Group Performance Depends on the Majority Rule

Some group decisions require a two-thirds or three-quarters majority of the people voting; others require only a simple majority. Does the accuracy of a group's decision making depend on which majority rule is used? A signal detection theory analysis was used to answer this question. Each member of a group was presented with a noisy display of either a signal or a nonsignal, and then each member cast a yes or no vote for the existence of a signal. The group decision was determined by a majority rule of the members' votes. Normative groups and groups of 5 or 7 people exhibited the same behavior: Performance was best when the group used a simple-majority rule and decreased when the group used more stringent rules. The worst performance was produced by a unanimous rule. Some group members adopted more liberal response criteria when the majority rule was made more stringent.     

Photographic Individuality, Breadth of Perspective, and Creativity

Individuality is valued in most conceptions of personality, but is seldom operationalized. The present research used photo essays about the self as the medium for operationalizing self-construals that are unlike others (i.e., are uniquely creative, abstract, self-reflective, and multidimensional). Ratings of these photo essays from two samples ( N = 183 university students) served as the measure of individuality. This measure was predicted and found to correlate in both samples with Breadth of Interest from the Jackson Personality Inventory (JPI; Jackson, 1994). In Study 1, individuality also correlated with the JPI Complexity scale and with two measures of divergent thinking (unique word associations, and fluency on Wallach & Kogan's [1965] creativity tasks). In Study 2, individuality correlated with having more permeable boundaries, a nonprejudicial universal orientation, and imagining greater cultural diversity in one's future. Results suggest that individualistic persons take a broader, more complex and more creative perspective to their lives.     

Scotopic sensitivity/Irlen syndrome and the use of coloured filters: a long-term placebo-controlled study of reading strategies using analysis of miscue

This study investigated the long-term effects of using coloured filters on the frequency and type of errors in oral reading. A double-masked, placebo-controlled crossover experimental design was used, with subjects being assessed over a period of 20 months. There were three experimental groups (Placebo tints, Blue tints, and Diagnosed tints) involving 113 subjects with reading difficulties, ranging in age from 9.2 yr. to 13.1 yr. The 35 controls (ranging in age from 9.4 yr. to 12.9 yr.) had reading difficulties but did not require coloured filters. There was a significant improvement for all groups in the accuracy of miscues over the period, although experimental groups over-all did not improve at a significantly different rate than the control group. The failure to find significantly greater improvement for the experimental groups over the control group for the total period, despite subjects' reports of improved print clarity, may be partly related to the lack of effective letter-sound analysis and synthesis skills and to the use of a word-identification strategy of guessing based on partial visual analysis.     

Personal theories, intellectual ability, and epistemological beliefs: adult age differences in everyday reasoning biases

Age-related differences in everyday reasoning biases were explored. In each of 2 social domains, examination of theoretical beliefs and biases along 2 dimensions of scientific reasoning, involving the law of large numbers and the evaluation of experimental evidence, revealed that, across age groups, scientific reasoning was used to reject evidence that contradicted prior beliefs; relatively cursory reasoning was used to accept belief-consistent evidence. Biased reasoning was more common among middle-aged and older adults than among young adults. Dispositions to engage in analytic processing were negatively related to biases, but intellectual abilities and bias were not related. The findings support a 2-process view of adult cognitive development and suggest that the tendency to rely on heuristic information processing increases with age.     

Aging, encoding fluency, and metacognitive monitoring

Encoding fluency (how rapidly one generates a mediator for a new association) may be a cue used to judge one's own learning. To evaluate age differences in utilization of this cue, older and younger adults were instructed to use interactive imagery to study paired associates, pressing a button to indicate when an image had been formed for a given pair. A judgment of learning (JOL) was also made immediately after each pair had been studied. Hence, at least two cues pertaining to encoding fluency-whether an image had been formed (a diagnostic cue) and the latency of formation (a nondiagnostic one)-were available when making JOLs. Age equivalence was found in JOL accuracy, and JOLs for both age groups were positively related to imagery formation and were negatively related to the latency of image formation. Moreover, subjectively judged latency correlated higher with JOLs than actual (objective) latency, supporting the hypothesis that perceived fluency is a cue used in constructing JOLs.     

Knowing good from bad: the paradox of neuroticism, negative affect, and evaluative processing

There are pragmatic benefits to trait-consistent mood states, especially when people are evaluating new objects within the environment (M. Tamir, M. D. Robinson, & G. L. Clore, 2002). The present studies, involving both naturally occurring (Studies 1 and 2) and manipulated (Study 3) mood states, demonstrated such trait-consistent interactions within the context of neuroticism and negative mood states. Individuals high in neuroticism were faster to make evaluations when in a negative mood state like sadness. By contrast, individuals low in neuroticism were faster to make evaluations when in a neutral mood state. The present studies demonstrate that although negative mood states are hedonically unpleasant, they can be beneficial in some ways for individuals high in neuroticism.     

Extraversion, threat categorizations, and negative affect: a reaction time approach to avoidance motivation

The authors sought to measure a component of the avoidance self-regulation system, specifically one related to object appraisal functions. Participants performed a choice reaction time task (Studies 1 & 2) or a go/no go task (Study 3) in which they were asked to categorize words (e.g., knife) as threatening in nature. In a series of three studies involving 236 undergraduates, the authors found that introverts who were skilled at categorizing events as threatening (vs. introverts slow to do so) experienced more negative affect in their daily lives. Among extraverts, threat categorization performance did not predict negative affect. The authors suggest that implicit threat categorizations render individuals vulnerable to negative affect but that high levels of Extraversion are capable of inhibiting such affective consequences. The authors discuss implications of the findings for extant views of Extraversion, avoidance motivation, and self-regulation.