Initial Testing Does Not Necessarily Affect Eyewitness Recall Assessed by Specific Questioning

In eyewitness situations, open recall is followed by specific questioning about the witnessed event. We examined whether initial testing affects later recall of actions and specific details. After watching a video of a bank robbery, participants completed an initial testing phase that involved free recall, specific questions about the actions or details of the event or a control condition with no initial testing. In the final test, correct and incorrect answers, accuracy and response confidence for actions and details were analysed. Initial testing affected neither recall nor confidence. The participants were more accurate for actions than details. Response confidence was higher for correct than incorrect answers and higher for details than actions in correct answers. The results showed that specific questioning affects differently the recall of event actions and details and that remembering details increased confidence. Investigative interviewers can use this evidence when questioning information not reported in initial testing.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Profiles of Resilience and Psychosocial Outcomes among Young Black Gay and Bisexual Men

Young Black gay/bisexual men (YBGBM) are affected by contextual stressors—namely syndemic conditions and minority stress—that threaten their health and well‐being. Resilience is a process through which YBGBM achieve positive psychosocial outcomes in the face of adverse conditions. Self‐efficacy, hardiness and adaptive coping, and social support may be important resilience factors for YBGBM. This study explores different profiles of these resilience factors in 228 YBGBM in New York City and compares profiles on psychological distress, mental health, and other psychosocial factors. Four profiles of resilience were identified: (a) Low self‐efficacy and hardiness/adaptive coping (23.5%); (b) Low peer and parental support (21.2%); (c) High peer support, low father support (34.5%); and (d) High father and mother support, self‐efficacy, and hardiness/adaptive coping (20.8%). YBGBM in profile 1 scored markedly higher on distress (d = .74) and lower on mental health functioning (d = .93) compared to men in the other profiles. Results suggest that self‐efficacy and hardiness/adaptive coping may play a more important role in protecting YBGBM from risks compared to social support and should be targeted in interventions. The findings show that resilience is a multidimensional construct and support the notion that there are different patterns of resilience among YBGBM.     

A Goal‐Priming Approach to Cognitive Consistency: Applications to Judgment

A fundamental criterion of judgment is consistency among beliefs. To augment traditional methods for studying cognitive consistency, we treat it as a goal and present a priming method for increasing its activation. Three studies use three criteria to validate the method: an increase in the biased evaluation of incoming information, speed in a lexical decision task, and participants' direct reports of greater goal activation. The method is then used to verify the role of the consistency goal in three diverse judgment phenomena. Priming cognitive consistency increases the search for postdecisional supporting information (selective exposure to information), the agreement between preference and prediction (the desirability bias or wishful thinking), and the adjustment of a socially unacceptable implicit attitude to conform to the corresponding explicit attitude. One conclusion is that the cause of these phenomena is not only motivated reasoning (driven directionally by a desired outcome) but also the purely cognitive and nondirectional process of simply making beliefs more consistent. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Capturing the multiple facets of mall experience: Developing and validating a scale

Many constructs have been tied to the customer experience in shopping malls, including hedonic shopping motivations, activities, excitement, and emotional and cognitive reactions. Yet the literature has not addressed the notion of the mall experience as a construct in and of itself. The current research aim is to conceptualize the mall experience through the development and validation of a measurement scale. We present a four‐stage process of scale development and validation, based on three studies with four separate samples of mall shoppers, in which the final stage employs the scale to predict mall equity and loyalty. The suggested scale offers a quantitative measurement of four different mall experiences—seductive, functional, social recreation, and social scene—which differ in their components. This work extends theory in understanding, conceptualizing, and measuring the customer experience in the retail space. On the practical level, the developed scale can serve as a means for planning a mall's marketing mix and launching marketing campaigns in order to attract various groups of customers. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The interplay of persuasion inference and flow experience in an entertaining food advergame

Increasingly, unhealthy food is being advertised through online games known as advergames. The advergame is designed for entertaining fun to promote the brand featured in the game. But what happens if the food advertised is healthy or the source of the game is non‐commercial? This study examines how people's entertainment (flow experience) interacts with their inference about the persuasion impact of food brands featured in an advergame, which vary according to their persuasion knowledge about the source (e.g., non‐commercial versus commercial) and the perceived persuasion effect on self (e.g., beneficial versus harmful). Results of an experiment show that flow is positively associated with persuasion effects of the advergame. Brand attitudes and purchase intentions were the most favorable for non‐commercial brands with perceived benefits (healthy food) followed by commercial brands (healthy food) and commercial brands with harmful effects (less healthy food). However, persuasion effects for purchase intention were mitigated when participants were immersed in a flow state. Ramifications for persuasion and health promotions are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nostalgia's fulfillment of agentic and communal needs: How different types of self‐concepts shape consumer attitudes toward nostalgia

This research investigates how consumers' different types of self‐concepts (agentic vs. communal) shape their attitudes toward nostalgia. Experiment 1, using a two (self‐concept: agentic vs. communal) by two (nostalgia: nostalgic vs. non‐nostalgic) between‐subjects design and a series of multivariate analysis of variance and Hayes's PROCESS Model 8, showed that agentic and communal participants' preference was not increased in the non‐nostalgic condition but was increased in the nostalgic condition. Self‐concept indirectly influenced participants' preference for the nostalgic product through different functions of nostalgia; Agentic participants' likelihood of buying a nostalgic product and recommending it to others increased through enhanced self‐positivity, whereas communal participants' likelihood of buying a nostalgic product and recommending it to others increased through enhanced social connectedness. In Experiment 2, these results were replicated in the context of a public education campaign, and participants' chronic self‐concepts were measured. Participants with different chronic self‐concept tendencies were randomly assigned to nostalgic or non‐nostalgic conditions and were asked to indicate their attitudes toward the campaign. As in Experiment 1, a series of regression and Hayes' PROCESS Model 8 revealed that agentic and communal participants' attitudes were not enhanced in the non‐nostalgic condition but were enhanced in the nostalgic condition. Agentic (communal) individuals' favorability toward the nostalgic message about advocacy increased through enhanced self‐positivity (social connectedness). It appears that consumers with different self‐concepts (agentic vs. communal) experience enhanced feelings relevant to their self‐concepts (self‐positivity vs. social connectedness) when presented with nostalgic appeals for an object, and these heightened feelings drive an increased preference for it. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social–Emotional Factors and Academic Outcomes Among Elementary‐Aged Children

Social–emotional comprehension involves encoding, interpreting, and reasoning about social–emotional information, and self‐regulating. This study examined the mediating pathways through which social–emotional comprehension and social behaviour are related to academic outcomes in two ethnically and socioeconomically heterogeneous samples totaling 340 elementary‐aged children. In both samples, social–emotional comprehension, teacher report of social behaviour, and academic outcomes were measured in a single school year. In both samples, structural equation models showed that the relationship between social–emotional comprehension and reading was mediated by socially skilled behaviour. In one sample, but not the other, the relationship between social–emotional comprehension and math was mediated by socially skilled behaviour. This paper advances our understanding of the mechanisms through which social–emotional factors are associated with academic outcomes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Sanitary‐Mask Effect on Perceived Facial Attractiveness

Currently, some Japanese women use a sanitary mask to hide their faces when not wearing makeup, perhaps because they believe that they are more attractive (or less ugly) when wearing a sanitary mask than when not wearing makeup. The present study examined the effect of wearing a sanitary mask on the perception of facial attractiveness. We manipulated the presence or absence of a mask in the main experiments or an occluder (e.g., notebook) in control experiments and asked participants to rate facial images. The results revealed that attractive faces wearing a sanitary mask were perceived as less attractive than the same faces without the mask, contrary to Japanese women's belief. This is the first study to demonstrate a new phenomenon, the sanitary‐mask effect, in which observers underestimate the physical attractiveness of a mask‐wearing face. Importantly, the pattern of the results of perceived attractiveness was substantially altered when a control object occluded the faces. This suggests that facial occlusion by a sanitary mask has a unique effect, due to occlusion and unhealthiness priming.