Intention-behaviour consistency: Effects of consideration set size,involvement and need for cognition

This study focuses on the strength of the relationship between behavioural intentions and actual behaviour in a multi-alternative choice context. Two separate moderating processes of intention-behaviour consistency were hypothesized, i.e. the amount of reasoning during intention formation, and the degree of confidence in the intention. Involvement (as an issue-specific factor), and need for cognition (as an individual difference factor) were investigated as antecedents of amount of reasoning. confidence in the intention was predicted from the size of the consideration set (i.e. the number of alternatives that one considers for choice), and involvement. The study comprised a longitudinal two-wave survey conducted before and after national elections in The Netherlands, in which pre-election voting intentions were compared with actual voting behaviour. A high degree of intention-behaviour consistency was found, which was significantly related to both amount of reasoning and confidence. The expected relations were found. The results extend current process models of attitude–behaviour relations. Furthermore, the results indicate that processes related to the consideration set size and content account for variance in intention-behaviour consistency in choice contexts that cannot be accounted for by traditional attitude-behaviour perspectives.     

Appraisal patterns of envy and related emotions

Envy is a frustrating emotion that arises from upward social comparison. Two studies investigated the appraisals that distinguish benign envy (aimed at improving one's own situation) from malicious envy (aimed at pulling down the superior other). Study 1 found that appraisals of deservingness and control potential differentiated both types of envy. We manipulated these appraisals in Study 2 and found that while both did not influence the intensity of envy, they did determine the type of envy that resulted. The more a situation was appraised as undeserved, the more participants experienced malicious envy. Benign envy was experienced more when the situation was not undeserved, and the most when the situation was appraised as both deserved and controllable. The current research also clarifies how the types of envy differ from the related emotions admiration and resentment.     

Self-esteem and depression revisited: implicit positive self-esteem in depressed patients?

The cognitive behavioural model of depression holds that negative cognitions related to the self have etiological importance for the maintenance and relapse of depression. This has been confirmed by research using questionnaires. Recent research using the Implicit Association Test, however, showed positive implicit self-esteem in formerly depressed participants, even after negative mood induction [Gemar, Segal, Sagrati, & Kennedy (2001). Mood-induced changes on the implicit association test in recovered depressed patients. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 110, 282-289]. These results are not in line with cognitive theory of depression. Since this could be an artifact of the specific procedure that was used, we investigated implicit self-esteem of currently depressed participants and healthy controls using three different paradigms: The Implicit Association Test, the Name Letter Preference Task, and the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task. The results of the three experiments are unequivocally indicative of positive implicit self-esteem in currently depressed patients. However, it remains an intriguing question what exactly these indirect measures assess.     

Body size estimation in eating disorder patients: Testing the video distortion method on a life-size screen

The video distortion method on a life-size screen is a new method for studying eating disordered patients' estimations of their own body width. Testing this method in female patients (53 with anorexia nervosa, 38 with bulimia nervosa) and 36 normal females, yielded high to very high reliability scores (consistency and test-retest stability). A careful analysis of the ‘just noticeable difference’ showed that a 5% deviation from the undistorted image should be considered as within the range of accuracy. Taking this into account, anorectic patients appear to score below, above, as well as within the normal range. Bulimia nervosa patients are either accurate in their body estimations or overestimate their body width. All control Ss are correct in their estimations. With this method no significant differences were found between the anorectic patients and the controls. Bulimics differ significantly from anorectics and controls on their optative responses (i.e. what they wanted to look like) and their affective responses (i.e. what they felt they looked like).     

Attention switching during scene perception: how goals influence the time course of eye movements across advertisements

Eye movements across advertisements express a temporal pattern of bursts of respectively relatively short and long saccades, and this pattern is systematically influenced by activated scene perception goals. This was revealed by a continuous-time hidden Markov model applied to eye movements of 220 participants exposed to 17 ads under a free-viewing condition, and a scene-learning goal (ad memorization), a scene-evaluation goal (ad appreciation), a target-learning goal (product learning), or a target-evaluation goal (product evaluation). The model reflects how attention switches between two states--local and global--expressed in saccades of shorter and longer amplitude on a spatial grid with 48 cells overlaid on the ads. During the 5- to 6-s duration of self-controlled exposure to ads in the magazine context, attention predominantly started in the local state and ended in the global state, and rapidly switched about 5 times between states. The duration of the local attention state was much longer than the duration of the global state. Goals affected the frequency of switching between attention states and the duration of the local, but not of the global, state.     

The New View on Ignorance Undefeated

In this paper, I provide a defence of the New View, on which ignorance is lack of true belief rather than lack of knowledge. Pierre Le Morvan has argued that the New View is untenable, partly because it fails to take into account the distinction between propositional and factive ignorance. I argue that propositional ignorance is just a subspecies of factive ignorance and that all the work that needs to be done can be done by using the concept of factive ignorance. I also defend two arguments of mine in favour of the New View against Le Morvan??s criticisms. As to the Linguistic Argument, I point out that the intuitions of the adherent of the New View about cases of true belief that fall short of knowledge are really intuitions about factive rather than propositional ignorance. As to the Excuse Argument, I argue that true belief is exculpatorily relevant: a true belief in a proposition p, where disbelief that p or suspension on p would provide at least a partial excuse, is relevant in that it renders one blameworthy for one??s action, unless further excuses hold. Finally, I reply to two closely related objections that might be levelled against the New View, namely that it seems false that one can reduce one??s ignorance by arbitrarily believing as many propositions as possible and that it seems false that an intellectually conscientious and critical person is more ignorant than an intellectually sloppy and credulous person just because the latter has more true beliefs.