to category X?” In the “wide-range” condition, the frequency for the same event was assessed with respect to “Out of 10,000”. Judged frequencies in the wide-range condition were divided by 100, and were compared with the corresponding judgments in the narrow-range condition. Such comparisons were made for low-frequency and high-frequency events. Previous research has shown that, for low-frequency events, judged frequencies are proportionally greater in the narrow-range than in the wide-range condition. These results reflect cognitive processes of implicit anchoring, whereby judged frequencies lie close to small numbers within the response ranges provided. I call this process “downward anchoring,” and predicted that this tendency would be replicated in the present study. Moreover, I predicted that assessments about high-frequency events would evoke similar cognitive processes operating in the opposite direction. By such “upward anchoring,” judged frequencies would lie close to relatively larger numbers within the given response ranges. Consequently, I predicted that judged frequencies for high-frequency events would be proportionally greater in the wide-range condition than in the narrow-range condition. These predictions were confirmed.     

Effect of verbal messages with reminders to communicate driving situations to alter driver behavior in conditional driving automation

In conditionally automated driving, drivers are relieved of steering (hands-off), accelerating, and braking actions as well as of continuous monitoring of driving situations and the system operation status (eyes off). This enables continuously engagement in non-driving-related activities. Managing the allocation of a driver’s attention to the surrounding environment and automation status presents a major challenge in human–machine system design. In this study, we propose a verbal message with a reminder (monitoring request) to divert the driver’s attention from non-driving-related activities to peripheral monitoring under conditionally automated driving. When the system encounters events related to weather, traffic, and road geometry, it provides a verbal message pertaining to the road surroundings (e.g., “It is foggy outside”) to the driver. After three seconds, the system provides a reminder message (i.e., “Did you confirm it?”) to the driver. We explore two questions: (1) how does the message with the reminder affect the driver’s attention allocation, and (2) how does the message with the reminder affect the driver behavior in response to a request to intervene (RTI). With a driving simulator, we designed a repeated measures mixed design with a between-participant factor of “Driving condition” and within-participant factors of “Event type” and “Measurement time”. Three driving conditions were established as follows: no messages, messages without reminders, and messages with reminders. Twenty-seven drivers participated as participants in the driving simulator experiment. Results showed that the reminder message was effective in allocating the participants’ attention to the surrounding environment, and the participants took over the driving task after spending more time understanding the take-over situation in the condition of messages with reminders compared to those in the condition of no messages. We conclude that the proposed reminder message can direct drivers’ attention to the road surroundings during conditionally automated driving. In the future, we plan to design adaptive verbal monitoring requests to adjust the reminder message according to the situation.     

The roles of self-esteem and self-consciousness in the Wortman-Brehm model of reactance and learned helplessness

The present experiments were designed to study the conditions under which failure would enhance or inhibit subsequent task performance. Based on the theory of Wortman and Brehm (1975), it was expected that small amounts of failure would produce reactance (manifested by improved performance at a subsequent task), whereas large amounts would lead to learned helplessness (i.e., impaired later performance). It was further expected that individual differences in self-esteem and private self-consciousness would serve as moderator variables for the above effects. In Experiment 1, subjects were exposed to either a small amount of failure or no failure before working on an anagrams task. As predicted, subjects high in self-consciousness, who have shown greater reactance arousal in attitude change studies, performed better on the anagrams task than subjects low in self-consciousness in the small-failure condition, but not in the no-failure condition. Further analyses revealed that this Self-Consciousness X Small Failure interaction was attributable to the performance data of the low, but not the high self-esteem subjects. Experiment 2 was designed to replicate and extend these results. Subjects were pretreated with either a small amount of failure, an extended amount of failure, or no failure before working on the anagrams task. A significant Self-Esteem X Helplessness Training interaction emerged. Relative to the no-failure condition, in which the two self-esteem groups did not differ, low self-esteem participants (low SEs) performed marginally better than did high self-esteem individuals (high SEs) in the small-failure condition but significantly worse than high SEs in the extended-failure condition. The effect of private self-consciousness was considerably weaker in this study, possibly because the sample included few low SEs (who are especially influenced by self-focused attention) who were also relatively low in self-consciousness. Questionnaire data from Experiment 2 were consistent with the notion that enhanced performance reflected reactance, whereas impaired performance signified helplessness.     

The Role of Psychological Reactance in Drinking Following Alcohol Prevention Messages1

Two experiments tested whether a dogmatic alcohol prevention message may, by arousing psychological reactance (the motivation to reassert a threatened freedom) result in more subsequent alcohol consumption, compared to a neutral message. In Study 1, 535 college students received either a high-threat (dogmatic) or low-threat (neutral) message recommending either abstinence or controlled drinking. Results indicated that high-threat messages were rated more negatively and resulted in more drinking intentions compared to low threat. The negative effect of high threat on message ratings was most pronounced for habitually heavy drinkers and an abstinence-espousing message. In Study 2, under the guise of a “memory study,” 74 college students received either a high- or low-threat message recommending abstinence from alcohol. Then, under the guise of a “perception study,” all subjects participated in a taste-rating task in which their beer consumption was unobtrusively measured. Results indicated that the effect of high threat was most negative for male heavy drinkers, who drank significantly more beer compared to low-threat controls. These results suggest that the persuasive ability of alcohol prevention efforts depend to a considerable extent on the reactance-arousing properties of the materials and that dogmatic alcohol prevention materials may have counterproductive effects for some college students.     

Self-monitoring in communicative interactions: Social cognitive consequences of goal-directed message modification

The hypothesis was examined that previously demonstrated message modification and its subsequent social cognitive effects would be more characteristic of high than low self-monitors. Subjects first read an essay describing a stimulus person and were then requested to communicate a referential message concerning him to a listener who supposedly either liked (positive audience condition) or disliked (negative audience condition) the stimulus person. Subjects were subsequently given, after both a brief and long delay interval, a reproduction, impression, and attitude measure. The results indicated that high self-monitors were more likely to modify their message in a manner that was evaluatively consistent with their listener's attitude. In addition, this message modification had the predicted social cognitive consequences in that it affected the high self-monitor's subsequent impressions of (but not necessarily attitude toward) the target person. The results suggested that the responses obtained from high self-monitors in many experimental contexts may themselves be the results of a self-monitoring strategy. The implications of these results for research examining the effects of “self-monitoring” are discussed.     

The Effect of Patriotic Messages on Restaurant Tipping1

This study compared the effectiveness of 2 types of patriotic messages with a warmth/ ingratiation message and a control condition on restaurant tipping. Two female food servers waited on 100 parties eating dinner. When diners were finished with their meals, servers left them 1 of 4 messages on their checks: “Have a Nice Day,”“God Bless America,”“United We Stand,” or no message. Results indicated that parties who received the “United We Stand” message left significantly higher tips than did those receiving no message or the “Have a Nice Day” message. No other significant differences were found. These results and their implications are discussed.     

Effects of variable message signs for slippery road conditions on driving speed and headways

This field study investigated the effects of two variable message signs (VMS) on driver behaviour. Specifically, the signs were a warning sign for slippery road conditions and a minimum headway sign. The study was performed as a before-and-after experiment at three test sites in Finland with an after period covering two winter seasons. The results showed that the slippery road condition sign reduced the mean speed on slippery roads by 1–2 km/h in addition to the decrease caused by the adverse road conditions. The minimum headway sign decreased the proportion of headways shorter than 1.5 s for cars in car-following situations, in addition to a speed reduction of 1 km/h. The effects were somewhat smaller during the second winter than the first.     

No sign of quitting: incidental exposure to “no smoking” signs ironically boosts cigarette‐approach tendencies in smokers

The unconscious mind tends to disregard negations in its processing of semantic meaning. Therefore, messages containing negated concepts can ironically prime mental representations and evaluations that are opposite to those intended. We hypothesized that the subtle presentation of a negated concept (e.g., “no smoking”) would activate ironic motivational orientations as well. We tested this hypothesis in a public health context. Smokers viewed photographs in which “no smoking” signs were either inconspicuously embedded (prime condition) or edited out (control condition). Primed smokers showed amplified automatic approach tendencies toward smoking‐related stimuli, but not toward smoking‐unrelated stimuli: an ironic motivational response to exposure to the signs. Since passive priming effects generally serve to facilitate forms of action, not inhibit them, antismoking and other public health campaigns may ironically increase the very behaviors they seek to reduce.     

Classes and collections: Principles of organization in the learning of hierarchical relations

This study demonstrates that children tend to distort class inclusion relations (e.g., the relation of oaks to trees) into the part-whole structure of collections (e.g., the relations of oaks to a forest). Children aged 6 to 17 were taught novel class inclusion hierarchies, analogous to the relation between oaks, pines, and trees. In one condition, the class inclusion relations were taught by ostensive definition alone, e.g., stating “These are trees” while pointing to trees and, “These are oaks” while pointing to oaks. in the second condition, children were additionally told what would be analogous to “Oaks and pines are two kinds of trees”. With this additional information to constrain their interpretation, even the youngest children correctly interpreted the relation as class inclusion. In contrast, with limited information, children as old as 14 erroneously imposed a collection structure on the inclusion hierarchies. They would deny, for example, that any single tree was a tree (as they should of they thought “tree” meant “forest”), and would pick up several trees despite being asked for a tree. The results indicated that the part-whole structure of collections is simpler to establish and maintain than the structure of inclusion.     

SIGNS AS DETERRENTS OF ILLEGAL PARKING IN SPACES DESIGNATED FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH PHYSICAL DISABILITIES

The percentage of illegal parking in spaces reserved for the physically disabled was monitored under three sign conditions: ground markings, ground markings plus vertical signs, and vertical signs containing a message that concerned citizens were watching the spaces. Illegal parking dropped from 69.3% of 102 vehicles during the initial ground-sign condition to 57.3% of 36 vehicles in the first vertical-sign condition. Following removal of the vertical signs, illegal parking increased to 68.7% of 43 vehicles. During the second vertical-sign condition, illegal parking dropped to 53.7% of 32 vehicles, followed by an increase to 69.5% of 68 vehicles after the vertical signs were removed. The lowest rate of illegal parking (27.1% of 78 vehicles) occurred in the vertical-sign-plus-message condition. Illegal parking subsequently increased to 34.6% (of 94 vehicles) when the message sign was removed, followed by an increase to 65.2% (of 105 vehicles) when the vertical signs were removed.     

Subject variables and reactance to persuasive communications about drugs

The role of three subject variables in the mediation of reactance to pro- and anti-LSD messages was investigated: sex, authoritarianism, and suspiciousness that the purpose of the experiment was to study persuasion. No reactance effect occurred reliably either overall or in any subgroup of subjects for the anti-LSD message which supported the initial views of most subjects (evening-division undergraduates). In the pro-LSD case, reactance effects occurred among highly suspicious male subjects only. It was suggested that reactance could be a responce to perceived threat from the experimenter rather than, or as well as the communicator, and that male and female subjects responded to such threat in accordance with their culturally prescribed roles.     

Recent books

Recent studies have shown that the basic evaluative conditioning (EC) effect (originally neutral stimuli acquiring an affective value congruent with the valence of the affective stimulus they were paired with) seems to be limited to participants who are unaware of the stimulus pairings. If participants are aware of the pairings, reactance effects occur (i.e., changes in the opposite direction of the valence of the affective stimulus). To examine whether these reactance effects are due to processes of conscious countercontrol or whether the ratings reflect intrinsic feelings towards the stimuli, a new procedure was developed that included a bogus‐pipeline condition. In this procedure, which was adapted from attitude research, participants were connected to bogus lie detector equipment leading them to believe that their “true” affective‐evaluative responses were being observed. In Experiment 1, reactance effects occurred also in this procedure, suggesting that the effect is spontaneous and not due to processes of conscious countercontrol. In Experiment 2, these effects were replicated using a between‐subjects design in addition to the standard within‐subjects control condition.     

Effect of design factors on drivers’ understanding of variable message signs locating traffic events

BackgroundThis article addresses how to combine three elements (a pictogram, an arrow, a city) in a variable message sign (VMS) to locate temporary events (e.g., “congestion before Milan”). We adopted the G1c stack model as a design template, an Advanced Directional Sign (ADS) recommended by the 1968 Convention to locate cities, which can be easily adapted to modern VMS. However, as most of the VMS in operation are not full-matrix, we have also adapted this design to more restrictive display conditions. This adaptation critically concerned the arrow function on the message that either points up broadly (generically, as in G1c) or connects with the city more specifically (explicit). Although G1c reads top-down like a verbal text, previous studies indicated drivers’ preference for bottom-up landmark order in VMS, so both ordering criteria were compared in the present study.MethodsThe experiment involved 99 people (70 drivers and 29 drivers in training). Participants were informed that they would see various VMS reporting certain events (e.g., congestion) related to one of four cities along the road. Their task was to identify the event location (before, after the city) after seeing blocks of two consecutive messages (first a complementary message, then the target message), limiting their response to the content of the second message. Three design-focused factors were tested: typographical alignment (left or centre), landmark order (bottom-up or top-down), and arrow function (explicit or generic). The rate of correct location answers was the dependent variable.ResultsResults revealed that comprehension varied greatly depending on the arrow’s function and the placing of elements. In the explicit-arrow messages, comprehension was good both in the Top-down and Bottom-up conditions, but in the generic-arrow messages, only in the Bottom-up condition was comprehension good. Likewise, understanding was better in the Before condition than in the After condition in all combinations of Landmark order and Arrow function conditions. In general, left alignment of the central column elements of the VMS improved comprehension respective to centred alignment. Finally, the complementary message factor had an effect under certain circumstances.Practical implicationsThe messages displaying a generic arrow (following the G1c model) were better understood when the landmarks were ordered bottom-up, not top-down. In addition, explicit-arrow messages were better understood per se (in the absence of a complementary message) than generic-arrow messages. Overall, this work suggests that improving our understanding of how thought processes and design features relate to each other can contribute to safer driving nationally and internationally.     

The effects of a salient self-schema on the evaluation of proattitudinal editorials: Top-down versus bottom-up message processing

The effects of a salient self-schema on message evaluation were studied. Subjects were identified who characterized themselves using trait adjectives that reflected the prototype of either a “religious” or a “legalistic” person. Equally persuasive sets of proattitudinal messages were developed empirically using weak arguments. Half of the messages were developed to reflect a “religious” perspective on the issue (capital punishment, abortion) whereas half were developed to reflect a “legalistic” perspective on the issue. Religious and legalistic subjects were then exposed to religious or legalistic arguments supporting an equally acceptable position (e.g., eliminating capital punishment). Afterward, subjects evaluated the persuasiveness of the communication and listed their thoughts as part of a “curriculum development project.” Results suggested that subjects when exposed to a schema-relevant message arguments for a position in which they believed were more positive about the quality of the message arguments and in their cognitive responding. These data extend the heuristic value of selfschemata to the area of attitudes and suggest that cognitive responses in persuasion are subjectively rather than objectively rational.     

Prior exercise of freedom and reactance

A communication that contains a particularly strong intent to influence caneasily lose persuasive impact or even bring about a “boomerang” effect. Such “boomerang” phenomena have often been attributed to “psychological reactance”, a motivational state created when freedoms are threatened or usurped. The first experiment reported here examined two factors that inhibited reactance effects. (A) The more that subjects were in initial disagreement with the communicator, the less likely they were to respond with boomerang change to a high pressure communication. (B) Among subjects who initially agreed with the communicator, a successful blocking of reactance effects was produced by asking them to write a short precommunication essay taking a position contrary to the communication. This latter effect was replicated in Experiment II.     

Visual demand of bilingual message signs displaying alternating text messages

This field study was designed to compare the visual demand of variable message signs (VMSs). Specifically, three VMS types were evaluated: a sign displaying a message alternately in Finnish and Swedish (2.0 s in each language), a sign displaying the same messages simultaneously, and a sign displaying air and road surface temperatures in Finnish. The data were collected by recording the eye movements of 38 drivers during highway driving. The main results suggested that the sign displaying alternating bilingual messages was no more demanding than the VMS displaying the same messages simultaneously. However, this conclusion is limited to those specific signs and conditions, and more research is needed for related applications in various conditions. The results further suggested that VMSs involving effective technologies might be rather demanding in comparison to the fixed signs.     

PROMPTING BAR PATRONS WITH SIGNS TO TAKE FREE CONDOMS

This study was designed to determine whether signs would prompt bar patrons to avail themselves of free condoms. The intervention at three “gay bars” involved placing a large sign directly above a container of free condoms; the sign gave statistics for the number of people who have died from AIDS in the state and pointed out that condoms can reduce the spread of AIDS. Additional signs placed in the restrooms gave information about safe sex practices and reminded patrons that free condoms could be obtained at a given location in the bar. An ABAB design was used, with a 2-week baseline, 2-week treatment with signs present, 2-week reversal with no signs, and 2-week reinstatement of treatment with signs present. For all three bars combined, 748 condoms were taken with signs present and 510 condoms were taken with signs absent. Overall, when signs were present, the number of condoms taken increased by 47%.     

Effects of variable message signs for slippery road conditions on reported driver behaviour

A field study by Rämä and Kulmala (Rämä, P., Kulmala, R. (2000). Effects of variable message signs for slippery road conditions on driving speed and headways. Transportation Research, Part F, 3, 85–94.) showed that a variable message sign warning about slippery road conditions reduced the mean speed by 1–2 km/h. The study also showed that a variable message sign recommending a minimum headway between vehicles decreased the proportion of short headways. However, the signs may have other effects on driver behaviour besides those measurable in terms of speed and headway, and this study was designed to investigate such potential effects. In total, 114 drivers who had encountered the slippery road condition sign and 111 drivers who had encountered the sign showing recommended minimum headway in adverse road surface conditions were interviewed. The results suggested that these variable message signs do indeed have other effects, such as the refocusing of attention to seek cues on potential hazards, testing the slipperiness of the road, and more careful passing behaviour. On the other hand, the results suggested that driving speed and headway are essential variables with which many other variables correlate.