Can the Media Create Public Opinion? A Social-Identity Approach

The media remains a powerful presence in U.S. culture. It gives people news of world and local events, it entertains, and it may even function as a companion to children. Because it functions as a window to the outside world, what appears across its landscape actually may become people's reality. Thus, the potential for distorting their view of that world is high if the picture provided is unrepresentative of actual events. For example, the prevalence of violent acts on television has been linked to increased aggression and escalating impressions of a dangerous world, and the overrepresentation of youth and beauty may be a causal factor of eating disorders. In this article, we explore the possibility that the media may also serve as a powerful creator of the very public opinions it seeks to reflect in its news. Subtle nonverbal cues of newscasters have been shown to influence voting behavior, and the media's overrepresentation of the proportion of blacks in poverty may decrease whites' support of welfare. By portraying a world in which people's opinions are based on their ethnic or demographic group membership, the media may also subtly but powerfully create the very opinions they seek to reflect.     

Who got vaccinated against H1N1 pandemic influenza? A longitudinal study in four U.S. cities

The recent H1N1 pandemic influenza stimulated numerous studies into the attitudes and intentions about the H1N1 vaccine. However, no study has investigated prospective predictors of vaccination behaviour. We conducted a two-wave longitudinal study among residents in four U.S. cities during the course of the H1N1 outbreak, using Internet surveys to assess demographic, cognitive and emotional predictors of H1N1 vaccination behaviour. Surveys were conducted at two time points, before (Time 1) and after (Time 2) the H1N1 vaccine was widely available to the public. Results show that Time 2 vaccination rates, but not Time 1 vaccination intentions, tracked H1N1 prevalence across the four cities. Receipt of seasonal influenza vaccine in the previous year, worry, compliance with recommended interventions, household size and education assessed at Time 1 were significant prospective predictors of vaccination behaviour. Perception of the H1N1 vaccine, social influence and prioritised vaccine recipient status assessed at Time 2 also predicted vaccination behaviour. Critically, worry about H1N1 mediated the effects of both objective risk (prevalence at the city level) and perceived risk on vaccination behaviour. These results suggest that H1N1 vaccination behaviour appropriately reflected objective risk across regions, and worry acted as the mechanism by which vaccination behaviour followed objective risk.     

Exploring the ability to identify visual search differences when observing drivers’ eye movements

How can we improve learner drivers’ visual skills? Much research has demonstrated that learner drivers have an impoverished spread of search during driving and that this is partly due to lack of knowledge of where and when to look, rather than simply an issue of cognitive load. Several training interventions have tried to improve scanning in these drivers with limited success. We propose that exposing drivers to examples of good and bad scanning behaviour may prove to be a useful tool in training visual search. The success of this approach, however, requires drivers to be able to distinguish between examples of good and bad scanning. To this end, two studies were undertaken where video clips of simulated driving with an overlaid eye movement trace were presented to participants who had to judge whether the eye movements were that of a learner driver or a driving instructor. Overall, participants found this discrimination task very difficult. However, the findings suggested that novice and learner drivers were able to correctly classify those eye movement traces of other learner drivers better than chance. It was also demonstrated that the ability to distinguish between the eye movements of learner drivers and driving instructors improved as the number of objective differences between the two groups increased across specific scenarios (as determined by frame-by-frame analysis using a priori categories). The results suggest that, under certain situations, drivers can extract information about the appropriateness of a particular scanning strategy just by watching a video of the eye movement trace. The implications for training interventions are discussed.     

The use of fruiting synchrony by foraging mangabey monkeys: a ‘simple tool’ to find fruit

Previous research has shown that a considerable number of primates can remember the location and fruiting state of individual trees in their home range. This enables them to relocate fruit or predict whether previously encountered fruit has ripened. Recent studies, however, suggest that the ability of primates to cognitively map fruit-bearing trees is limited. In this study, we investigated an alternative and arguably simpler, more efficient strategy, the use of synchrony, a botanical characteristic of a large number of fruit species. Synchronous fruiting would allow the prediction of the fruiting state of a large number of trees without having to first check the trees. We studied whether rainforest primates, grey-cheeked mangabeys in the Kibale National Park, Uganda, used synchrony in fruit emergence to find fruit. We analysed the movements of adult males towards Uvariopsis congensis food trees, a strongly synchronous fruiting species with different local patterns of synchrony. Monkeys approached within crown distance, entered and inspected significantly more Uvariopsis trees when the percentage of trees with ripe fruit was high compared to when it was low. Since the effect was also found for empty trees, the monkeys likely followed a synchrony-based inspection strategy. We found no indication that the monkeys generalised this strategy to all Uvariopsis trees within their home range. Instead, they attended to fruiting peaks in local areas within the home range and adjusted their inspective behaviour accordingly revealing that non-human primates use botanical knowledge in a flexible way.     

Motor planning in primates

Vaesen asks whether goal maintenance and planning ahead are critical for innovative tool use. We suggest that these aptitudes may have an evolutionary foundation in motor planning abilities that span all primate species. Anticipatory effects evidenced in the reaching behaviors of lemurs, tamarins, and rhesus monkeys similarly bear on the evolutionary origins of foresight as it pertains to tool use.     

Mood-congruent thoughts and personality disorder pathology

The primary aim of this research was to investigate associations that depression severity and trait anxiety have with reactions to specific, identifiable thoughts experienced by persons with varying levels of personality disorder (PD) pathology as they went about their day-to-day lives. Ninety-eight psychotropic medication-free persons participated in an experience sampling assessment procedure over four consecutive days, during which participants recorded specific thoughts experienced moments before a page signal was received and corresponding ratings of thought discomfort. Thought discomfort, regarded as an emotional reaction to thoughts or their evaluation, was moderately associated with several forms of PD pathology, particularly Cluster C pathology. Once depression severity and trait anxiety were controlled, however, associations between PD pathology and thought discomfort were eliminated. Findings from this research generally support the mood-congruence of negatively valenced thoughts in relation to PD pathology.     

Sensory information and associative cues used in food detection by wild vervet monkeys

Understanding animals’ spatial perception is a critical step toward discerning their cognitive processes. The spatial sense is multimodal and based on both the external world and mental representations of that world. Navigation in each species depends upon its evolutionary history, physiology, and ecological niche. We carried out foraging experiments on wild vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) at Lake Nabugabo, Uganda, to determine the types of cues used to detect food and whether associative cues could be used to find hidden food. Our first and second set of experiments differentiated between vervets’ use of global spatial cues (including the arrangement of feeding platforms within the surrounding vegetation) and/or local layout cues (the position of platforms relative to one another), relative to the use of goal-object cues on each platform. Our third experiment provided an associative cue to the presence of food with global spatial, local layout, and goal-object cues disguised. Vervets located food above chance levels when goal-object cues and associative cues were present, and visual signals were the predominant goal-object cues that they attended to. With similar sample sizes and methods as previous studies on New World monkeys, vervets were not able to locate food using only global spatial cues and local layout cues, unlike all five species of platyrrhines thus far tested. Relative to these platyrrhines, the spatial location of food may need to stay the same for a longer time period before vervets encode this information, and goal-object cues may be more salient for them in small-scale space.     

Hide and seek: The theory of mind of visual concealment and search

Researchers have investigated visual search behavior for almost a century. During that time, few studies have examined the cognitive processes involved in hiding items rather than finding them. To investigate this, we developed a paradigm that allowed participants to indicate where they would hide (or find) an item that was to be found (or hidden) by a friend or a foe. We found that (i) for friends more than foes, participants selected the pop-out item in the display, and (ii) when the display was homogeneous, they selected nearby and corner items. These behaviors held for both hiding and finding, although hide and find behaviors were not identical. For pop-out displays, decision times were unusually long when hiding an item from a foe. These data converge on the conclusion that the principles of search and concealment are similar, but not the same. They also suggest that this paradigm will provide researchers a powerful method for investigating theory of mind in adults.