Accessibility experiences and the hindsight bias: I knew it all along versus it could never have happened

In two experiments, we tested accessibility experiences versus accessible content in influencing the hindsight bias when participants generated either thoughts about alternative outcomes or thoughts about known outcomes. Participants who had listed many thoughts (Experiment 1) and those who had contracted their brow muscles (Experiment 2) when considering alternate outcomes rated the known outcome as more likely than did than those who had listed two thoughts or who had not contracted their brows--a "backfire" effect. In contrast, but no less ironically, participants who had listed many thoughts and those who contracted their brows when considering known outcomes rated those outcomes as less likely--an "it could never have happened" effect. Both effects are due to subjective accessibility experiences, and their role in influencing and debiasing the hindsight bias is discussed.     

How pleasant was your childhood? Beliefs about memory shape inferences from experienced difficulty of recall

People's beliefs about how memory works can affect their inferences from experienced difficulty of recall. Participants were asked to recall either 4 childhood events (experienced as an easy task) or 12 childhood events (experienced as a difficult task). Subsequently, they were led to believe that either pleasant or unpleasant periods of one's life fade from memory. When the recall task was difficult (12 events), participants who believed that memories from unpleasant periods fade away rated their childhood as less happy than participants who believed that memories from pleasant periods fade away. The opposite pattern was observed when the recall task was easy (4 events). This interplay of recall experiences and memory beliefs suggests that the judgmental impact of subjective experiences is shaped by beliefs about their meaning. It also suggests that the recall difficulty in clinical memory work may lead a person to make negative inferences about his or her childhood, provided the person shares the popular belief that memory represses negative information.     

“How Many Partners Is Too Many?” Shaping Perceptions of Personal Vulnerability1

The effectiveness of interventions that directly inform people of the risks posed by their own behavior is frequently undermined by people's ability to defend themselves against unwanted information. In response to this difficulty, an alternative approach to shaping people's perceptions of personal vulnerability in which people remained unaware of the intervention was tested. As part of a survey on sexual issues, college undergraduates reported the total number of sexual partners they had had on a response scale that systematically framed their sexual behavior as being either above average or below average. Participants in the 2 conditions reported the same absolute number of sexual partners. However, those who received a response scale that implied they had had more partners than the average student reported greater concern about their sexual behavior than did those who received a scale that implied they had had fewer partners than average. The implications of this approach for influencing perceptions of personal risk are discussed.     

Is there an internal association of numbers to hands? The task set influences the nature of the SNARC effect

The SNARC effect refers to the association of smaller numbers with the left and of larger numbers with the right side of extracorporal space (Dehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993). We tested the assumption that, in addition to these associations, numbers are also related to participants' hands. We report two experiments with vertically arranged buttons in which the nature of the SNARC effect depended on whether the task set was button or hand related: In the first case, a vertical location-related SNARC effect occurred, whereas in the second a hand-related SNARC effect was found. Our third experiment confirmed that space-related number representations dominate the SNARC effect when the buttons are arranged horizontally. We concluded that both effector- and space-related number representations can influence and modify the SNARC effect.     

Getting groups to develop good strategies: Effects of reflexivity interventions on team process,team performance,and shared mental models

This study examines the effect of guided reflection on team processes and performance, based on West’s (1996, 2000) concept of reflexivity. Communicating via e-mail, 49 hierarchically structured teams (one commander and two specialists) performed seven 15 min shifts of a simulated team-based military air-surveillance task (TAST) in two meetings, a week apart. At the beginning of the second meeting, teams were assigned either to a reflexivity (individual or group) or to a control condition. Results show that reflexivity enhanced performance, the link between reflexivity and team performance being mediated by communication and implementation of strategies as well as by similarity of mental models. Contrary to expectations, individual reflexivity was superior to group reflexivity. Additional analyses suggested that group reflexivity decreased the commanders’ active behavior and increased discussion of strategies that were too general to be helpful. Results point to the usefulness of reflexivity as a generic intervention but underscore the importance of focusing on strategies that are task-specific.