Put your money where your mouth is! Explaining collective action tendencies through group-based anger and group efficacy

Insights from appraisal theories of emotion are used to integrate elements of theories on collective action. Three experiments with disadvantaged groups systematically manipulated procedural fairness (Study 1), emotional social support (Study 2), and instrumental social support (Study 3) to examine their effects on collective action tendencies through group-based anger and group efficacy. Results of structural equation modeling showed that procedural fairness and emotional social support affected the group-based anger pathway (reflecting emotion-focused coping), whereas instrumental social support affected the group efficacy pathway (reflecting problem-focused coping), constituting 2 distinct pathways to collective action tendencies. Analyses of the means suggest that collective action tendencies become stronger the more fellow group members "put their money where their mouth is." The authors discuss how their dual pathway model integrates and extends elements of current approaches to collective action.     

Attitude formation through exploration: valence asymmetries

The formation of attitudes toward novel objects was examined as a function of exploratory behavior. An initial experiment, in which participants played a computer game that required them to learn which stimuli, when sampled, produced favorable or unfavorable outcomes, demonstrated learning, attitude formation, and generalization to novel objects. The findings also revealed 2 interesting valence asymmetries: a learning asymmetry involving better learning for negatively valenced than positively valenced objects and a generalization asymmetry involving stronger generalization as a function of negative than of positive attitudes. Findings from 4 experiments led to an explanation of the learning asymmetry in terms of information gain being contingent on approach behavior and related the generalization asymmetry to a negativity bias that weighs resemblance to a known negative more heavily than resemblance to a positive.     

An MMPI-2 scale to identify reported history of emotional abuse

A 42-item MMPI-2 scale classified 97.5% of 201 clinic outpatients into groups reporting or not reporting prior emotional abuse.     

Task-effector asymmetries in a rhythmic continuation task

Variability in rhythmic movements has been interpreted as a signature of internal or peripheral noise processes. Grounded in an oscillator interpretation, this study hypothesized that period variability and drift arises from the asymmetry between target period and the limb's intrinsic dynamics. Participants synchronized to 7 target periods, swinging 1 of 3 pendulums in a continuation paradigm; 3 periods were longer, 3 shorter, and 1 identical to the preferred period. Results supported 5 predictions: Drift toward the preferred period was observed that scaled with the asymmetry. Variability was lowest for symmetry conditions and increased with the asymmetry. Variability decreased concomitant with the approach toward the preferred period. Periods exponentially approached the preferred period with positive autocorrelations up to 10 cycles.     

Relations between implicit measures of prejudice:what are we measuring?

Some recent findings suggest that different implicit measures of prejudice assess the same underlying construct, but other work suggests that they may not. In this experiment, White participants completed a version of a priming measure of racial attitudes that either encouraged categorization of the face primes in terms of race or did not encourage such categorization, and then completed the Implicit Association Test. Correspondence between the two measures was found only when categorization by race was required on the priming measure. Moreover, participants appeared more prejudiced when they were led to construe individuals in terms of race than when they were not so encouraged. The discussion focuses on the potential for dissociations between evaluations of a category and evaluations of members of the category.     

Cross-Cultural Sexism and the Effectiveness of Gender (Non)Traditional Advertising: A Comparison of Purchase Intentions in Poland,South Africa,and the United Kingdom

Findings regarding the effectiveness of (non)traditionally gendered advertisements are mixed and largely emanate from the United States. We tested the stereotype content model and ambivalent sexism theory cross-nationally in an advertising context and predicted that paternalistic (vs. envious) female stereotypes will trigger higher purchase intent (PI) irrespective of country (Hypothesis 1), viewers’ benevolent sexism will positively predict PI for paternalistic housewife advertisements (Hypothesis 2a), viewers’ hostile sexism will negatively predict PI for envious businesswoman advertisements (Hypothesis 2b), and these relationships with sexism will be confined to less gender egalitarian countries (i.e., Poland and South Africa) (Hypothesis 3). Statistical analyses of data from 468 Polish, South African, and British university students supported Hypothesis 1 and partially supported Hypotheses 2 and 3. The predicted patterns held for South Africa, but in Poland, viewers’ benevolence positively predicted PI for both advertisement types, with the exception of highly hostile women. British viewers’ hostility positively predicted PI for the housewife advertisement. Our findings support the cross-cultural applicability of the stereotype content model to advertising and suggest that the predictive role of sexism changes depending on its type, advertisement type, country, and gender. We recommend that advertisers should adopt a nuanced approach in predicting the effectiveness of gendered advertisements.     

Inhibition, interference, and conflict in task switching

The role of inhibition in the task-switching process has received increased empirical and theoretical attention in the literature on cognitive control. Many accounts have suggested that inhibition occurs when a conflict must be resolved—for example, when a target stimulus contains features of more than one task. In the two experiments reported here, we used variants of backward inhibition, or N – 2 repetition, designs to examine (1) whether inhibition occurs in the absence of conflict at the stimulus or response level, (2) when in the task-switching process such inhibition may occur, and (3) the potential consequences of inhibition. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that neither stimulus- nor response-level conflict is necessary for inhibition to occur, while the results of Experiment 2 suggest that inhibition may be associated with a reduction of proactive interference (PI) from a previously performed task. Evidence of inhibition and the reduction of PI both occurred at the task-set level. However, inhibition of specific stimulus values can also occur, but this is clearly separable from task-set inhibition. Both experiments also provided evidence that task-set inhibition can be applied at the time of the new task cue, as opposed to at the onset of the target or at the response stage of the trial. Taken together, the results from these experiments provide insight into when and where in the task-switching process inhibition may occur, as well as into the potential functional benefits that inhibition of task sets may provide.