Anger arousal,deindividuation, and aggression

We tested the notion that angered persons' aggression would be increased through a process of excitation transfer when they are deindividuated, but that individuated subjects would be most aggressive in circumstances under which they could use the information that they had ingested an arousing drug as a pretext for their aggression. Sixty-two male undergraduates participated under either deindividuated or individuated conditions, ingested either 350 mg of caffeine or a placebo, were informed that they had either taken a stimulant or a nonarousing drug, and were all angered by a confederate. According to prediction, when deindividuated and aroused by caffeine the amount of noxious stimulation subjects delivered to the provocateur was greater if they believed that the drug they had taken was nonarousing than if they thought it was a stimulant; in contrast, individuated subjects' aggression was greater when aroused subjects believed the drug was a stimulant. The results are discussed in terms of excitation transfer and the effect of aggression inhibition on the use of information about one's arousal.     

Benefits of response time-extended multinomial processing tree models: A reply to Starns (2018)

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - In his comment on Heck and Erdfelder (2016, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 23, 1440–1465), Starns (2018, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25,...     

Can bottom-up processes of attention be a source of ‘interference’ in situations where top-down control of attention is crucial?

In this study, we investigate whether emotionally engaged bottom-up processes of attention can be a source of ‘interference’ in situations where top-down control of attention is necessary. Participants were asked to monitor and report on a video of a war scenario showing a developing battle in two conditions: emotionally positive and emotionally negative. Half of the participants (n = 15) were exposed to task-irrelevant pictures of positive emotional valence embedded within the scenario; the other half were exposed to task-irrelevant pictures of negative emotional valence. Sensitivity and Bias scores were calculated using signal detection theory. Overall, task accuracy scores were dependent upon the valence; negative pictures had an adverse effect on performance, whereas positive pictures improved performance. We concluded that negative emotional pictures interfered with top-down control of attention by attracting competing bottom-up processes of attention. We found the opposite effect for positive emotional stimuli.     

Belief in Absolute Necessity

We outline a theory of the cognitive role of belief in absolute necessity that is normative and intended to be metaphysically neutral. We take this theory to be unique in scope since it addresses simultaneously the questions of how such belief is (properly) acquired and of how it is (properly) manifest. The acquisition and manifestation conditions for belief in absolute necessity are given univocally, in terms of complex higher‐order attitudes involving two distinct kinds of supposition (A‐supposing and C‐supposing). It is subsequently argued that the proposed acquisition and manifestation conditions are rationally interdependent, and that such harmony affords explanations of connections between different facets of belief in necessity that otherwise remain mysterious.     

Tests of Measurement Invariance Without Subgroups: A Generalization of Classical Methods

The issue of measurement invariance commonly arises in factor-analytic contexts, with methods for assessment including likelihood ratio tests, Lagrange multiplier tests, and Wald tests. These tests all require advance definition of the number of groups, group membership, and offending model parameters. In this paper, we study tests of measurement invariance based on stochastic processes of casewise derivatives of the likelihood function. These tests can be viewed as generalizations of the Lagrange multiplier test, and they are especially useful for: (i) identifying subgroups of individuals that violate measurement invariance along a continuous auxiliary variable without prespecified thresholds, and (ii) identifying specific parameters impacted by measurement invariance violations. The tests are presented and illustrated in detail, including an application to a study of stereotype threat and simulations examining the tests’ abilities in controlled conditions.     

The Limits of Experience and Explanation: F. A. Lange and Ernst Mach on Things in Themselves

In the middle of the nineteenth century, advances in experimental psychology and the physiology of the sense organs inspired so-called ‘Back to Kant’ Neo-Kantians to articulate robustly psychologistic visions of Kantian epistemology. But their accounts of the thing in itself were fraught with deep tension: they wanted to conceive of things in themselves as the causes of our sensations, while their own accounts of causal inference ruled that claim out. This paper diagnoses the source of that problem in views of one Neo-Kantan, F. A. Lange, and argues that it is solved only by Ernst Mach. No less than Lange and other Neo-Kantians, Mach was inspired to develop a psychologistic account of the foundations of knowledge, but his account also includes a coherent denial of things in themselves’ existence. Finally, this paper uses this account of Lange and Mach on things in themselves to illuminate Mach's relation to a certain strain of the Neo-Kantian philosophy of his own time: his views constitute a more fully coherent version of the psychologistic theory of knowledge Back to Kant figures tried to articulate.     

Hindsight bias in political elections

Two studies on political hindsight bias were conducted on the occasions of the German parliament election in 1998 and the Nordrhein-Westfalen state parliament election in 2000. In both studies, participants predicted the percentage of votes for several political parties and recalled these predictions after the election. The observed hindsight effects were stronger than those found in any prior study on political elections (using percentage of votes as the dependent variable). We argue that the length of the retention interval between original judgement and recollection is mainly responsible for this difference. In our second study, we investigated possible artifacts in political hindsight biases using a control-group design where half of the participants recalled their predictions shortly before or after the election. Hindsight bias was preserved, reinforcing the results of earlier studies with non-control-group designs. Finally, we discuss the possibility that the hindsight experience (in political judgement and in general) actually consists of three different, partly independent components.     

Cognitive processes in implicit attitude tasks: An experimental validation of the Trip Model

Implicit attitude tasks have become very popular in various areas of psychology. However, little is known about the cognitive processes they involve. To address this issue, we investigated the underlying processes of the Go/No‐go Association Task (GNAT), a go/no‐go variant of the well‐known Implicit Association Test (IAT). More precisely, we tested two alternative multinomial processing tree (MPT) models of GNAT performance, the Trip Model and the generalized Quad Model. Both models assume that GNAT performance is influenced not only by automatic associations but also by response biases and a controlled discrimination process. However, the two models differ with respect to an additional overcoming bias process. In contrast to the Quad Model, the Trip Model assumes that overcoming bias does not play a major role in GNAT performance. Instead, the Trip Model emphasizes the role of response biases. We report three experiments that demonstrate the validity of the Trip Model for GNAT data. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hindsight bias from 3 to 95 years of age

Upon learning the outcome to a problem, people tend to believe that they knew it all along (hindsight bias). Here, we report the first study to trace the development of hindsight bias across the life span. One hundred ninety-four participants aged 3 to 95 years completed 3 tasks designed to measure visual and verbal hindsight bias. All age groups demonstrated hindsight bias on all 3 tasks; however, preschoolers and older adults exhibited more bias than older children and younger adults. Multinomial processing tree analyses of these data revealed that preschoolers' enhanced hindsight bias resulted from them substituting the correct answer for their original answer in their recall (a qualitative error). Conversely, older adults' enhanced hindsight bias resulted from them forgetting their original answer and recalling an answer closer to, but not equal to, the correct answer (a quantitative error). We discuss these findings in relation to mechanisms of memory, perspective taking, theory of mind, and executive function.