Taking a closer look: On the operation of nonconscious impression formation

In this article, we analyzed the information processing that underlies nonconscious impression formation. In the first experiment, the nonconscious activation of the impression formation goal led to a faster analysis of the trait implications of behaviors, compared with a control group. In Experiment 2, participants who were nonconsciously primed with an impression formation goal were more likely than those in a control condition to form associations in memory between behaviors and implied traits. In Experiment 3, nonconsciously primed participants were more sensitive than those in a control condition to whether inconsistent trait information was relevant or irrelevant to the actor’s disposition. Moreover, in Experiments 2 and 3, those with a nonconscious goal showed just as much evidence of impression formation as those who were consciously and intentionally trying to form an impression. Implications for nonconscious goal-pursuit and impression formation are discussed.     

Theoretical accounts of Gulf War Syndrome: from environmental toxins to psychoneuroimmunology and neurodegeneration

Non-specific illness includes a wide variety of symptoms: behavioural (e.g., reduced food and water intake), cognitive (e.g., memory and concentration problems) and physiological (e.g., fever). This paper reviews evidence suggesting that such symptoms can be explained more parsimoniously as a single symptom cluster than as a set of separate illnesses such as Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). This superordinate syndrome could have its biological basis in the activity of pro-inflammatory cytokines (in particular interleukin-1: IL-1), that give rise to what has become known as the 'sickness response'. It is further argued that the persistence of non-specific illness in chronic conditions like GWS may be (in part) attributable to a bio-associative mechanism (Ferguson and Cassaday, 1999). In the case of GWS, physiological challenges could have produced a non-specific sickness response that became associated with smells (e.g., petrol), coincidentally experienced in the Persian Gulf. On returning to the home environment, these same smells would act as associative triggers for the maintenance of (conditioned) sickness responses. Such associative mechanisms could be mediated through the hypothalamus and limbic system via vagal nerve innervation and would provide an explanation for the persistence of a set of symptoms (e.g., fever) that should normally be short lived and self-limiting. We also present evidence that the pattern of symptoms produced by the pro-inflammatory cytokines reflects a shift in immune system functioning towards a (T-helper-1) Th1 profile. This position contrasts with other immunological accounts of GWS that suggest that the immune system demonstrates a shift to a Th2 (allergy) profile. Evidence pertaining to these two contrasting positions is reviewed.     

Blood, sex, personality, power, and altruism: factors influencing the validity of strong reciprocity

It is argued that the generality of strong reciprocity theory (SRT) is limited by the existence of anonymous spontaneous cooperation, maintained in the absence of punishment, despite free-riding. We highlight how individual differences, status, sex, and the legitimacy of non-cooperation need to be examined to increase the internal and ecological validity of SRT experiments and, ultimately, SRT's external validity.     

Why Are Women Paid Less than Men, but Given Higher Raises?

We replicated and extended a largely ignored pattern of findings in the literature, namely, that women receive lower base pay but higher pay increases than men within the same organization. Despite the fact that we were able to explain about 95% of the variance in base pay, gender differences remained. We found that unequal starting pay was a significant factor in subsequent base pay. In addition, we compared two explanations for the finding that women receive higher pay raises than men. The results suggested that structural features of the pay increase system, rather than the reduction of stereotypes, seemed to account for women receiving higher pay increases.     

Recognizing the un-real McCoy: priming and the modularity of face recognition

Fodor (1983) has proposed that face perception is carried out by an informationally encapsulated module, whose operation is unaffected by context or expectancies. We tested the modularity hypothesis by examining whether discriminations between normal and distorted versions of famous faces can be primed, either by the name of an associated person (semantic context) or by a valid cue as to the identity of the target face (expectancy). A preliminary experiment showed that, in the absence of priming, discriminations between normal and distorted versions of a face were unaffected by whether the target faces were familiar or not, confirming that these judgments tap perceptual, not postperceptual (semantic), coding processes. In Experiment 1, accuracy was significantly higher when target face pairs were preceded by related name primes, as compared with unrelated ones. In Experiment 2, reaction times were significantly faster for targets preceded by a valid identity cue than for targets preceded by an invalid one. Neither effect could be explained as a speed—accuracy tradeoff. These results fail to support Fodor’s conjecture that face processing is encapsulated.     

Examining mental simulations of uncertain events

A great deal of research into the experiential nature of language has demonstrated that our understanding of events is facilitated through mental simulations of the described linguistic input. However, to date little is understood about how contextual uncertainty about the described event might influence the content and strength of these mental representations or the cognitive effort involved. In this article, we report a single experiment in which participants read sentences such as “The old lady [knows/thinks] that the picnic basket is open.” Following a delay of 250 or 1,500 ms, they responded to pictures that varied in the physical form of the target object (matching vs. mismatching). Results revealed an expected facilitation effect for matching images, but more important, they also showed interference effects (longer reaction times) at the shorter interstimulus interval (ISI; 250 ms) following the uncertain verb thinks, as compared with the certain verb knows. At the longer ISI, this effect was no longer present. This suggests that at the short ISI, uncertain conditions required extra time to construct and map a simulation of events onto the available image. Results are discussed in terms of the mechanisms involved in representing possible events and with reference to related literature on perspective taking.