Gender and priming differences in speed of processing of information relating to social structure

Previous research has shown that women and men’s different interactional contexts result in selective differences in retention of information (e.g., Gabriel & Gardner, 1999). This study tested the hypothesis that there should be broad gender-related differences in latencies of retrieval of information focused on groups or dyads, with women processing the latter more rapidly, and men processing the former more rapidly. Participants were given a diary reading task with explicit recall instructions. Results showed that although no difference was found in overall retention of items, women responded more rapidly to items referring to dyads, while men responded more rapidly to items referring to groups. In addition, a strong effect of the gender of the protagonist of the diary was found. Participants of both gender responded more rapidly to dyadic items when the protagonist was female but responded more rapidly to group items when the protagonist was male. These results indicate that gender differences in social structure result in differences in encoding and retrieval of broad classes of information that are not accountable for by selective retention.     

When additional multiple‐choice lures aid versus hinder later memory

Three experiments were conducted to investigate whether increasing the number of lures on a multiple‐choice test helps, hinders or has no effect on later memory. All three patterns have been reported in the literature. In Experiment 1, the stimuli were unrelated word lists, and increasing the number of lures on an initial multiple‐choice test led to better performance on later free recall and cued recall tasks. In contrast, in Experiments 2 and 3, stimuli were facts from prose materials, and increasing the number of multiple‐choice lures led to robust costs in cued recall and smaller costs in free recall. The results indicate that performance on the initial multiple‐choice test is a critical factor. When initial multiple‐choice performance was near ceiling, testing with additional lures led to superior performance on subsequent tests. However, at lower levels of multiple‐choice performance, testing with additional lures produced costs on later tests. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Why Do People Engage in Collective Action? Revisiting the Role of Perceived Effectiveness

Research has shown limited support for the notion that perceived effectiveness of collective action is a predictor of intentions to engage in collective action. One reason may be that effectiveness has been in terms of whether the action will influence key decision makers. We argue that the effectiveness of collective action might be judged by other criteria, such as whether it influences third parties, builds an oppositional movement, and expresses values. Two hundred and thirty one attendees at a rally rated the effectiveness of the rally and their intentions to engage in future collective action. For those participants who were not members of an organization, intentions were linked to the perceived effectiveness of the rally in expressing values and influencing the public. For those who were members of an organization, intentions were linked only to the effectiveness of the rally in building an oppositional movement.     

Reducing the tendency to self-handicap: The effect of self-affirmation

Self-handicapping, the creating or claiming of obstacles to one’s performance to influence explanations given for subsequent outcomes, has been shown to have a host of attitudinal and behavioral consequences. Given the wide ranging impact of self-handicapping, it is important to understand the conditions under which self-handicapping is more or less likely to occur. Accordingly, the present study tested the hypothesis that people will be less likely to engage in self-handicapping if they have previously engaged in self-affirmation. The results of this study found that self-affirmation was more effective in reducing self-handicapping behavior when individuals experienced non-contingent success than when they experience contingent success. Theoretical contributions to the self-handicapping and self-affirmation literatures are discussed, as are practical implications.     

INTUITIONS AND SEMANTIC THEORY

Abstract: While engaged in the analysis of philosophically central concepts, analytic philosophers have traditionally relied extensively on their own intuitions about when such concepts can be correctly applied. Intuitions have, however, come under increasingly critical scrutiny of late, and if they turned out not to be a reliable tool for the proper analysis of our concepts, then a radical reworking of analytic philosophy's methodology would be in order. One influential line of criticism against the use of intuitions argues that they only tell us about our conceptions of things, and not the things themselves. This venerable line of criticism can seem considerably strengthened if one endorses “externalist” accounts of meaning. Nevertheless, the move from semantic externalism to the rejection of intuitions will be shown to be illegitimate if one has a constitutive rather than expressive understanding of the relation between our intuitions and our concepts.     

Pragmatic Schemas and the Selection Task: To Reason or Not to Reason

Cheng and Holyoak (1985) have proposed that people possess classes of linguistically based schemas that have an internal structure that is determined by pragmatic considerations. They found that when permission schemas (“If you want to do P, then you must do Q”) are used in the selection task, the success rate is much superior to what is usually observed. According to Cheng and Holyoak, this is due to the fact that the permission schema is defined by a set of production rules that give the same answers to problems of conditional inference as those of formal logic. In order to test this hypothesis specifically, 160 university students were given one of two tests. The first contained two sets of inferential reasoning tasks, one using a permission schema, the second using a relation of multiple causality. The second test employed the same two conditional relations, but in an appropriate context. The results indicated that subjects did better on the reasoning task with the schema of multiple causality when presented in context, but, as predicted, their performance was much worse on the inferential reasoning task with the permission schema, which generated a higher proportion of logically incorrect responses. These results suggest that contrary to what has been affirmed, permission schemas might not have a logical structure that is equivalent to conditional logic. A second experiment examined selection task performance using the same two relations in context. Performance on the permission schema was superior to that found with the relation of multiple causality. This confirmed previous results indicating that permission schemas do improve selection task performance, but also suggests that this effect is not related to understanding of conditional reasoning.     

Emotions,concepts and the indeterminacy of natural kinds

Synthese - A central question for philosophical psychology is which mental faculties form natural kinds. There is hot debate over the kind status of faculties as diverse as consciousness, seeing,...     

"Let Us Be Saints if We Can"

Stanley Hauerwas's Gifford Lectures are, at least in part, an interpretation of the Giffords that came before him. As a contribution to intellectual and theological history, however, I wish Hauerwas had given witness to Santayana's Hermes the hermeneut, along with the considerable, indeed considerate, witness he does give to his own Christian faith. Hauerwas seems to dislike Reinhold Niebuhr and, by my account, misreads William James. Thus I have to conclude that With the Grain of the Universe does not measure up to his own more capacious and incisive works.