On the Emergence of Human Goal Pursuit: The Nonconscious Regulation and Motivation of Goals

Experimental research in social psychology has discovered that human goal pursuit can emerge in the absence of conscious awareness. Whereas these goal-priming effects are commonly explained in terms of habitual automatic processes, recent studies shed new light on the matter. Building on this recent work, this paper attempts to promote a more comprehensive understanding and examination of the potential mechanisms that enable people to pursue their goals in a nonconscious fashion. Specifically, it addresses (i) the human capacity to pursue goals without awareness of the activation and operation of the goal, even when habits are inadequate; and (ii) the fundamental role of positive affect in nonconsciously modulating the motivation of goals and their pursuit.     

Maternal pre‐ and postnatal anxiety and infant temperament. The generation R study

The aim of this study was to investigate whether maternal anxiety that is temporary or chronic during the pre‐ and postnatal period predicts infant temperament. Mothers of 2997 infants in a population‐based birth cohort reported levels of pregnancy‐specific anxiety (Pregnancy Outcome Questionnaire) and general anxiety symptoms (Brief Symptom Inventory) prenatal and at 6 months postnatal. Temperament characteristics were assessed by maternal report using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire—Revised when the infants were 6 months of age. Maternal pregnancy‐specific and general anxiety during the pre‐ and postnatal period were all independently associated with perceived infant temperamental difficulties. Chronically high maternal anxiety predicted the highest perceived infant activity level and negative affectivity. These findings show that different forms of maternal anxiety during both the pre‐ and postnatal period are independently related to perceived temperamental problems in infancy. They also emphasize the significance of chronic maternal anxiety for infant mental health. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The nonconscious road to perceptions of performance: Achievement priming augments outcome expectancies and experienced self-agency

Three experiments explored the effects of priming the achievement concept on the expectation of performance outcomes and experiences of self-agency over outcomes in a task in which performance outcomes were dependent on chance. Experiment 1 and 2 showed that achievement priming produced expectations of higher (more successful) outcomes prior to working on the task, regardless of whether priming was subliminal (nonconscious) or supraliminal (conscious) and that this effect could not be attributed to subjective motivation to perform well. Experiment 3 revealed that subliminal achievement priming decreased participants’ experienced self-agency when outcome feedback was low, but increased self-agency when it was high. Together, these results suggest that activating achievement concepts outside of awareness spontaneously triggers expectations of higher task outcomes, which increases or decreases self-agency depending on whether there is a match or mismatch with observed outcomes. Implications for the literature on achievement-priming effects on behavior are discussed.     

Putting behavior on hold decreases reward value of need-instrumental objects outside of awareness

We examined whether cues that put impulsive behavior towards rewarding objects on hold reduces the value of the rewarding objects outside of conscious awareness. We manipulated the reward value of water by making participants thirsty, or not. Next, a bottle of water was subliminally presented in a go/no-go task, and paired with either go cues or no-go cues (putting behavior on hold). Subsequently, as a measure of reward value of water, participants estimated the size of water objects. Results showed that repeatedly withholding behavior towards water reduced the perceived size of water objects, but only when participants were made thirsty. These results suggest that withholding impulsive behavior towards objects that serve basic needs nonconsciously reduces reward value of these objects. Implications for nonconscious behavior regulation are briefly discussed.     

Group Effects on Individual Learning Achievement

This study focuses on the impact of the social context of a class on student behaviour, in particular, the effects of pupil-pupil interaction on learning achievement. Two major functions of reference groups are distinguished: a normative and a comparative function. The normative function deals with norm setting and enforcing norms. The comparative function is merely a standard of comparison for the individual. This study deals with the question as to what extent contextual effects at classroom level can be accounted for by these two types of reference processes. The development of mathematical achievement of some 3,600 students in Year 8 (11 or 12 years of age) in about 200 primary schools in the Netherlands was followed. Students were asked to rate their classmates on two/three-point scales: a comparative scale and a normative scale. It appears that both the comparative and the normative reference structure of classes have substantial effects on individual achievement. The effect of the normative reference group, however, is by far the strongest.     

Bootstrap confidence intervals for principal covariates regression

Principal covariate regression (PCOVR) is a method for regressing a set of criterion variables with respect to a set of predictor variables when the latter are many in number and/or collinear. This is done by extracting a limited number of components that simultaneously synthesize the predictor variables and predict the criterion ones. So far, no procedure has been offered for estimating statistical uncertainties of the obtained PCOVR parameter estimates. The present paper shows how this goal can be achieved, conditionally on the model specification, by means of the bootstrap approach. Four strategies for estimating bootstrap confidence intervals are derived and their statistical behaviour in terms of coverage is assessed by means of a simulation experiment. Such strategies are distinguished by the use of the varimax and quartimin procedures and by the use of Procrustes rotations of bootstrap solutions towards the sample solution. In general, the four strategies showed appropriate statistical behaviour, with coverage tending to the desired level for increasing sample sizes. The main exception involved strategies based on the quartimin procedure in cases characterized by complex underlying structures of the components. The appropriateness of the statistical behaviour was higher when the proper number of components were extracted.     

Revisiting the agentic shift: Weakening personal control increases susceptibility to social influence

What happens when people experience a reduced sense of personal control? Among the various strategies to defend against a perception of randomness, people may show an increased acceptance of external sources of control. Indeed, in one of the most classic studies in social psychology, Stanley Milgram referred to an “agentic shift”—the tendency to relinquish personal control to an external agent—to explain his dramatic obedience effects. We propose that his account is a specific manifestation of a more general phenomenon: the tendency for increased susceptibility to various forms of external social influence when perceived personal control is reduced. In a series of (lab and field) studies using a variety of perceived control manipulations, we demonstrate that a reduction in the sense of personal control increases people's vulnerability to the bystander effect, promotes obedience to authority and fosters compliance with behavioral requests. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Romaphobia Among Serbian Adolescents: The Role of National In‐group Attitudes and Perceived Threat

This study employed the integrated threat theory to examine Serbian adolescents' attitudes towards the Roma. The sample consisted of 687 secondary school students (mean age 17), of whom 53% were females. In a survey‐based study, we assessed adolescents' national in‐group attitudes (i.e., nationalism), their feelings toward the Roma, and their perception of economic and symbolic threat. Findings suggest that perceived threat to either real resources or worldviews of the dominant group was related to more negative attitudes towards the Roma minority. Further, Romaphobia was positively related to adolescents' nationalism and this relationship was partially mediated by perceived economic and symbolic threat. The theoretical and educational implications are discussed.     

Perceiving an exclusive cause of affect prevents misattribution

Affect misattribution occurs when affective cues color subsequent unrelated evaluations. Research suggests that affect misattribution decreases when one is aware that affective cues are unrelated to the evaluation at hand. We propose that affect misattribution may even occur when one is aware that affective cues are irrelevant, as long as the source of these cues seems ambiguous. When source ambiguity exists, affective cues may freely influence upcoming unrelated evaluations. We examined this using an adapted affect misattribution procedure where pleasant and unpleasant responses served as affective cues that could influence later evaluations of unrelated targets. These affective cues were either perceived as reflecting a single source (i.e., a subliminal affective picture in Experiment 1; one's internal affective state in Experiment 2), or as reflecting two sources (i.e., both) suggesting source ambiguity. Results show that misattribution of affect decreased when participants perceived affective cues as representing one source rather than two.