Positive affect as a moderator of liking effects on trust and attraction

Attitude similarity effects on attraction appear to be mediated sequentially by positive affect, inferred attraction, and trust. That is, the first two supposedly distal mediators influence each other in building trust, a mediator proximal to attraction. However, the correlational nature of data reported heretofore precludes definitive conclusions about sequential dependency between the two distal mediators. In the research reported, therefore, the authors manipulated positive affect in the participants (Time 1) and liking of the partner for them (Time 2), and measured trust before attraction. As predicted, liking effects on trust and attraction were stronger when positive affect in the participants was high than when it was low. Importantly, the interaction effect in trust fully mediated the interaction effect in attraction.     

Factors predicting the use of technology: findings from the Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE)

The successful adoption of technology is becoming increasingly important to functional independence. The present article reports findings from the Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE) on the use of technology among community-dwelling adults. The sample included 1,204 individuals ranging in age from 18-91 years. All participants completed a battery that included measures of demographic characteristics, self-rated health, experience with technology, attitudes toward computers, and component cognitive abilities. Findings indicate that the older adults were less likely than younger adults to use technology in general, computers, and the World Wide Web. The results also indicate that computer anxiety, fluid intelligence, and crystallized intelligence were important predictors of the use of technology. The relationship between age and adoption of technology was mediated by cognitive abilities, computer self-efficacy, and computer anxiety. These findings are discussed in terms of training strategies to promote technology adoption.     

A functional analysis of personal autonomy: How restricting ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ affects experienced agency and goal motivation

Personal autonomy is central to people's experiences of agency and abilities to actively take part in society. To address the challenges of supporting autonomy, we propose a functional model of autonomy, according to which the experience of agency is a function of the opportunity to determine what to do, when to act and how to act in goal-pursuit. We tested the model in three experiments where the three goal-pursuit components could be constrained by another person or an artificial intelligence (AI) agent. Results showed that removing any of the three components from one's own decisions reduced experienced agency (Study 1a and 1b) and lowered motivation to pursue goals in organisational contexts (Study 2). In comparison to the strong and robust main effects, interactions between the components and the effects of the source of restriction (human vs. AI) were negligible. Implications for personal autonomy, algorithmic decision-making and behaviour change interventions are discussed.     

“When the going gets tough,the tough get going”: Motivation towards closure and effort investment in the performance of cognitive tasks

Previous studies have demonstrated that the need for closure (NFC), which refers to an individual’s aversion toward uncertainty and the desire to quickly reduce it, leads to reluctance to invest effort in judgments and decision making. However, we argue that NFC may lead to either an increase or a decrease in effort depending on the availability of easy vs. difficult means to achieve closure and perceived importance of the task goal. We found that when closure could be achieved via both less and more demanding means, NFC was associated with decreased effort unless the task was perceived as important (Study 1). However, when attaining closure was possible via demanding means only, NFC was associated with increased effort, regardless of the task importance (Study 2). Moreover, NFC was related to choosing a more instrumental strategy for the goal of closure, even if this strategy required effort (Study 3). The results are discussed in the light of cognitive energetics theory.