False physiological feedback and persuasion: Effect of fear arousal vs. fear reduction on attitude change

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that increases in false physiological feedback of fear arousal will enhance persuasion and that reduction in the arousal feedback is unnecessary for increased persuasion to occur. Prior research has usually found a positive relation between level of arousal and persuasion, but support for the drive reduction hypothesis is tenuous. However, Harris and Jellison (1971) claimed support for such a hypothesis. They manipulated subjects' fear arousal cognitively via false physiological feedback while the subjects listened to a persuasive communication. The present experiments used a similar procedure in an attempt to test an "arousal only" against an "arousal reduction" hypothesis. Subjects listened to a persuasive speech while receiving false feedback via a meter concerning their fear arousal. In Experiment I half of the subjects received high arousal and half received moderate arousal information. Within each of these conditions half of the subjects had their arousal reduced, and the other half did not. In Experiment II subjects received either low arousal, high arousal, or high then low arousal feedback while listening. The results of the two studies generally provided support for the "arousal only" hypothesis. An interpretation in terms of Bem's attribution theory was tentatively suggested.     

Effects of task success or failure on causal attributions and person perception

An actor's outcome on a task (success-failure) was manipulated orthogonally to information that the actor either used or did not use drugs. Casual attributions for success-failure were obtained as well as trait ratings of the actor. Subjects read a case study of an artist who either succeeded or failed in his profession. For half of the subjects, the artist was described as using hard drugs, and no mention of drugs was made for. the other half. It was predicted and confirmed that success-failure interacted with drugs-no drugs in determining attributions of ability. It was also found, as expected, that success was attributed to ability and motivation more than was failure. Further, success tended to be internally attributed to the actor, while failure was externally attributed. The interaction obtained for ability attribution was not obtained for a measure of trying, nor for the trait ratings. The results confirmed Kepka and Brickman's (1971) suggestion that ability and motivation are qualitatively different concepts in naive psychology, but some of their specific conclusions are questioned.     

Race versus belief about race as determinants of attraction: Belief prejudice and two kinds of race prejudice

An experiment was conducted to assess the effects of actual racial membership versus similarity of beliefs about racial issues on interpersonal evaluations. Prejudiced and unprejudiced White male students observed a videotaped interaction of two Black and two White male actors discussing racial issues and then evaluated the actors on several scales. One White and one Black actor took a conservative stand on racial issues, and the other White and Black pair of actors took a liberal position. Results from the ratings showed strong belief prejudice effects. Prejudiced subjects were attracted to conservative actors while unprejudiced subjects were attracted to liberal actors. Additionally, there were two kinds of race effects. Prejudiced subjects preferred White to Black actors, but unprejudiced subjects showed a reverse bias, preferring Black to White actors. A tentative explanation for this unusual finding was proposed.     

Additivity of risk in portfolios

A collection of gambles constituting a portfolio may itself be represented as a single gamble played once. A portfolio may be constructed by requiring each component gamble to be played once, and there is a theory of additive risk which requires that the perceived risk of the portfolio be an additive function of the perceived riskiness of the component gambles. Alternatively, a portfolio may be constructed as a probability mixture of the component gambles, and there is a theory of expected risk which requires that the perceived risk of the portfolio be the average of the riskiness of the component gambles. Existing evidence suggests that both of these theories cannot be true. A test of additivity of portfolios under both kinds of composition functions was made under two forms of display, the components displayed separately and fused as a single gamble. This experiment supports expected risk and rejects additive risk, especially under fused display.     

Communicator credibility and persuasian

Prior research has usually found a positive relationship between a communicator’s perceived credibility and his persuasiveness. An experiment was designed to test the hypothesis that the perceived vested interest of a speaker, the position the speaker advocated, and the social similarity between audience and speaker would influence attributions of credibility and affect the speaker’s persuasiveness. Three variables were manipulated in a 2 by 2 by 2 factorial design. Ss read a speech that either favored (pro) or opposed (con) student voting rights; the speech was attributed to a speaker who was either similar (student) or dissimilar (townie) to the stndent audience and who either had a vested interest (running for elective office) or had no vested interest (merely giving his opinion) :in the position he advocated. As predicted, the similarity of the speaker to the audience, the vested interest of the speaker, and the position advocated in the speech strongly influenced attributions of credibility. However, in contrast to much previous research, persuasion was found to be relatively independent of the variation in the speaker’s perceived credibility. It was suggested that the failure of attributions of credibility to relate to persuasion may have been due to the high degree of ego involvement for the Ss in the topic of student voting rights.     

A Population-Based Study of Children’s Well-Being and Health: The Relative Importance of Social Relationships,Health-Related Activities,and Income

This study investigated how various risk and protective factors interface with child health and well-being at the population level. Specifically, we examined the association of income, social-contextual variables, and indicators of health-related habits and activities to children’s life satisfaction and perceived overall health. Child data were collected via a self-report survey, the Middle Years Development Instrument, which was administered in three demographically diverse Canadian school districts to 5026 grade 4 students (83 % of the students had complete data and were included in the analyses). Multiple regression and mediation analyses were conducted to examine the joint associations of social relationships with adults and peers, nutrition and sleep habits, and after school sports activities with children’s satisfaction with life and perceived health. Results indicate that peer belonging and relationships with adults at home and school were the strongest predictors of life satisfaction. Furthermore, the (small) association between income and life satisfaction was mediated by social relationship variables. Child reports of perceived health were predicted by peer belonging, adult relationships (home, school, neighborhood), after-school team sports, and nutrition habits. The (small) association between income and health was mediated by social relationships and team sports participation. Findings are discussed in light of previous research on social determinants and socio-economic gradients of children’s health and life satisfaction.     

Difficult Differences: A Socio‐cultural Analysis of How Diversity Can Enable and Inhibit Creativity

The relationship between diversity and creativity can be seen as paradoxical. A diversity of perspectives should be advantageous for collaborative creativity, yet its benefits are often offset by adverse social processes. One suggestion for overcoming these negative effects is perspective taking. We compared four dyads with low scores on trait perspective taking with four dyads who were high on trait perspective taking on a brainstorming task followed by reconstructive interviews. Trait‐based perspective taking was strongly associated with greater creativity. However, contrary with expectation, interactional perspective taking behaviors (including questioning, signaling understanding, repairing) were associated with lesser creativity. The dyads that generated the fewest ideas were most likely to get stuck within ideational domains, struggling to understand one‐another, having to elaborate and justify their ideas more. In contrast, the dyads that generated many ideas were more likely to recognize each other's ideas as valuable without extensive justification or negotiation. We suggest that perspective taking is crucially important for mediating diversity in the generation of new ideas not only because it enables understanding the perspective of the other, but because it entails an atmosphere of tolerance, playfulness, and mutual recognition.