Hindsight bias: An interaction of automatic and motivational factors?

If subjects are asked to recollect a former response after having been informed about the correct response, their recollection tends to approach the correct response. This effect has been termedhindsight bias. We studied hindsight bias in an experiment requiring numerical responses to almanac-type questions for physical quantities. We varied (1) the time at which the correct information was provided, (2) the encoding of the original responses by asking/not asking subjects to give a reason for the respective response, and (3) the motivation to recall correctly. We found that hindsight is less biased if reasons are given and if the correct information is provided at an earlier time. Motivation had only interactive effects: (1) With high motivation to recall correctly, the time the correct information was provided had no influence. (2) With reasons given, the variation of motivation showed no effect. These results rule out purely motivational and purely automatic explanations.     

Affect and persuasion: Mood effects on the processing of message content and context cues and on subsequent behaviour

Two experiments are reported examining the impact of recipients' mood on the processing of simple, everyday persuasive communications and on subsequent behaviour. Consistent with the general assumption that affective states may inform an individual about the state of its current environment, it was found that positive (as compared to neutral or negative) mood reduced subjects' motivation to systematically process both content information and contextual cues. Specifically, Experiment I demonstrated that, in a field setting, the behaviour of subjects who had been put in a good mood was less likely to reflect differences in message content than the behaviour of neutral mood subjects. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these findings, showing that good mood subjects' behaviour was uninfluenced by content as well as context information, whereas bad mood subjects did make use of both types of information. Subject's cognitive responses and evaluations paralleled the behavioural data. The results are discussed in terms of their compatibility with contemporary models of persuasion, and their implications for future research on mood and persuasion and on the interplay of affect and cognition in general are considered.     

Variations on the Ramsey test: More triviality results

The purpose of this note is to formulate some weaker versions of the so called Ramsey test that do not entail the following unacceptable consequenceIf A and C are already accepted in K, then if A, then C is also accepted in K. and to show that these versions still lead to the same triviality result when combined with a preservation criterion.     

Autobiographical memory impairment in chronic schizophrenia: Significance and clinical correlates

Previous studies of autobiographical memory (AM) in schizophrenia yielded a reduction of specificity, richness of details and conscious recollection, which indicate both, quantitative and qualitative AM changes. However, their associations with psychopathological symptoms and neuropsychological deficits were not resolved. Therefore, we sought to investigate AM with respect to psychopathology and neuropsychology in patients with chronic schizophrenia to rule out the influence of different courses of the disease. AM of four lifetime periods was examined in 75 patients and 50 healthy controls by using a semi-structured interview. The recalled episodes were rated for memory specificity. Subsequently, one single event of each period of life was rated for details and experiential aspects of reliving (originality, vividness/visual imagery, emotional re-experiencing and emotional valence). When contrasted with healthy controls, patients recalled a significantly reduced number of episodes and personal semantic facts; moreover, memory specificity of AM was significantly lower in patients than controls. While the richness of details calculated for single events showed only minor, non-significant group differences, vividness and emotional re-experiencing were significantly less pronounced in the patient group. Along with this, AM performance correlated significantly with negative symptoms including apathy as well as verbal memory and executive functions. Our results underline the significance of overgenerality as a key feature of AM in schizophrenia as well as a dissociation between intact number of details of single events and reduced vividness and emotional re-experiencing. The extent of negative symptoms including apathy and impairments of verbal memory/executive functions may explain AM deficits in chronic schizophrenia.     

Salience of rape affects self-esteem: The moderating role of gender and rape myth acceptance

In two experiments, conducted in Germany and the U.S.A., it was found that exposure to a rape report lowered self-esteem and positive affect in women who do not accept ‘rape myths’ (stereotypical beliefs which blame the victim and exonerate the rapist; Burt, 1980). Men high in rape myth acceptance (RMA) showed an increase in positive affect and self-esteem as a function of exposure to rape; men low in RMA and women high in RMA were largely unaffected. Both experiments demonstrated that these effects were specific to rape, as opposed to violence in general. These results support the feminist hypothesis that the threat of rape serves the function to exert social control over women and to sustain men's dominance. Potential cognitive mechanisms mediating the observed effects are discussed.     

Input- and output-monitoring in implicit and explicit memory

Previous experiments have shown that the procedure of questioning subjects retrospectively about the input and output status of information (input and output monitoring) is a useful method for assessing the awareness states of subjects during implicit and explicit memory tasks. The main purpose of the present study was to investigate whether the previous findings could be extended to other implicit and explicit memory tasks. We were especially interested in whether differences in input- and output-monitoring performance can be observed when both the implicit and explicit memory tasks are conceptual ones. In a final test phase, the target items from the study phase and new distractor items were presented. In a recognition-like situation, subjects had to decide whether an item had been presented in the study phase (input status), as well as whether they had produced the item in the memory-test phase (output status). In all three experiments judgments about the input status - but only for those items that had been produced in the implicit or in the explicit memory test - were more precise after explicit than after implicit memory testings. This finding was not influenced by the distinction between perceptual and conceptual-memory tasks (Exp. 1), and was obtained under conditions in which the implicit and the explicit memory tasks were both conceptual and differed only in test instructions (Exps. 2 and 3). These results suggest that not only subjects performing a perceptual test of implicit memory, but also subjects in a conceptual implicit test were less aware of using information from a previous study episode than subjects who received memory instructions. It is concluded that requiring judgments about the input status of information is a good method for assessing subjects test awareness and is preferable to the use of a questionnaire (Exp. 3). In contrast, in all three experiments no differences were found with the output-monitoring measure between implicit and explicit test conditions.     

Axiomatic justifications of the utility principle: A formal investigation

It is argued that existing axiomatic theories of utility do not provide the utility principle or the principle of maximising expected utility with a formal justification. It is also argued that these theories only put mild constraints on a decision-maker in a decision-context. Finally, it is argued that the prospects are not particularly bright for finding formal non-circular arguments for the utility principle that do not rely on the law of large numbers.