The effects of predictive ability information,locus of control,and decision maker involvement on decision aid reliance

This study examines several factors that influence decision makers' willingness to rely on mechanical decision aids. The first experiment examined the effects of predictive ability information and locus of control on decision aid reliance. The results indicate that decision makers were more likely to rely on a decision aid when its predictive validity was not disclosed. Further, decision makers with an external locus of control relied more on the decision aid than those with an internal locus of control. The second experiment expanded upon this result to examine the interactive effects of decision maker involvement and locus of control. The results suggest that involving decision makers in the aid's development enhanced reliance. However, decision makers with an internal locus of control were more strongly influenced by this form of involvement (in terms of increasing their reliance on the decision aid) than decision makers with an external locus of control. Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Shades of awe: The role of awe in consumers' pro-environmental behavior

Climate change is a critical issue right now. Despite substantial work in academia examining this issue, more solutions are needed to encourage consumers to engage in more pro-environmental behavior. In the current research, we explore the ability of awe, a unique and powerful self-transcendent emotion, to motivate pro-environmental behavior and green consumption. Using different methods to induce awe and assess the effect of awe on consumers' pro-environmental behavior, we conducted three experimental studies. Across our studies, our results show that when consumers feel awe, they are more likely to engage in pro-environmental behavior and consumption. Further, we distinguish among three kinds of awe (awe of nature, awe of God, and awe from man-made wonders) and show that awe arising from nature and from God increases pro-environmental behavior more than awe from man-made wonders. In addition, a series of mediation analyses show that the effects distinguishing different sources of awe are best accounted for by different mediators rather than one common mediator; specifically these relationships are mediated by consumers' feelings of small self (i.e., diminished self-concept) and their level of spirituality, respectively. Implications for how marketers and practitioners can best utilize the power of awe for encouraging pro-environmental behavior are discussed.     

Feature distribution and background knowledge in category learning

Three experiments examined the interactions of category structure and prior knowledge in category learning.Experiment 1 examined the distribution of atypical or 'crossover' features in category learning. In real categories, crossover features may be unevenly distributed found primarily in very unusual examples of a category (like whales or ostriches). In contrast, in many psychology experiments, each item has exactly one crossover feature. Even versus uneven distribution of crossover features did not affect category learning when the features were neutral. However, when the features were connected by prior knowledge, it was much harder for subjects to learn the structure with the uneven distribution of crossover features. Experiments 2 and 3 found similar results with a slightly less uneven condition. We conclude that learning is a function of the interaction of category structure and prior knowledge rather than either one alone. Furthermore, knowledge benefits learning even when the category contains contradictions of the knowledge, so long as the contradictions are not very salient.     

Self-Attitudes and Suicidal Behavior

Findings are reported concerning the hypothesized relationship between adoption of suicidal responses (ideation, threats, attempts) and antecedent negative self-attitudes. Data were provided by junior high school student (N = 3,148) responses to questionnaires administered three times at annual intervals. Antecedent negative self-attitudes were measured by a seven-item self-derogation scale at the first testing. Adoption of suicidal responses was indicated by earlier denial and subsequent affirmation of the response (self-reports). Findings indicate that suicidal behaviors are responses (whether or not subsequently continued) to experiences of negative self-attitudes in the more recent past. However, whether or not suicidal behaviors are related to self-derogating feelings in the more remote past can be seen as a function of a sex-social-class-mode of suicidal response interaction.     

Controlling attention to gaze and arrows in childhood: an fMRI study of typical development and Autism Spectrum Disorders

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to examine functional anatomy of attention to social (eye gaze) and nonsocial (arrow) communicative stimuli in late childhood and in a disorder defined by atypical processing of social stimuli, Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Children responded to a target word ('LEFT'/'RIGHT') in the context of a distracting arrow or averted gaze pointing in a direction that was congruent, incongruent, or neutral (bar without arrowheads, central gaze) relative to the target word. Despite being irrelevant to the target task, both arrow and averted gaze facilitated responses (Congruent vs. Neutral trials) to the same extent in the two groups and led to interference (Incongruent vs. Congruent trials), which was greater from arrows in ASD than control children. In the brain, interaction between group and distracter-domain was observed in frontal-temporal regions during facilitation and frontal-striatal regions during interference. During facilitation, regions associated with attention to gaze in control children (left superior temporal sulcus, premotor) were associated with attention to arrows in ASD children; gaze was associated with medial temporal involvement in ASD children. During interference, regions associated with arrows in control children (anterior cingulate, right caudate) were activated in response to gaze in ASD children; further, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region not observed in control children, was activated during gaze-interference in ASD children. Thus, functional anatomy was atypical in ASD children during spontaneous processing of social and nonsocial communicative cues.     

Idiomatic processing: Syntactic frozenness and subjective familiarity

Summary Four experiments are reported that investigated idiomatic processing. Two experiments collected subjects' ratings of frozenness, familiarity, and meaningfulness for a set of idioms. The ratings obtained were used to assess the contributions of these dimensions to performance in two experiments that utilized a phoneme-identification task. Ambiguous and unambiguous phoneme targets occurred as the initial sound in the final word in idiomatic and neutral carrier phrases. Subjects' phoneme identifications were biased in the labeling of ambiguous segments in that identification responses in the idiom context tended to form an idiomatic phrase, more so than those in the neutral carrier phrase. Additional correlational analyses suggested that an idiom's degree of influence on identification depended on the rated syntactic frozenness. For subjects who knew the idioms, familiarity did not account for the biasing effect of idiomatic contexts. The experiments are discussed in terms of theories of auditory word recognition and the representation of frozenness in the mental lexicon.This research was supported by NIDCD Grant R29 NS26 587 to the first author.