bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Why Counterattitudinal Messages Are as Memorable as Proattitudinal Messages: The Importance of Active Defense Against Attack
Authors: Eagly Alice H. , Kulesa Patrick , Brannon Laura A. , Shaw Kelly , Hutson-Comeaux Sarah
Published: June 2007

Three experiments were designed to clarify the mechanisms underlying Eagly, Chen, Chaiken, and Shaw-Barnes’s (1999) meta-analytic demonstration that attitudinally congenial information has typically not been more memorable than uncongenial information. Participants remembered congenial and uncongenial messages equally well, despite their disapproval of the uncongenial information. This null congeniality effect was obtained regardless of whether (a) messages pertained to abortion or gays in the military or presented information on both sides or only one side of the issue; (b) recognition or recall measures were administered soon after the message or 2 weeks later; and (c) participants were or were not activists on the issue, had stronger or weaker attitudes, had more prior knowledge of counterattitudinal (vs. proattitudinal) arguments, or did or did not have their attention constrained to the message. Process findings suggested that participants’ thoughtful counterarguing of the uncongenial messages enhanced their memory for them.
“I was Only Kidding!”: Victims’ and Perpetrators’ Perceptions of Teasing
Authors: Kowalski Robin M.
Published: June 2007

Teasing is an interpersonal behavior that some people perceive to be fun and a matter of joking around and that other people view as cruel and a means of hurting someone’s feelings. These perspectives might reflect the views of perpetrators and victims, respectively. To examine this, 72 male and female participants wrote two narratives, one in which they described an incident when they were teased and another in which they described an event where they perpetrated the teasing. Victims and perpetrators formed very different impressions of the teasing event. Perpetrators perceived the event as more humorous and less damaging than did victims. However, they also reported feeling more guilt than did victims. Most of the incidents recounted by victims focused on physical appearance, followed by relationships and behavior. Perpetrator narratives focused primarily on behavior, followed closely by body parts and appearance. Implications of victim/perpetrator differences regarding teasing and the consequences of teasing are discussed.
Subgroup Relations: A Comparison of Mutual Intergroup Differentiation and Common Ingroup Identity Models of Prejudice Reduction
Authors: Hornsey Matthew J. , Hogg Michael A.
Published: June 2007

Two studies examined relations between groups (humanities and math-science students) that implicitly or explicitly share a common superordinate category (university student). In Experiment 1, 178 participants performed a noninteractive decision-making task during which category salience was manipulated in a 2 (superordinate category salience)× 2 (subordinate category salience) between-groups design. Consistent with the mutual intergroup differentiation model, participants for whom both categories were salient exhibited the lowest levels of bias, whereas bias was strongest when the superordinate category alone was made salient. This pattern of results was replicated in Experiment 2 (N = 135). In addition, Experiment 2 demonstrated that members of subgroups that are nested within a superordinate category are more sensitive to how the superordinate category is represented than are members of subgroups that extend beyond the boundaries of the superordinate category.
Variability in Impression Formation: Investigating the Role of Motivation, Capacity, and the Categorization Process
Authors: Reynolds Katherine J. , Oakes Penelope J.
Published: June 2007

Current theory and research suggests that stereotyping is inversely related to the allocation of attentional resources. For example, motivational factors (e.g., interdependence, accuracy goals) are argued to increase attentional investment and encourage individuation. Within this model, a neglected feature of the impression formation process is the role of the perceivers’ own self-definition. Based on self-categorization theory, it is argued that whether the salient self-other categorization is defined in interpersonal or group terms, respectively, will determine whether impressions will be more individuated or stereotypic. Two experiments are reported where the effect of interdependence (Experiment 1) and accuracy goals (Experiment 2) as well as the salient comparative context (interpersonal, intergroup) on impression formation were investigated. The results suggest that the nature of self-other categorizations does play a significant role in explaining variability in impression formation.
Interpersonal Adjective Scales: Confirmation of Circumplex Structure from Multiple Perspectives
Authors: Gurtman Michael B. , Pincus Aaron L.
Published: June 2007

The Interpersonal Adjective Scales (IAS) were developed to allow assessment of interpersonal traits from the perspective of the circumplex model of personality. In this study, the authors examined the fit of the IAS to the circumplex from multiple perspectives, testing different versions of the model and applying different methods. Overall, the IAS’ fit to the structural requirements of the circumplex was excellent; even in the worst case, departures were of negligible practical significance. In fitting circumplex models to data, future researchers will need to move beyond the current descriptive focus toward greater emphasis on testing of competing theoretical models that account for circular relations among variables.
Incorporating Proximal and Distal Influences on Prejudice: Testing a General Model Across Outgroups
Authors: Agnew Christopher R. , Thompson Vaida D. , Gaines Stanley O.
Published: June 2007

The present research integrates various social psychological approaches to understanding the causes of traditional prejudice. The authors examined (a) whether conceptually distinct variable sets shown previously to predict prejudice could be modeled collectively within a proximal-distal framework and (b) whether different outgroups could be modeled collectively within this framework. The authors developed and tested a model that included four sets of explanatory factors derived from past research: Family Status, Contextual Exposures, Beliefs, and Personality. It was hypothesized that the influence of these factors could be represented in a causal sequence such that (a) the distal factors (i.e., Family Status and Contextual Exposures) would lead to both proximal factors (i.e., Beliefs and Personality) and (b) the proximal factors would lead directly to Negative Attitudes Toward Outgroups. Structural equation analyses of data obtained from two independent samples generally supported the model—the impact of distal factors on prejudice was mediated largely by proximal factors.
The O. J. Simpson Criminal Verdict as a Racially Symbolic Event: A Longitudinal Analysis of Racial Attitude Change
Authors: Nier Jason A. , Mottola Gary R. , Gaertner Samuel L.
Published: June 2007

White college students’ racial attitudes were assessed before and after the O. J. Simpson criminal verdict. The authors tested two models, derived from the Symbolic Racism perspective, to examine potential changes in racial attitudes following the verdict. According to the construal model, racial attitudes influence how individuals construe race-related events. Therefore, the construal model suggested that pre-verdict racial attitudes would predict perceptions of the Simpson verdict. The symbolic event model, however, suggested that the verdict itself shaped racial attitudes and that perceptions of the verdict would predict changes in racial attitudes, independent of the effect of pre-verdict racial attitudes. The symbolic event model was largely supported; perceptions of the verdict predicted changes in racial attitudes, and racial attitudes became more crystallized following the verdict. The construal model, however, was only weakly supported; pre-verdict racial attitudes predicted the perceived fairness of the verdict, but only for those whose attitudes were well-crystallized.
Stereotyping Against Your Will: The Role of Inhibitory Ability in Stereotyping and Prejudice among the Elderly
Authors: von Hippel William , Silver Lisa A. , Lynch Molly E.
Published: June 2007

An experiment examined the hypothesis that elderly people rely on stereotypes more, and are more prejudiced, than younger people because of deficits in the ability to inhibit information. Consistent with predictions, elderly people relied on stereotypes even when instructed not to, whereas young people did not. Elderly people also were more prejudiced than young people, and these differences in stereotyping and prejudice were mediated by age differences in inhibitory ability. Because elderly people reported a stronger desire than young people to control their prejudiced reactions, these results suggest that inhibitory failure can cause people to become more prejudiced than they want to be.
From Antecedent Conditions to Violent Actions: A General Affective Aggression Model
Authors: Lindsay James J. , Anderson Craig A.
Published: June 2007

The General Affective Aggression Model (GAAM) posits that variables that increase aggression do so by increasing aggressive affect, aggressive cognition, or arousal. The effects of trait hostility, pain, and cognitive cues on state hostility (Experiment 1), on lexical decisions for aggressive and control words (Experiment 2), on escape motives (Experiment 3), and on aggressive behavior (Experiment 4) are presented. Consistent with GAAM, trait hostility increased both flight and fight motives, presumably due to affective reactions. Pain also increased hostile affect but increased aggression only when aggressive thoughts were made highly accessible (i.e., after viewing gun pictures). Theoretical implications are discussed.
The Dissociation of Emotion Expression from Emotion Experience: A Personality Perspective
Authors: Gross James J. , John Oliver P. , Richards Jane M.
Published: June 2007

When we want to know what others are feeling, we look to the face for clues. However, individual differences matter: Some faces are more expressive than others. Do both emotion experience and dispositional expressivity predict emotion expression? Based on an analysis of display rules, the authors hypothesized that expressivity would moderate the relation between experience and expression for negative, but not for positive, emotion. Study 1 examined the relation between habitual emotion experience and peer-rated expressive behavior and showed the predicted moderator effect for negative emotion: Experience was related to expression only for dispositionally high-expressivity participants, not for low-expressivity participants. For positive emotion, however, experience was related to expression for both groups. Study 2 replicated these findings using momentary emotion experience and objectively coded expressive behavior during films that elicited amusement and sadness. Results are interpreted in terms of low-expressivity individuals' propensity to dynamically regulate negative emotion-expressive behavior.
Manipulating Personal Salience: The Effects of Performance Expectations on Physical Positioning
Authors: Akimoto Sharon A. , Sanbonmatsu David M. , Ho Edward A.
Published: June 2007

Contestants playing the Minnesota Jeopardy game chose positions in a 3 × 3 seating arrangement in anticipation of the competition. More visible seats were selected when contestants expected to perform well than when they expected to perform poorly. Mediation analyses suggest that performance expectations affected the desire to be noticed, which, in turn, affected the salience of the seat that was assumed. The findings suggest that people manipulate their salience as a function of their performance expectations to influence the impressions of others. The study introduces an important and possibly ubiquitous self-presentation technique that has been largely neglected by the psychological literature.
Vividness Can Undermine or Enhance Message Processing: The Moderating Role of Vividness Congruency
Authors: Smith Stephen M. , Shaffer David R.
Published: June 2007

Previous research on the subject of vividness effects in persuasion has yielded conflicting outcomes that are difficult to interpret. The authors outline a theoretical position that anticipates conditions under which vivid message presentations can either enhance or inhibit message processing and persuasion. The key moderator is vividness congruency, which is defined as the extent to which the vivid elements of a message are congruent with the theme of the message itself. Two experiments were conducted that suggest that this previously unexamined variable is an important moderator of vividness effects. Experiment 1 demonstrated that vividness effects on message recall are contingent on the congruency between message content and vivid elements. Experiment 2 showed that message processing (indexed via an argument quality manipulation) can be reduced by adding vivid but incongruent images to a message, relative to pallid messages. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.
The Role of Honor-Related Values in the Elicitation, Experience, and Communication of Pride, Shame, and Anger: Spain and the Netherlands Compared
Authors: Mosquera Patricia M. Rodriguez , Manstead Antony S. R. , Fischer Agneta H.
Published: June 2007

The authors investigated how honor-related values affect pride, shame, and anger. Spain and the Netherlands were selected for comparison because honor-related values are relatively more important in Spain, whereas individualistic values are relatively more important in the Netherlands. A total of 327 (169 Spanish, 158 Dutch) persons participated in the research. Participants answered questions about autobiographical experiences of pride, shame, and anger and about vignettes describing events that could give rise to these emotions. The observed differences are consistent with the notion that honor-related values are relatively more important in shaping the experience and expression of pride, shame, and anger in Spain, whereas individualistic values are relatively more important in shaping the experience and expression of these emotions in the Netherlands.
Self-Focused Attention and Mood During Everyday Social Interactions
Authors: Flory Janine D. , Räikkönen Katri , Matthews Karen A. , Owens Jane F.
Published: June 2007

This study examined the association of dispositional self-focused attention to mood rated at the time of a negative social interaction in 100 employed, middle-age adults using experience sampling methodology. Results revealed that a self-focusing style was associated with higher negative mood and lower positive mood at the time of a negative social interaction during 3 days of everyday activities. Women who were chronically self-focused were particularly vulnerable to these negative social interactions in the daily environment; they were more likely than men to report lower positive mood during the interaction. In addition, 30 minutes after the negative social interaction, self-focused individuals with higher preexisting levels of depressive symptoms continued to report higher levels of negative mood and lower levels of positive mood relative to individuals who were not self-focused and did not report higher depressive symptoms. These results provide support for the role of self-focused attention in the etiology and maintenance of negative moods.
Why Good People Sometimes Do Bad Things: Motivated Reasoning and Unethical Behavior
Authors: Bersoff David M.
Published: June 2007

The hypothesis that unethical behavior is promoted when people are able to develop and maintain a biased characterization of an unethical action as being morally acceptable was tested in an experiment in which 120 participants were overpaid for taking part in a study. The variable of interest—whether the participants pointed out the overpayment—was examined in a between-participants design under three sets of contrasting manipulations designed to affect differentially participants’ abilities to convince themselves that keeping the over payment was acceptable. Logistic regressions revealed a decrease in unethical behavior when participants’ abilities to construct neutralizations for keeping the overpayment were impeded. A follow-up study indicated that these results were unlikely to have been a consequence of changes in the ethicality of keeping the money as a function of the specific experimental manipulations used. The influence of moral attitudes and gender on moral behavior was also examined. Moral attitude measures were not predictive, but males were more likely to act unethically.
Ethnocentrism, Social Identification, and Discrimination
Authors: Perreault Stéphane , Bourhis Richard Y.
Published: June 2007

In line with social identity theory (SIT), minimal group paradigm (MGP) studies have shown that high in-group identifiers discriminate more than low in-group identifiers. But why do some people identify more to their ad hoc group in the MGP? One week prior to a MGP study, 121 undergraduates completed scales assessing their ethnocentrism, authoritarianism, and personal need for structure. In Phase 2, the same participants took part in a MGP study in which us-them categorization was either assigned randomly or was chosen. Participants who chose their group membership identified more with their own group and discriminated more than respondents randomly assigned to their group. Path analysis showed that ethnocentrism and perception of control over group ascription predicted degree of in-group identification, which in turn, was positively related to discriminatory behavior.
The Three Rs of Academic Achievement: Reading, ’Riting, and Racism
Authors: van Laar Colette , Sidanius Jim , Rabinowitz Joshua L. , Sinclair Stacey
Published: June 2007

Using vocational choice and social dominance theories as theoretical frameworks, the authors examined the effects of ideology/role congruency on differential institutional rewards. The authors reasoned that congruents (i.e., individuals high in antiegalitarianism in hierarchy-enhancing [HE] social roles and low in antiegalitarianism in hierarchy-attenuating [HA] roles) would receive higher institutional rewards than would incongruents (i.e., individuals high in antiegalitarianism in HA social roles and low in antiegalitarianism in HE roles). Furthermore, it was predicted that one’s continued exposure to the university environment would increase the probability of being a congruent. The authors used a large sample of university students, with grade point average as the operationalization of institutional reward. Role was defined as the students’ major, and antiegalitarianism was defined by a classical racism scale. As expected, (a) everything else being equal, congruents received higher grades than did incongruents, and (b) the probability of being a congruent increased with university experience.
Misanthropic Person Memory when the Need to Self-Enhance is Absent
Authors: Ybarra Oscar
Published: June 2007

This research examined the role that the removal of the need or ability to self-enhance can play in the misanthropic processing of attributed behavioral information (i.e., remembering best negative, internally attributed behaviors and positive externally attributed behaviors). Experiment 1demonstrated that removing a person’s need to self-enhance by increasing his or her self-esteem eliminated misanthropic memory, whereas misanthropy was preserved for control participants and perceivers who had experienced a decrease in self-esteem. Furthermore, controlling for participants’ self-evaluations eliminated the memory pattern differences between the two experimental conditions. Experiment 2 demonstrated that canceling the ability to self-enhance by having perceivers form an impression of themselves eliminated the misanthropy effect. However, the misanthropy effect was replicated when perceivers learned about an unknown other. The results were discussed with regard to the situations and factors that can increase or reduce the need to self-enhance and their implications for social information processing.
The Impact of Males Proposing Condom Use on Perceptions of an Initial Sexual Encounter
Authors: Bryan Angela D. , Aiken Leona S. , West Stephen G.
Published: June 2007

The authors investigated the impact of the introduction of a condom into an initial sexual encounter on the perception of the male condom proposer and the likely outcome of the sexual encounter. College students viewed a videotape depicting the development of an initial sexual encounter. Method of condom introduction (verbal, nonverbal, no condom control) was varied. Respondents evaluated the condom proposer on five characteristics (nice, mature, romantic, exciting, promiscuous). Condom proposers were perceived as nicer and more mature but less romantic and exciting than nonproposers. Women but not men perceived the proposer as nicer and more mature and less promiscuous when he introduced the condom verbally rather than nonverbally. Men but not women estimated that proposing condom use diminished the chance of sexual intercourse. Results are discussed from the perspectives of person perception, sex role stereotypes, the evolutionary perspective on mate selection, and the applied perspective of the implications for intervention.
Anger in Close Relationships: An Interpersonal Script Analysis
Authors: Fehr Beverley , Baldwin Mark , Collins Lois , Patterson Suzanne , Benditt Riva
Published: June 2007

The authors conducted an analysis of anger scripts in close relationships from a relational schema perspective focusing on the interpersonal experience of anger and on the sequencing of anger events. The amount of anger elicited by various instigating events was found to differ for women and men. More important, there was evidence of an interpersonal script for anger. Reactions of angry people were predicated on anticipated partner responses. Gender differences in interpersonal scripts were found only when the angered person chose to react in a negative way (e.g., aggression). Women and men held similar scripts for anger when the angered person reacted in a prosocial manner. Implications of these findings for script analyses of emotion and for close relationships are discussed.
Threatening Times and Fluctuations in American Church Memberships
Authors: McCann Stewart J. H.
Published: June 2007

Building on the work of S. M. Sales, who related contemporaneous economic threat to authoritarian behaviors, two studies tested the hypothesis that threat is associated with relatively more attraction to authoritarian churches and less attraction to nonauthoritarian churches. The hypothesis was supported in Study 1, when the annual percentage of changes in memberships (1928-1986) for two authoritarian and two nonauthoritarian denominations were examined in relation to several annual social, economic, and political threat indices, and in Study 2, when changes in the proportion of the population having membership in 25 representative denominations were examined over periods of relatively low threat (1955-1964), high threat (1965-1974), and low threat (1965-1979). Both studies suggest that social and political threat as well as economic threat may activate authoritarian behaviors.
On the Seizing and Freezing of Negotiator Inferences: Need for Cognitive Closure Moderates the Use of Heuristics in Negotiation
Authors: de Dreu Carsten K. W. , Koole Sander L. , Oldersma Frans L.
Published: June 2007

The relationship between dispositional need for cognitive closure (NFC) and the use of heuristics in negotiation was investigated. In Study 1 (N = 147), negotiators with high NFC were more influenced by focal points when setting limits and making concessions than were negotiators with low NFC. In Study 2 (N = 74), negotiators with high NFC were more influenced by stereotypic information when making concessions than were negotiators with low NFC. Study 3 examined whether results could be attributed to a correlation between NFC and social value orientation—the dispositional tendency to approach the negotation in a prosocial or more selfish way. In three different samples, no such relationship was found. The use of heuristics in negotiation is moderated by need for cognitive closure, and this effect is most likely due to the fact that negotiators with low need for closure are less likely to seize and freeze on information.
Educational Experiences and Shifts in Group Consciousness: Studying Women
Authors: Henderson-King Donna , Stewart Abigail J.
Published: June 2007

This study takes a multifaceted approach to group consciousness. The authors assessed changes in women’s feminist consciousness due to their exposure to feminism through women’s studies. Feminist consciousness was measured at the beginning and end of a semester during which some research participants were enrolled in an introductory women’s studies course. Women’s studies students were compared with students who were interested, but not enrolled, in women’s studies. As expected, women’s studies students showed an increase on several aspects of feminist consciousness, whereas non-women’s studies students did not. Non-women’s studies students became less sensitive to sexism. It is also noteworthy that, although they became more feminist, women’s studies students did not become more negative toward men.
Social Motives and Emotional Feelings as Determinants of Facial Displays: The Case of Smiling
Authors: Jakobs Esther , Manstead Antony S. R. , Fischer Agneta H.
Published: June 2007

The goal of the present study was to examine the relationship between social motives, emotional feelings, and smiling, with a view to demonstrating that smiling is determined by both factors but in different ways. To vary social motives, the authors manipulated two aspects of social context. Pairs of friends performed either the same or a different task in either the same or a different room, whereas a control group participated in the experiment alone. To vary emotional feelings, participants viewed each of two film clips that differed with respect to the intensity of positive emotional feelings they evoked. Dependent variables included facial activity, as measured by the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), self-reported emotional feelings, and measures of social motives. As predicted, both emotional feelings and social motives affected facial activity. The relevance of the results for theories of facial displays is discussed.
Similarity Judgments and Covariations of Affects: Findings and Implications for Affect Structure Research
Authors: Reisenzein Rainer , Schimmack Ulrich
Published: June 2007

Results from four studies document very high agreement between the raw data matrices of affect similarity judgments and correlations computed from self-ratings. This was found both for the global structural level, where the correlation-similarity correspondence was as high as the average correspondence of correlation matrices from different studies, and for local subgroups of affects, provided that reliable measures were used. The findings suggest that self-rating correlations and similarity judgments of affects contain essentially the same structural information. As a consequence, the two data types are equally valid starting points for structural analyses of affect, and differences between the models of affect that have been derived from them may reflect primarily method artifacts, such as the use of different scaling methods, rather than differences in the original data. Possible explanations for the high correspondence between self-rating correlations and similarity judgments of affect are discussed.
Harbingers of Depressotypic Reassurance Seeking: Negative Life Events, Increased Anxiety, and Decreased Self-Esteem
Authors: Joiner Thomas E. , Katz Jennifer , Lew Angela
Published: June 2007

No previous study has examined the initial stages of the depressive interpersonal spiral described by Coyne. The authors’ purpose was to elucidate predictions regarding the formative stages of the spiral and to put them to empirical test in a prospective study of college undergraduates ( N = 177). The authors predicted and found that (a) negative life events predicted increases in anxiety, decreases in self-esteem, and increases in reassurance-seeking; (b) negative life events predicted changes in reassurance seeking via their influence on anxiety and self-esteem; and (c) this mediational role was relatively specific to anxiety and self-esteem and did not apply to depression. Understanding the groundwork of the depressive interpersonal spiral may point to its prevention.
Perceptions of Risk and the Buffering Hypothesis: The Role of Just World Beliefs and Right-Wing Authoritarianism
Authors: Lambert Alan J. , Burroughs Thomas , Nguyen Tina
Published: June 2007

Although perceptions of risk have been studied extensively by both social and cognitive psychologists, relatively little work has focused on individual differences in these perceptions. Across two studies, the authors examined the relationship of perceived risk to just world beliefs (BJW) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). Both studies showed that these two variables have interactive effects on perceived risk across a wide variety of different types of threats (e.g., getting hijacked, contracting AIDS). Among high authoritarians, participants felt much less at risk if they believed in a just world than if they did not. Among low authoritarians, however, BJW and perceived risk were unrelated. Results are conceptualized in terms of a buffering hypothesis, which suggests that the extent to which self-protective variables (such as BJW) mediate risk are most pronounced among persons who view the world in threatening terms (i.e., high authoritarians). Implication of these findings for previous models of risk and personality development are discussed.
Social Value Orientations and Strategy Choices in Competitive Negotiations
Authors: Olekalns Mara , Smith Philip L.
Published: June 2007

Social value orientations are known to influence outcome preferences, expectations, and strategic choices. This research investigated whether dyadic composition, as determined by the social value orientations of negotiators, affects the negotiation process. A log-linear analysis showed that strategy selection is influenced by dyad type: Prosocial dyads use restructuring and supportive strategies and focus on process management. Proself dyads focus on priority information exchange and concessionary behavior while avoiding positional arguing. Mixed dyads emphasize argumentation and show a pattern consistent with distributive bargaining. Sequencing of strategies also varied with dyad type. Responses to restructuring suggestions were different in the three dyad types, and positional-priority sequences were elicited in proself dyads and suppressed in mixed dyads. The authors conclude that dyads differ in the extent to which they emphasize the procedural or distributive components of the negotiating task as well as in their patterns of information search.
Forming Judgments of Attitude Certainty, Intensity, and Importance: The Role of Subjective Experiences
Authors: Haddock Geoffrey , Rothman Alexander J. , Reber Rolf , Schwarz Norbert
Published: June 2007

Two studies examined the impact of subjective experiences on reports of attitude certainty, intensity, and importance. In Study 1, participants with moderate or extreme attitudes toward doctor-assisted suicide generated three (easy) or seven (hard) arguments that either supported or countered their opinion toward the issue prior to indicating the strength of their attitude. Participants with moderate attitudes rated their opinions as more intense, personally important, and held with greater certainty when they had generated either a small number of supporting arguments or a large number of opposing arguments. Ratings provided by individuals with extreme attitudes were unaffected by the argument generation task. In Study 2, the impact of ease of recall on strength-related judgments was eliminated when it was rendered nondiagnostic by a misattribution manipulation. Implications of these findings for attitude strength and other judgmental phenomena are discussed.
Social Identity Salience and the Emergence of Stereotype Consensus
Authors: Haslam S. Alexander , Oakes Penelope J. , Reynolds Katherine J. , Turner John C.
Published: June 2007

In recent years, there has been a renewal of interest in the processes through which groups coordinate social perceptions and judgement. This topic is particularly important for the study of stereotyping, as most of the impact of stereotypes derives from the fact that they are widely shared within social groups. The present experiment (N = 132) tests the assertion that perceivers are more likely to generate a shared in-group stereotype to the extent that they define themselves and interact in terms of a common social category membership. Results supported predictions, indicating that manipulations intended to heighten social identity salience affected the content of self-categorizations leading to enhanced stereotype consensus and favorableness. As predicted, effects apparent when individuals completed stereotype checklists were also enhanced when checklists were completed in groups. These results are consistent with predictions derived from self-categorization theory and point to the capacity for internalized group memberships to structure and regulate cognition.
Injustice and Powerseeking
Authors: Foster Craig A. , Rusbult Caryl E.
Published: June 2007

Lay perception and scientific accounts of powerseeking are rather uniformly negative, portraying powerseeking as dispositionally driven behavior with self-interested or antisocial origins. The present research suggests that powerseeking may be prosocially motivated, with situational rather than exclusively dispositional origins. Two experiments demonstrated that powerseeking motivation and powerseeking behavior are reliably motivated by the perception of injustice. Both experiments revealed that injustice-inspired powerseeking is mediated by the degree to which a situation is perceived to be wrong, violates beliefs regarding fairness, and inspires feelings of anger or upset. In addition, Experiment 2 revealed that the scope of justice concerns is relatively broad, in that powerseeking is not limited to injustice involving close victims.
An Equity Theory Analysis of the Impact of Forgiveness and Retribution on Transgressor Compliance
Authors: Kelln Brad R. C. , Ellard John H.
Published: June 2007

Forgiveness, when thought of as an unsolicited gift, may increase the perceived debt of the transgressor to the victim whereas retribution should reduce it. Male undergraduates participated in a study designed to test this equity interpretation of forgiveness and retribution. Participants were induced to break a piece of electronic equipment during an ostensible memory study; the reaction of the experimenter served as the experimental manipulation. Participants experienced one of forgiveness, retribution, both retribution and forgiveness, or neither, and were then asked to comply with a request from the experimenter as an indirect measure of perceived inequity. Consistent with an equity analysis, a planned contrast analysis indicated that forgiveness alone yielded the most compliance and retribution yielded the least compliance.
Satisfaction Judgments in Positive and Negative Moods: Effects of Concurrent Assimilation and Contrast Producing Processes
Authors: Abele Andrea E. , Gendolla Guido H. E.
Published: June 2007

The present experiment tested the assumption that mood effects in evaluative online judgments are influenced by two processes. The integration of mood as one piece of information into the overall judgment produces assimilation. The comparison of a judgmental issue with a meaningful standard of reference produces contrast. The standard of reference that produces the contrast effect can sometimes be the same thing that produces the mood state, which in turn, produces the assimilation effect. Participants were induced into a positive or negative mood and then rated their satisfaction with three life domains that were differently related to the mood-inducing event. The data revealed a crossover interaction reflecting a mood assimilation effect when no similarity between mood-inducing event and judgmental domain existed, no observable effect in the case of moderate similarity, and a mood-inducing event contrast effect in high similarity conditions. The within-cell correlations between mood and judgments were all positive.
Belief in U.S. Government Conspiracies Against Blacks among Black and White College Students: Powerlessness or System Blame?
Authors: Crocker Jennifer , Luhtanen Riia , Broadnax Stephanie , Blaine Bruce Evan
Published: June 2007

Black Americans are far more likely than White Americans to endorse theories about conspiracies by the U.S. government against Blacks. The present study explored the predictors of these conspiracy beliefs for 91 Black and 96 White college students. Two explanations for belief in these conspiracies were considered, one focusing on political powerless and externality of attributions and the other focusing on system blame for Blacks’ disadvantaged status. Regression analyses supported the view that belief in these conspiracy theories is related to blaming problems of Black Americans on prejudice and discrimination. Race was a powerful predictor of belief in these conspiracies even when socioeconomic status was controlled. Furthermore, the race effect was partially mediated by the system blame measure but not by political powerlessness or greater externality of attributional style. System blame was a much stronger predictor of conspiracy beliefs for Black than for White students. Conspiracy beliefs were positively associated with the racial self-esteem of Black students and negatively for White students. Clinical implications and implications for intergroup relations are discussed.
Context Effects in Leadership Perception
Authors: Emrich Cynthia G.
Published: June 2007

In this study, participants perceived the same job candidate to display more leader qualities when his potential group was a troubled one rather than a tranquil one. They described this person more favorably as a leader and falsely recognized him as having performed more leadership-consistent and fewer leadership-irrelevant behaviors in a test of recognition memory. Using Jacoby’s process-dissociation procedure, the author discovered that unconscious (rather than conscious) memory processes completely mediated this context effect—a mediation indicative of either postconscious or goal-dependent context effects in leadership perception. Previous studies have demonstrated that context affects perceptions of incumbent leaders. This study demonstrates that context also can affect perceptions of potential leaders, with a troubled context magnifying those qualities that are consistent with individuals’ implicit theories and romanticized conceptions of leadership.
Dispositional Envy
Authors: Smith Richard H. , Parrott W. Gerrod , Diener Edward F. , Hoyle Rick H. , Kim Sung Hee
Published: June 2007

Although many scholars have argued that individual differences in proneness to envy can have wide-ranging implications for social interactions, the empirical testing of these claims is largely undeveloped. We created a single-factor Dispositional Envy Scale (DES) to measure individual differences in tendencies to envy, and examined some of the implications of such differences. Study 1 indicated that the DES is a reliable, stable measure, containing items suiting theoretical criteria for the makeup of dispositional envy. Study 2 supported the construct validity of the DES by showing that it is correlated with other individual difference measures in theoretically compatible ways. Studies 3 and 4 supplied diverse ways of establishing the criterion-related validity of the DES by showing that it moderated envious responses to another person’s superiority and that it predicted envy beyond other correlated individual measures of neuroticism, self-esteem, cynical hostility, and socially desirable responding.
Status, Gender, and Nonverbal Behavior: A Study of Structured Interactions between Employees of a Company
Authors: Hall Judith A. , Friedman Gregory B.
Published: June 2007

This study examined organizational status, defined as power and influence within a company, and gender as predictors of nonverbal behavior between employees of the company (N = 46). Participants were videotaped while performing structured tasks in dyadic interactions with two different partners. Nonverbal behaviors conveyed by the face, body, and voice quality were measured in terms of global dimensions (dominance, expressiveness, and warmth) and discrete behaviors such as smiling, nodding, gesturing, gazing, and interrupting. Status and gender effects were examined both on a within-dyads and a between-individuals basis. Although a number of status and gender effects emerged, there was no overall support for Henley’s hypothesis that differences in status can explain gender differences in nonverbal behavior. Indeed, gender and status differences did not parallel each other, and gender differences became more pronounced when status differences were controlled.
Would You Drink after a Stranger? The Influence of Self-Presentational Motives on Willingness to Take a Health Risk
Authors: Martin Kathleen A. , Leary Mark R.
Published: June 2007

This experiment examined the influence of self-presentational motives on a potentially unhealthy behavior—drinking from a stranger’s water bottle. In a 2 × 2 factorial design, participants’ (N = 48) social image-concern (low/high) was manipulated, and half of the participants also received a verbal challenge to drink from the bottle (challenged/not challenged). Participants in the high image-concern condition drank significantly more water (M = 50.8 ml) from the stranger’s bottle than did participants in the low image-concern condition (M = 30.1 ml), p < .05. Also, participants who were challenged drank more (M = 53.7 ml) than those who were not challenged (M = 27.2 ml), p < .05. Discussion focuses on the utility of a self-presentational approach for understanding health risk behavior.
Motivated Search for Common Ground: Need for Closure Effects on Audience Design in Interpersonal Communication
Authors: Richter Linda , Kruglanski Arie W.
Published: June 2007

A key assumption of communication theory is that successful communicators tailor their messages to the knowledge of their audience. This study examined the extent to which such adjustments depend on a communicator’s need for cognitive closure. Participants high or low in the need for closure created descriptions of abstract figures either for themselves or for another student. After several weeks, participants tried to match their own and others’ descriptions to the correct figures. Descriptions written by participants high (vs. low) in the need for closure were shorter, more figurative, and less likely to be successfully identified by others. Furthermore, the differences in length, content, and identifiability between descriptions written for oneself and for others were generally smaller for high (vs. low) need for closure participants. These results suggest that audience design is not a fixed aspect of interpersonal communication but depends on variables affecting the knowledge construction process at large.
Secret Transmission: A Relative Intimacy Hypothesis
Authors: Yovetich Nancy A. , Drigotas Stephen M.
Published: June 2007

The transmission of another’s secret is likened to self-disclosure, and further predictions are set forth based on a relative intimacy hypothesis. This hypothesis maintains that individuals will be more likely to transmit private information gathered from a lower-level intimate to a higher-level intimate (upward transmission) rather than from a higher-level intimate to a lower-level intimate (downward transmission). This pattern of behavior also is predicted to be normatively enforced. Results of three studies support these assertions. Participants were more likely to communicate upward rather than downward in both imagined (Study 1) and actual (Study 2) instances of secret transmission. In addition, individuals in Study 3 evaluated a secret relayer more negatively when he or she passed the secret from a higher-level intimate to a lower-level intimate.
Organizational Status and Perceived Sexual Harassment: Detecting the Mediators of a Null Effect
Authors: Sheets Virgil L. , Braver Sanford L.
Published: June 2007

Although power differentials are commonly believed to be central to sexual harassment experiences, prior empirical investigations have found no clear association between a perpetrator’s organizational status (as an index of his power) and perceptions by the victim that the perpetrator’s behavior constitutes sexual harassment. A model to explain this pattern as the result of two opposing mediators is forwarded and tested. Specifically, it was found that a harasser’s organizational status affects perceptions of his power, which increase a victim’s perceptions that the perpetrator’s behavior is harassing; however, it also was found that a harasser’s organizational status simultaneously affects perceptions of his social dominance, which decrease perceptions that his behavior is harassing. Thus, these mediators cancel each other, yielding a null finding when their effects are ignored. This finding supports both sociocultural and evolutionary models of sexual harassment perceptions and suggests that each can contribute to an understanding of sexual harassment experiences.
Effects of Controllability, Predictability, and Information-Seeking Style on Interest in Predictive Genetic Testing
Authors: Shiloh Shoshana , Ben-Sinai Ronit , Keinan Giora
Published: June 2007

The combined contribution of personal style (monitoring) and situational factors (control and certainty) on seeking predictive genetic testing was investigated. Participants were 209 individuals who were randomly divided into four groups; each group offered one hypothetical genetic test characterized by different degrees of controllability and certainty. Participants’ monitoring information-seeking style was measured by the Miller Behavioral Styles Scale (MBSS) and the Threatening Medical Situations Inventory (TMSI), which is a measure specific for medical situations. The authors found that high monitors were generally more interested than low monitors in testing and that this general tendency was especially pronounced under conditions of high certainty/low control. Tests that provide control were generally preferred to tests that do not by high and low monitors alike, whereas tests that provide certainty were preferred to those that do not only by high monitors. These findings were interpreted as indicating similarities and differences in the needs that information about threats fulfills for high and low monitors as well as identifying conditions that limit information-seeking by high monitors.