Matching attidudes towards cartoons across evaluative judgments and nonverbal evaluative behavior

Summary Attitude responses and behavior were theoretically treated as two modalities in a psychophysical matching task. The total response pattern was expected to vary in terms of (a) covariation between modalities and (b) shifts in central tendencies within modalities. Subjects watched a series of humorous and disgusting cartoons on nonsense and women-related topics and evaluated each cartoon using an attitude rating scale. Their facial expressions were secretly videotaped. The tapes were content-analyzed by raters for the amount of nonverbal mirth and of disgust. Independent variables were: (1) Instruction for self-observation (yes/no), (2) Instructions to identify the kind of cartoon (yes/no), (3) Sex of subject (male/female), and (4) Kind of cartoon (nonsense or women-related). The correlation across the total set of cartoons between the two modalities was r=0.88. Self-observation and kind of cartoon affected the strength of covariation of the modalities: sex of subjects and kind of cartoon had a biasing influence on the central tendency of responses.