Nifty ways to leave your lover: The tactics people use to entice and disguise the process of human mate poaching

Although a number of studies have explored the ways that men and women romantically attract mates, almost no research exists on the special tactics people use when already in a relationship and trying to attract someone new--a process known as mate poaching enticement. In Study 1, the authors investigated the tactics people use to entice others into making mate poaching attempts. Enticement tactic effectiveness conformed to evolutionary-predicted patterns across sex and temporal context. In Study 2, the authors examined the tactics men and women use to disguise mate poaching enticement. The most effective camouflage for poaching also varied between sex in evolutionary-predicted ways, regardless of the target of deception (i.e., current partner vs. larger community). Discussion focuses on limitations of this research, future investigative directions, unexpected findings, and the utility of placing mate poaching attraction within the broader context of human sexual strategies.     

Inductive reasoning and judgment interference: experiments on Simpson's paradox

In a series of experiments on inductive reasoning, participants assessed the relationship between gender, success, and a covariate in a situation akin to Simpson's paradox: Although women were less successful then men according to overall statistics, they actually fared better then men at either of two universities. Understanding trivariate relationships of this kind requires cognitive routines similar to analysis of covariance. Across the first five experiments, however, participants generalized the disadvantage of women at the aggregate level to judgments referring to the different levels of the covariate, even when motivation was high and appropriate mental models were activated. The remaining three experiments demonstrated that Simpson's paradox could be mastered when the salience of the covariate was increased and when the salience of gender was decreased by the inclusion of temporal cues that disambiguate the causal status of the covariate.     

The role of temporal unpredictability for process interference and code overlap in perception-action dual tasks

Two experiments explore interference in dual tasks. The first task required perceptual judgment of the movement direction (left vs right) of a briefly presented stimulus; the second task was a tone-discrimination reaction-time (RT) task. Participants reported their judgment at leisure. In 50% of the trials they were told to ignore the stimulus (no report). The directions of stimulus movement and response in the RT task could either be the same or different, establishing cross-task compatibility (CTC) relations. We varied the degree of temporal unpredictability by using two stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOA, 100 ms vs 1200 ms) for the task stimuli. In Experiment 1, SOA was varied randomly within blocks of trials in one group and between blocks in another group. In Experiment 2, only the short SOA was used in one group and only the long SOA in another group. In both experiments, we observed substantially longer RTs with the short compared with the long SOA, regardless of whether there was temporal certainty (blocked or constant SOA) or uncertainty (random SOA) about stimulus onset. We assume that the process of encoding into short-term memory in one task interferes with concurrent retrieval processes (i.e., response selection) in the other task. This process interference effect was strongly reduced in no-report trials. Furthermore, we found shorter RT in compatible than in incompatible trials. This CTC effect diminished with long SOA but occurred even in no-report trials, implying that it refers to an automatically activated and then decaying code that primes response selection in the RT task.     

The power of the spoken word: sociolinguistic cues influence the misinformation effect

We investigated whether the sociolinguistic information delivered by spoken, accented postevent narratives would influence the misinformation effect. New Zealand subjects listened to misleading postevent information spoken in either a New Zealand (NZ) or North American (NA) accent. Consistent with earlier research, we found that NA accents were seen as more powerful and more socially attractive. We found that accents per se had no influence on the misinformation effect but sociolinguistic factors did: both power and social attractiveness affected subjects' susceptibility to misleading postevent suggestions. When subjects rated the speaker highly on power, social attractiveness did not matter; they were equally misled. However, when subjects rated the speaker low on power, social attractiveness did matter: subjects who rated the speaker high on social attractiveness were more misled than subjects who rated it lower. There were similar effects for confidence. These results have implications for our understanding of social influences on the misinformation effect.     

When is ignorance bliss? The effects of inaccurate self-assessments of knowledge on learning and attrition

Two studies were conducted to examine the implications of inaccurate self-appraisals in online training. Self-assessment of knowledge moderated the effects of trainees’ performance on subsequent performance and attrition. Performance was highest after uniformly positive ratings (i.e., high self-assessment and high performance), followed by underestimation, overestimation, and uniformly negative ratings, respectively. Attrition was lowest after uniformly positive ratings, followed by underestimation, uniformly negative ratings, and overestimation, respectively. Effort had a more positive effect on performance following low than high self-assessments and this interaction fully mediated the self-assessment/performance interaction on subsequent performance. Commitment had a more negative effect on subsequent attrition following low than high self-assessments and this interaction fully mediated the self-assessment/performance interaction on subsequent attrition. Finally, trainee conscientiousness affected their behavior when their performance and self-assessments were inconsistent—overestimating and underestimating performance increased attrition more for trainees low in conscientiousness and impaired performance more for trainees high in conscientiousness.     

What have you done for me lately? Friendship-selection in the shadow of the Dark Triad traits

The current studies examined how the Dark Triad personality traits (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) facilitate the strategic structuring of an individual's social environment in terms of same- and opposite-sex friends. In one study using normative questions (N = 267) and another using a budget-allocation task (N = 114), we found that the Dark Triad traits were associated with choosing friends for strategic purposes and to create a volatile environment. Narcissistic individuals reported relatively more reasons to form friendships, such as shared interests, makes me feel good, and intelligence. Women high in narcissism chose same-sex friends who were attractive and women high on Machiavellianism chose same-sex friends who have social status. Men high on psychopathy devalued traits associated with good social relationships in favor of friends who could facilitate their mating efforts and to offset risks incurred in their life history strategy. Results are discussed using the selection-manipulation-evocation framework for explaining how personality traits interact with social environments and integrated with findings from evolutionary biology.     

Modal preferences in creative problem solving

Embodied cognitive science appeals to the idea that cognition depends on the body as well as on the brain. This study looks at whether we are more likely to engage just the brain or enlist the body for complex cognitive functioning such as creative problem solving. Participants were presented with a puzzle based on De Bono's lateral thinking puzzles. The puzzle consisted of rotating and joining two-dimensional shapes to make a three-dimensional one. In one condition, participants were given the choice of either solving the puzzle mentally or through manipulation of the images on a computer screen. In another condition, the subjects had to solve the puzzle first mentally and then report which mode they would have preferred to solve the puzzle. Two more conditions were applied with slight variations. In all conditions, an overwhelming majority of participants chose to solve the puzzle by manipulation, even though there was not a significant increase on performance. It appeared that participants were making a conscious choice for the body to play a feedback-driven role in creative cognitive processing. This strong preference for manual manipulation over just mental representation, regardless of the impact on performance, would seem to suggest that it is our natural tendency to involve the body in complex cognitive functioning. This would support the theory that cognition may be more than just a neural process, and that it is a dynamic interplay between body, brain and world. The experiential feedback of the body moving through space and time may be an inherently important factor in creative cognition.     

On reconciling conflicting meta-analytic findings regarding integrity test validity

We react to the Van Iddekinge, Roth, Raymark, and Odle-Dusseau (2012a) meta-analysis of the relationship between integrity test scores and work-related criteria, the earlier Ones, Viswesvaran, and Schmidt (1993) meta-analysis of those relationships, the Harris et al. (2012) and Ones, Viswesvaran, and Schmidt (2012) responses, and the Van Iddekinge, Roth, Raymark, and Odle-Dusseau (2012b) rebuttal. We highlight differences between the findings of the 2 meta-analyses by focusing on studies that used predictive designs, applicant samples, and non-self-report criteria. We conclude that study exclusion criteria, correction for artifacts, and second order sampling error are not likely explanations for the differences in findings. The lack of detailed documentation of all effect size estimates used in either meta-analysis makes it impossible to ascertain the bases for the differences in findings. We call for increased detail in meta-analytic reporting and for better information sharing among the parties producing and meta-analytically integrating validity evidence.     

Eye movements reveal sustained implicit processing of others' mental states

The ability to attribute mental states to others is crucial for social competency. To assess mentalizing abilities, in false-belief tasks participants attempt to identify an actor's belief about an object's location as opposed to the object's actual location. Passing this test on explicit measures is typically achieved by 4 years of age, but recent eye movement studies reveal registration of others' beliefs by 7 to 15 months. Consequently, a 2-path mentalizing system has been proposed, consisting of a late developing, cognitively demanding component and an early developing, implicit/automatic component. To date, investigations on the implicit system have been based on single-trial experiments only or have not examined how it operates across time. In addition, no study has examined the extent to which participants are conscious of the belief states of others during these tasks. Thus, the existence of a distinct implicit mentalizing system is yet to be demonstrated definitively. Here we show that adults engaged in a primary unrelated task display eye movement patterns consistent with mental state attributions across a sustained temporal period. Debriefing supported the hypothesis that this mentalizing was implicit. It appears there indeed exists a distinct implicit mental state attribution system.     

Group commitment in the face of discrimination: The role of legitimacy appraisals

In contrast to everyday use of the term discrimination, we propose that discrimination can be appraised as either illegitimate or legitimate, and a comprehensive analysis of responses to discrimination needs to account for both ways of experiencing discrimination. We examine how perceived pervasiveness of discrimination and legitimacy appraisals affect group commitment among women in academia (Study 1) and tobacco smokers facing an upcoming smoking ban (Study 2). We found support for our hypothesis that legitimacy of discrimination appraisals moderates the effect of pervasiveness of discrimination. In both studies, group identification and collective action intentions were undermined most when the ingroup claimed that discrimination against them was legitimate and discrimination was perceived as pervasive. In both studies, group identification mediated the effects on collective action intentions. The results highlight the important role of legitimacy appraisals in understanding disadvantaged group members' responses to discriminatory treatment. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.