The Moderating Role of Agreeableness in the Relationship between Experiencing Anger and Creative Performance

Previous studies regarding the effect of experiencing anger on creative performance have shown controversial findings. Some studies have reported that anger hampers creative performance, whereas others have shown that anger promotes cognitive motivation and improves creative performance. Anger is associated with hostility, threats, and conflict, states that are congruent with low agreeableness. In contrast, anger is incompatible with an agreeable individual's preference for harmony and peace. Experiencing this negative activating emotion should be demanding and stressful to them and thereby hamper creative task engagement. Accordingly, we conducted an experimental study to examine whether agreeableness moderated the association between anger and creative performance. A total of 128 undergraduates were randomly assigned to receive either induced anger or a neutral emotion and then completed a creativity task. We found that participants with lower levels of agreeableness showed better fluency, flexibility, and originality in creativity in the anger relative to the neutral-emotion condition, whereas participants with higher levels of agreeableness showed better creative performance in the neutral emotion relative to the anger condition. The present findings not only provide a viable account for integrating inconsistent findings regarding the facilitating effect of anger on creativity but also contribute to contingent strategies for promoting creative performance.     

All Behavior is choice: Revisiting an evolutionary theory's account of behavior on single schedules

The axiomatic principle that all behavior is choice was incorporated into a revised implementation of an evolutionary theory's account of behavior on single schedules. According to this implementation, target responding occurs in the context of background responding and reinforcement. In Phase 1 of the research, the target responding of artificial organisms (AOs) animated by the revised theory was found to be well described by an exponentiated hyperbola, the parameters of which varied as a function of the background reinforcement rate. In Phase 2, the effect of reinforcer magnitude on the target behavior of the AOs was studied. As in Phase 1, the AOs' behavior was well described by an exponentiated hyperbola, the parameters of which varied with both the target reinforcer magnitude and the background reinforcement rate. Evidence from experiments with live organisms was found to be consistent with the Phase-1 predictions of the revised theory. The Phase-2 predictions have not been tested. The revised implementation of the theory can be used to study the effects of superimposing punishment on single-schedule responding, and it may lead to the discovery of a function that relates response rate to both the rate and magnitude of reinforcement on single schedules.     

Unattractive people are unaware of their (un)attractiveness

Past research has shown that how people rate their physical attractiveness is only moderately correlated with how they are rated by others, suggesting that at least some people have little insight into their true level of attractiveness. The present research tests the hypothesis that unattractive people are not aware of their unattractiveness. In fact, six studies (overall N = 1,180) showed that unattractive participants considerably overestimated their attractiveness compared to ratings by strangers. In contrast, attractive participants were more accurate. If anything, they underestimated their attractiveness. It was also examined why unattractive people overestimate their attractiveness. As expected, unattractive participants differentiated less between attractive and unattractive stimulus persons than did attractive participants. They were also more likely than attractive participants to select unattractive stimulus persons to compare themselves to. However, these tendencies did not account for why unattractive participants overestimated their attractiveness, nor did affirming participant’s self-worth. Limitations and avenues for future research are discussed.     

情绪对联合行动中共同表征能力的影响机制

采用联合Simon任务通过3个实验探究不同情绪维度对联合任务中共同表征能力的影响机制。实验1a、1b分别考察在高、低唤醒度条件下不同效价对个体共同表征能力的影响; 实验2在此基础上进一步探索动机维度在其中的作用。结果发现：无论效价高低, 高唤醒度都是提高个体共同表征能力的关键因素, 且动机强度在其中起一定调节作用; 而在低唤醒度条件下, 高效价会起一定补偿作用。上述结果很好地支持了参照编码假说, 也澄清了情绪不同维度对联合动作表征的影响机制。     

提取干扰对不同类型内隐记忆的影响

以往研究关于提取阶段的干扰是否会影响内隐记忆存在着异义, 其中一个重要因素可能源于所采用的内隐记忆测验类型的差异。本研究采用学习-测验范式, 通过4个实验, 分别考察了提取干扰对识别式知觉内隐测验、识别式概念内隐测验、产生式知觉内隐测验和产生式概念内隐测验的影响, 以期对提取干扰和内隐记忆之间的关系有着更全面的了解。结果表明: (1)词汇判断任务(识别式知觉)和语义分类任务(识别式概念)的启动效应在提取干扰下消失了, (2)而产生式词汇判断任务(产生式知觉)和产生式语义分类任务(产生式概念)在提取干扰下仍发现了明显的启动效应, 但与无干扰条件相比, 启动效应量也有着明显的减少。由此可见, 不同类型的内隐记忆都会受到提取干扰的影响, 相比于产生式启动, 识别式启动更容易受到提取干扰的破坏。     

记忆的前向测试效应对老年人学习新事物的作用

为检验前置测试是否可以有效地提升老年人学习新事物的能力,参与实验的老年人被随机分为有前置测试的实验组和无前置测试的对照组,在实验1中学习了5列单词,在实验2中记忆了5列日用品,在实验3中学习了4段讲座视频。结果表明,实验组老年人对新事物的记忆成绩均高于对照组的老年人。结论认为,前置测试能够显著提升老年人学习新事物的能力,干扰降低与学习参与相结合的“加减”理论能更好地解释提升老年人记忆的前向测试效应。     

No evidence of other-race effect for Chinese faces in Malaysian non-Chinese population

The other-race effect (ORE) reflects poor recognition of faces of a different race to one's own. According to the expertise-individuation hypothesis, this phenomenon is a consequence of limited experience with other-race faces. Thus, similar experience with own and other-race faces should abolish the ORE. This study explores the ORE in a multi-racial country (i.e., Malaysia) by comparing Malaysian observers' face recognition for faces of a predominant racial group in Malaysia (i.e., Chinese) with faces from an uncommon group (i.e., Caucasian). Malaysian Chinese, Malays, and Malaysian Indians completed the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) and the CFMT-Chinese. Compared with the normative scores, Malaysian observers showed poor performance in the CFMT-Caucasian. Interestingly, Malays and Malaysian Indians observers' performance was identical to that of Malaysian Chinese in the CFMT-Chinese and to the normative scores of the test. These results demonstrate the relevance of experience in shaping the ORE.     

Presence of administrators differentially impacts eyewitness discriminability for same- and other-race identifications

Best practice guidelines recommend that eyewitness lineup administrators be blind to a suspect's identity, but no research has investigated whether the mere presence of a lineup administrator impacts eyewitness identification decisions. Informed by social facilitation theory, we predicted that the presence of an audience would differentially impact identification accuracy for same- and other-race identifications. Participants (N = 191) viewed same- and other-race lineups either with an audience or alone. Although the presence of an audience did not directly impact identification accuracy, significant indirect effects indicated that the audience provoked evaluation apprehension which hindered other-race identification accuracy and improved same-race identification accuracy. We suggest that using double-blind lineup procedures may not sufficiently protect eyewitness identification accuracy when making other-race lineup decisions in the presence of others.     

When “decoy effect” meets gender bias: The role of choice set composition in hiring decisions

A large body of research has found evidence that hiring decisions are frequently subject to strong gender bias and has explored factors that help to predict and prevent such a bias from occurring. In this paper, we explore a novel factor that has received only little attention: the composition of the choice set. Drawing on prior research on the attraction effect of decoys in consumer choice and personnel decisions, we posit that when decision makers need to decide whether to hire a male or a female applicant for a stereotypically male position, the presence of a third applicant whose profile is asymmetrically dominated by one of the two applicants can in many circumstances strongly increase the odds that the male applicant will be selected, but will not be beneficial for the female applicant. We test our hypotheses in five experimental studies with different designs, experimental settings, and participant pools—including managers with professional experience in hiring decisions. Our results provide robust evidence demonstrating the strong effects of choice set composition on the emergence of gender bias. In addition, we found that the presence of asymmetrically dominated applicants makes decision makers more confident in their biased decisions and more likely to implement them immediately without searching for further information. Finally, our results also provide some initial evidence that our results for stereotypically male positions will be reversed when hiring decisions are made for stereotypically female positions where the presence of decoys instead gives an advantage to female over male applicants.     

干扰刺激类型对内隐记忆提取干扰的调节

为了探讨内隐记忆提取干扰效应是否敏于注意资源的变化,该实验沿用前期经典的“学习-测验”范式,通过在提取阶段同时设置两种不同刺激类型的干扰任务:箭头干扰和汉字干扰,以此来探讨内隐记忆提取干扰效应的本质所在。结果发现,不同提取干扰条件对内隐记忆产生不同程度的影响,汉字干扰对内隐记忆的影响比箭头产生的干扰更大。结果表明,干扰刺激类型会调节内隐记忆提取干扰效应的大小,证实内隐记忆提取干扰敏于注意资源的变化。