Understanding the foot‐in‐the‐door effect as a pseudo‐effect from the perspective of the Campbell paradigm

Compliance with a small request (a metaphorical foot‐in‐the‐door) promotes compliance with a subsequent big request. Whereas some explanations expect a drop in the behavioural costs of the big request, others suspect that the effect comes from boosting the underlying attitude. However, evidence for both explanations is equivocal and circumstantial, at best. Drawing on what Kaiser et al. (2010) call the Campbell paradigm, we present an integrative account: Compliance with any request demands a corresponding attitude to counterbalance the costs of the request. In our research, 229 participants were randomly assigned to either a foot‐in‐the‐door (i.e., initially asked to sign a pro‐environmental petition) or a control condition. Small‐request‐compliant participants were more likely than control participants to also comply with the big request and to continue filling out environmental‐issues‐related questionnaires. However, this foot‐in‐the‐door effect occurred without diminishing behavioural costs or increasing attitude levels. Accordingly, the greater likelihood of small‐request‐compliant participants to also comply with the big request can be parsimoniously explained by baseline variability in people's attitude levels that manifests in their compliance with the initial request. We conclude that several of the foot‐in‐the‐door effects reported in the literature carry the risk of representing mere pseudo‐effects.     

Hiding effort to gain a competitive advantage: Evidence from China

Previous studies with Western populations have shown that adolescents' tendency to downplay their academic effort is affected by two kinds of motives: ability‐related motives (e.g., to appear competent) and social approval motives (e.g., to be popular). In this research, we test for the presence of additional competition‐related motives in China, a culture placing strong emphasis on academic competition. Study 1 (N = 150) showed that, in response to a scenario in which a hard‐working high‐school junior hid effort from classmates, the most highly endorsed explanation was “to influence others to work less hard to maintain a competitive advantage.” Study 2 (N = 174) revealed that competition‐related explanations were endorsed relatively more often when the speaker and audience had similar academic rankings. This tendency was most evident when both speaker and audience were top performers, and when this was the case, participants' desire to demonstrate superiority over others was a positive predictor of endorsement of competition‐related motives. Study 3 (N = 137) verified that competition‐related motives were more strongly endorsed among Chinese participants than U.S. participants. These results suggest that at least in cultures that emphasize academic competition and in contexts where competition is salient, hiding effort is often about attempting to gain strategic advantage.     

Dynamic self‐representation of interdependent Chinese: The effect of bicultural experience

The process of globalisation has increased the opportunity for Chinese individuals to utilise influences from other cultures that differ from their own collectivistic culture. The explorations of the impact of acculturation on Chinese individuals' self‐construals have become intriguing. Thus, we recruited German‐Chinese (N = 192) people who live in Germany and had direct bicultural experiences, as well as Mainland‐Chinese (N = 192) people who live in Mainland China and had internalised a second culture through more indirect means of exposure. We investigated their accessibility to both interdependent and independent cultural frameworks using temporal self‐construal priming. The results showed that priming effects were observed in both cultural groups. However, the self‐construals of the German‐Chinese participants were more flexible than those of Mainland‐Chinese under self‐construal priming. Also, the results suggested that women were easier to be influenced by direct bicultural experiences, due to their private and collective self were different between the two cultures. These findings provide evidence regarding the opinion that individuals could use influences from more than one culture. More importantly, these results suggest that the acculturation induced by direct bicultural experiences facilitates cultural frame switching.     

Do Japanese Youth Proactively Form Identities? An Investigation of Independent Self Formation

This article addresses the debate concerning cultural differences in independent and interdependent self formation among Japanese youth. Independent self formation is defined as any purposive action to form a self actively through individual efforts. This study provides evidence that the majority of Japanese youth, despite their culturally collectivist backgrounds, form selves individually at the level of specific activities. High levels of active self formation were found among 41% of the sample. These findings contribute to the literature on both self development and identity formation, with the finding that both independent self formation and proactive identity formation occur among a significant proportion of Japanese students.     

A New Measure of Hallucinatory States and a Discussion of REM Sleep Dreaming as a Virtual Laboratory for the Rehearsal of Embodied Cognition

Hallucinatory states are experienced not only in connection with drugs and psychopathologies but occur naturally and spontaneously across the human circadian cycle: Our nightly dreams bring multimodal experiences in the absence of adequate external stimuli. The current study proposes a new, tighter measure of these hallucinatory states: Sleep onset, REM sleep, and non‐REM sleep are shown to differ with regard to (a) motor imagery indicating interactions with a rich imaginative world, and (b) cognitive agency that could enable sleepers to recognize their hallucinatory state. Mentation reports from the different states were analysed quantitatively with regard to two grammatical–semantic constructs, motor agency and cognitive agency. The present results support earlier physiological and psychological evidence in revealing a decline in cognitive functions and an increase in simulated interactions with a hallucinatory world, en route to normal REM sleep. This leads us to introduce the hypothesis that REM sleep, which exhibits remarkably high levels of (simulated) sensorimotor processes, may have evolved to serve as a virtual laboratory for the development and rehearsal of embodied cognition. The new measure of hallucinatory states presented here may also hold implications for the study of executive functions and (meta‐)cognitions, which might be interesting, for example, for the investigation of lucid dreaming.     

Projecting Lower Competence to Maintain Moral Warmth in the Avoidance of Prosocial Requests

When faced with prosocial requests, consumers face a difficult decision between taking on the request's burden or appearing unwarm (unkind, uncaring). We propose that the desire to refuse such requests while protecting a morally warm image leads consumers to under‐represent their competence. Although consumers care strongly about being viewed as competent, five studies showed that they downplayed their competence to sidestep a prosocial request. This effect occurred across both self‐reported and behavioral displays of competence. Further, the downplaying competence effect only occurred when facing an undesirable prosocial request, not a similarly undesirable proself request. The final studies showed that people specifically downplayed competence and not warmth. We further distinguished between social warmth (e.g., humor) and moral warmth (e.g., kindness), showing that when competence, social warmth, and moral warmth were all requisite skills for a prosocial task, people downplayed competence and social warmth more than moral warmth. These findings underscore that although people care strongly about being viewed as competent, they willingly trade off competence evaluations if evaluations of warmth—particularly moral warmth—are at risk.     

Impaired autobiographical memory in complicated grief

This study investigated the relationship between autobiographical memory and goals in complicated grief (CG). Twenty-four individuals with CG and 21 bereaved individuals without CG completed an autobiographical memory task and a personal goals task. CG participants were more likely to recall memories related to their loss, particularly in response to negative cues. There was a positive relationship between the proportion of loss-related memories recalled and the proportion of grief-related goals held by individuals after controlling for symptom level. Individuals with CG also showed impaired retrieval of specific autobiographical memories in response to both positive and negative cues. These results suggest that CG is characterised by impaired and biased retrieval of specific autobiographical memories. These patterns are consistent with propositions stemming from the self-memory models of autobiographical memory.     

Longitudinal Model Predicting Self‐Concept in Pediatric Chronic Illness

Although self‐concept has been identified as salient to the psychosocial adjustment of adolescents dealing with a chronic illness (CI), little research has focused on its predictors it. Given that depression and parent–child attachment have been linked to self‐concept in the population at large, the goal of this study was to evaluate these relationships longitudinally in a sample of adolescents with CI. Using participant data from the Mastering Each New Direction (MEND) program, a 3‐month psychosocial, family based intensive outpatient program for adolescents with CI, we employed multilevel modeling to test longitudinal changes in self‐concept, as predicted by depressive symptoms and parent–child attachment, in a sample of 50 youths (M_age = 14.56, SD_age = 1.82) participating in MEND. Both “time spent in the program” and decreases in depressive symptoms were associated with increases in self‐concept over time. Higher baseline levels of avoidant attachment to both mother and father were also associated with greater initial levels of self‐concept. Targeting depressive symptoms and supporting adaptive changes in attachment may be key to promoting a healthy self‐concept in pediatric CI populations. The association between avoidant attachment and higher baseline self‐concept scores may reflect differences in participants’ autonomy, self‐confidence, or depression. Limitations of the study include variability in the amount of time spent in the program, attrition in final time point measures, and the inability to fully examine and model all potential covariates due to a small sample size (e.g. power).     

Divergence over conformity: Change in immigration attitudes after the electoral success of an anti‐immigration populist party in the Finnish 2015 parliamentary elections

The populist, anti‐immigration‐oriented Finns Party was considered the winner of the Finnish 2015 parliamentary elections. In a representative sample of young adults (N = 606), a longitudinal pre‐ post‐election design revealed that attitudes towards immigration became more favourable among those disappointed by the outcome and those who did not vote for the Finns Party. Among the latter, both supporting the green‐red rival parties and disliking the Finns Party independently predicted increased support for migration. Other attitudes did not change. The results highlight the importance of social processes and identity concerns, particularly self‐categorization, as drivers of attitude change. While previous work has focused on conformity dynamics, our results suggest that diverging from an unwanted identity may be associated with attitude change.     

Should President Clinton be prosecuted for perjury? The effects of preference for consistency, self-esteem, and political party affiliation

Conducted in the fall of 2000, this study investigates personality and social variables that should predict attitudes regarding the desirability of prosecuting President Clinton for perjury following the expiration of his term (in January of 2001). Prosecution was favored by High Preference for Consistency (PFC) more than Low PFC individuals, by High Self-Esteem more than Low Self-Esteem individuals, and by Republicans more than Democrats. In addition, PFC and Party Affiliation interacted: High PFCs wanted Clinton prosecuted regardless of Party Affiliation, but Low PFCs desired prosecution strongly only if they were Republicans. Overall, the results are consistent with the general self-theory principle that human beings tend to adopt attitudes and positions that restore, maintain, or enhance self-esteem.