Political conservatism as motivated social cognition

Analyzing political conservatism as motivated social cognition integrates theories of personality (authoritarianism, dogmatism-intolerance of ambiguity), epistemic and existential needs (for closure, regulatory focus, terror management), and ideological rationalization (social dominance, system justification). A meta-analysis (88 samples, 12 countries, 22,818 cases) confirms that several psychological variables predict political conservatism: death anxiety (weighted mean r = .50); system instability (.47); dogmatism-intolerance of ambiguity (.34); openness to experience (-.32); uncertainty tolerance (-.27); needs for order, structure, and closure (.26); integrative complexity (-.20); fear of threat and loss (.18); and self-esteem (-.09). The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat.     

Individual differences in motivated social cognition: the case of self-serving information processing

Three experiments examined the hypothesis that people show consistency in motivated social cognitive processing across self-serving domains. Consistent with this hypothesis, Experiment 1 revealed that people who rated a task at which they succeeded as more important than a task at which they failed also cheated on a series of math problems, but only when they could rationalize their cheating as unintentional. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and demonstrated that a self-report measure of self-deception did not predict this rationalized cheating. Experiment 3 replicated Experiments 1 and 2 and ruled out several alternative explanations. These experiments suggest that people who show motivated processing in ego-protective domains also show motivated processing in extrinsic domains. These experiments also introduce a new measurement procedure for differentiating between intentional versus rationalized cheating.     

Learning,cognition and ideology

Abstract

Invited to give the 2000 Rick Turner Memorial Lecture, I pondered the following question: What explains the fact that the sincere thought of a brilliant and heroic person such as Turner can appear preposterous to me, if bad faith or scholarly ignorance on one side or the other are ruled out, as they should be in this case? I address this question by considering what ‘ideologies’ are from the perspective of cognitive learning theory. I describe the dynamics by which pressures for social coordination cause brains to implement alternative natural soft-wares for performing inferences in complex domains of association and inference. I conclude by noting that this need not imply normative relativism, since the relative justifications for conclusions produced by different softwares can still be debated. My aim is thus not to contest Turner’s ideology or political views, but to partially explain how learning produces differences that transcend factual disagreements and even ethical ones.     

Automatic social behavior as motivated preparation to interact

The authors propose that automatic social behavior may result from perceivers preparing to interact with primed social group members. In Study 1, participants primed with a disliked outgroup (gay men) showed evidence of interaction preparation (aggression) rather than direct stereotypic trait expression (passivity). In Study 2, participants with implicit positive attitudes toward the elderly walked more slowly after "elderly" priming, but participants with negative attitudes walked more quickly, results consistent with a preparatory account; the reverse was found priming "youth." Study 3 demonstrated that the accessibility of a primed category follows a pattern more consistent with that of goal-related constructs (including post-goal-fulfillment inhibition) than that of semantically primed constructs. Implications for the function of stored knowledge are discussed.     

The energetics of motivated cognition: a force-field analysis

A force-field theory of motivated cognition is presented and applied to a broad variety of phenomena in social judgment and self-regulation. Purposeful cognitive activity is assumed to be propelled by a driving force and opposed by a restraining force. Potential driving force represents the maximal amount of energy an individual is prepared to invest in a cognitive activity. Effective driving force corresponds to the amount of energy he or she actually invests in attempt to match the restraining force. Magnitude of the potential driving force derives from a combination of goal importance and the pool of available mental resources, whereas magnitude of the restraining force derives from an individual's inclination to conserve resources, current task demands, and competing goals. The present analysis has implications for choice of means to achieve one's cognitive goals as well as for successful goal attainment under specific force-field constellations. Empirical evidence for these effects is considered, and the underlying theory's integrative potential is highlighted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Speaking truth to power: Empowerment ideology as social intervention and policy

The popularity, and subsequent ambiguity, in the use of the term “empowerment” has created an even greater need for reassessment in the applied context than in the theory and research literatures. This paper outlines some of the areas of community, organizational, and societal level social intervention and policy ostensibly based on the concept of empowerment. These include neighborhood voluntary associations (for environmental protection, community crime prevention, etc.), self-help groups, competence-building primary prevention, organizational management, health care and educational reforms, and national and international community service and community development policies. Issues in applying social research to community organizations and to legislative and administrative policy making are reviewed. Ten recommendations are offered, including the value of a dialectical analysis, for helping researchers and policy makers/administrators make more effective use of empowerment theory and research. Humpty Dumpty: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean neither more nor less.” King of Hearts: “If there's no meaning in it, that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any.”—Lewis Carroll Portions of this paper were first presented in the program “Empowerment Theory, Research and policy” at the Biennial Conference on Community Research and Action, Williamsburg, Virginia, June 18, 1993. The author thanks Barbara B. Brown, Jo Ann Lippe, Ken Maton and his students, David V. Perkins, Marc A. Zimmerman, and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts.     

Aging and motivated cognition: the positivity effect in attention and memory

As people get older, they experience fewer negative emotions. Strategic processes in older adults' emotional attention and memory might play a role in this variation with age. Older adults show more emotionally gratifying memory distortion for past choices and autobiographical information than younger adults do. In addition, when shown stimuli that vary in affective valence, positive items account for a larger proportion of older adults' subsequent memories than those of younger adults. This positivity effect in older adults' memories seems to be due to their greater focus on emotion regulation and to be implemented by cognitive control mechanisms that enhance positive and diminish negative information. These findings suggest that both cognitive abilities and motivation contribute to older adults' improved emotion regulation.     

Social spatial cognition: social distance dynamics as an identifier of social interactions

We suggest that socio-spatial behavior, which is an interaction between social and spatial cognition, can be viewed as a set of excursions that originate and end in close proximity to another individual(s). We present an extension of earlier studies that perceived spatial behavior in individual animals as a series of excursions originating from a particular location. We measured here the momentary distance between two individuals (social distance) to differentiate among eight possible types of social excursion originating in a state of proximity between excursion-participants. The defined excursion types are based on whether or not the excursion initiator also concludes the excursion, whether or not the excursion starts and ends at the same location, and the dynamics of the distance between excursion participants. We validated this approach to socio-spatial behavior as a set of excursions using it to analyze the behavior of the two sexes in rodents, of normal vs. stereotyped rats, as well as of different rodent species. Each of these groups displays a prevalent excursion type that reflects a distinct social dynamics. Our approach offers a useful and comprehensive tool for studying socio-spatial cognition, and can also be applied to distinguish among different social situations in rodents and other animals.

     

In genes we trust: the biological component of psychological essentialism and its relationship to mechanisms of motivated social cognition

Three studies analyzed the biological component of psychological essentialism (laypeople's belief that social categories have an underlying nature/natural foundation) as it pertains to mechanisms of motivated social cognition. A new scale assessing the belief in genetic determinism is introduced as a measure of the biological component of essentialism. Results speak to the reliability and validity of the scale and show that essentialist beliefs are associated with basic social-cognitive motives and are also related to processes of stereotyping and prejudice. An experimental study found that rendering essentialist information salient elicits increased levels of prejudice and in-group bias, particularly in persons holding chronic essentialist beliefs.     

The emerging fragile X premutation phenotype: evidence from the domain of social cognition

Fragile X syndrome is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is caused by large methylated expansions of a CGG repeat (>200) region upstream of the FMR1 gene that results in the lack of expression of the fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP). Affected individuals display a neurobehavioral phenotype that includes a significant impairment in social cognition alongside deficits in attentional control, inhibition and working memory. In contrast, relatively little is known about the trajectory and specificity of any cognitive impairment associated with the fragile X premutation ("carrier-status") (approximately 55-200 repeats). Here, we focus on one aspect of cognition that has been well documented in the fragile X full mutation, namely social cognition. The results suggest that premutation males display a pattern of deficit similar in profile, albeit milder in presentation, to that of the full mutation. However, little evidence emerged for a correlation between CGG repeat length and severity of phenotypic outcomes. The findings are discussed in the context of functional neuroimaging and brain-behaviour-molecular correlates. We speculate that the deficiencies in social cognition are attributable to impairment of neural pathways modulated by the cerebellum.     

Political attitudes: Interactions of cognition and affect

Commonly held political opinions provide an ecologically relevant focus for studying the interactions of environmental context, affect or emotion, and cognition. To explore this approach to information processing, John T. Lanzetta helped initiate a series of experiments examining how emotional responses to politicians' nonverbal displays influence changes in attitude toward these leaders. Although this line of research has revealed how a number of variables interact when humans respond to known individuals in meaningful situations, the precise relationship between mood state or affect prior to a stimulus and subsequent emotions and cognitions remains unclear. Based on recent theories of modular brain function, an experimental paradigm was designed to test the hypothesis that the effects of a mood state on information processing depend on the subject's awareness of the affect as well as on its valence. Preliminary data from such a study, in which preconscious images of emotionally evocative stimuli were used to induce positive or negative affect prior to viewing the leader, suggests that the induction of negative affective states can lead to more positive attitudes. Reflected in such public opinion phenomena as the rally-round-the-flag effect, this mood-incongruent attitude change challenges many traditional theories of emotion and cognition.This research was supported by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences and the William H. Spoor Grant for Leadership Issues. We would like to extend a note of special appreciation to William N. Morris, Ph.D.     

Empathy and contextual social cognition

Empathy is a highly flexible and adaptive process that allows for the interplay of prosocial behavior in many different social contexts. Empathy appears to be a very situated cognitive process, embedded with specific contextual cues that trigger different automatic and controlled responses. In this review, we summarize relevant evidence regarding social context modulation of empathy for pain. Several contextual factors, such as stimulus reality and personal experience, affectively link with other factors, emotional cues, threat information, group membership, and attitudes toward others to influence the affective, sensorimotor, and cognitive processing of empathy. Thus, we propose that the frontoinsular-temporal network, the so-called social context network model (SCNM), is recruited during the contextual processing of empathy. This network would (1) update the contextual cues and use them to construct fast predictions (frontal regions), (2) coordinate the internal (body) and external milieus (insula), and (3) consolidate the context–target associative learning of empathic processes (temporal sites). Furthermore, we propose these context-dependent effects of empathy in the framework of the frontoinsular-temporal network and examine the behavioral and neural evidence of three neuropsychiatric conditions (Asperger syndrome, schizophrenia, and the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia), which simultaneously present with empathy and contextual integration impairments. We suggest potential advantages of a situated approach to empathy in the assessment of these neuropsychiatric disorders, as well as their relationship with the SCNM.     

Political ideology and American intergroup discrimination: A patriotism perspective

ABSTRACT

Individuals tend to rate themselves more positively than strangers or acquaintances—a self-enhancement effect. But such self-enhancement is potentially detrimental to one's intimate relationships. We hypothesized that higher relationship quality would predict (1) partner-enhancement (i.e., rating the partner more positively than the self) and (2) higher feelings of being understood and validated (FUV). In addition, (3) partner-enhancement would add to relationship quality's prediction of FUV. These hypotheses were tested among cross-sex friendships (N = 92) and dating relationships (N = 90) in University students and in a married, non-University sample (N = 94). All hypotheses were supported in romantic relationships. For cross-sex friendships, regardless of relationship quality, individuals partner-enhanced on the negative traits but neither self- nor partner-enhanced on the positive traits. Finally, relationship quality predicted partner-perceptions more strongly than self-perceptions.     

Mutual gaze and social cognition

I examine the role of mutual gaze in social cognition. I start by discussing recent studies of joint visual attention in order to show that social cognition is operative in infancy prior to the emergence of theoretical skills required to make judgments about other people's states of mind. Such social cognition depends on the communicative potential inherent in human bodies. I proceed to examine this embodied social cognition in the context of Merleau-Ponty's views on vision. I expose some inner difficulties within Merleau-Ponty's position as well as to point out the ways of resolving them by means of combined insights from developmental psychology and the analyses of self-other relations from philosophies of dialogue.     

Developmental phenomenology: examples from social cognition

Continental Philosophy Review - We explore relationships between phenomenology and developmental psychology through an in-depth analysis of a particular problem in social cognition: the most...     

Embodied cognition and social consumption: Self-regulating temperature through social products and behaviors

Extant embodied cognition research suggests that individuals can reduce a perceived lack of interpersonal warmth by substituting physical warmth, and vice versa. We suggest that this behavior is self-regulatory in nature and that this self-regulation can be accomplished via consumptive behavior. Experiment 1 found that consumers perceived ambient temperature to be significantly lower when eating alone compared to eating with a partner. Experiment 2 found that consuming a cool (vs. warm) drink led individuals to generate more socially-oriented attributes for a hypothetical product. Experiment 3 found that physically cooler individuals desired a social consumption setting, whereas physically warmer individuals desired a lone consumption setting. We interpret these results within the context of self-regulation, such that perceived physical temperature deviations from a steady state unconsciously motivate the individual to find bodily balance in order to alleviate that deviation.