Ripples of contempt: aversive responses to others (mis)fortunes

Motivation and Emotion - In this short commentary we argue that feelings of contempt play a major role in schadenfreude (joy in the misfortunes of others) and “reverse...     

Evolving informational credentials: the (mis)attribution of believable facts to credible sources

Three studies demonstrate that individuals often rely on a "belief force equals credible source" heuristic to make source judgments, wherein they assume that statements they believe originate from credible sources. In Study 1, participants who were exposed to a statement many times (and hence believed it) were more likely to attribute it to Consumer Reports than to the National Enquirer. In Study 2, participants read a murder investigation article containing evidence against two suspects from credible and noncredible sources. When participants believed a particular suspect to be guilty, they misattributed evidence incriminating that suspect to the high-credibility source. Study 3 demonstrated that this phenomenon occurs because individuals assume their beliefs are true and that true beliefs come from credible sources; when participants were given feedback that their beliefs were incorrect, the relationship between beliefs and source inferences did not occur.     

The (mis)reporting of statistical results in psychology journals

In order to study the prevalence, nature (direction), and causes of reporting errors in psychology, we checked the consistency of reported test statistics, degrees of freedom, and p values in a random sample of high- and low-impact psychology journals. In a second study, we established the generality of reporting errors in a random sample of recent psychological articles. Our results, on the basis of 281 articles, indicate that around 18% of statistical results in the psychological literature are incorrectly reported. Inconsistencies were more common in low-impact journals than in high-impact journals. Moreover, around 15% of the articles contained at least one statistical conclusion that proved, upon recalculation, to be incorrect; that is, recalculation rendered the previously significant result insignificant, or vice versa. These errors were often in line with researchers’ expectations. We classified the most common errors and contacted authors to shed light on the origins of the errors.     

A learning approach to the treatment of homosexuality

‘Aversive’ techniques in the treatment of homosexuality provide practical and ethical difficulties for the therapist. A technique involving ‘imaginary’ aversive therapy and a discrimination learning task is described. It is felt that such an approach following on classical desensitization of neurotic disturbances which may underly the homosexual disorder, offers hope of early symptom removal and lasting improvement.     

Debiasing the hindsight bias: The role of accessibility experiences and (mis)attributions

Two studies tested the role of accessibility experiences and attributions in debiasing the hindsight bias. Participants listed 4 or 12 thoughts about how a college football game, or the 2000 US Presidential election, might have turned out differently. Listing 12 thoughts was experienced as difficult, suggesting to participants that there were few ways in which the event could have turned out otherwise. Hindsight biases increased under this condition, unless participants attributed the difficulty of the thought generation to their own lack of knowledge, which resulted in a trend in the opposite direction. The interplay of accessible content, accessibility experiences and attribution in mental simulation is discussed.     

A metacognitive approach to "implicit" and "explicit" evaluations: comment on Gawronski and Bodenhausen (2006)

A metacognitive model (MCM) is presented to describe how automatic (implicit) and deliberative (explicit) measures of attitudes respond to change attempts. The model assumes that contemporary implicit measures tap quick evaluative associations, whereas explicit measures also consider the perceived validity of these associations (and other factors). Change in explicit measures is greater than implicit measures when new evaluative associations are formed and old associations are rejected. Implicit measure change is greater than explicit when newly formed evaluative associations are rejected. When implicit and explicit evaluations conflict, implicit ambivalence can occur. The authors relate the MCM to the associative-propositional evaluation model and explain how the MCM builds on the attitude strength assumptions of the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion.     

Evaluating the efficacy of a program to enhance college students' self-regulation learning processes and learning strategies

The present study examines the efficacy of a program designed to enhance college students'learning processes and study strategies. The program was organised around a number of letters written by a freshman, Gervásio (Rosário, Nú?ez, & González-Pienda, 2006), telling about his new experiences, troubles, and successes in the university. This intervention program is intended to promote a series of strategies (cognitive, meta-cognitive, and supportive) which allow students to manage their learning processes in a more proficient, successful, and autonomous way. The collected data suggest that students who had the opportunity to follow the program significantly improved their declarative knowledge about learning strategies, reduced their use of surface approaches to study, and extended the newly acquired skills to new and different tasks and assignments.     

Efficacy of objects,pictures and words in a simple learning task(1)

Adult subjects were required to memorise positions associated with twelve common objects, their pictures and their names. Both written and spoken names were used. It was found that learning was fastest with the objects and slowest with verbal symbols, and that pictures occupied an intermediate position. The data suggest that the errors observed are partly due to differential forgetting of various types of stimuli and partly perhaps to differential difficulty in making deductions from them.     

The (mis)measurement of body image: ten strategies to improve assessment for applied and research purposes

Body image is a multifaceted construct consisting of a variety of measured dimensions. Research in the area has mushroomed in recent years, a phenomenon paralleled by an explosion in the assessments developed to measure some aspect of the construct. Unfortunately, these developments have not always been guided by a clear-cut attention to measurement issues. Assessment errors specific to the field of body image and also germane to basic psychological measurement strategies have characterized much of the work in the area. This article outlines 10 such issues with accompanying examples and suggestions for avoiding such pitfalls. Attention to these seemingly minor methodological details should result in a more consistent conceptualization of body image, utilization of appropriate measures in specific contexts, and engender more valid comparisons of findings across disparate studies.     

On the (mis)categorization of unattractive brides and attractive prostitutes: extending evaluative congruency effects to social category activation

Numerous studies have shown that social categorization is a flexible process that partly depends on contextual variables. However, little is known about the role of affect in people's access to categorical dimensions. We investigated the hypothesis that social category activation is facilitated on evaluatively congruent dimensions. Two studies provide support for this evaluative-matching hypothesis, in which social categorization was found to be faster and more accurate for evaluatively congruent categories (i.e., unattractive foreigners, unattractive prostitutes, attractive fellow-citizens and attractive brides) than for evaluatively incongruent categories (i.e., attractive foreigners, attractive prostitutes, unattractive fellow-citizens and unattractive brides). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

Evoked prior learning experience and approach to learning as predictors of academic achievement

Background. In separate studies and research from different perspectives, five factors are found to be among those related to higher quality outcomes of student learning (academic achievement). Those factors are higher self‐efficacy, deeper approaches to learning, higher quality teaching, students’ perceptions that their workload is appropriate, and greater learning motivation. University learning improvement strategies have been built on these research results. Aim. To investigate how students’ evoked prior experience, perceptions of their learning environment, and their approaches to learning collectively contribute to academic achievement. This is the first study to investigate motivation and self‐efficacy in the same educational context as conceptions of learning, approaches to learning and perceptions of the learning environment. Sample. Undergraduate students (773) from the full range of disciplines were part of a group of over 2,300 students who volunteered to complete a survey of their learning experience. On completing their degrees 6 and 18 months later, their academic achievement was matched with their learning experience survey data. Method. A 77‐item questionnaire was used to gather students’ self‐report of their evoked prior experience (self‐efficacy, learning motivation, and conceptions of learning), perceptions of learning context (teaching quality and appropriate workload), and approaches to learning (deep and surface). Academic achievement was measured using the English honours degree classification system. Analyses were conducted using correlational and multi‐variable (structural equation modelling) methods. Results. The results from the correlation methods confirmed those found in numerous earlier studies. The results from the multi‐variable analyses indicated that surface approach to learning was the strongest predictor of academic achievement, with self‐efficacy and motivation also found to be directly related. In contrast to the correlation results, a deep approach to learning was not related to academic achievement, and teaching quality and conceptions of learning were only indirectly related to achievement. Conclusions. Research aimed at understanding how students experience their learning environment and how that experience relates to the quality of their learning needs to be conducted using a wider range of variables and more sophisticated analytical methods. In this study of one context, some of the relations found in earlier bivariate studies, and on which learning intervention strategies have been built, are not confirmed when more holistic teaching–learning contexts are analysed using multi‐variable methods.     

A new approach to the formulation and testing of learning models

It is argued that current attempts to model human learning behavior commonly fail on one of two counts: either the model assumptions are artificially restricted so as to permit the application of mathematical techniques in deriving their consequences, or else the required complex assumptions are imbedded in computer programs whose technical details obscure the theoretical content of the model. The first failing is characteristic of so-called mathematical models of learning, while the second is characteristic of computer simulation models. An approach to model building which avoids both these failings is presented under the title of a black-box theory of learning. This method permits the statement of assumptions of any desired complexity in a language which clearly exhibits their theoretical content.Section II of the paper is devoted to the problem of testing and comparing alternative learning theories. The policy advocated is to abandon attempts at hypothesis testing. It is argued that, in general, we not only lack sufficient data and sufficiently powerful techniques to test hypotheses, but that the truth of a model is not really the issue of basic interest. A given model may be true in the sense that on the basis of available evidence we cannot statistically reject it, but not interesting in the sense that it provides little information about the processes underlying behavior. Rather, we should accept or reject models on the basis of how much information they provide about the way in which subjects respond to environmental structure. This attitude toward model testing is made precise by introducing a formal measure of the information content of a model. Finally, it is argued that the statistical concept of degrees-of-freedom is misleading when used in the context of model testing and should be replaced by a measure of the information absorbed from the data in estimating parameters.I would like to express my indebtedness to Ernest W. Adams and Julian Feldman for their guidance and encouragement of the research reported here.Much of the research reported here was conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, and incorporated in a Ph.D. dissertation in Logic and the Methodology of Science [15]. The research was supported in part by the Computer Institute for Social Science Research, Michigan State University.     

The benefits of a "sidelong" approach to self-esteem need satisfaction: comment on Crocker and Park (2004)

J. Crocker and L. E. Park (2004) have achieved an admirable integration of the self-esteem literature with their claim that self-esteem is better conceived of as a dynamic human striving, rather than as a passive state or personality characteristic. However, the costs of self-esteem striving may be overstated--these costs may arise only in certain constrained cases. Also, although Crocker and Park suggested that self-esteem is not a true psychological need, there is evidence that humans in all cultures need to feel a positive sense of self-worth (K. M. Sheldon, in press). Problems may arise only when people strive too directly for this feeling, rather than deriving it as a natural concomitant of non-self-focused goals. A "sidelong" approach to self-esteem need satisfaction is advocated in this commentary.