Maintaining Positive Self-Evaluations: Reducing Attention to Diagnostic but Unfavorable Social Comparison Information When General Self-Regard Is Salient

We predicted that when (1) people are faced with diagnostic but personally challenging social comparison information in a domain, and (2) their self-regard is salient, they will be less likely to use the comparison information when judging their standing in the domain (making the judgment less inductive). Participants in Study 1 estimated their standing on risk factors for two health problems, and some did so after their self-regard was made salient. Moreover, some received information (about their peers' standing on these risk factors) that challenged participants' self-serving comparative beliefs. As expected, estimates of personal risk factor standing among high self-regard salience/comparison information participants were less correlated with similar estimates collected 2 months earlier, suggesting the estimates had become less inductive. There was also tentative evidence that, in this condition, self-esteem played a greater role in constructing these estimates. In Study 2, participants were led to believe that their comparative standing on risk factors was better than it actually was, and in this case, they were more likely to use this information when making self-judgments about their personal risk. Evidently, the extent to which people use diagnostic comparison information inductively when making self-inferences depends on the favorability of that information.     

Multisensory prior entry.

Despite 2 centuries of research, the question of whether attending to a sensory modality speeds the perception of stimuli in that modality has yet to be resolved. The authors highlight weaknesses inherent in this previous research and report the results of 4 experiments in which a novel methodology was used to investigate the effects on temporal order judgments (TOJs) of attending to a particular sensory modality or spatial location. Participants were presented with pairs of visual and tactile stimuli from the left and/or right at varying stimulus onset asynchronies and were required to make unspeeded TOJs regarding which stimulus appeared first. The results provide the strongest evidence to date for the existence of multisensory prior entry and support previous claims for attentional biases toward the visual modality and toward the right side of space. These findings have important implications for studies in many areas of human and animal cognition.     

Self-discrepancies and emotional vulnerability: how magnitude, accessibility, and type of discrepancy influence affect

Two studies examined whether the type of emotional change experienced by individuals is influenced by the magnitude and accessibility of the different types of self-discrepancies they possess. In both studies, subjects filled out a measure of self-discrepancy a few weeks prior to the experimental session. Subjects were asked to list up to 10 attributes each for different self-states--their actual self, their ideal self (their own or others' hopes and goals for them), and their ought self (their own or others' beliefs about their duty and obligations). Magnitude of self-discrepancy was calculated by comparing the attributes in the actual self to the attributes in either the ideal self or the ought self, with the total number of attribute pairs that matched being subtracted from the total number of attribute pairs that mismatched. In Study 1, subjects were asked to imagine either a positive event or a negative event and were then given a mood measure and a writing-speed task. Subjects with a predominant actual:ideal discrepancy felt more dejected (e.g., sad) and wrote more slowly in the negative event condition than in the positive event condition, whereas subjects with a predominant actual:ought discrepancy, if anything, felt more agitated (e.g., afraid) and wrote more quickly in the negative event condition. In Study 2, subjects were selected who were either high in both kinds of discrepancies or low in both. Half of the subjects in each group were asked to discuss their own and their parents' hopes and goals for them (ideal priming), and the other half were asked to discuss their own and their parents' beliefs concerning their duty and obligations (ought priming). For high-discrepancy subjects, but not low-discrepancy subjects, ideal priming increased their dejection whereas ought priming increased their agitation. The implications of these findings for identifying cognitive-motivational factors that may serve as vulnerability markers for emotional problems is discussed.     

The clinical vignette: Use in teaching and evaluation of group therapists

This paper describes the use of a written vignette as an aid in teaching group psychotherapy. Educators can determine in advance their expectations of the students' understanding of the vignette. Trainees evaluate the salient data, recognize patients' and therapist's contributions to the process, and conceptualize at three levels: intrapsychic, interpersonal and group-as-a-whole. This method supplements the usual training methods, and offers information about both the individual student and the entire class. This approach has an advantage of enabling educators to assess students in a relatively standardized fashion.     

Self-monitoring and age

Two adult samples were surveyed to investigate the relation between individuals' levels of self-monitoring and age. A negative relation was predicted as older individuals were seen as most likely to exhibit the low self-monitoring tendency of behaving in accordance with one's own attitudes and feelings, whereas younger individuals appeared most likely to exhibit the high self-monitoring tendency of behaving according to social cues. A significant negative correlation between age and self-monitoring was found in both samples. The self-monitoring construct is discussed in relation to other social-cognitive life-span differences and to the idea of critical periods throughout the life span.     

Absolute and Relative Biases in Estimations of Personal Risk1

Two studies examined the accuracy of personal risk estimates, as determined by comparing mean estimates made by college students with population statistics for college-educated individuals. Study 1 suggested that optimistic biases (the tendency for people to think they are less at risk than the average person) arise more because people overestimating the average person's risk than because they underestimate their own risk. In Study 2, subjects rated their risk after being presented with risk statistics that were 150%, 100%, or 50% of the true values. Subjects' estimates decreased with decreases in the comparison statistics, as if subjects attempted to preserve their “below-average” status, but they changed less than did the statistics and were actually pessimistic in comparison to the 50% values. Implications for interventions designed to influence risk perceptions are discussed.     

TESTING A HIERARCHICAL MODEL OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Abstract— A priming procedure (e g, Klein, Loftus Trafton, & Fuhrman, 1992) was used to lest a hierarchical model of self-knowledge. According lo this model, people simultaneously hold multiple representations of themselves that differ bath in their context specificity and in the type of knowledge of which they consist Specifically, context-independent self-knowledge is assumed to be represented abstractly without reference to any particular behaviors, whereas the representation of context-dependent self-knowledge includes knowledge of one's behavior in specific situations. Our results support a hierarchical model. Subjects accessed abstract knowledge when describing their context-independent personality characteristics, but accessed behavioral episodes when describing themselves in a specific context Possible implications of this research are discussed, as a the relation of a hierarchical model of self-knowledge to a mixed model of self-knowledge (e g, Klein & Loftus, 1993b).     

Chronometric analysis of apparent spotlight failure in endogenous visual orienting

Subjects made speeded responses to peripheral luminance increments or decrements preceded by informative central precues. In 4 experiments one of these stimuli was much more likely to occur than the other. In a simple detection task, the likely and unlikely stimuli showed equivalent cuing effects. In a discrimination task (bright/dim), the likely stimuli showed cuing but the unlikely one did not (spotlight failure), and there was a tendency to make the likely response when the unlikely stimulus occurred at the cued location. In Experiment 5, the 2 stimuli were equally likely, and a choice was required. Large cuing effects were observed for both stimuli with no evidence of a speed-accuracy trade-off. A logogen-activation framework is described within which criterion and sensitivity adjustments are needed to accommodate the full pattern of results. Endogenous orienting appears to enhance processing of all stimuli at attended (relative to unattended) locations, an effect that may be masked by specific stimulus or response expectancies.     

Effects of arousal on human visual dominance

Human attention research has found that vision controls attention when competing against other sensory modalities, for example, audition, proprioception, taction. Similarly, animal learning experiments have demonstrated visual attentional control when animals are positively motivated but auditory control when aversively motivated. The experiments with animals suggest a way of attenuating visual dominance in humans. Three experiments using human subjects explored the degree of visual versus auditory control exhibited in the presence of different arousal states. In Experiments 1 and 2, an electric shock and a threat of electric shock, respectively, to the subject’s finger resulted in auditory attentional control In Experiment 3, a tactile stimulus resulted in attenuated visual control. The results of these experiments are discussed in relation to the evolutionary advantage conferred by such attentional strategies.