Watching Eyes effects: When others meet the self

The perception of direct gaze—that is, of another individual’s gaze directed at the observer—is known to influence a wide range of cognitive processes and behaviors. We present a new theoretical proposal to provide a unified account of these effects. We argue that direct gaze first captures the beholder’s attention and then triggers self-referential processing, i.e., a heightened processing of stimuli in relation with the self. Self-referential processing modulates incoming information processing and leads to the Watching Eyes effects, which we classify into four main categories: the enhancement of self-awareness, memory effects, the activation of pro-social behavior, and positive appraisals of others. We advance that the belief to be the object of another’s attention is embedded in direct gaze perception and gives direct gaze its self-referential power. Finally, we stress that the Watching Eyes effects reflect a positive impact on human cognition; therefore, they may have a therapeutic potential, which future research should delineate.     

David and Goliath. When empirical and clinical standards of practice meet

Traditional clinical methods of assessing the effectiveness of psychological treatments have come under attack. Experience and strong belief frequently lead to false confidence in treatments and sometimes result in damage to patients. Advocates have called for a scientific standard to replace the extant standards based on expert opinion and cost. Yet there are costs to the use of both the old standards and scientific standards based on manualized treatments and associated research. This article proposes a set of criteria for determining whether a treatment is scientifically credible based on empirically informed principles rather than on techniques or single-theory formulations. This proposal offers a way to overcome the problems of rigid manuals as well as those associated with forcing clinicians to adhere to theories and practices that are outside of their interest, experience, and expertise. Instead, scientifically sound, cross-cutting principles of treatment selection are proposed by which a treatment could be evaluated for scientific credibility and applied from a number of theoretical frameworks.     

Thinking through war: the social thought of Richard T. Ely, John R. Commons, and Edward A. Ross during the First World War

This paper examines the social thought of University of Wisconsin professors Richard T. Ely, John R. Commons, and Edward A. Ross during World War I. Like many of their fellow scholars, these three were actively involved in the pro-war effort. Although their support for the war was strongly conditioned by personal and occupational considerations, the impact of their wartime service was not restricted to those realms. Their social thought, which they impressed into service explaining and justifying the war, was itself altered in subtle and sometimes surprising ways by the forceful positions they took on the political, economic, and racial significance of the conflict.     

When mutations meet motivations: Attitude biases in counterfactual thought

The present research examines whether existing attitudes can spontaneously bias the content and direction of generated counterfactual thoughts, and whether these thoughts influence subsequent attitude-relevant judgments. Two experimental studies demonstrate that attitudes can bias the content of counterfactual thoughts, and that these biased thoughts in turn predict polarized attitudes. These effects were obtained regardless of whether explicit instructions for counterfactual generation were given. Furthermore, both studies demonstrate that these effects are mediated by judgments of future likelihood. Implications of these results for theories of counterfactual thinking and persuasion are discussed.     

When I's meet: sharing subjective experience with someone from the outgroup

Believing one shares a subjective experience with another (i.e., I-sharing) fosters connections among strangers and alters perceptions of the ingroup and outgroup. In this article, the authors ask whether I-sharing also fosters liking for members of a salient outgroup. Study 1 establishes that I-sharing promotes liking for the other sex, even among people with salient social identities. Study 2 shows that I-sharing promotes liking for a member of the sexual orientation outgroup, whether it occurs before or after group memberships get revealed. Study 3 focuses on salient race categories and looks at the effects of I-sharing versus value-sharing as a function of shared group membership. For those high in existential isolation, I-sharing trumps value-sharing, regardless of the I-sharer's social identity. I-sharing may offer a way of improving attitudes toward outgroup members that still enables people to embrace their differing social identities.     

When organizational justice and the self-concept meet: Consequences for the organization and its members

In two studies, we examined the joint effects of employed participants’ self-concept levels and perceptions of fairness on organizational attitudes and citizenship behavior intentions. We examined the effects of chronic self-concept activation in Study 1, whereas we primed the working self-concept in Study 2. Combining the results of both studies, we found support for our hypotheses that particular self-concept levels and organizational justice dimensions interact to predict various work-related outcomes. Specifically, we observed interactions between the relational self-concept and interactional justice, and between the collective self-concept and procedural justice, such that the justice–outcome relationships were stronger for those experiencing higher activation on the relevant self-concept level. Thus, as hypothesized, justice information is weighted differently depending on the particular level of self-concept that is active. In addition, interesting direct effects of employees’ self-concepts were also observed. We discuss the implications of these findings and the importance of considering the self-concept in conjunction with organizational justice.     

When senses meet functions: an amodal stage in conceptual processing

Research has shown that concepts are associated with modality-specific features widely distributed in the brain and that semantic hubs or convergence zones may exist to mediate or integrate distributed representations. Although much neuropsychological and neuroimaging literature has provided support for the existence of hubs/convergence zones from the spatial perspective, opinions differ as to whether the representations in the hubs/convergence zones are modality-specific or amodal. The current ERP study aimed to explore whether there is an amodal stage in conceptual processing from the temporal perspective. Participants were presented with prime-target pairs and were asked to judge whether the prime (a sensory or functional feature) could be an attribute of the target (a noun in a natural or artifactual category). The results revealed that a semantic hub or convergence zone may be reached no later than 350–450?ms in conceptual processing and that the representations in the hub may be amodal.     

When two sources of fluency meet one cognitive mindset

Fluency, the subjective experience of ease associated with information processing, has been shown to affect a host of judgments. Previous research has typically focused on specific factors that affect the use of a single, specific fluency source. In the present study we examine how cognitive mindsets, or processing modes, moderate fluency emanating from two simultaneous sources of fluency. As a cognitive mindset manipulation, participants performed Jacoby's process dissociation paradigm. Subsequently, participants engaged in a metamemory task that incorporates (and can separately measure the influence of) two simultaneous sources of fluency: familiarity and accessibility. Our results confirmed that our content-unrelated mindset procedure had affected the use of fluency. Moreover, the use of both fluency sources was attenuated, demonstrating the generality of the effect. The findings highlight the causal dependency of fluency on a complex, cognitively-rich environment.     

Patriarchy and phantasy: A conception of psychoanalytic sociology

The nature versus nurture controversy in the history of the social sciences is compared with the heredity versus environment debate in the history of psychoanalysis. Generally, psychoanalysis addresses the question of human thought in contrast to the social disciplines, which examine human behavior. This division of science may be considered the representation of a fundamental dichotomy between internal (latent) and external (manifest) aspects characteristic of human existence. This universal duality is based on the division between the sexes, the union of which reproduces life. This paper attempts to draw attention to the common structure of the mind and society by showing that the same pattern of manifest and latent content exists within each entity. The manifest aspect of existence is reflected in patriarchal social structure and the latent aspect in the structure of unconscious phantasy. These aspects are dialectically interrelated in that patriarchy is the manifest form of phantasy and phantasy the latent form of patriarchal order. This model of the integration of psychoanalysis and sociology is based on the work of Juliet Mitchell, particularly Psychoanalysis and Feminism. Psychoanalytic sociology is defined as a discipline that investigates the relationship between mental life and social organization.     

When contributions make a difference: Explaining order effects in responsibility attribution

In two experiments, we established an order effect in responsibility attributions. In line with Spellman (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 126: 323-348, 1997), who proposed that a person's perceived causal contribution varies with the degree to which it changes the probability of the eventual outcome, Experiment 1 showed that in a team challenge in which the players contribute sequentially, the last player's blame or credit is attenuated if the team's result has already been determined prior to her acting. Experiment 2 illustrated that this attenuation effect does not overgeneralize to situations in which the experienced order of events does not map onto the objective order of events; the level of the last person's performance is only discounted if that person knew that the result was already determined. Furthermore, Experiment 1 demonstrated that responsibility attributions remain sensitive to differences in performance, even if the outcome is already determined. We suggest a theoretical extension of Spellman's model, according to which participants' responsibility attributions are determined not only by whether a contribution made a difference in the actual situation, but also by whether it would have made a difference had things turned out somewhat differently.     

When self-destructive thoughts flash through the mind: Failure to meet standards affects the accessibility of suicide-related thoughts

When individuals realize that they fail to attain important standards or expectations, they may be motivated to escape the self, which could lead thoughts of suicide to become more accessible. Six studies examined this hypothesis, mainly derived from escape theory (Baumeister, 1990). The results indicated that whenever individuals realize that they fail to attain an important standard, they experience increased accessibility of suicide-related thoughts (Studies 1-6). In line with the idea that such effects reflect motivations to escape from negative self-awareness, they were especially pronounced when associated with high levels of self-consciousness and escapist motivations (Study 1) and with a large discrepancy between self and standards (Studies 2-4). Moreover, failure to attain standards increased suicide-thought accessibility along with the desire for an altered state of consciousness (Study 5). Finally, increases in suicide-thought accessibility after failure were associated with simultaneous increases in accessibility of general concepts related to escape (Study 6). Implications of these findings for escape and terror management theories are discussed.     

Edward L. Thorndike: the selectionist connectionist

From the very outset of his work, Thorndike allied himself with the Darwinian proposition that complex phenomena can arise as the cumulative effects of a selection process, here the process envisioned by the law of effect. Thorndike's selectionist approach, when combined with his connectionism, laid the foundation for a synthesis of behavior analysis and neuroscience.     

Chicago sociology and the society for social research: A comment

Lester R. Kurtz's introduction to Robert Park's “Notes on the Origins of the Society for Social Research” (JHBS, October 1982) contains several errors of fact and understates the significance of the society for an understanding of the achievement of Chicago sociology. The role of the society as an institutional mechanism for consolidating and integrating a research group into a “school” is discussed.