Interest in the problem of method biases has a long history in the behavioral sciences. Despite this, a comprehensive summary of the potential sources of method biases and how to control for them does not exist. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which method biases influence behavioral research results, identify potential sources of method biases, discuss the cognitive processes through which method biases influence responses to measures, evaluate the many different procedural and statistical techniques that can be used to control method biases, and provide recommendations for how to select appropriate procedural and statistical remedies for different types of research settings.

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Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies.

Five studies tested two general hypotheses: Individuals differ in their use of emotion regulation strategies such as reappraisal and suppression, and these individual differences have implications for affect, well-being, and social relationships. Study 1 presents new measures of the habitual use of reappraisal and suppression. Study 2 examines convergent and discriminant validity. Study 3 shows that reappraisers experience and express greater positive emotion and lesser negative emotion, whereas suppressors experience and express lesser positive emotion, yet experience greater negative emotion. Study 4 indicates that using reappraisal is associated with better interpersonal functioning, whereas using suppression is associated with worse interpersonal functioning. Study 5 shows that using reappraisal is related positively to well-being, whereas using suppression is related negatively.

Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: implications for affect, relationships, and well-being.

The emerging field of emotion regulation studies how individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express them. This review takes an evolutionary perspective and characterizes emotion in terms of response tendencies. Emotion regulation is denned and distinguished from coping, mood regulation, defense, and affect regulation. In the increasingly specialized discipline of psychology, the field of emotion regulation cuts across traditional boundaries and provides common ground. According to a process model of emotion regulation, emotion may be regulated at five points in the emotion generative process: (a) selection of the situation, (b) modification of the situation, (c) deployment of attention, (d) change of cognitions, and (e) modulation of responses. The field of emotion regulation promises new insights into age-old questions about how people manage their emotions.

http://www.elaborer.org/cours/A13/lectures/Gross1998.pdf

The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review.

Numerous studies show that happy individuals are successful across multiple life domains, including marriage, friendship, income, work performance, and health. The authors suggest a conceptual model to account for these findings, arguing that the happiness-success link exists not only because success makes people happy, but also because positive affect engenders success. Three classes of evidence--crosssectional, longitudinal, and experimental--are documented to test their model. Relevant studies are described and their effect sizes combined meta-analytically. The results reveal that happiness is associated with and precedes numerous successful outcomes, as well as behaviors paralleling success. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that positive affect--the hallmark of well-being--may be the cause of many of the desirable characteristics, resources, and successes correlated with happiness. Limitations, empirical issues, and important future research questions are discussed.

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The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success?

Social behavior is ordinarily treated as being under conscious (if not always thoughtful) control. However, considerable evidence now supports the view that social behavior often operates in an implicit or unconscious fashion. The identifying feature of implicit cognition is that past experience influences judgment in a fashion not introspectively known by the actor. The present conclusion--that attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes have important implicit modes of operation--extends both the construct validity and predictive usefulness of these major theoretical constructs of social psychology. Methodologically, this review calls for increased use of indirect measures--which are imperative in studies of implicit cognition. The theorized ordinariness of implicit stereotyping is consistent with recent findings of discrimination by people who explicitly disavow prejudice. The finding that implicit cognitive effects are often reduced by focusing judges' attention on their judgment task provides a basis for evaluating applications (such as affirmative action) aimed at reducing such unintended discrimination.

/pdf/implicit-social-cognition-attitudes-self-esteem-and-2j32pp6h9o.pdf

Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes, Self-Esteem, and Stereotypes.

We investigated the hypothesis that people's facial activity influences their affective responses. Two studies were designed to both eliminate methodological problems of earlier experiments and clarify theoretical ambiguities, This was achieved by having subjects hold a pen in their mouth in ways that either inhibited or facilitated the muscles typically associated with smiling without requiring subjects to pose in a smiling face. Study 1 's results demonstrated the effectiveness of the procedure. Subjects reported more intense humor responses when cartoons were presented under facilitating conditions than under inhibiting conditions that precluded labeling of the facial expression in emotion categories. Study 2 served to further validate the methodology and to answer additional theoretical questions. The results replicated Study 1 's findings and also showed that facial feedback operates on the affective but not on the cognitive component of the humor response. Finally, the results suggested that both inhibitory and facilitatory mechanisms may have contributed to the observed affective responses. Research on the role of peripheral physiological reactions in the experience of emotion has placed its main emphasis on the influence of facial muscular activity. A great number of studies have dealt with whether and how people's facial expressions influence their affective experience. The basic hypothesis of these studies is derived from Darwin's (1872) early contention that an emotion that is freely expressed by outward signs will be intensified, whereas an emotion whose expression is repressed will be softened (p. 22). In other words, Darwin suggested that in the presence of an eliciting emotional stimulus a person's emotional experience can be either strengthened or attenuated depending on whether it is or is not accompanied by the appropriate muscular activity. Darwin's statement is the predecessor of the current facial

/pdf/inhibiting-and-facilitating-conditions-of-the-human-smile-a-1y8pdqfyhi.pdf

Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: A nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis.

Some ruminative thoughts.

It was hypothesized that moods have few, if any, motivational or processing implications, but are input to other processes that determine their motivational implications. In Experiment 1, Ss read a series of behaviors in forming an impression. When told to read the behaviors until they felt they had enough information, those in positive moods (PMs) stopped sooner than did those in negative moods (NMs). When told to stop when they no longer enjoyed reading the behaviors, NMs stopped sooner than PMs

/pdf/mood-as-input-people-have-to-interpret-the-motivational-2bz2frgeuq.pdf

Mood as Input: People Have to Interpret the Motivational Implications of Their Moods

In three experiments, impressions of an ambiguously described stimulus person were assimilated toward the implications of primed concepts when performance of the priming task was interrupted, but were contrasted with these implications when performance of the priming task was allowed to continue to completion. In addition, when the primed concepts were evaluatively consistent (Experiment 1), assimilation and contrast were observed on both prime-related and prime-unrelated dimensions. When the primed concepts were evaluatively inconsistent (Experiment 2), however, these shifts in impression were observed only on dimensions directly related to the primed concepts. When no concepts descriptively relevant to the stimulus information were primed (Experiment 3), the assimilation and contrast were relative to the favorableness of a primed general evaluative person concept. Taken together, these results suggest that a concept may be accessible to an individual and may be relevant to target information, yet not be used to encode that information; that assimilation and contrast may occur for reasons other than the discrepancy between the target and the contextual stimuli on the dimension of judgment; and that individuals may use the evaluative implications of their person representation as a cue in deciding which of several equally applicable, equally accessible descriptive concepts to use in interpreting information about a person.

Set/reset: use and disuse of concepts in impression formation.

Set/reset (Martin, 1986) hypothesis that contrast demands more cognitive effort than does assimilation was examined. In Exp. 1, the impressions of distracted Ss showed assimilation toward blatantly primed concepts, whereas the impressions of nondistracted Ss showed contrast. In Exp. 2, Ss told that their ratings would be lumped into a group average showed assimilation, whereas Ss told that their ratings would be examined individually showed contrast. In Exp. 3, the impressions of Ss low in need for cognition showed assimilation, whereas the impressions of Ss high in need for cognition showed contrast. Exp. 1 also showed that the results were not due to differences in recall of the target information, and Exp. 3 showed that the results were not due to differences in recall of the priming stimuli. Together, the results suggest that the processes involved in contrast demand more cognitive effort than do the processes involved in assimilation.

Leonard L. Martin

Papers

Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: A nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis.

Some ruminative thoughts.

Mood as Input: People Have to Interpret the Motivational Implications of Their Moods

Set/reset: use and disuse of concepts in impression formation.

Assimilation and contrast as a function of people's willingness and ability to expend effort in forming an impression.