Virtual prejudice

According to recent theorizing in social psychology, social behavior is controlled not only by reflective, but also by impulsive systems. The latter are based on associative links that may influence behavior without intent. The current study examined how prejudiced implicit associations affect physiological and automatic behavioral responses. Our native Dutch participants were immersed in a virtual environment in which they encountered virtual persons (avatars) with either White or Moroccan facial features. In line with our predictions, participants maintained more distance and showed an increase in skin conductance level when approaching Moroccan avatars as opposed to White avatars. Participants’ implicit negative associations with Moroccans moderated both effects. Moreover, evidence was found that the relation between implicit prejudice and distance effects was fully mediated by skin conductance level effects. These data demonstrate how prejudiced implicit associations may unintentionally lead to impulsive discriminatory responses.     

A comparison of two methods of assessing representation-mediated food aversions based on shock or illness

In experiments that measured food consumption, Holland (1981; Learning and Motivation, 12, 1-18) found that food aversions were formed when an exteroceptive associate of food was paired with illness, but not when such an associate was paired with shock. By contrast, measuring the ability of food to reinforce instrumental responding, Ward-Robinson and Hall (1999; Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 52B, 335-350) found that pairing an associatively activated representation of food with shock readily established an aversion to that food. Two experiments considered the origins of these apparently discrepant results. The results did not support either the possibility that instrumental reinforcement power is a more sensitive measure of aversion learning than consumption, or the hypothesis that illness particularly devalues properties of food representations that determine consumption (such as palatability) whereas shock devalues more general properties critical to reinforcement. The results suggested instead that whereas the effects of pairings of a food associate with illness are mediated by changes in the value of the food itself, the effects of pairings with shock are mediated by the conditioning of fear or other competing responses to the site of food delivery, and not by modification of the value of food itself.     

Influence des caractéristiques affectives et sémantiques des exemplaires d’un IAT Jeunes-Vieux sur les mesures d’attitudes résultantes

The IAT is supposed to be a method of indirect measure of the associative strengths between two target concepts (e.g., Young people versus Old) and two attribute concepts (e.g., Good versus Bad). But the stimuli used to represent these concepts can have an influence on IAT effects. We systematically manipulated the affective and semantic features of the stimuli used in a Young-Old IAT. The appearance of target exemplars (photos) and attribute exemplars (words) were perfectly differentiated. Three hundred and twenty subjects participated in the experiment and the results show that IAT effects are both influenced by the stimuli used and by the associative strengths between concepts. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Understanding and using the implicit association test: V. measuring semantic aspects of trait self‐concepts

Implicit Association Tests (IATs) often reveal strong associations of self with positive rather than negative attributes. This poses a problem in using the IAT to measure associations involving traits with either positive or negative evaluative content. In two studies, we employed non‐bipolar but evaluatively balanced Big Five traits as attribute contrasts and explored correlations of IATs with positive (e.g. sociable vs. conscientious) or negative (e.g. reserved vs. chaotic) attributes. Results showed (a) satisfactory internal consistencies for all IATs, (b) explicit–explicit and implicit–implicit correlations that were moderate to high and comparable in strength after both were corrected for attenuation and (c) better model fit for latent variable models that linked the implicit and explicit measures to distinct latent factors rather to the same factor. Together, the results suggest that IATs can validly assess the semantic aspect of trait self‐concepts and that implicit and explicit self‐representations are, although correlated, also distinct constructs. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

几种策略选择模型的发展轨迹与比较

策略选择作为儿童认知发展的重要方面,日益受到人们的关注.20世纪70年代后,一些研究者相继构建出几种策略选择的理论模型,以说明儿童策略选择的过程及其机制.文章根据策略模型发展的历程,对元认知模型、联结分布模型、适应性策略选择模型和策略选择与发现模型进行了概述与比较,以摸清策略模型发展的轨迹与特点,由此进一步明确策略模型研究发展的方向.     

Interrelationships between spider fear associations,attentional disengagement and self-reported fear: A preliminary test of a dual-systems model

Recent conceptualisations of anxiety posit that equivocal findings related to the time-course of disengaging from threat-relevant stimuli may be attributable to individual differences in associative and rule-based processing. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that strength of spider-fear associations would indirectly predict reported spider fear via impaired disengagement. One hundred and thirty-one undergraduate volunteer participants completed the Go/No-go Association Task, a visual search task, and self-report spider fear questionnaires. Stronger spider-fear associations were associated with reduced disengagement accuracy, whereas higher levels of reported spider fear were related to faster engagement with and disengagement from spiders. Bootstrapping multiple mediation analyses demonstrated that stronger-spider fear associations evidenced an indirect relationship with reported spider fear via reduced disengagement accuracy, highlighting the importance of fine-grained analyses of different aspects of cognitive bias. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive models of anxiety.     

Do features of stimuli influence IAT effects?

The Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) is a categorization task intended to measure the strength of associations between concepts. The present research investigated the influence of individual stimuli on IAT effects. Exploring implicit attitudes of East and West Germans, we systematically manipulated relatedness of target stimuli to the attribute dimension and, simultaneously, relatedness of attribute stimuli to the target dimension. Two experiments demonstrate the influence of stimulus associations as one source that drives IAT effects. Depending on the strength and the direction of these cross-category associations, the result was either stronger IAT effects or a decline of IAT effects. Implications for theoretical models as well as for the interpretation of IAT effects are discussed.     

Does sunshine prime loyal … or summer? Effects of associative relatedness on the evaluative priming effect in the valent/neutral categorisation task

After 30 years of research, the mechanisms underlying the evaluative priming effect are still a topic of debate. In this study, we tested whether the evaluative priming effect can result from (uncontrolled) associative relatedness rather than evaluative congruency. Stimuli that share the same evaluative connotation are more likely to show some degree of non-evaluative associative relatedness than stimuli that have a different evaluative connotation. Therefore, unless associative relatedness is explicitly controlled for, evaluative priming effects reported in earlier research may be driven by associative relatedness instead of evaluative relatedness. To address this possibility, we performed an evaluative priming study in which evaluative congruency and associative relatedness were manipulated independently from each other. The valent/neutral categorisation task was used to ensure evaluative stimulus processing in the absence of response priming effects. Results showed an effect of associative relatedness but no (overall) effect of evaluative congruency. Our findings highlight the importance of controlling for associative relatedness when testing for evaluative priming effects.     

I owe you: age-related similarities and differences in associative memory for gains and losses

Older adults often experience associative memory impairments but can sometimes remember important information. The current experiments investigate potential age-related similarities and differences associate memory for gains and losses. Younger and older participants were presented with faces and associated dollar amounts, which indicated how much money the person “owed” the participant, and were later given a cued recall test for the dollar amount. Experiment 1 examined face-dollar amount pairs while Experiment 2 included negative dollar amounts to examine both gains and losses. While younger adults recalled more information relative to older adults, both groups were more accurate in recalling the correct value associated with high-value faces compared to lower-value faces and remembered gist-information about the values. However, negative values (losses) did not have a strong impact on recall among older adults versus younger adults, illustrating important associative memory differences between younger and older adults.     

Recognition of facial expressions is moderated by Islamic cues

Recognising emotions from faces that are partly covered is more difficult than from fully visible faces. The focus of the present study is on the role of an Islamic versus non-Islamic context, i.e. Islamic versus non-Islamic headdress in perceiving emotions. We report an experiment that investigates whether briefly presented (40?ms) facial expressions of anger, fear, happiness and sadness are perceived differently when covered by a niqāb or turban, compared to a cap and shawl. In addition, we examined whether oxytocin, a neuropeptide regulating affection, bonding and cooperation between ingroup members and fostering outgroup vigilance and derogation, would differentially impact on emotion recognition from wearers of Islamic versus non-Islamic headdresses. The results first of all show that the recognition of happiness was more accurate when the face was covered by a Western compared to Islamic headdress. Second, participants more often incorrectly assigned sadness to a face covered by an Islamic headdress compared to a cap and shawl. Third, when correctly recognising sadness, they did so faster when the face was covered by an Islamic compared to Western headdress. Fourth, oxytocin did not modulate any of these effects. Implications for theorising about the role of group membership on emotion perception are discussed.