The artful dodger: answering the wrong question the right way

What happens when speakers try to "dodge" a question they would rather not answer by answering a different question? In 4 studies, we show that listeners can fail to detect dodges when speakers answer similar-but objectively incorrect-questions (the "artful dodge"), a detection failure that goes hand-in-hand with a failure to rate dodgers more negatively. We propose that dodges go undetected because listeners' attention is not usually directed toward a goal of dodge detection (i.e., Is this person answering the question?) but rather toward a goal of social evaluation (i.e., Do I like this person?). Listeners were not blind to all dodge attempts, however. Dodge detection increased when listeners' attention was diverted from social goals toward determining the relevance of the speaker's answers (Study 1), when speakers answered a question egregiously dissimilar to the one asked (Study 2), and when listeners' attention was directed to the question asked by keeping it visible during speakers' answers (Study 4). We also examined the interpersonal consequences of dodge attempts: When listeners were guided to detect dodges, they rated speakers more negatively (Study 2), and listeners rated speakers who answered a similar question in a fluent manner more positively than speakers who answered the actual question but disfluently (Study 3). These results add to the literatures on both Gricean conversational norms and goal-directed attention. We discuss the practical implications of our findings in the contexts of interpersonal communication and public debates.     

Ethnicity matters for undergraduate majors in challenges, experiences, and perceptions of psychology

In this investigation of a national sample of undergraduate psychology majors, we directly compare the experiences and perceptions of students of color with those of European Americans. Our aim was to identify factors that might contribute to our discipline's educational pipeline, in which the relative lack of ethnic diversity is a recognized problem. We found that students of color and European American majors are similar in a number of ways but also different in others. Students of color are challenged by less encouragement from and interaction with faculty, perceive a lack of respect, and wish to see more attention to diversity in curriculum, research, faculty, and textbooks. It is not surprising that students of color were significantly less satisfied than European Americans with their studies in psychology.     

A device for silent on-line recording of continuously changing behavioral measures

A nonintrusive method of monitoring continuously changing behavior frequently is required in experimentation with human subjects, particularly infants. The touch-sensor switch box provides the observer with an ongoing record on a polygraph and allows the observer to give undivided attention to the subject. The mode of operation is completely silent.     

Retroactive inhibition as a function of the conceptual structure of original and interpolated lists

Subjects learned either a hierarchically structured serial list of concept instances or a list made up of the same words but without structure. These two original lists were followed by one of four interpolated lists varying in number of hierarchical levels and consisting of new instances of the concepts which occurred in the original lists. Recall of the original structured list showed heavy retroactive inhibition, with the magnitude being independent of the number of conceptual levels in the interpolated lists. For the unstructured original list, retroactive inhibition decreased as the number of conceptual levels in the interpolated list increased. Some mechanisms believed involved in producing these outcomes were discussed.