Action-effect binding by observational learning

The acquisition of bidirectional action–effect associations plays a central role in the ability to intentionally control actions. Humans learn about actions not only through active experience, but also through observing the actions of others. In Experiment 1, we examined whether action–effect associations can be acquired by observational learning. To this end, participants observed how a model repeatedly pressed two buttons during an observation phase. Each of the buttonpresses led to a specific tone (action effect). In a subsequent test phase, the tones served as target stimuli to which the participants had to respond with buttonpresses. Reaction times were shorter if the stimulus–response mapping in the test phase was compatible with the action–effect association in the observation phase. Experiment 2 excluded the possibility that the impact of perceived action effects on own actions was driven merely by an association of spatial features with the particular tones. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the presence of an agent is necessary to acquire novel action–effect associations through observation. Altogether, the study provides evidence for the claim that bidirectional action–effect associations can be acquired by observational learning. Our findings are discussed in the context of the idea that the acquisition of action–effect associations through observation is an important cognitive mechanism subserving the human ability for social learning.     

Rates of responding measured by continuous recording in applied behavioral research

There is no published source that can inform behavioral measurement research about typical response rates measured by continuous recording in applied behavior analysis. The present study was designed to determine the distribution of data on rate of responding reported across a recent 10‐volume (1998–2007) sample of research articles from the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. Rate of responding was measured for 20 553 datapoints in 360 sets of data (one participant in one graph) presented in 60 research articles. The majority of datapoints showed response rates of less than 1.0 response per minute, with 28.3% at zero. The highest rate reported was 104.5 responses per minute. The maximum response rate in datasets was more than 1.0 response per minute in 96.7% of datasets, indicating that continuous recording has been employed in research in which a relatively high rate of responding was recorded at some time during the study. The data from this report will assist researchers to determine empirically the representativeness of response rates in studies of measurement in applied behavior analysis. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Misery has more company than people think: underestimating the prevalence of others' negative emotions

Four studies document underestimations of the prevalence of others' negative emotions and suggest causes and correlates of these erroneous perceptions. In Study 1a, participants reported that their negative emotions were more private or hidden than were their positive emotions; in Study 1b, participants underestimated the peer prevalence of common negative, but not positive, experiences described in Study 1a. In Study 2, people underestimated negative emotions and overestimated positive emotions even for well-known peers, and this effect was partially mediated by the degree to which those peers reported suppression of negative (vs. positive) emotions. Study 3 showed that lower estimations of the prevalence of negative emotional experiences predicted greater loneliness and rumination and lower life satisfaction and that higher estimations for positive emotional experiences predicted lower life satisfaction. Taken together, these studies suggest that people may think they are more alone in their emotional difficulties than they really are.     

Committed dis(s)idents: participation in radical collective action fosters disidentification with the broader in-group but enhances political identification

The present research examined the hypothesis that participation in radical, but not moderate, action results in disidentification from the broader in-group. Study 1 (N = 98) was a longitudinal study conducted in the context of student protests against tuition fees in Germany and confirmed that participation in radical collective action results in disidentification with the broader in-group (students) whereas participation in moderate collective action does not. Both types of action increased politicized identification. Study 2 (N = 175) manipulated the normativeness of different types of imagined collective actions in the same context and replicated this disidentification effect for radical actions, but only when this action mismatched the broader in-group's norms. This study also indicated that these effects were partially mediated by perceived lack of solidarity and perceived lack of commitment to the cause among the broader in-group. The implications of these findings for understanding radicalization within social movements are discussed.     

How affective states, task difficulty, and self-concepts influence the formation and consequences of performance expectancies

Positive versus negative affective states are associated with the use of broad versus specific knowledge structures. We predicted that specific self-concepts and task difficulty would affect performance expectancies only for individuals in a negative mood; for individuals in a positive mood, only the general self-concept, but not task difficulty, would affect performance expectancies. In an experiment, we manipulated task difficulty and mood, and we assessed self-concepts, performance expectancies, and task performance. The expected interactions for the formation of performance expectancies (mood × general self-concept, mood × specific self-concept, mood × difficulty) were found. Concerning the consequences of performance expectancies, we predicted that expectancies would affect actual performance only if the task was difficult and if task difficulty was taken into account when the expectancy is generated. This hypothesis was supported: The relationship between performance expectancies and actual performance was significant only for difficult tasks and given negative mood.     

Referential competence is associated with motivational congruence

[Schultheiss, 2001] and [Schultheiss, 2008] hypothesized that referential competence (RC) - stable individual differences in the ability to quickly name nonverbally represented information - should predict congruence between implicit and explicit motives. We tested this hypothesis using a color-naming task to assess RC, picture-story measures of implicit motives, and self-report measures of participants’ motivational values and goals. Study 1 showed that the RC measure captures a stable individual difference by test-retest and internal consistency criteria. Studies 2 and 3 provided correlational evidence for the hypothesized association between RC and measures of between- and within-individual motivational congruence. Study 4 showed that in the absence of situationally induced referential processing, RC predicts preferences for motive-congruent goals.     

Affective mediators of intergroup contact: a three-wave longitudinal study in South Africa

Intergroup contact (especially cross-group friendship) is firmly established as a powerful strategy for combating group-based prejudice (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). Great advances have been made in understanding how contact reduces prejudice (Brown & Hewstone, 2005), highlighting the importance of affective mediators (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008). The present study, a 3-wave longitudinal study undertaken among minority-status Colored high school children in South Africa (N = 465), explored the full mediation of the effects of cross-group friendships on positive outgroup attitudes, perceived outgroup variability, and negative action tendencies via positive (affective empathy) and negative (intergroup anxiety) affective mediators simultaneously. The target group was the majority-status White South African outgroup. As predicted, a bidirectional model described the relationship between contact, mediators, and prejudice significantly better over time than either autoregressive or unidirectional longitudinal models. However, full longitudinal mediation was only found in the direction from Time 1 contact to Time 3 prejudice (via Time 2 mediators), supporting the underlying tenet of the contact hypothesis. Specifically, cross-group friendships were positively associated with positive outgroup attitudes (via affective empathy) and perceived outgroup variability (via intergroup anxiety and affective empathy) and were negatively associated with negative action tendencies (via affective empathy). Following Pettigrew and Tropp (2008), we compared two alternative hypotheses regarding the relationship between intergroup anxiety and affective empathy over time. Time 1 intergroup anxiety was indirectly negatively associated with Time 3 affective empathy, via Time 2 cross-group friendships. We discuss the theoretical and empirical contributions of this study and make suggestions for future research.     

Causal Attributions Predict Willingness to Support the Allocation of Funding to Lung Cancer Treatment Programs

Lung cancer patients may experience stigmatization as a result of the link between their disease and smoking, such as lack of public support for funding lung cancer treatment programs. This study examines whether causal attributions for the contraction of lung cancer predict the stigmatization of individuals with the disease by investigating willingness to support the allocation of funds to hypothetical lung cancer treatment programs. Participants were 766 undergraduate students. The findings indicate that participants who made causal attributions preferred to support the allocation of funding to programs that value the lives of breast cancer patients, rather than lung cancer patients. These findings have implications for understanding the influence of causal attributions on the stigmatization of lung cancer.     

A tutorial on hierarchically structured constructs

Many psychological constructs are conceived to be hierarchically structured and thus to operate at various levels of generality. Alternative confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) models can be used to study various aspects of this proposition: (a) The one-factor model focuses on the top of the hierarchy and contains only a general construct, (b) the first-order factor model focuses on the intermediate level of the hierarchy and contains only specific constructs, and both (c) the higher order factor model and (d) the nested-factor model consider the hierarchy in its entirety and contain both general and specific constructs (e.g., bifactor model). This tutorial considers these CFA models in depth, addressing their psychometric properties, interpretation of general and specific constructs, and implications for model-based score reliabilities. The authors illustrate their arguments with normative data obtained for the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and conclude with recommendations on which CFA model is most appropriate for which research and diagnostic purposes.