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.

INDIVIDUAL PROCESSES IN INTERGROUP BEHAVIOR 3 From Individual to Group Impressions 3 GROUP MEMBERSHIP AND INTERGROUP BEHAVIOR 7 The Scope and Range of Ethnocentrism 8 The Development of Ethnocentrism 9 Intergroup Conflict and Competition 12 Interpersonal and intergroup behavior 13 Intergroup conflict and group cohesion 15 Power and status in intergroup behavior 16 Social Categorization a d Intergroup Behavior 20 Social categorization: cognitions, values, and groups 20 Social categorization a d intergroup discrimination 23 Social identity and social comparison 24 THE REDUCTION FINTERGROUP DISCRIMINATION 27 Intergroup Cooperation and Superordinate Goals " 28 Intergroup Contact. 28 Multigroup Membership and "lndividualizat~’on" of the Outgroup 29 SUMMARY 30

Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations

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.

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

Publisher Summary Individuals come to “know” their own attitudes, emotions, and other internal states partially by inferring them from observations of their own overt behavior and/ or the circumstances in which this behavior occurs. Thus, to the extent that internal cues are weak, ambiguous, or uninterpretable, the individual is functionally in the same position as an outside observer, an observer who must necessarily rely upon those same external cues to infer the individual's inner states. This chapter traces the conceptual antecedents and empirical consequences of these propositions, attempts to place the theory in a slightly enlarged frame of reference, and clarifies just what phenomena the theory can and cannot account for in the rapidly growing experimental literature of self-attribution phenomena. Several experiments and paradigms from the cognitive dissonance literature are amenable to self-perception interpretations. But precisely because such experiments are subject to alternative interpretations, they cannot be used as unequivocal evidence for self-perception theory. The reinterpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena and other self-perception phenomena have been discussed. The chapter highlights some differences between self-perception and interpersonal perception and shift of paradigm in social psychology. It discusses some unsolved problems, such as the conceptual status of noncognitive response classes and the strategy of functional analysis.

Self-perception theory

Three aspects of the self(private, public, collective) with different probabilities in different kinds of social environments were sampled. Three dimensions of cultural variation (individualism--collectivism, tightness-looseness, cultural complexity) are discussed in relation to the sampling of these three aspects of the self. The more complex the culture, the more frequent the sampling of the public and private self and the less frequent the sampling of the collective self. The more individualistic the culture, the more frequent the sampling of the private self and the less frequent the sampling of the collective self. Collectivism, external threat, competition with outgroups, and common fate increase the sampling of the collective self. Cultural homogeneity results in tightness and in the sampling of the collective self. The article outlines theoretical links among aspects of the environment, childrearing patterns, and cultural patterns, which are linked to differential sampling of aspects of the self. Such sampling has implications for social behavior. Empirical investigations of some of these links are reviewed.

The Self and Social Behavior in Differing Cultural Contexts

How likely people are to think of themselves in terms of a given personal characteristic is predicted from the distinctiveness postulate that the person, when confronted by a complex stimulus (such as the self), selectively notices and encodes the stimulus in terms of what is most peculiar about it, since these peculiar characteristics are the most informative in distinguishing it from other stimuli. This partial view of the person as an information-encoding machine (one is conscious of oneself insofar as, and in the ways that, one is different) is used to derive four predictions implying that ethnic identity is salient in children's spontaneous self-concepts to the extent that their ethnic group is in the minority in their social milieu at school. Our measure of salience of ethnicity was its being spontaneously mentioned by the children in response to a nondirective "Tell us about yourself" question. All four predictions were confirmed, though for several of the findings there are plausible alternative explanations.

Salience of ethnicity in the spontaneous self-concept as a function of one's ethnic distinctiveness in the social environment.

The Yin and Yang of Progress in Social Psychology: Seven Koan.

A discrimination theory of selective perception was used to predict that a given trait would be spontaneously salient in a person's self-concept to the exten that this trait was distinctive for the person within her or his social groups. Sixth-grade students' general and physical spontaneous self-concepts were elicited in their classroom settings. The distinctiveness within the classroom of each student's characteristics on each of a variety of dimensions was determined, and it was found that in a majority of cases the dimension was significantly more salient in the spontaneous self-concepts of those students whose characteristic on thedimension was more distinctive. Also reported are incidental findings which include a description of the contents of spontaneous self-comcepts as well as determinants of their length and of the spontaneous mention of one's sex as part of one's self-concept.

Trait salience in the spontaneous self-concept.

Publisher Summary This chapter describes various approaches to the problem of inducing resistance to persuasion, and presents a number of variations on each approach. Persuasive messages are known to be more effective if they are presented with their conclusions explicitly drawn, rather than left to be drawn by the recipient. Several ways of inducing resistance to persuasion, and some possibly pretreatments—like enhancing the person's tendency to use perceptual distortion in the defense of his preconceptions—are included in the chapter. Some contemporary approaches to inducing resistance to persuasion include the behavioral commitment approach, anchoring the belief to other cognitions, inducing resistance cognitive states, and prior training in resting persuasive attempts. It is believed that with better education the individual becomes more resistant to persuasion. However, empirical research does not consistently support such a proposition. It is by no means clear that any general-education manipulation would have the effect of increasing resistance to persuasion. Training more specifically tailored to reduce susceptibility to persuasion might be more successful. There is some evidence that the more intelligent are more resistant to conformity pressures from peers, but they also seem to be more susceptible to the mass-media kind of persuasion attempts. Further experiments will have to determine, if inoculation theory will predict the immunizing efficacy of various types of defenses in the case of controversial beliefs as successfully as it has for truisms.

Some Contemporary Approaches

The directive, information-processing aspects of the personality are described in terms of eight successive steps: exposure, perception, comprehension, agreement, retention, retrieval, decision making, and action. Each of these steps is illustrated by recent psychological research. The dynamic, motivational aspect of human personality is described more briefly in terms of 16 basic human motives that have received attention in recent psychological research.

William J. McGuire

Papers

Salience of ethnicity in the spontaneous self-concept as a function of one's ethnic distinctiveness in the social environment.

The Yin and Yang of Progress in Social Psychology: Seven Koan.

Trait salience in the spontaneous self-concept.

Some Contemporary Approaches

Some Internal Psychological Factors Influencing Consumer Choice