Mere exposure and the endowment effect on consumer decision making

Previous researchers (e.g., J. A. Bargh, 1992, 2002) demonstrated the importance of nonconscious processes on consumer choice behavior. Using an advertisement, the authors determined the effect of two nonconscious processes--the mere exposure effect, which increases object preference by increasing consumer exposure to an object, and the endowment effect, which increases object valuation by providing consumer possession of an object--on consumer behavior. Although the mere exposure effect and endowment effect did not produce an interaction, they produced independent effects. The endowment effect increased object valuation but not object preference. The mere exposure effect increased object preference but not object valuation. Thus, at the unconscious level, an increase in object preference does not lead to an increase in object valuation, nor does an increase in object valuation lead to an increase in object preference. The authors discuss the importance of developing measures of unconscious process in advertising effectiveness.     

The role of attentional resources in automatic detection

The question of whether an automatic detection task requires the use of limited-capacity resources was investigated in a series of dual-task experiments. The automatic task required subjects to detect a consistently mapped target digit in a display of letters. This task was paired with a variety of concurrent visual discriminations that could either occur in close proximity to the automatic target or in a disparate display area. The main finding was that accuracy in each task was higher in conditions allowing attention to be shared than when it had to be divided between separate areas. These results indicate that detection of automatic targets depends on the allocation of spatial attention to the target's area.     

Assessing Fear of Storms and Severe Weather: Validation of the Storm Fear Questionnaire (SFQ)

To date, research on storm phobia has been limited by a lack of validated self-report measures for evaluating the severity of anxiety, phobic avoidance, and distress associated with storms and severe weather. The current research presents the development and validation of the Storm Fear Questionnaire (SFQ), a 15-item self-report questionnaire that assesses the cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects thought to be associated with Storm Phobia in adults. Three studies were conducted to assess 1) the factor structure, internal consistency, and convergent and discriminant validity of the SFQ, 2) the test-retest reliability of the SFQ, 3) the extent that scores on the SFQ were associated with subjective anxiety ratings during a Behavioral Approach Test (BAT) involving exposure to a virtual thunderstorm, and the extent to which SFQ scores distinguished community participants with versus without a fear of storms. Exploratory factor analyses supported a one-factor model with good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α?=?.95), good convergent and discriminant validity with self-report measures of anxiety, worry, depression, and other specific phobias, and acceptable test-retest reliability. Moreover, there was a significant positive association between SFQ scores and anxiety ratings following the BAT involving exposure to a virtual thunderstorm and participants with a high fear of storms reported significantly higher SFQ scores than those with a low fear of storms. In sum, the SFQ has good psychometric properties and appears to be a valuable tool for assessing the severity of fear associated with storms and severe weather. Research evaluating the diagnostic and clinical utility of the SFQ is still needed.     

The logic of Simpson’s paradox

There are three distinct questions associated with Simpson’s paradox. (i) Why or in what sense is Simpson’s paradox a paradox? (ii) What is the proper analysis of the paradox? (iii) How one should proceed when confronted with a typical case of the paradox? We propose a “formal” answer to the first two questions which, among other things, includes deductive proofs for important theorems regarding Simpson’s paradox. Our account contrasts sharply with Pearl’s causal (and questionable) account of the first two questions. We argue that the “how to proceed question?” does not have a unique response, and that it depends on the context of the problem. We evaluate an objection to our account by comparing ours with Blyth’s account of the paradox. Our research on the paradox suggests that the “how to proceed question” needs to be divorced from what makes Simpson’s paradox “paradoxical.”     

Building Collaborative Mental Health Teams in Schools Through MFT School Certification: Initial Findings

Building collaborative multidisciplinary mental health teams to boost student achievement has been a growing initiative in American schools since the 1970s. Marriage and Family Therapists (MFTs)joined those teams in 2008, when Connecticut became the first state to certify MFTs for schoolbased practice. This article chronicles the history of that collaboration and reports initial research into MFT school-based participation on those teams.     

Memory for metaphor by nonfluent bilinguals

The purpose of this study was to investigate memory for metaphors by nonfluent bilinguals under different orientation conditions. In Experiment 1 beginning bilinguals were asked to either (1) translate into English the figurative meanings of metaphors in the second language (L2); (2) translate into English the literal meanings of these same metaphorical sentences; (3) translate these metaphorical sentences into English-no specific instructions as how to translate given; (4) translate into English a similar list of nonmetaphorical sentences; (5) copy in L2 the list of metaphorical sentences; or (6) copy in L2 the list of nonmetaphorical sentences. Subjects' memory for these sentences was measured on a cued recall test. In Experiment 2 monolingual subjects did language tasks similar to conditions 1, 5, and 6 in Experiment 1. In both experiments, recall was best in the first condition and worst in the fifth condition. In Experiment 1 recall was also poorer in the second condition than in the other translation conditions. The implication is that the task for this condition requires subjects to process materials in a counterintuitive manner.