Automatic activation of self-discrepancies and emotional syndromes: when cognitive structures influence affect

Different types of self-discrepancies are associated with different negative affects. Two studies were conducted to determine whether automatic activation of specific actual-self: self-guide mismatches, as cognitive structures, would induce distinct emotional states. Subjects possessing significant discrepancies between their actual self and either their ideal self-guide (attributes that someone wishes or hopes the person would possess) or their ought self-guide (attributes that someone believes the person has the duty or obligation to possess) responded verbally to an audiotape while "thinking about other people." Study 1 involved two kinds of priming attributes: self-relevant and yoked (another subject's self-relevant attributes). Activating mismatches induced momentary syndromes of dejection (sadness, decreased arousal) in ideal-discrepant subjects but induced agitation (nervousness, increased arousal) in ought-discrepant subjects. In Study 2, subjects were randomized to either self-relevant/nondiscrepant, self-discrepant, or yoked priming. The findings of Study 1 were replicated for the self-discrepant priming condition alone. Results indicate that (a) mismatches constitute cognitive structures and (b) automatic activation of different mismatches via contextual priming induces distinct types of emotional discomfort.     

Knowledge about the deleterious effects of smoking and its relationship to smoking cessation among pregnant adolescents

Smoking cessation among pregnant adolescents remains a complex and unresolved issue. The purpose of this study was to examine adolescents' knowledge of the detrimental effects of smoking on pregnant women and fetuses and its relationship to efforts to quit smoking. The sample consisted of 71 pregnant adolescents, and a three-group randomized intervention design-Teen FreshStart (TFS), Teen FreshStart with buddy (TFSB), and usual care control (UCC)-was used. Instruments included a demographic questionnaire, a smoking history questionnaire, and an 11-item scale measuring knowledge of the effects of smoking during pregnancy. For the entire sample, knowledge scores increased significantly (p = .000) from T1 (preintervention) to T2 (postintervention), and the adolescents who quit smoking had significantly higher knowledge at T2 (p = .028) and greater increases (T1 to T2) in their knowledge (p = .019) than did those who did not quit. Together, the TFS and TFSB groups had significantly higher knowledge at T2 (p = .017) and a significantly greater increase in knowledge from T1 to T2 (p = .005) than did the UCC group. This also held true when the TFS and TFSB groups were examined individually. Each had significantly higher knowledge at T2 (TFS, p = .029; TFSB, p = .008) and a significantly greater increase in knowledge from T1 to T2 (TFS, p = .007; TFSB, p = .009) than did the UCC group. Furthermore, despite the small sample sizes, within-group comparisons showed (a) no significant differences between quitters and nonquitters in the UCC group, (b) significantly higher knowledge at T2 (p = .052) and a trend indicating greater increases in knowledge from T1 to T2 (p = .092) for the quitters compared with the nonquitters in the TFS group, and (c) a trend for adolescents in the TFSB group who quit smoking to have greater increases in knowledge compared with those who did not quit (p = .158). These results indicate the need for continued inquiry into the relationship between pregnant teenagers' health knowledge and decisions to stop smoking.     

The effect of applicant influence tactics on recruiter perceptions of fit and hiring recommendations: a field study

The present study examined the effect of applicant influence-tactic use on recruiter perceptions of fit. Two tactics, ingratiation and self-promotion, were expected to have positive effects on recruiter perceptions of fit and on recruiter hiring recommendations. In addition, the authors expected recruiter fit perceptions to mediate the relationship between applicant influence tactics and recruiter hiring recommendations. Results suggested that ingratiation had a positive effect on perceived fit and recruiter hiring recommendations (and indirectly, on receipt of a job offer). In addition, perceived fit mediated the relationship between ingratiation and hiring recommendations. The effects of self-promotion on fit and hiring recommendations were generally weak and nonsignificant. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Regulatory fit and persuasion: transfer from "Feeling Right."

The authors propose that when a message recipient "feels right" from regulatory fit (E. T. Higgins, 2000), this subjective experience transfers to the persuasion context and serves as information for relevant evaluations, including perceived message persuasiveness and opinions of the topic. Fit was induced either by strategic framing of message arguments in a way that fit/did not fit with the recipient's regulatory state or by a source unrelated to the message itself. Across 4 studies, regulatory fit enhanced perceived persuasiveness and opinion ratings. These effects were eliminated when the correct source of feeling right was made salient before message exposure, supporting the misattribution account. These effects reversed when message-related thoughts were negative, supporting the claim that fit provides information about the "rightness" of one's (positive or negative) evaluations.     

Context pre-exposure obscures amygdala modulation of contextual-fear conditioning

We report that post-training inactivation of basolateral amygdala region (BLA) with muscimol impaired memory for contextual-fear conditioning (as measured by freezing) and intra-BLA norepinephrine enhanced this memory. However, pre-exposure to the context eliminated both of these effects. These findings provide a likely explanation of why an earler study failed to observe that the BLA modulates contextual fear conditioning-they pre-exposed their rats to the context. These results also suggest that the amygdala modulates the storage of the context fear memory and may do so by influencing the storage of the representation of the context in which the shock occurred.     

Preserved spatial memory over brief intervals in older adults

Two studies compared young and older adults' memory for location information after brief intervals. Experiment 1 found that accuracy of intentional spatial memory for individual locations was similar in young and older participants for set sizes of 3 and 6. Both groups also encoded individual locations in relation to the larger configuration of locations. Experiment 2 showed that like young adults, older adults' latency to respond to a test probe in a letter working memory task was negatively influenced by spatial information that was irrelevant to the task. This interference effect indicated preserved incidental memory for spatial information in older adults. Together, these data suggest that initial encoding of spatial information for relatively small numbers of items is largely preserved in healthy older adults and that representations of spatial information persist over short intervals.     

When do self-discrepancies have specific relations to emotions? The second-generation question of Tangney, Niedenthal, Covert, and Barlow (1998)

Self-discrepancy theory (E. T. Higgins, 1987) hypothesizes that actual-ideal discrepancies are uniquely related to dejection emotions, whereas actual-ought discrepancies are uniquely related to agitation emotions. A review of the literature testing this hypothesis supports an affirmative-answer to the question "Is there an effect?" However, as the results of J. P. Tangney, P. M. Niedenthal, M. V. Covert, and D. H. Barlow's (1998) study indicate, the predicted unique relations are not always found. Their article contributes to the development of self-discrepancy theory by shifting attention to the second-generation question "When is there an effect?" Four variables that moderate the likelihood of finding unique discrepancy-emotion relations are discussed in the present article: the magnitude of a self-discrepancy, the accessibility of a self-discrepancy, the applicability and relevance of a self-discrepancy in a current context, and the importance of a self-discrepancy to the person.     

A Study of the Impact of Factor Importance Weightings on Job Satisfaction Measures

This study empirically tests Locke's theory that the importance of a job satisfaction factor to an individual is already reflected in the individual's responses to the specific questions, Responses from a job satisfaction survey carried out by a large Canadian company were analyzed using a second generation causal modeling technique, Partial Least Squares. The results supported Locke's theory in that weighting the responses with the individual's importance factors did not improve the variance explained in the job satisfaction model. Further analysis indicated that there were differences between groups with high job satisfaction and groups with low satisfaction, differences in job satisfaction for different levels of service length, and that the differences in job satisfaction across gender were not large.