External Validity,Why Art Thou Externally Valid? Recent Studies of Attraction Provide Three Theoretical Answers

Some studies have better external validity than others, but why? Recent studies in the domain of interpersonal attraction have been tackling this question by documenting how people respond differently to hypothetical versus live interactions. In live interactions, people tend to report their experienced emotions, they evaluate others using a low‐level concrete construal, and they attempt to implement the goal of having a pleasant interaction. In hypothetical scenarios, people forecast their emotions, they evaluate others using a high‐level abstract construal, and they deliberate about others' positive and negative features. By situating the hypothetical versus live interaction distinction within the framework of strong preexisting theories (i.e., affective forecasting, construal‐level theory, mindset theory), this research reinforces the idea that there is nothing inherently invalid about laboratory studies that are cosmetically dissimilar from real life. Nevertheless, it remains highly problematic to generalize findings to a setting that elicits a countervailing set of psychological processes.     

Mental simulation and sexual prejudice reduction: the debiasing role of counterfactual thinking

Reducing prejudice is a critical research agenda, and never before has counterfactual priming been evaluated as a potential prejudice‐reduction strategy. In the present experiment, participants were randomly assigned to imagine a pleasant interaction with a homosexual man and then think counterfactually about how an incident of sexual discrimination against him might not have occurred (experimental condition) or to imagine a nature scene (control condition). Results demonstrated a significant reduction in sexual prejudice from baseline levels in the counterfactual simulation group. Importantly, whereas intergroup anxiety and motivation to control prejudice were not predictive factors, number of counterfactual thoughts generated independently predicted variance in prejudice reduction. Mechanisms for, and implications of, prejudice‐reduction strategies including counterfactual thinking are discussed.     

Book Reviews

R. D. Laing & A. Esterson. Sanity, Madness and the Family (2nd edition). New York: Basic Books, 1971, $6.95. Reviewed by A. I. Rabin

B. Von Haller Gilmer. Psychology. New York: Harper & Row, 1970, 512 pages, $9.95. Reviewed by Eric C. Theiner, Ph.D.

Jean Piaget. Structuralism. New York: Basic Books, 1970, 153 pages, $5.95. Reviewed by Dale L. Johnson, Ph.D.

Lynette Shaw and Herbert Sichel. Accident Proneness: Research in the Occurrence, Causation and Prevention of Road Accidents. New York: Pergammon Press, 1971, 476 pages, $16.00. Reviewed by Louise Bates Ames

Ulf Kragh & Gudmund Smith, (Eds.). Percept-Genetic Analysis. Lund: Gleerups, 1970, 408 pages, 85:80 kroms, (or $17.68). Reviewed by Juris G. Draguns     

Jesus ACTED UP: Learning with Robert Goss

In this essay, I discuss my responses to Bob Goss’ Jesus ACTED UP as I re-read it 20 years after its original discussion. Bob's work is foundational for subsequent queer theology even as it is bound to the particular context of the early 1990s. Next, I place the book in the larger context of what I call the “queerification” of Christianity. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer equality movement has made significant gains in terms of opening the church to openly queer clergy and access to marriage because of the contributions of scholar/activists such as Bob Goss. I conclude by looking ahead at the need for future explorations that can agitate while also reflecting the nuance required in relation to the more complex understandings of gender and sexuality that have emerged, the growing attention to intersectionality and the instability and complexity of personal identities, and the more subtle but no less deadly forms of homohatred we now face — perhaps in the form of collaborative, even co-authored work.     

Practice and feedback effects on the confidence-accuracy relation in eyewitness memory

It has been claimed that the lack of a reliable confidence-accuracy relation in eyewitness memory stems from eyewitnesses' lack of knowledge concerning their relative expertise. Two studies tested this idea by contrasting the effects of practice alone with practice with feedback in three successive eyewitness tests. Experiment 1 tested recall for events, and Experiment 2 used recognition of faces as test materials. Both studies showed that practice alone did not increase the confidence-accuracy relation, but practice with feedback on relative performance produced robust increases in the confidence-accuracy relation. This suggests that lack of calibration is one factor that causes the reported lack of association between confidence and accuracy for eyewitness memory.     

Using potential performance theory to test five hypotheses about meta-attribution

Based on I. Kant's (1991) distinction between perfect and imperfect duties and the attribution literature pertaining to that distinction, the authors proposed and tested 5 hypotheses about meta-attribution. More specifically, violations of perfect duties have been shown to arouse both more negative affect and stronger correspondent inferences than do violations of imperfect duties (e.g., D. Trafimow, I. K. Bromgard, K. A. Finlay, & T. Ketelaar, 2005). But when it comes to making meta-attributions-that is, guessing the attributions others would make-is the affect differential an advantage or a disadvantage? In addition to the null hypothesis of no effect, the authors proposed and tested additional hypotheses about how negative affect might increase or decrease the effectiveness of people's meta-attribution strategies and how even if there is no effect on strategy effectiveness, negative affect could increase or decrease the consistencies with which these strategies could be used.