The Wished‐For Always Wins Until the Winner Was Inevitable All Along: Motivated Reasoning and Belief Bias Regulate Emotion During Elections

How do biases affect political information processing? A variant of the Wason selection task, which tests for confirmation bias, was used to characterize how the dynamics of the recent U.S. presidential election affected how people reasoned about political information. Participants were asked to evaluate pundit‐style conditional claims like “The incumbent always wins in a year when unemployment drops” either immediately before or immediately after the 2012 presidential election. A three‐way interaction between ideology, predicted winner (whether the proposition predicted that Obama or Romney would win), and the time of test indicated complex effects of bias on reasoning. Before the election, there was partial evidence of motivated reasoning—liberals performed especially well at looking for falsifying information when the pundit's claim predicted Romney would win. After the election, once the outcome was known, there was evidence of a belief bias—people sought to falsify claims that were inconsistent with the real‐world outcome rather than their ideology. These results suggest that people seek to implicitly regulate emotion when reasoning about political predictions. Before elections, people like to think their preferred candidate will win. After elections, people like to think the winner was inevitable all along.     

MATRIX THINKING: AN ADAPTATION AT THE FOUNDATION OF HUMAN SCIENCE,RELIGION, AND ART

Intrigued by Robinson and Southgate's 2010 work on “entering a semiotic matrix,” we expand their model to include the juxtaposition of all signs, symbols, and mental categories, and to explore the underpinnings of creativity in science, religion, and art. We rely on an interdisciplinary review of human sentience in archaeology, evolutionary biology, the cognitive science of religion, and literature, and speculate on the development of sentience in response to strong selection pressure on the hominin evolutionary line, leaving us the “lone survivors” of complex, multiple lines of physical and cultural evolution. What we call Matrix Thinking—the creative driver of human sentience—has important cognitive and intellectual features, but also equally important characteristics traced to our intense sociability and use of emotionality in vetting rational models. Scientist, theologian, and artist create new cultural knowledge within a social context even if alone. They are rewarded by emotional validation from group members, and guided by the ever present question, “Does it feel right?”     

Life seems different with you around: Differential shifts in cognitive appraisal in the mere presence of others for neuroticism and impression management

How does mere social presence affect cognitive processes? The extant literature has focused on the impact of social presence on cognitive resources. The present study extends this work by focusing on the positivity of cognitive appraisal. Building on recent findings it was predicted that the traits neuroticism and impression management will differentially moderate the effect, such that neuroticism will be associated with a negative shift in appraisal, and impression management with a positive shift. In an experiment, participants (N = 158) formed evaluations of life events either alone or in social presence. The results supported the predictions. The findings advance the knowledge about the effect of social presence on cognition, and about the role of personality in moderating responses in public social contexts.     

Antisocial Behavior,Moral Disengagement,Empathy and Negative Emotion: A Comparison Between Disabled and Able-Bodied Athletes

Theories of morality suggest that negative emotions associated with antisocial behavior should diminish motivation for such behavior. Two reasons that have been proposed to explain why some individuals repeatedly harm others are that (a) they use mechanisms of moral disengagement to justify their actions, and (b) they may not empathize with and vicariously experience the negative emotions felt by their victims. With the aim of testing these proposals, the present study compared spinal cord injured disabled athletes and able-bodied athletes to determine the effect of reduced visceral afferent feedback caused by spinal cord injury on antisocial behavior, moral disengagement, empathy, and negative emotion (i.e., anger, anxiety, and dejection). Disabled athletes reported less frequent antisocial behavior and lower moral disengagement than able-bodied athletes. Group differences in antisocial behavior were mediated by differences in moral disengagement. The two groups did not differ in empathy or negative emotion. The findings of this study suggest that antisocial behavior may be regulated by mechanisms of moral disengagement.     

幼儿父母婚姻冲突与教养方式的关系:父母情绪调节策略的调节作用

以285名幼儿家长为被试,采用问卷法考察婚姻冲突对权威教养和专制教养的差别效应以及父母情绪调节策略在其中的调节作用。结果发现:(1)幼儿父母的婚姻冲突能显著负向预测其权威教养,显著正向预测其专制教养,婚姻冲突对两类教养的预测作用大小无显著差异;(2)父母情绪调节策略对婚姻冲突与权威教养关系的调节作用显著,且这种调节作用不存在家长性别的差异:较少使用认知重评或较多使用表达抑制的家长,其婚姻冲突能显著负向预测权威教养;经常使用认知重评或较少使用表达抑制的家长,其婚姻冲突对权威教养的影响不显著。父母情绪调节策略对婚姻冲突与专制教养关系的调节作用不显著。     

Burger or yogurt? Indulgent consumption in impression management contexts

We conducted three studies to investigate indulgent choice in settings with and without impression management by public–private manipulation with evaluation. Study 1 showed that the participants were less indulgent under public scrutiny due to the employment of impression management. Study 2 focused on the impression management context to test the moderate effect of self‐consciousness in two impression managed contexts. Study 3 focused on context without impression management to test the moderate effects of self‐awareness on choices. We found that depending on differences in primed personality, individuals tended to make choices other than those they favoured privately when anticipating that others might form impressions of them based on the decisions made. The findings of all three studies support our basic prediction that people are less indulgent under impression management and suggest that people tend to manage their impression by eating healthier (less indulgently) in public.     

Fat talk and self-presentation of body image: Is there a social norm for women to self-degrade?

The current investigations build upon previous ethnographic research, which identified a social norm for adolescent females to engage in “fat talk” (informal dialogue during which individuals express body dissatisfaction). In Study 1, participants were shown a vignette involving women engaging in fat talk dialogue and were subsequently asked to chose one of three self-presentational responses for a target female: (1) self-accepting of her body, (2) providing no information, or (3) self-degrading about her body. Male and female participants believed the target would be most likely to self-degrade, and that this would lead women to like her, while the self-accepting response would lead men to like her most. Study 2 used the same vignette but participants were asked to respond in an open-ended fashion. Participants again expected the target female to self-degrade. The present findings suggest college students perceive fat talk self-degradation of body image as normative.     

Effects of team and organizational commitment – A longitudinal study

Retention management, i.e., keeping qualified employees, is a top priority for contemporary organizations. Commitment, and especially team commitment, can be the key to mastering this challenge. There is a lack of longitudinal research concerning the development and the direction of the effects of team commitment over time. In a longitudinal field-study design with three points of measurement, a total of 360 employees in 52 semi-autonomous industrial teams were surveyed over a period of three years. On the one hand, organizational commitment showed stronger effects on organization-related criteria (job satisfaction and intention to leave). These effects were consistent over the three points of measurement. Team commitment, on the other hand, affected team-related criteria (team performance and altruism). Longitudinal analyses confirmed the effects of organizational commitment on job satisfaction and intention to leave, and of team commitment on team performance and altruism. Moreover, these effects increased over time. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.