Assessing individual differences in achievement motivation with the Implicit Association Test

The authors examined the validity of an Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) for assessing individual differences in achievement tendencies. Eighty-eight students completed an IAT and explicit self-ratings of achievement orientation, and were then administered a mental concentration test that they performed either in the presence or in the absence of achievement-related feedback. Implicit and explicit measures of achievement orientation were uncorrelated. Under feedback, the IAT uniquely predicted students’ test performance but failed to predict their self-reported task enjoyment. Conversely, explicit self-ratings were unrelated to test performance but uniquely related to subjective accounts of task enjoyment. Without feedback, individual differences in both performance and enjoyment were independent of differences in either of the two achievement orientation measures.     

Two Egocentric Sources of the Decision to Vote: The Voter's Illusion and the Belief in Personal Relevance

The decision to vote in a national election requires a choice between serving a social good and satisfying one's self-interest. Viewed as a cooperative response in a social dilemma, casting a vote seems irrational because it cannot have a discernible effect on the electoral outcome. The findings of two studies with undergraduate samples suggest that some people vote not because they set aside self-interest, but because they expect their own behaviors to matter. Two psychological processes contribute to this belief: the voter's illusion (the projection of one's own choice between voting and abstention to supporters of the same party or candidate), and the belief in personal relevance (the belief that one's own vote matters regardless of its predictive value for the behavior of others). The rationality of these two egocentric mechanisms depends on the normative framework invoked. Their relevance for actual voting behavior is indicated by their ability to account for four types of variation in turnout rates.     

Prospect theory analysis of guessing in multiple choice tests

The guessing of answers in multiple choice tests adds random error to the variance of the test scores, lowering their reliability. Formula scoring rules that penalize for wrong guesses are frequently used to solve this problem. This paper uses prospect theory to analyze scoring rules from a decision‐making perspective and focuses on the effects of framing on the tendency to guess. In three experiments participants were presented with hypothetical test situations and were asked to indicate the degree of certainty that they thought was required for them to answer a question. In accordance with the framing hypothesis, participants tended to guess more when they anticipated a low grade and therefore considered themselves to be in the loss domain, or when the scoring rule caused the situation to be framed as entailing potential losses. The last experiment replicated these results with a task that resembles an actual test. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sensory responsiveness and the effects of equal subjective rewards on tactile learning and memory of honeybees

In tactile learning, sucrose is the unconditioned stimulus and reward, which is usually applied to the antenna to elicit proboscis extension and which the bee can drink when it is subsequently applied to the extended proboscis. The conditioned stimulus is a tactile object that the bee can scan with its antennae. In this paper we describe the quantitative relationships between gustatory antennal stimulation, gustatory proboscis stimulation, and tactile learning and memory. Bees are 10-fold more responsive to sucrose solutions when they are applied to the antenna compared to proboscis stimulation. During tactile conditioning, the sucrose solution applied to the proboscis determines the level of acquisition, whereas antennal input is of minor importance. Bees differing in their gustatory responsiveness measured at the antenna differ strongly in their tactile acquisition and memory. We demonstrate how these differences in tactile acquisition and memory can be greatly reduced by calculating equal subjective rewards, based on individual gustatory responsiveness.     

Perfectionism and social desirability: Students report increased perfectionism to create a positive impression

Because previous studies examining correlations between perfectionism and social desirability produced inconclusive findings, this study used an experimental approach examining the perceived social desirability of perfectionism. 117 university students were randomly assigned to three conditions (fake-good, standard, and fake-bad instructions) and then completed measures of self-oriented, other-oriented, and socially prescribed perfectionism. Results showed that all three forms of perfectionism were perceived as socially desirable. Self-oriented perfectionism showed a strong linear trend across the conditions: Students reported significantly higher self-oriented perfectionism in the fake-good condition, and significantly lower self-oriented perfectionism in the fake-bad condition compared to standard instructions. Other-oriented perfectionism showed the same linear trend, albeit weaker, and only fake-good and fake-bad conditions differed significantly. Socially prescribed perfectionism too showed a significant linear trend: Students reported higher levels in the fake-good condition compared to standard instructions and fake-bad condition, with no significant difference between the latter conditions. The findings indicate that, in educational settings, students perceive perfectionism—including maladaptive forms such as socially prescribed perfectionism—as socially desirable.     

Complex problem solving — More than reasoning?

This study investigates the internal structure and construct validity of Complex Problem Solving (CPS), which is measured by a Multiple-Item-Approach. It is tested, if (a) three facets of CPS - rule identification (adequateness of strategies), rule knowledge (generated knowledge) and rule application (ability to control a system) - can be empirically distinguished, how (b) reasoning is related to these CPS-facets and if (c) CPS shows incremental validity in predicting school grade point average (GPA) beyond reasoning. N = 222 university students completed MicroDYN, a computer-based CPS test and Ravens Advanced Progressive Matrices. Analysis including structural equation models showed that a 2-dimensionsal model of CPS including rule knowledge and rule application fitted the data best. Furthermore, reasoning predicted performance in rule application only indirectly through its influence on rule knowledge indicating that learning during system exploration is a prerequisite for controlling a system successfully. Finally, CPS explained variance in GPA even beyond reasoning, showing incremental validity of CPS. Thus, CPS measures important aspects of academic performance not assessed by reasoning and should be considered when predicting real life criteria such as GPA.     

An Exactification of the Monoid of Primitive Recursive Functions

We study the monoid of primitive recursive functions and investigate a onestep construction of a kind of exact completion, which resembles that of the familiar category of modest sets, except that the partial equivalence relations which serve as objects are recursively enumerable. As usual, these constructions involve the splitting of symmetric idempotents.     

How the brain blinks: towards a neurocognitive model of the attentional blink

When people monitor a visual stream of rapidly presented stimuli for two targets (T1 and T2), they often miss T2 if it falls into a time window of about half a second after T1 onset-the attentional blink (AB). We provide an overview of recent neuroscientific studies devoted to analyze the neural processes underlying the AB and their temporal dynamics. The available evidence points to an attentional network involving temporal, right-parietal and frontal cortex, and suggests that the components of this neural network interact by means of synchronization and stimulus-induced desynchronization in the beta frequency range. We set up a neurocognitive scenario describing how the AB might emerge and why it depends on the presence of masks and the other event(s) the targets are embedded in. The scenario supports the idea that the AB arises from "biased competition", with the top-down bias being generated by parietal-frontal interactions and the competition taking place between stimulus codes in temporal cortex.     

Empirically and clinically useful decision making in psychotherapy: differential predictions with treatment response models

In the delivery of clinical services, outcomes monitoring (i.e., repeated assessments of a patient's response to treatment) can be used to support clinical decision making (i.e., recurrent revisions of outcome expectations on the basis of that response). Outcomes monitoring can be particularly useful in the context of established practice research networks. This article presents a strategy to disaggregate patients into homogeneous subgroups to generate optimal expected treatment response profiles, which can be used to predict and track the progress of patients in different treatment modalities. The study was based on data from 618 diagnostically diverse patients treated with either a cognitive-behavioral treatment protocol (n = 262) or an integrative cognitive-behavioral and interpersonal treatment protocol (n = 356). The validity of expected treatment response models to predict treatment in those 2 protocols for individual patients was evaluated. The ways such a procedure might be used in outpatient centers to learn more about patients, predict treatment response, and improve clinical practice are discussed.