A comparison of self-other agreement in personal values versus the Big Five personality traits

Can we judge other people’s values accurately, or are values too subjective to assess? We compared self-other agreement in personal values with agreement in the Big Five personality traits. Self-other agreement in four higher-order values (median r = .47) and in six culture-specific value factors (median r = .50) was substantial and similar to that for the Big Five personality traits (median r = .51). When corrected for attenuation due to measurement error self-other agreement was high for all three scales (median rs > .65). The results suggest that people can assess values of others whom they know well with remarkable accuracy. Therefore, other-ratings of personal values can be used to validate and complement self-report value measures.     

The accuracy of roommate ratings of behaviors versus beliefs

We evaluated the accuracy of peer ratings of roommates’ personality characteristics, against roommate self-ratings, as a function of rating domain observability. Instead of the usual ratings of broad personality traits, however, our domains represented peer ratings of narrow exemplars of personality traits. Specifically, we compared roommate ratings on (a) observable trait-related behaviors with (b) unobservable trait-related attitudes or beliefs. We observed greater self-peer agreement in rating behaviors, in general, than in rating beliefs. We also observed greater tendency of raters to adopt an assumed similarity heuristic when judging their roommates’ attitudes and beliefs than their behaviors. We discuss the contribution of these findings to understanding the determinants of accuracy in personality judgments and developing best practices for personality assessment.     

The Impact of Asymmetric Partial Feedback on Response‐Bias

For many decisions we make, we are more likely to receive feedback about some outcomes than about others, and thus we must operate under conditions of asymmetric partial feedback. In this paper, we examine the effects of asymmetric partial feedback on decision making across three experiments. Experiment 1 examines the effects of four partial feedback schedules on decision making in a single‐attribute auditory detection task. Experiment 2 examines these same schedules in the context of a simulated experiment in which virtual participants perform a multi‐attribute choice task. Experiment 3 then examines effects of one partial feedback schedule representative of a real‐world decision‐making domain (personnel selection) using an ecologically informed multi‐attribute choice task. All three experiments reveal that asymmetric partial feedback primarily impacts on response‐bias, a parameter of signal detection theory. These findings can be explained in terms of decision makers' attempts to maximize accuracy and the fact that shifts in response‐bias will, under partial feedback, produce misleading impressions of greater accuracy. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Confirmatory Search and Asymmetric Dominance

Decision makers use confirmatory search strategies in judgment tasks. As a result of this, their attention towards task‐relevant cues is biased in favor of cues supporting available responses. Changing these responses can alter the cues used in the judgment task and, subsequently, alter beliefs. We use this mechanism to predict and explain the emergence of the asymmetric dominance effect in judgment. In four sets of experiments, we document systematic changes in belief, as dominated options are added to the response set. These effects emerge for a number of naturalistic judgment tasks and are mediated by the increased accessibility of decoy‐supporting cues. Finally, these effects can be eliminated when the decision maker's attention is drawn towards the cues supporting the non‐dominant response. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Are we looking for positivity or similarity in a partner's outlook on life? Similarity predicts perceptions of social attractiveness and relationship quality

Previous research has shown that people with an optimistic life orientation are perceived as socially more attractive than pessimists. However, following the similarity-attraction hypothesis, we assumed that both the perceiver's and the target's life orientation affects perceptions of social attractiveness. Moreover, we were interested in how the composition of romantic partners’ life orientation (similar vs. dissimilar) affects perceived relationship quality. The results of an experimental online study (N?=?316) confirmed previous findings: Overall, optimists were perceived as socially more attractive than pessimists. Furthermore, perceivers’ life orientation moderated that effect, which was larger with optimistic than with pessimistic perceivers. Moreover, with respect to ongoing relationships optimistic participants indicated higher relationship quality if they perceived their partners as similarly optimistic. The findings are in line with the similarity-attraction hypothesis. They are discussed with regard to the benefits of optimism in social interactions and relationships.     

Conceptual similarity effects on working memory in sentence contexts: Testing a theory of anaphora

The degree of semantic similarity between an anaphoric noun phrase (e.g., the bird) and its antecedent (e.g., a robin) is known to affect the anaphor resolution process, but the mechanisms that underlie this effect are not known. One proposal (Almor, 1999) is that semantic similarity triggers interference effects in working memory and makes two crucial assumptions: First, semantic similarity impairs working memory just as phonological similarity does (e.g., Baddeley, 1992), and, second, this impairment interferes with processes of sentence comprehension. We tested these assumptions in two experiments that compared recall accuracy between phonologically similar, semantically similar, and control words in sentence contexts. Our results do not provide support for Almor's claims: Phonological overlap decreased recall accuracy in sentence contexts, but semantic similarity did not. These results shed doubt on the idea that semantic interference in working memory is an underlying mechanism in anaphor resolution.     

信任：父母的代内相似和亲子的代际传递

以往研究指出, 信任有其家庭根源。以116个家庭中的子女及其父母为研究对象考察在家庭中, 父母信任水平是否相似, 父母和子女之间是否存在人际信任的代际传递现象。研究采用投资博弈问卷分别测量了子女和父母的信任水平, 并以送出数量和估计返还数量作为信任的测量指标。结果发现：(1)子女和父母在投资博弈中均表现出一定水平的信任, 且父母的信任表现出相似性; (2)在估计返还数量上, 信任表现出代际传递, 且传递存在性别差异：父亲和母亲的信任水平不能预测女孩的信任水平, 能预测男孩信任水平; 父亲对男孩的影响呈J型曲线, 母亲与男孩的信任水平呈倒U型曲线关系。     

The role of item similarity in part-list cueing impairment

The presentation of a subset of studied items as retrieval cues can have detrimental effects on recall of the remaining (target) items. In three experiments we examined whether such part-list cueing impairment depends on the similarity between cue and target items. Item similarity was manipulated by making use of pre-experimental semantic similarities between cue and target items (Experiments 1 and 2), or was episodically induced through a similarity-encoding task, in which participants were asked to interrelate cue and target items in a meaningful way (Experiment 3). In all three experiments reliable part-list cueing impairment arose when the similarity between cues and targets was low, but no impairment was found when the similarity between cues and targets was high. Inhibitory as well as non-inhibitory explanations of the findings are discussed.     

Does maintaining bindings in visual working memory require more attention than maintaining features?

ABSTRACT

Whether more attention is required for maintaining bindings than maintaining features in visual working memory (VWM) remains an open question. If maintaining bindings in VWM does not require more attention than maintaining features, is it related to the stability of binding representations? In this study, we explored whether maintaining bindings requires more attention than maintaining features for similar and dissimilar objects by inserting a feature report task into the maintenance phase of VWM in Experiments 1 and 2. We also investigated whether the effect of similarity on the attentional requirement for maintaining bindings and features is due to the stability of VWM representations by inserting a suffix during the maintenance phase of VWM in Experiment 3. The results showed that when object-based attention was consumed, bindings were more impaired than features for dissimilar objects but not for similar objects. We also found that the bindings of similar objects were less interfered by the suffix than those of dissimilar objects. Our findings suggest that maintaining bindings does not require more attention than maintaining features when the binding representations are stable in VWM and similarity improves the stability of binding representations.     

THE GENETIC RECOMBINATION OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

The estrangement between genetic scientists and theologians originating in the 1960s is reflected in novel combinations of human thought (subject) and genes (investigational object), paralleling each other through the universal process known in chaos theory as self‐similarity. The clash and recombination of genes and knowledge captures what Philip Hefner refers to as irony, one of four voices he suggests transmit the knowledge and arguments of the religion‐and‐science debate. When viewed along a tangent connecting irony to leadership, journal dissemination, and the activities of the “public intellectual” and the public at large, the sequence of voices is shown to resemble the passage of genetic information from DNA to mRNA, tRNA, and protein, and from cell nucleus to surrounding environment. In this light, Hefner's inquiry into the voices of Zygon is bound up with the very subject matter Zygon covers.