Behavioral routines in decision making: the effects of novelty in task presentation and time pressure on routine maintenance and deviation

This article examines the role of behavioral routines in decision making. In order to induce routines, participants were confronted with recurrent route decisions in a computer-controlled trucking game, which allows for manipulation of routine acquisition and strength. During the final round of the game, time pressure and novelty in task presentation were varied as between-factors. It was hypothesized that time pressure would increase the likelihood of routine maintenance and novelty would increase the likelihood of deviation. Besides individual choices, response latencies and self-reports were additionally assessed to measure the amount of deliberation during decision making. Results show that time pressure strongly increased the probability of routine maintenance, even though the situation indicated the inadequacy of the routine. In contrast, novelty in task presentation provoked routine deviation and increased deliberation, as evident from response latencies and self-reports. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The impact of open and closed mindsets on evaluative priming

In the present research, we argue that open versus closed mindsets, accompanying ongoing versus completed mental jobs on the prime, determine the size of congruity effects in the evaluative priming paradigm. More specifically, we hypothesised that disfluent primes that resist an easily completed encoding process should induce an open mindset and thereby result in stronger congruity effects than fluent primes that induce closed mindsets. Across two experiments, we applied two different manipulations of prime fluency: gradual demasking (experiment 1) and colour contrast (experiment 2). As expected, in both experiments we found robust congruity effects, but only on trials with disfluent (vs. fluent) primes. Results of a follow-up experiment suggest that these effects are not due to attentional processes. We conclude that the mindsets resulting from individuals' activities during encoding are crucial in determining the outcome of evaluative priming effects.     

Applying sampling theories to attitude learning in a virtual school class environment

According to sampling theories of attitude formation, evaluative learning depends on the sampling in the environment. We investigated teachers’ student evaluations in a simulated school class. Two experiments were designed to test distinct implications of experience-sampling models. While the model advanced by Fazio, Eiser, and Shook (2004) and Denrell (2005) led to the prediction of a negativity effect through asymmetric depolarization, another model (Fiedler, 1996) suggested a positivity effect through asymmetric polarization. Findings supported the latter contention. The selective tendency to oversample good students while neglecting weaker students was not radical enough to prevent the correction of negative impressions, precluding a negativity effect. Instead, extended selective sampling led to gradually increasing polarization of positive impressions, and facilitated detection of positive performance changes. While these findings can be reconciled with the Fazio–Denrell model, they highlight the crucial role of auxiliary psychological assumptions about attitude learning, as distinguished from the formal model itself.     

Fusion prevents the redundant signals effect: evidence from stereoscopically presented stimuli

In a simple reaction time (RT) experiment, visual stimuli were stereoscopically presented either to one eye (single stimulation) or to both eyes (redundant stimulation), with brightness matched for single and redundant stimulations. Redundant stimulation resulted in two separate percepts when noncorresponding retinal areas were stimulated, whereas it resulted in a single fused percept when corresponding areas were stimulated. With stimulation of noncorresponding areas, mean RT was shorter to redundant than to single stimulation, replicating the redundant signals effect (RSE) commonly found with visual stimuli. With stimulation of corresponding areas, however, no RSE was observed. This suggests that the RSE is driven by the number of percepts rather than by the number of stimulated receptors or sensory organs. These results are consistent with previous findings in the auditory modality and have implications for models of the RSE.     

Evaluative conditioning depends on higher order encoding processes

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is commonly conceived as stimulus-driven associative learning. Here, we show that internally generated encoding activities mediate EC effects: Neutral conditioned stimuli (CS) faces were paired with positive and negative unconditioned stimuli (US) faces. Depending on the encoding task (Is CS a friend vs. enemy of US?), Experiment 1 yielded either normal EC effects (CS adopting US valence) or a reversal. This pattern was conditional on the degree to which encoding judgements affirmed friend or enemy encoding schemes. Experiments 2a and 2b replicated these findings with more clearly valenced US faces and controlling for demand effects. Experiment 3 demonstrated unconditional encoding effects when participants generated friend or enemy relations between CS and US faces. Explicitly stated friend or enemy relations in Experiment 4 left EC effects unaffected. Together, these findings testify to the importance of higher order cognitive processes in conditioning, much in line with recent evidence on the crucial role of conditioning awareness.     

Pseudocontingencies can override genuine contingencies between multiple cues

The cognitive process of contingency assessment has traditionally been conceived as an inference from the joint frequencies (table cell entries) of correlated cues. Alternatively, pseudocontingency (PC) inferences are derived from the alignment of separate base rate trends (table marginals). The present research extends PCs to the simultaneous assessment of six contingencies between four personality cues. Consistently obtained PC effects, reflecting accurately assessed base rate trends, were unaffected by the actual cue intercorrelations, which were zero or consistent or inconsistent with the PCs. The functional value of PC inferences is discussed. Although PCs can be misleading, they afford approximations of actually existing correlations that suffice under many, although not under all, conditions.     

Size matters: Attracting new immigrants to Canadian cities

Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver have attracted most new immigrants to Canada. Small and medium-sized cities in Canada are keen to share the wealth that new immigrants represent, and federal and provincial governments support a more even distribution of settlement. As a result, the idea of attracting new immigrants to smaller locations is a pressing policy issue. This research weighs the characteristics of place that new immigrants consider on arrival. It uses findings from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (Statistics Canada, 2003) to construct an index that ranks five medium-sized cities in British Columbia in terms of their potential attractiveness to new immigrants. The index created proves robust and reliable from a statistical viewpoint. The study confirms that immigrants are attracted to cities where friends and family or other immigrants live. Moreover, the increase in attractiveness of a city is primarily related to its size. The index is an indicator of the role that population and the extant number of immigrants in situ plays in determining the appeal of smaller cities. From a policy perspective, if governments wish to “spread the wealth” associated with immigration and an expanded labour force, a proactive policy stance that enumerates and communicates the appeal of less prominent communities is vital. This is an important finding, and we offer policy options that account for the relationship of population size to immigrant retention.