Longer-term consequences of anger expression in negotiation: Retaliation or spillover?

Negotiators often concede to angry partners. But what happens when they meet again? According to the spillover hypothesis, negotiators demand less from previously angry partners because they perceive them as tough. According to the retaliation hypothesis, negotiators demand more from previously angry partners because of negative impressions and a desire to get even. Experiment 1 showed that participants demanded less in later negotiations when their partner in a previous negotiation had expressed anger (rather than no emotion) and the later negotiation was with the same (rather than a different) partner. Consistent with the spillover hypothesis, this effect was mediated by inferences regarding the partner’s toughness. Experiment 2 showed that apologies reduce the negative effects of anger on impressions and desire for future interaction. Behavioral reactions were moderated by social value orientation: extending the established might/morality effect, prosocial participants responded cooperatively to an apology, whereas proselfs responded competitively.     

Underestimating numerosity of items in visual search tasks

Previous research on numerosity judgments addressed attended items, while the present research addresses underestimation for unattended items in visual search tasks. One potential cause of underestimation for unattended items is that estimates of quantity may depend on viewing a large portion of the display within foveal vision. Another theory follows from the occupancy model: estimating quantity of items in greater proximity to one another increases the likelihood of an underestimation error. Three experimental manipulations addressed aspects of underestimation for unattended items: the size of the distracters, the distance of the target from fixation, and whether items were clustered together. Results suggested that the underestimation effect for unattended items was best explained within a Gestalt grouping framework.     

Predictor variables for a 100-km race time in male ultra-marathoners

In 169 male 100-km ultra-marathoners, the variables of anthropometry, training, and prerace experience, in order to predict race time, were investigated. In the bivariate analysis, age (r = .24), body mass (r = .20), Body Mass Index (r = .29), circumference of upper arm (r = .26), percent body fat (r = .45), mean weekly running hours (r = -.21), mean weekly running kilometers (r = -.43), mean speed in training (r=-.56), personal best time in a marathon (r = .65), the number of finished 100-km ultra-runs (r = .24), and the personal best time in a 100-km ultra-run (r = .72) were associated with race time. Stepwise multiple regression showed that training speed (p < .0001), mean weekly running kilometers (p < .0001), and age (p < .0001) were the best correlations for a 100-km race time. Performance may be predicted (n=169, r2 = .43) by the following equation: 100-km race time (min) = 1085.60 - 36.26 x (training speed, km/hr.) - 1.43 x (training volume, km/wk.) + 2.50 x (age, yr.). Overall, intensity of training might be more important for a successful outcome in a 100-km race than anthropometric attributes. Motivation to train intensely for such an ultra-endurance run should be explored as this might be the key for a successful finish.     

Hierarchical Bayes Models for Response Time Data

Human response time (RT) data are widely used in experimental psychology to evaluate theories of mental processing. Typically, the data constitute the times taken by a subject to react to a succession of stimuli under varying experimental conditions. Because of the sequential nature of the experiments there are trends (due to learning, fatigue, fluctuations in attentional state, etc.) and serial dependencies in the data. The data also exhibit extreme observations that can be attributed to lapses, intrusions from outside the experiment, and errors occurring during the experiment. Any adequate analysis should account for these features and quantify them accurately. Recognizing that Bayesian hierarchical models are an excellent modeling tool, we focus on the elaboration of a realistic likelihood for the data and on a careful assessment of the quality of fit that it provides. We judge quality of fit in terms of the predictive performance of the model. We demonstrate how simple Bayesian hierarchical models can be built for several RT sequences, differentiating between subject-specific and condition-specific effects.     

The Moral Laboratory: On Kant’s Notion of Pedagogy as a Science

Following Kant, it is clear that, but probably not completely how we are morally obligated. I will point out that there are three possible ways to struggle for an understanding of how we can be obligated as rational beings and also as ordinary human beings. There is (a) the argument from rational feeling (‘Achtung’), (b) the argument from language, and finally (c) the argument from systematization. Reading the later passages of the ‘Critique of pure Reason’ and following its instructions, we will understand why education has to be founded by the same kind of argumentation as the natural sciences. The systematical analysis of Kant’s analogy between the physical body and the moral obligation will explain the suspected gap between our just rational and our whole selves. The most important part of the demanded bridge will be Kant’s Moral Laboratory.     

Expanding the study of U.S. religion: Reflections on the state of a subfield

The study of U.S. religion, which dates from the 19th century, expanded its sources, methods, and scope during the last quarter of the 20th century, as specialists offered more inclusive historical narratives. That methodological expansion never went far enough, however, and the impulse toward narrative inclusiveness has been restrained in recent years. The subfield, I argue, now faces a number of challenges that also confront other specializations in the study of religion—contraction, overspecialization, fragmentation, and parochialism. After a focused overview of the subfield’s history, I discuss those challenges. Proposing a tentative response, I suggest that specialists celebrate methodological diversity and theoretical sophistication, encourage comparative and translocative studies, and increase collaboration across disciplinary boundaries and national borders. Finally, I suggest that we expand the subfield’s temporal span and geographical scope and reframe the study of U.S. religion in terms of the Atlantic World, the Pacific World, and the Western Hemisphere.     

The change-of-standard effect: Distorted standards and adjusted impressions

Previous accounts of the memory distortion known as the change-of-standard effect hypothesize that participants form a relative impression of a target at encoding and later use that impression with the average of all items to recall the target (Higgins & Lurie, 1983). In three experiments, we investigated the standard and the integration of the standard with the relative impression. Experiments 1 and 2 show that participants’ subjective average at recall is distorted toward recent stimuli: It is computed when required and is therefore affected by the items’ accessibility at that time. Furthermore, the impression’s influence on recall is relatively small when the context changes between encoding and decoding. Experiment 3 shows that this change in the impression’s influence occurs only when the participant integrates information across sessions, suggesting that such tasks make participants aware of the changed context and cause them to adjust the use of their impression in recalling the target.     

In the Eye of the Beholder: Eye-tracking Assessment of Social Information Processing in Aggressive Behavior

Acording to social information processing theories, aggressive children are hypersensitive to cues of hostility and threat in other people’s behavior. However, even though there is ample evidence that aggressive children over-interpret others’ behaviors as hostile, it is unclear whether this hostile attribution tendency does actually result from overattending to hostile and threatening cues. Since encoding is posited to consist of rapid automatic processes, it is hard to assess with the selfreport measures that have been used so far. Therefore, we used a novel approach to investigate visual encoding of social information. The eye movements of thirty 10–13 year old children with lower levels and thirty children with higher levels of aggressive behavior were monitored in real time with an eyetracker, as the children viewed ten different cartoon series of ambiguous provocation situations. In addition, participants answered questions concerning encoding and interpretation. Aggressive children did not attend more to hostile cues, nor attend less to non-hostile cues than non-aggressive children. Contrary, aggressive children looked longer at non-hostile cues, but nonetheless attributed more hostile intent than their non-aggressive peers. These findings contradict the traditional bottom-up processing hypotheses that aggressive behavior would be related with failure to attend to non-hostile cues. The findings seem best explained by topdown information processing, where aggressive children’s pre-existing hostile intent schemata (1) direct attention towards schema inconsistent non-hostile cues, (2) prevent further processing and recall of such schema-inconsistent information, and (3) lead to hostile intent attribution and aggressive responding, disregarding the schema-inconsistent non-hostile information.     

Demea’s Dilemmas

This paper considers how Descartes's and Hume's sceptical challenges were appropriated by Christian Wolff and Johann Nicolaus Tetens specifically in the context of projects related to Kant's in the transcendental deduction. Wolff introduces Descartes's dream hypothesis as an obstacle to his account of the truth of propositions, or logical truth, which he identifies with the 'possibility' of empirical concepts. Tetens explicitly takes Hume's account of our idea of causality to be a challenge to the `reality' of transcendent concepts in general, a challenge he addresses by locating the source of this concept in the understanding rather than in the imagination. After considering this background, I turn to Kant's deployment of apparently traditional sceptical concerns at the outset of the transcendental deduction and argue that he does not there intend to introduce a global sceptical challenge and, accordingly, that there are historical grounds for doubting that the transcendental deduction is intended as an anti-sceptical argument.