A Review of Sensory Imagery for Consumer Psychology

This review of mental imagery research has the core objective of fostering more research on the topic of sensory imagery. The review is organized around a conceptual framework highlighting (a) how mental imagery is formed, (b) the elicitation and elaboration of mental imagery, (c) the multi-modal nature of sensory imagery, and (d) the consumer behavior consequences of mental imagery. This conceptual framework provides many new lenses through which researchers can view prior findings, and thereby motivates innovative new research ideas. Future research directions are provided in each section of the review, with additional unexplored opportunities presented in a final section.     

The emergence and reduction of bias in letters of recommendation

Despite the widespread use of letters of recommendation (LORs) in selection systems, research has largely failed to consider the potential emergence of bias in interpretations of LORs. The present study fills this void by examining both race and gender bias in evaluations of LORs and assessing the efficacy of elaboration as a strategy for reducing such bias. Undergraduate students (n = 423) rated four LORs that varied with regard to applicant race and gender. Results suggest that bias does exist in evaluations of LORs, but that requiring raters to expand on their evaluations (i.e., elaborate) reduces this bias. Implications include elaboration as a strategy organizations can implement to reduce bias from emerging when relying on LORs as a selection tool.     

Destruction, Alteration, Simples and World Stuff

When a tree is chopped to bits, or a sweater unravelled, its matter still exists. Since antiquity, it has sometimes been inferred that nothing has really been destroyed: what has happened is just that this matter has assumed new form. Contemporary versions hold that apparent destruction of a familiar object is just rearrangement of microparticles or of 'physical simples' or 'world–stuff'. But if destruction of a familiar object is genuinely to be reduced to mere alteration of something else, we must identify an alteration proper to the career, the course of existence, of this something else; relatedly, the alteration must be characterizable without asserting the existence of the familiar object. All contemporary views fail one of these requirements.     

Perceptions of social influence when messages favour ‘us’ versus ‘them’: A closer look at the social distance effect

The third‐person effect (TPE) is the tendency for individuals to assume that persuasive communications have a stronger effect on other people than on themselves. In turn the social distance effect (SDE) is the tendency for this TPE to increase with the psychological distance between self and comparator. Two experiments showed that the SDE is moderated by whether the message favours the ingroup or the outgroup, holding all other content constant. In Study 1, male and female participants read a message arguing that either women were better drivers than men or vice versa, and then indicated how much they thought themselves, ingroup members, outgroup members and society would be influenced. The results indicate that for the pro‐outgroup message the SDE was found. However, for the pro‐ingroup message the SDE was reversed with ingroup members perceived as more influenced than all other targets, including the self. Study 2 replicated this finding using minimal groups, which eliminated the effects of prior stereotypes about male and female drivers. Across both studies the self was perceived as relatively invulnerable to influence regardless of message bias. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Continuities and Consequences of Interactional Styles Across the Life Course

Behavior patterns can be sustained across the life course by two kinds of person-environment interaction. Cumulative continuity arises when an individual's interactional style channels him or her into environments that themselves reinforce that style, thereby sustaining the behavior pattern across the life course through the progressive accumulation of its own consequences. Interactional continuity arises when an individual's style evokes reciprocal, sustaining responses from others in ongoing social interaction, thereby reinstating the behavior pattern across the individual's life course whenever the relevant interactive situation is replicated. Using archival data from the Berkeley Guidance Study (Macfarlane, Allen, & Honzik, 1954), we present evidence for the operation of these two continuity-promoting processes by identifying individuals who were ill-tempered, shy, or dependent in late childhood and then tracing the continuities and consequences of these interactional styles across the subsequent 30 years of their lives in the domains of work and family. The importance of the sociocultural context in mediating these continuities and consequences is stressed.