The More You Ask For,the More You Get: Anchoring in Personal Injury Verdicts

The ‘anchoring and adjustment’ bias was demonstrated in a personal injury case using mock jurors. In Experiment 1, the ad damnum, or requested compensation, was manipulated across participants. In Experiment 2, anchors were operationalized as the strength of the legal evidence. Both monetary and causal anchors systematically influenced judgments of the probability that the defendant caused the plaintiff's injuries, compensation awarded, and perceptions of the litigants. These results indicate that anchoring occurs in legal applications, and that plaintiffs would do well to request large compensation awards. In addition, anchors expressed on one scale affected judgments expressed on another scale. This cross-modality anchoring stands in contrast to previous studies. Finally, these anchoring effects are unlikely to be explained by either demand effects or perceived relevance of the anchor.     

Processing strategy moderates the cultivation effect

This study tested the hypothesis that processing strategy moderates the effect of television viewing on social perceptions (cultivation effect). One hundred twenty‐two male and female students provided estimates of the prevalence of crime, occupations, affluence, and marital discord under one of three conditions. Some participants were induced to process heuristically (heuristic group) through instructions to provide their estimates spontaneously with little elaboration. Other participants were induced to process systematically (systematic group) through an accuracy motivation/task importance manipulation. A third (control) group received instructions to simply answer the questions. The results indicated that processing strategy moderated the cultivation effect such that cultivation effects were noted in the heuristic and control groups but not in the systematic group. These results are consistent with the notion that the cultivation effect can be explained in part as the result of heuristic processing through lack of source discounting, and they provide support for the heuristic processing model of cultivation effects.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Human Information Processing: An Introduction to Psychology. By Peter H. Lindsay and Donald A. Norman . Human Memory: Research and Theory. By L. S. Cermak . Organization of Memory. Edited by Endel Tulving and Wayne Donaldson . Associations or Addresses: a Study in Serial Verbal Learning. By F. J. Strømnes . Verbal Learning Research and the Technology of Written Instruction. Edited by Ernst Z. Rothkopf and Paul E. Johnson . Inhibition and Learning. Edited by R. A. Boakes and M. S. Halliday . Purposive Explanation in Psychology. By Margaret A. Boden . The Double Brain. By S. Dimond . Limbic System Mechanisms and Autonomic Function. Edited by C. H. Hockman . Languages of the Brain: Experimental Paradoxes and Principles in Neuropsychology. By K. H. Pribram . Perception in Everyday Life. By S. Howard Bartley . Language and Social Behaviour. By W. P. Robinson . Language Development: Structure and Function. By Philip S. Dale . Language of the Mentally Retarded. Edited by Richard L. Schiefelbusch . Studies in Dyadic Communication. Edited by A. W. Siegman and B. Pope . The Social Animal. By Elliot Aronson . Moral Learning and Development, Theory and Research. By Douglas Graham . The Social Influence Processes. Edited by J. T. Tedeschi . Perception and Cognition: a Cross-Cultural Perspective. By Barbara B. Lloyd . The Psychology of Humor. Edited by J. H. Goldstein and P. E. Mc Ghee . Males and Females. By Corinne Hutt . The Interview: Research on its Anatomy and Structure. By Joseph D. Matarazzo and Arthur N. Wiens . Inquiring Man: the Theory of Personal Constructs. By D. Bannister and Fay Fransella . Change and Continuity in Infancy. By Jerome Kagan . The Psychology of Consciousness. By R. E. Ornstein . Occupational Psychology. By Donald E. Super and Martin J. Bohn , Jr .     

Value-Orientation Analysis: The Adaptation of an Anthropological Model for Counseling Research

This article proposes the adaptation of Florence Kluckhohn's theory of Variation in Value Orientations for use in counseling research. The author summarizes Kluckhohn's theory and presents guidelines for its adaptation.