Political conservatism as motivated social cognition

Analyzing political conservatism as motivated social cognition integrates theories of personality (authoritarianism, dogmatism-intolerance of ambiguity), epistemic and existential needs (for closure, regulatory focus, terror management), and ideological rationalization (social dominance, system justification). A meta-analysis (88 samples, 12 countries, 22,818 cases) confirms that several psychological variables predict political conservatism: death anxiety (weighted mean r = .50); system instability (.47); dogmatism-intolerance of ambiguity (.34); openness to experience (-.32); uncertainty tolerance (-.27); needs for order, structure, and closure (.26); integrative complexity (-.20); fear of threat and loss (.18); and self-esteem (-.09). The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat.     

The social cognition of immigrants' acculturation: effects of the need for closure and the reference group at entry

Three studies found support for the notion that immigrants' acculturation to the host culture is interactively determined by their need for cognitive closure (A. W. Kruglanski & D. M. Webster, 1996) and the reference group they forge on their arrival. If such reference group is fashioned by close social relations with coethnics, the higher the immigrants' need for closure, the weaker their tendency to assimilate to the new culture and the stronger their tendency to adhere to the culture of origin. By contrast, if the reference entry group is fashioned by close relations with members of the host country, the higher their need for closure, the stronger their tendency to adapt to the new culture and the weaker their tendency to maintain the culture of origin. These findings obtained consistently across 3 immigrant samples in Italy, 1 Croatian and 2 Polish, and across multiple different measures of acculturation.     

Regulatory mode preferences for autonomy supporting versus controlling instructional styles

Background Three studies carried out in educational settings examined determinants of teacher's instructional styles and students' degree of satisfaction with the learning climates created by such styles. Aims Based upon regulatory mode theory, Studies 1 and 2 tested the hypotheses that teachers' locomotion orientation will be positively related, and their assessment orientation will be negatively related, to autonomy supportive (vs. controlling) instructional styles. Study 3 tested the hypothesis that students' regulatory mode will exhibit a fit effect with the prevalent learning climate in their school. Samples Participants for Study 1 were 378 teachers (278 females); for Study 2 were 96 teachers (65 females); and for Study 3 were 190 students (all males). Method Participants completed questionnaires that included measures of teaching styles (Studies 1 and 2), perceived learning climate and satisfaction (Study 3), and regulatory mode orientations (Studies 1 and 3). In Study 2 regulatory mode orientations were experimentally induced. Results Results confirmed that teachers' autonomy supportive versus controlling styles were positively related to their locomotion orientations and negatively related to their assessment orientation, and that students with a stronger locomotion (vs. assessment) orientation reported a higher level of satisfaction when the learning climate was perceived as autonomy supportive (vs. controlling). Conclusions The present studies show that teachers' preference for adopting an instructional style is influenced by their regulatory mode orientations, and that the effects of a learning climate on students' satisfaction are contingent on a fit between type of learning climate and students' regulatory mode orientations.     

Lay Epistemic Theory: The Motivational,Cognitive, and Social Aspects of Knowledge Formation

We review and integrate three separate research programs emanating from the theory of lay epistemics (Kruglanski, A. W. (1989). Lay Epistemics and Human Knowledge: Cognitive and Motivational Bases. New York: Plenum). The need for cognitive closure is an epistemic motivation that propels knowledge formation and has widely ramifying consequences for individual, interpersonal, and group phenomena. The unimodel investigates the process of new knowledge formation from the ‘information given.’ The work on epistemic authority highlights the centrality of social source effects, including the self as a source, in human epistemic behavior. These three research programs examine facets of epistemic behavior that function interdependently to produce the knowledge that guides individual and social functioning.     

How many roads lead to Rome? Equifinality set‐size and commitment to goals and means

Four studies examined the relation between the number of equifinal means to a goal, actors' commitment to that goal, and their commitment to the means. In Study 1, participants freely generated varying number of means to two of their work goals. In Study 2, they generated social means to their goals (people they viewed as helpful to goal attainment). In Studies 3 and 4, the number of means to participants' goals was experimentally manipulated. All four studies found that means commitment is negatively related, whereas goal commitment is positively related, to means number. Consistent support was also obtained for the notion that the relation between means number and goal commitment is mediated by the expectancy of goal attainment, and by goal importance. Conceptual and practical implications of the findings were considered that link together the notions of substitutability and dependency within a goal systemic framework. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Positive affect as informational feedback in goal pursuit

Two studies investigated the cognitive activation of a goal following a promise to complete it. Current theorizing about the impact of positive affect as informational feedback in goal pursuit suggests two contradictory conclusions: (1) positive affect can signal that sufficient progress towards a goal has been made, but also (2) positive affect can signal that commitment to a goal should be maintained. When individuals infer that significant progress toward goal achievement has been made, the goal should be deactivated, but when individuals infer that commitment to the goal should be maintained, goal activation should be increased. To determine the conditions in which positive affect leads to increased goal activation as opposed to goal deactivation, we proposed that competing goals serve as a moderator. We found that positive affect led to decreased goal activation when competing goals were present, but to increased goal activation when competing goals were absent.     

Multifinality in implicit choice

This research examines the possibility that people's choices in the service of an explicit focal goal may also reflect their tendency to fulfill implicit background goals and in that sense are multifinal. We carried out 5 experimental studies to investigate this notion. In Experiment 1, a primed implicit goal affected individuals' choices even when those avowedly served an explicit "focal" goal. Experiment 2 replicated this finding with a different type of implicit goals. Experiment 3 found that primed implicit goals had no effect on choices where the options that served them undermined the explicit goal. Experiment 4 found that a primed implicit goal served by a multifinal option does not privilege it over a unifinal option if that goal had been already attained by a different means. Finally, Experiment 5, via 3 types of control groups, showed that choices were affected by both the explicit and implicit goals in isolation, and they shifted toward multifinality when these goals were conjointly present. The discussion considers the integrative potential of the multifinality framework and its implications for a variety of phenomena in the domain of motivated cognition.     

Intuitive and deliberate judgments are based on common principles

A popular distinction in cognitive and social psychology has been between intuitive and deliberate judgments. This juxtaposition has aligned in dual-process theories of reasoning associative, unconscious, effortless, heuristic, and suboptimal processes (assumed to foster intuitive judgments) versus rule-based, conscious, effortful, analytic, and rational processes (assumed to characterize deliberate judgments). In contrast, we provide convergent arguments and evidence for a unified theoretical approach to both intuitive and deliberative judgments. Both are rule-based, and in fact, the very same rules can underlie both intuitive and deliberate judgments. The important open question is that of rule selection, and we propose a 2-step process in which the task itself and the individual's memory constrain the set of applicable rules, whereas the individual's processing potential and the (perceived) ecological rationality of the rule for the task guide the final selection from that set. Deliberate judgments are not generally more accurate than intuitive judgments; in both cases, accuracy depends on the match between rule and environment: the rules' ecological rationality. Heuristics that are less effortful and in which parts of the information are ignored can be more accurate than cognitive strategies that have more information and computation. The proposed framework adumbrates a unified approach that specifies the critical dimensions on which judgmental situations may vary and the environmental conditions under which rules can be expected to be successful.     

The dynamics of consumer behavior: A goal systemic perspective

Like most behavior, consumer behavior too is goal driven. In turn, goals constitute cognitive constructs that can be chronically active as well as primed by features of the environment. Goal systems theory outlines the principles that characterize the dynamics of goal pursuit and explores their implications for consumer behavior. In this vein, we discuss from a common, goal systemic, perspective a variety of well known phenomena in the realm of consumer behavior including brand loyalty, variety seeking, impulsive buying, preferences, choices and regret. The goal systemic perspective affords guidelines for subsequent research on the dynamic aspects of consummatory behavior as well as offering insights into practical matters in the area of marketing.     

Effect of circadian rhythms on retrieval-induced forgetting

This study investigated the effects of natural circadian rhythms on retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF; Anderson et al. in J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 20:1063–1087, 1994). Individuals tested at optimal times (i.e., morning persons tested in the morning and evening persons tested in the evening) showed a significantly greater RIF effect than individuals tested at non-optimal times (i.e., morning persons tested in the evening and evening persons tested in the morning). Thus, the limited quantity of resources available to allocate in the inhibitory activity during non-optimal times produced a significant decrement in RIF. These findings are compatible with the inhibitory account of RIF and with the notion of a resource-demanding process underlying this memory phenomenon.