Understanding the effect of a numerical anchor

Wegener et al. extended the investigation of the anchoring phenomenon to include the manipulation of cognitive load and several traditional factors in persuasion such as source credibility. To this breadth strategy might be added approaches that focus more on depth. By depth is meant an understanding of the underlying mechanisms of anchoring and the forces driving those mechanisms.     

How persuasive messages can influence behavior without awareness

A persuasive message that favors one option in a binary choice can enhance the apparent value of its target by biasing the interpretation of subsequent information. The message installs its target as the initial leader in preference and lets the predecisional distortion of information defend that leadership position. An experiment that contrasts showing TV commercials before and after objective product information demonstrates this process. Ratings of the importance of the commercials to the choice indicate that people are aware of advertising's direct effect on their choice but not of its indirect effect through the biased evaluation of the product information.     

Using Motivational Monitoring to Evaluate the Efficacy of Self-disclosure and Self-involving Interventions

Self-disclosures and self-interventions are generally considered useful, although their role remains controversial. This is mainly due to the heterogeneity of research findings on this topic, characterized by the lack of a clear definition of self-disclosure and of systematic and effective methods to evaluate the short- and long-term effects of such interventions. To clarify the concept of self-disclosure, it is essential to understand whether its definition comprehends different interventions, which may have different effects. An accurate and reliable evaluation of such effects may allow clinicians and researchers to differentiate among different kinds of self-disclosures. In this theoretical article, we propose a method to evaluate the clinical efficacy of self-disclosures interventions. This method is based upon the monitoring of motivational systems (Liotti, 2005), which allows therapists to assess the cooperative attunement between patient and therapist in real-time. Our central assumption is that the evaluation of the cooperative attunement between patient and therapist, as well as the patient’s metacognitive functioning, is primary to assess the use of clinical interventions. Indeed, these factors – either acting on their own or synergistically – are the mark, the essence, and the reflection of the therapeutic alliance, which is the strongest predictor of treatment’s outcome.

     

Adults blink more deeply: a comparative study of the attentional blink across different age groups

The attentional blink (AB) is thought to help the visual system parse and categorize rapidly changing information by segmenting it into temporal chunks, and is elicited using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation. It is reflected in a decrease in accuracy at detecting the second of two targets presented within 200–500 ms of the first, and its development appears to be protracted on tasks that require set‐shifting. Here, younger (M = 8.5 years) and older (M = 12.8 years) children and adults (M = 19.13 years) completed a simple AB task with no set‐shift requirement in which participants detected two letters in a stream of numbers presented at a rate of 135 ms/item. In addition to assessing the developmental course of the AB on this simple task, we also assessed temporal order errors, or swaps. The AB and its associated characteristics are present in both groups but developmental differences were noted in the depth of the AB, and the presence or absence of lag‐1 sparing. These developmental changes were explained by changes in a single parameter, inhibition, using the eTST model, which suggests that the AB is an adaptive function of the visual system.     

Predicting Perceived Risk of Crime: a Multilevel Study

With a sample of Italians selected from 71 Italian counties (N = 1,868), we performed two multilevel analyses aimed at predicting the perceived risk of crime at local (i.e., in the participants' county of residence) and at societal (i.e., in the context of Italian society) levels. A significant proportion of the variation in local risk perception was at the county level. The following individual variables predicted higher levels of this variable: indirect victimization, the perception of social and physical disorder, being a woman, being poorly educated, and being an older person. Among the ecological predictors, the crime rate and unemployment rate predicted higher levels of local crime risk perception, while the immigrant rate did not. Perceived risk of crime at the societal level did not show significant variation at the county level. Education, being a man, trusting people, and adhesion to post‐materialistic values predicted lower levels of societal crime risk perception, while number of sons/daughters and exposure to television news increased it. The limitations and possible development of this study are discussed.     

Social cognitive career theory, conscientiousness, and work performance: A meta-analytic path analysis

We performed a meta-analytic path analysis of an abbreviated version of social cognitive career theory's (SCCT) model of work performance (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994). The model we tested included the central cognitive predictors of performance (ability, self-efficacy, performance goals), with the exception of outcome expectations. Results suggested that a slightly modified version of the model, incorporating a path between ability and goals, provided adequate fit to the data. In addition, we examined alternative pathways through which conscientiousness, a Big 5 personality variable, might operate in concert with the social cognitive variables in predicting work performance. Good fit was found for a model in which conscientiousness is linked to performance both directly and indirectly via self-efficacy and goals. The implications of these results for SCCT, future research, and practical efforts to facilitate work performance are discussed.