Movement Synchrony Influences Intergroup Relations in a Minimal Groups Paradigm

Studies show that synchronizing movements with others encourages a collective social identity, leading to increased cooperation within a group. The current study investigated whether movement synchrony impacts social categorization and cooperation across intergroup boundaries. Two 3-person groups were brought together under movement synchrony conditions designed to emphasize different social categorizations of the aggregate: all individuals moved to the same beat, each minimal group moved to a different beat, or each individual moved to a different beat. Results demonstrate that movement synchrony influenced social categorization and cooperation across intergroup boundaries. Implications for approaches to intergroup relations using movement synchrony are noted.     

Directional bias in the mental representation of spatial events: nature or culture?

Previous research has shown a tendency for people to imagine simple sentences as evolving from left to right, with the sentence subject being located to the left of the object. In two cross-cultural studies comparing Italian and Arab participants, we investigated whether this bias is a function of hemispheric specialization or of directionality of written language (left to right in Italian, right to left in Arabic). Both studies found a reversal of directional bias in Arabs. Italians tended to position the subject to the left of the object, and Arabs tended to position the subject to the right of the object (Experiment 1); both groups were facilitated in a sentence-picture matching task when the subject was drawn in the position that it would usually occupy in the written language (left for Italians, right for Arabs; Experiment 2). In Experiment 2, an additional, language-independent facilitation was observed when action evolved from left to right, suggesting that both hemispheric specialization and scanning habit affect visual imaging.     

Choosing an inferior alternative

We show how decision makers can be induced to choose a personally inferior alternative, a strong violation of rational decision making. First, the inferior alternative is installed as the leading option by starting with information that supports this alternative. Then, the decision maker uses the natural process of distorting new information to support whichever alternative is leading. This leader-supporting distortion overcomes the inherent advantages of the superior alternative. The end result is a tendency to choose the self-identified inferior alternative. We trace the choice process to reveal the amount of distortion and its influence on preference. Self-reported awareness of distortion to support the inferior alternative is not related to the amount of distortion. The absence of valid awareness suggests that the manipulation that produces this preference violation is unlikely to be detected and that the distortion is unlikely to be corrected by the decision maker. As expected, given the lack of awareness, final confidence is just as high when the inferior alternative is chosen as when the superior one is. The discussion considers how to prevent an adversary from manipulating one's decisions using this technique.     

Mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals is not a consequence of response bias

The status of mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals was evaluated following incidental encoding of target words. Individuals with high and low levels of trait anxiety completed a modified Stroop task, which revealed an attentional bias for threat-related stimuli in anxious individuals. This group was significantly slower in naming the colour in which threat-related words were displayed compared to neutral words. In a subsequent free recall test for the words used in the modified Stroop task, anxious individuals recalled more threat-related words compared to low-anxious people. This difference was significant even when controlling for the false recall of items that had not been presented during study. These results support the view put forward by Russo, Fox, Bellinger, and Nguyen-Van-Tam (2001) that mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals can be observed if the target material is encoded at a relatively shallow level. Moreover, contrary to Dowens and Calvo (2003), the current results show that the memory advantage for threat-related information in anxious individuals is not a consequence of response bias.     

Toward a unified account of spacing effects in explicit cued-memory tasks

Memory for repeated items improves when presentations are spaced during study. This effect is found in memory tasks using different types of material, paradigms, and participant populations. Although several explanations have been proposed, none explains the presence of spacing effects in cued-memory tasks for unfamiliar stimuli. Two experiments assessed the spacing effect on a yes-no recognition-memory task using nonwords and words as targets. The main results showed that changing the font between repeated occurrences of targets at study removed the spacing effect for nonwords only. A 3rd experiment using lexical decision showed that the font manipulation reduced repetition priming of nonwords when items were repeated at Lag 0. These results suggest that short-term perceptual priming supports spacing effects in cued-memory tasks for unfamiliar stimuli.     

Age differences and the identity negative priming effect: an updated meta-analysis

A recent meta-analysis (P. Verhaeghen & L. De Meersman, 1998a) revealed that older adults show a reliable but significantly reduced negative priming effect compared with young adults. The present study provides an updated quantitative review on the effect of aging on the magnitude of the negative priming effect in identity tasks. This analysis demonstrated that the negative priming effect was not significantly different between young and old adults. This result differs from P. Verhaeghen and L. De Meersman's study. The implications of this finding for inhibitory-based theories of cognitive aging are discussed.     

Catching nonconscious goals in the act of decision making

Research has consistently found that goals triggered by environmental cues can influence decision making processes outside of conscious awareness. This lack of awareness led naturally to the presumption that decision makers could not report the activation level of nonconsciously primed goals. This paper shows that goal activation levels can be reported, so long as the report is made during the decision process on a continuous goal activation scale. These results indicate that default lack of awareness is less a limitation of the cognitive system and more a function of the method used to recover goals during a decision process.     

The Country's Crime Rate Moderates the Relation Between Authoritarian Predispositions and the Manifestations of Authoritarianism: A Multilevel,Multinational Study

We performed a multilevel, multinational test of Stenner's model on authoritarianism using the 2008 European Values Survey dataset (N = 55 199, nested in 38 nations). We focussed on the effects exerted on four authoritarian manifestations (racial intolerance, political intolerance, negative attitudes towards immigrants, and moral intolerance) by the cross‐level interaction between participants' authoritarian predispositions (assessed in terms of childrearing values) and their country's crime rate. Associations between authoritarian predispositions and racial intolerance, political intolerance, negative attitudes towards immigrants, and moral intolerance were significantly stronger among participants living in countries characterised by high crime rates than those among participants living in countries with low crime rates. Limitations, implications, and future directions of this study are discussed. Copyright © 2013 European Association of Personality Psychology.