Experience and Theory

N. R. Hanson's discussion of experience is criticized. Experience, though necessary for knowing, is insufficient as a basis for understanding in either science or religion. Experience alone can be misleading. We may begin with experience, but we cannot claim to understand until experience has been mediated by theory. The article is excerpted from Metaphoric Process: The Creation of Scientific and Religious Understanding (Gerhart and Russell 1984), Chapter 2.     

A social validation explanation for mutual enhancement

Group members experience mutual enhancement when they evaluate one another’s task capabilities more positively because they are discussing shared as compared to unshared information. Two experiments investigated a social validation explanation for mutual enhancement. In Experiment 1, members of dyads read and discussed either shared or unshared information and collectively recalled this information under conditions where accuracy was important or not. Mutual enhancement occurred when need for accuracy was higher, but not when it was lower. In Experiment 2, members of dyads read validating or non-validating information from an outsider after they collectively recalled shared or unshared information. Members who discussed unshared information and received no validating communication from the outsider gave one another the lowest task capability ratings compared to members who discussed shared information and/or received validating communication from the outsider. All of these results are consistent with a social validation explanation for mutual enhancement.     

自我知觉积极偏向的理论解释和意义分析

许多研究者注意到了人在进行自我知觉时的积极偏向,并提出各种观点对其进行解释和论证;许多实证研究也从不同侧面揭示了这种乐观偏向的适应意义。本文对相关内容进行了综合和梳理,介绍了自我增强的动机、自尊的需要和实现趋向等理论观点;并概括出这一积极偏向在提高行为动机和成就表现、消除不良情绪以及增进身心健康和社会适应等方面所具有的积极作用。     

Who wants privacy protection,and what do they want?

As privacy controversies have become more salient since the early 1980s, one response by policy makers has been to try to encourage consumers to demand privacy protection, by expecting goods and services to be designed with privacy‐enhancing technologies (PETs) embedded in them. But what scope is there for this? Conventional approaches to understanding consumer demand for privacy protection have not been very helpful in providing robust accounts of when consumers will want which kinds of protection. This paper offers a neo‐Durkheimian institutionalist theoretical account of the roots of consumer preferences for privacy and services with PETs in particular, which yields testable hypotheses for future research. It grounds preferences in risk perceptions, shows how distinct styles of risk perceptions are the result of distinct types of situation in social organisation, and derives typical demand curves for each of these types, before exploring the extent of mobility of preferences predicted by the theory, which in turn provides the basis for understanding the scope for persuading consumers to demand privacy‐respecting services of different types. Rooted in the sociology of knowledge and in anthropological approaches, the argument represents a challenge to psychometric, naïve empiricist and postmodernist accounts, and it offers a distinct research agenda. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications Ltd.     

Compensatory Control: Achieving Order Through the Mind, Our Institutions, and the Heavens

ABSTRACT— We propose that people protect the belief in a controlled, nonrandom world by imbuing their social, physical, and metaphysical environments with order and structure when their sense of personal control is threatened. We demonstrate that when personal control is threatened, people can preserve a sense of order by (a) perceiving patterns in noise or adhering to superstitions and conspiracies, (b) defending the legitimacy of the sociopolitical institutions that offer control, or (c) believing in an interventionist God. We also present evidence that these processes of compensatory control help people cope with the anxiety and discomfort that lacking personal control fuels, that it is lack of personal control specifically and not general threat or negativity that drives these processes, and that these various forms of compensatory control are ultimately substitutable for one another. Our model of compensatory control offers insight into a wide variety of phenomena, from prejudice to the idiosyncratic rituals of professional athletes to societal rituals around weddings, graduations, and funerals.     

What can we learn from toddlers about categorical perception of color? Comments on Goldstein, Davidoff, and Roberson

We comment on Goldstein, Davidoff, and Roberson’s replication and extension (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102, 219-238 [2009]) of our study of the effect of toddlers’ color term knowledge on their categorical perception (CP) of color (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 90, 114-141 [2005]). First, we discuss how best to assess color term knowledge when concerned with the effects of language on color CP. A reanalysis of our data indicates that even toddlers who do not know the terms for the relevant focal colors still show CP. Second, we comment on Goldstein and colleagues’ finding of blue-purple CP, as we did, but not of blue-green CP in Himba toddlers. We present contrasting data from Wright (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Surrey, 2006) that demonstrates blue-green CP in Himba toddlers. Finally, we discuss the limitations of the approach taken by all of these investigations and discuss theoretical accounts of the origin and nature of color CP.     

Seeing power in action: The roles of deliberation, implementation, and action in inferences of power

Six experiments investigate the hypothesis that social targets who display a greater action orientation are perceived as having more power (i.e., more control, less dependence, and more influence) than less action-oriented targets. I find evidence that this inference pattern is based on the pervasive belief that individuals with more power experience less constraint and have a greater capacity to act according to their own volition. Observers infer that targets have more power and influence when they exhibit more implementation than deliberation in the process of making decisions in their personal lives (Study 1a), in a public policy context (Study 1b), and in small groups (Study 2). In an organizational context, observers infer that a target who votes for a policy to change from the status quo has more power than a target who votes not to change from the status quo (Study 3). People also infer greater intra-organizational power and higher hierarchical rank in targets who take physical action toward a personal goal than in those who do not (Studies 4-5).     

Between a rock and a hard place: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

Individuals are frequently forced to make decisions from among undesirable choice-sets. Raise taxes or cut social services? Lay off workers or go bankrupt? Go deep in debt or forgo a college education? The research presented here suggests that in such situations, decision-makers are often evaluated negatively regardless of the choice they make. In Experiment 1, participants read about a judge deciding which of two seemingly unfit parents to award sole custody in a real-life divorce case. In Experiment 2, participants were led to believe that their partner in the experiment was forced to pick one of two unpleasant tasks for the participant to perform. In both cases, the decision and decision-maker were evaluated negatively regardless of the alternative chosen–and regardless of the fact that they were the only options in the choice-set. Discussion focuses on the source, scope, and consequences of this phenomenon.     

A pox on the mind: Disjunction of attention and memory in the processing of physical disfigurement

The unfavorable treatment of people with physical disfigurements is well-documented, yet little is known about basic perceptual and cognitive responses to disfigurement. Here, we identify a specialized pattern of cognitive processing consistent with the hypothesis that disfigurements act as heuristic cues to contagious disease. Disfigurements are often invariant across time and difficult to conceal, and thus observers can detect the presence of such cues without necessarily remembering the particular individuals bearing these cues. Indeed, despite the fact that disfigured faces were especially likely to hold disease-sensitive perceivers’ attention (Study 1), disfigured individuals were often confused with one another and thus not well remembered later (Study 2), revealing a disjunction of the typical relationship between elevated attention and elevated memory. We discuss the implications of our results for stigmatization of people with and without physical abnormalities and suggest the possibility that cognitive mechanisms for processing social information may be functionally tuned to the variant nature of important cues.     

Person perception by active versus passive perceivers

Person perception research is dominated by studies of passive perceivers who exert no control over the information they receive. In contrast, perceivers in everyday life can often actively choose the type and quantity of information they receive. In this study, active and yoked passive perceivers formed impressions of individuals based on information from Facebook. Compared to active perceivers, passive perceivers reported greater confidence and ease in their judgments. Passive perceivers exhibited greater confidence (though not greater accuracy) with increased information, but active perceivers did not show this effect, placing a boundary condition on past research. Passive perceivers also liked targets more than active perceivers, a finding that is not explained by valence-dependant sampling by active participants, or by misattribution of fluency or greater sensitivity among passive participants. These provocative findings highlight the need to account for active and interactive processes in person perception rather than continuing to focus on passive perceivers.