Showing papers in "Psychological Science in 1999"

Stereotype Susceptibility: Identity Salience and Shifts in Quantitative Performance

Abstract: Recent studies have documented that performance in a domain is hindered when individuals feel that a sociocultural group to which they belong is negatively stereotyped in that domain. We report that implicit activation of a social identity can facilitate as well as impede performance on a quantitative task. When a particular social identity was made salient at an implicit level, performance was altered in the direction predicted by the stereotype associated with the identity. Common cultural stereotypes hold that Asians have superior quantitative skills compared with other ethnic groups and that women have inferior quantitative skills compared with men. We found that Asian-American women performed better on a mathematics test when their ethnic identity was activated, but worse when their gender identity was activated, compared with a control group who had neither identity activated. Cross-cultural investigation indicated that it was the stereotype, and not the identity per se, that influenced performance.

“I” Value Freedom, but “We” Value Relationships: Self-Construal Priming Mirrors Cultural Differences in Judgment

Abstract: The distinction between relatively independent versus interdependent self-construals has been strongly associated with several important cultural differences in social behavior. The current studies examined the causal role of self-construal by investigating whether priming independent or interdependent self-construals within a culture could result in differences in psychological worldview that mirror those traditionally found between cultures. In Experiment 1, European-American participants primed with interdependence displayed shifts toward more collectivist social values and judgments that were mediated by corresponding shifts in self-construal. In Experiment 2, this effect was extended by priming students from the United States and Hong Kong with primes that were consistent and inconsistent with their predominant cultural worldview. Students who received the inconsistent primes were more strongly affected than those who received the consistent primes, and thus shifted self-construal, and corresponding ...

On the Dimensional and Hierarchical Structure of Affect

Abstract: Green, Goldman, and Salovey (1993) challenged the view that “positive affect” and “negative affect” are largely uncorrelated dimensions. On the basis of factor analytic studies of happiness and sadness, and of positive and negative emotional activation (PA and NA), they claimed that a “largely bipolar structure of affect” (p. 1029) emerges when random and nonrandom error are taken into account. A reappraisal of their own findings and confirmatory analysis of additional data do not support this claim. Happiness and sadness form a largely unidimensional bipolar structure, but PA and NA are relatively independent. However, exploratory analyses yield a three-level hierarchy incorporating in one structure a general bipolar Happiness-Versus-Unhappiness dimension, the relatively independent PA and NA dimensions at the level below it, and discrete emotions at the base. We emphasize the heuristic value of a hierarchical perspective.

Nonverbal Counting in Humans: The Psychophysics of Number Representation

Abstract: In a nonverbal counting task derived from the animal literature, adult human subjects repeatedly attempted to produce target numbers of key presses at rates that made vocal or subvocal counting difficult or impossible. In a second task, they estimated the number of flashes in a rapid, randomly timed sequence. Congruent with the animal data, mean estimates in both tasks were proportional to target values, as was the variability in the estimates. Converging evidence makes it unlikely that subjects used verbal counting or time durations to perform these tasks. The results support the hypothesis that adult humans share with nonverbal animals a system for representing number by magnitudes that have scalar variability (a constant coefficient of variation). The mapping of numerical symbols to mental magnitudes provides a formal model of the underlying nonverbal meaning of the symbols (a model of numerical semantics).

In Search of the Self: A Positron Emission Tomography Study

Abstract: Previous work using positron emission tomography (PET) has shown that memory encoding processes are associated with pref- erential activation of left frontal regions of the brain, whereas retrieval processes are associated predominantly with right frontal activations. One possible reason for the asymmetry is that episodic retrieval nec- essarily involves reference to the self, and the self-concept may be rep- resented (at least partially) in right frontal regions. Accordingly, the present study investigated the possibility that encoding of self-related material might also activate right frontal areas. Eight right-handed volunteers judged trait adjectives under four separate PET scan con- ditions: (a) relevance to self, (b) relevance to a well-known public fig- ure, (c) social desirability, and (d) number of syllables. The results showed that self-related encoding yielded left frontal activations sim- ilar to those associated with other types of semantic encoding, but also specific activations in the right frontal lobe. It is concluded that the concept of self involves both general schematic structures and further specific components involved in episodic memory retrieval.

Inhibition of Return is a Foraging Facilitator in Visual Search

Abstract: Using overt orienting, participants searched a complex visual scene for a camouflaged target (Waldo from the “Where's Waldo?™” books). After several saccades, we presented an uncamouflaged probe (black disk) while removing or maintaining the scene, and participants were required to locate this probe by foveating it. Inhibition of return was observed as a relative increase in the time required to locate these probes when they were in the general region of a previous fixation, but only when the search array remained present. Perhaps also reflecting inhibition of return, preprobe saccades showed a strong directional bias away from a previously fixated region. Together with recent studies that replicate the finding of inhibition at distractor locations following serial but not parallel visual search—so long as the search array remains visible—these data strongly support the proposal that inhibition of return functions to facilitate visual search by inhibiting orienting to previously examined locations.

Face Recognition in Poor-Quality Video: Evidence From Security Surveillance:

Abstract: Security surveillance systems often produce poor-quality video, and this may be problematic in gathering forensic evidence. We examined the ability of subjects to identify target people captured by a commercially available video security device. In Experiment 1, sub- jects personally familiar with the targets performed very well at iden- tifying them, but subjects unfamiliar with the targets performed very poorly. Police officers with experience in forensic identification per- formed as poorly as other subjects unfamiliar with the targets. In Experiment 2, we asked how familiar subjects can perform so well. Using the same video device, we edited clips to obscure the head, body, or gait of the targets. Obscuring body or gait produced a small decrement in recognition performance. Obscuring the targets' heads had a dramatic effect on subjects' ability to recognize the targets. These results imply that subjects recognized the targets' faces, even in these poor-quality images.

A System for Relational Reasoning in Human Prefrontal Cortex

Abstract: The integration of multiple relations between mental representations is critical for higher level cognition. For both deductive- and inductive-reasoning tasks, patients with prefrontal damage exhibited a selective and catastrophic deficit in the integration of relations, whereas patients with anterior temporal lobe damage, matched for overall IQ but with intact prefrontal cortex, exhibited normal relational integration. In contrast, prefrontal patients performed more accurately than temporal patients on tests of both episodic memory and semantic knowledge. These double dissociations suggest that integration of relations is a specific source of cognitive complexity for which intact prefrontal cortex is essential. The integration of relations may be the fundamental common factor linking the diverse abilities that depend on prefrontal function, such as planning, problem solving, and fluid intelligence.

Top-Down Attentional Guidance Based on Implicit Learning of Visual Covariation

Abstract: The visual environment is extremely rich and complex, producing information overload for the visual system. But the environment also embodies structure in the form of redundancies and regularities that may serve to reduce complexity. How do perceivers internalize this complex informational structure? We present new evidence of visual learning that illustrates how observers learn how objects and events covary in the visual world. This information serves to guide visual processes such as object recognition and search. Our first experiment demonstrates that search and object recognition are facilitated by learned associations (covariation) between novel visual shapes. Our second experiment shows that regularities in dynamic visual environments can also be learned to guide search behavior. In both experiments, learning occurred incidentally and the memory representations were implicit. These experiments show how top-down visual knowledge, acquired through implicit learning, constrains what to expect and guide...

Cross Talk Between Native and Second Languages: Partial Activation of an Irrelevant Lexicon

Abstract: Bilingualism provides a unique opportunity for exploring hypotheses about how the human brain encodes language. For example, the “input switch” theory states that bilinguals can deactivate one language module while using the other. A new measure of spoken language comprehension, headband-mounted eyetracking, allows a firm test of this theory. When given spoken instructions to pick up an object, in a monolingual session, late bilinguals looked briefly at a distractor object whose name in the irrelevant language was initially phonetically similar to the spoken word more often than they looked at a control distractor object. This result indicates some overlap between the two languages in bilinguals, and provides support for parallel, interactive accounts of spoken word recognition in general.

Some Beginnings of Word Comprehension in 6-Month-Olds

Abstract: Previous studies of infants' comprehension of words estimated the onset of this ability at 9 months or later. However, these estimates were based on responses to names of relatively immobile, familiar objects. Comprehension of names referring to salient, animated figures (e.g., one's parents) may begin even earlier. In a test of this possibility, 6-month-olds were shown side-by-side videos of their parents while listening to the words “mommy” and “daddy.” The infants looked significantly more at the video of the named parent. A second experiment revealed that infants do not associate these words with men and women in general. Infants shown videos of unfamiliar parents did not adjust their looking patterns in response to “mommy” and “daddy.”

A Few Can Catch a Liar

Abstract: Research suggests that most people cannot tell from demeanor when others are lying. Such poor performance is typical not only of laypeople but also of most professionals concerned with lying. In this study, three professional groups with special interest or skill in deception, two law-enforcement groups and a select group of clinical psychologists, obtained high accuracy in judging videotapes of people who were lying or telling the truth about their opinions. These findings strengthen earlier evidence that some professional lie catchers are highly accurate, and that behavioral clues to lying are detectable in real time. This study also provides the first evidence that some psychologists can achieve high accuracy in catching lies.

Number Versus Contour Length in Infants' Discrimination of Small Visual Sets

Abstract: This study examined infants' use of contour length in num- ber discrimination tasks. We systematically varied number and con- tour length in a visual habituation experiment in order to separate these two variables. Sixteen 6- to 8-month-old infants were habituated to displays of either two or three black squares on a page. They were then tested with alternating displays of either a familiar number of squares with a novel contour length or a novel number of squares with a familiar contour length. Infants dishabituated to the display that changed in contour length, but not to the display that changed in num- ber. We conclude that infants base their discriminations on contour length or some other continuous variable that correlates with it, rather than on number.

The Role of Fixation Position in Detecting Scene Changes Across Saccades

Abstract: Target objects presented within color images of naturalistic scenes were deleted or rotated during a saccade to or from the target object or to a control region of the scene. Despite instructions to memorize the details of the scenes and to monitor for object changes, viewers frequently failed to notice the changes. However, the failure to detect change was mediated by three other important factors: First, accuracy generally increased as the distance between the changing region and the fixation immediately before or after the change decreased. Second, changes were sometimes initially missed, but subsequently noticed when the changed region was later refixated. Third, when an object disappeared from a scene, detection of that disappearance was greatly improved when the deletion occurred during the saccade toward that object. These results suggest that fixation position and saccade direction play an important role in determining whether changes will be detected. It appears that more information can be retai...

Face Perception During Early Infancy

Abstract: Previous studies of face perception during early infancy are difficult to interpret because of discrepant results and procedural differences. We used a standardized method based on the Teller acuity card procedure to test newborns, 6-week-olds, and 12-week-olds with three pairs of face and nonface stimuli modified from previous studies. Newborns' preferences were influenced both by the visibility of the stimuli and by their resemblance to a human face. There appears to be a mechanism, likely subcortical, predisposing newborns to look toward faces. Changes in preferences at 6 and 12 weeks of age suggest increasing cortical influence over infants' preferences for faces.

Are average facial configurations attractive only because of their symmetry

Abstract: Several commentators have suggested that the attractive- ness of average facial configurations could be due solely to associated changes in symmetry. If thissymmetry hypothesis is correct, then aver- ageness should not account for significant variance in attractiveness ratings when the effect of symmetry is partialed out. Furthermore, changes in attractiveness produced by manipulating the averageness of individual faces should disappear when all the images are made per- fectly symmetric. The experiments reported support neither prediction. Symmetry and averageness (or distinctiveness, the converse of aver- ageness) made independent contributions to attractiveness (Experi- ments 1 and 2), and changes in attractiveness resulting from changes in averageness remained when the images were made perfectly symmetric (Experiment 2). These results allow us to reject the symmetry hypothe- sis, and strengthen the evidence that facial averageness is attractive. Images of surprising beauty can be produced by averaging faces together (Galton, 1878; Langlois & Roggman, 1990; Langlois, Roggman, & Musselman, 1994; Rhodes & Tremewan, 1996). This observation has generated considerable debate about why such images should be attractive. Are they attractive because they are average, or are other factors responsible? Part of the appeal of averaged composites no doubt stems from the

The Process of Moralization

Abstract: Moralization is the process through which preferences are converted into values, both in individual lives and at the level of culture. Moralization is often linked to health concerns, including addiction. It is significant because moralized entities are more likely to receive attention from governments and institutions, to encourage supportive scientific research, to license censure, to become internalized, to show enhanced parent-to-child transmission of attitudes, to motivate the search by individuals for supporting reasons, and, in at least some cases, to recruit the emotion of disgust. Moralization seems to be promoted in predominantly Protestant cultures and if the entity is associated with stigmatized groups or harmful to children. The recent history and current status of cigarette smoking in the United States are used to illustrate moralization.

Representing Inner Worlds: Theory of Mind in Autistic, Deaf, and Normal Hearing Children

Abstract: The purpose of the study reported here was to examine the degree to which delays or deficits in developing a theory of mind are specific to children with autism or extend to other groups of atypical children with varying conversational experience and awareness. The performance of deaf children from a variety of conversational backgrounds was compared with that of autistic and normal hearing children on a range of tasks requiring representation of others' mental states. Native signers, oral deaf children, and normal hearing children scored similarly, and their performance exceeded that shown by signing deaf children from hearing families and children with autism. The latter two groups did not differ significantly from each other. These results point to an interplay among biology, conversation, and culture in the development of a theory of mind.

The Effects of “Mandatory Volunteerism” on Intentions to Volunteer

Abstract: With the widespread emergence of required community-service programs comes a new opportunity to examine the effects of requirements on future behavioral intentions To investigate the consequences of such “mandatory volunteerism” programs, we followed students who were required to volunteer in order to graduate from college Results demonstrated that stronger perceptions of external control eliminated an otherwise positive relation between prior volunteer experience and future intentions to volunteer A second study experimentally compared mandates and choices to serve and included a premeasured assessment of whether students felt external control was necessary to get them to volunteer After being required or choosing to serve, students reported their future intentions Students who initially felt it unlikely that they would freely volunteer had significantly lower intentions after being required to serve than after being given a choice Those who initially felt more likely to freely volunteer were relat

A Sociocognitive Analysis of Substance Abuse: An Agentic Perspective

Abstract: This article presents a social-cognitive theory of substance abuse. The exercise of self-regulatory agency plays a central role in this approach. Perceived self-efficacy is the foundation of human agency. Unless people believe they can produce desired effects by their actions, they have little incentive to act. Self-efficacy beliefs promote desired changes through cognitive, motivational, affective, and choice processes. Perceived self-efficacy exerts its effects on every phase of personal change—the initiation of efforts to overcome substance abuse, achievement of desired changes, recovery from relapses, and long-term maintenance of a drug-free life. Assessments of perceived efficacy identify areas of vulnerability and provide guides for treatment. Substance abuse is a social problem, not just a personal one. Reducing substance abuse also requires policy initiatives and social remedies achieved through the exercise of collective efficacy.

Unconscious Unease and Self-Handicapping: Behavioral Consequences of Individual Differences in Implicit and Explicit Self-Esteem

Abstract: In contrast to measures of explicit self-esteem, which assess introspectively accessible self-evaluations, measures of implicit self-esteem assess the valence of unconscious, introspectively inaccessible associations to the self. This experiment is the first to document a relationship between individual differences in implicit self-esteem and social behavior: Participants completed either a self-relevant or a self-irrelevant interview, and were then rated by the interviewer on their anxiety. When the interview was self-relevant, apparent anxiety was greater for participants low in implicit self-esteem than for participants high in self-esteem; implicit self-esteem did not predict anxiety when the interview was self-irrelevant. Explicit self-esteem did not predict apparent anxiety in either interview, but did predict participants' explicit self-judgments of anxiety. Self-handicapping about interview performance was greater for participants low in both explicit and implicit self-esteem than for those high i...

Carrot-Eaters and Creature-Believers: The Effects of Lexicalization on Children's Inferences About Social Categories

Abstract: This article examines how language affects children's inferences about novel social categories. We hypothesized that lexicalization (using a noun label to refer to someone who possesses a certain property) would influence children's inferences about other people. Specifically, we hypothesized that when a property is lexicalized, it is thought to be more stable over time and over contexts. One hundred fifteen children (5- and 7-year-olds) learned about a characteristic of a hypothetical person (e.g., “Rose eats a lot of carrots”). Half the children were told a noun label for each character (e.g., “She is a carrot-eater”), whereas half heard a verbal predicate (e.g., “She eats carrots whenever she can”). The children judged characteristics as significantly more stable over time and over contexts when the characteristics were referred to by a noun than when they were referred to by a verbal predicate. Lexicalization (in the form of a noun) provides important information to children regarding the stability of...

The Relation Between Implicit and Explicit Learning: Evidence for Parallel Development

Abstract: Much research has focused on the separability of implicit and explicit learning, but less has focused on how they might interact. A recent model suggests that in the motor-skill domain, explicit knowledge can guide movement, and the implicit system learns in parallel, based on these movements. Functional imaging studies do not support that contention, however; they indicate that learning is exclusively implicit or explicit. In the experiment reported here, participants learned a motor sequencing task either implicitly or explicitly. At transfer, most of the stimuli were random, but the sequence occasionally appeared; thus, it was not obvious that explicit knowledge could be applied to the task. Nevertheless, participants with explicit training showed sequence knowledge equivalent to those with implicit training, implying that implicit knowledge had been acquired in parallel with explicit knowledge. This result has implications for the development of automaticity and of motor-skill learning.

The Mozart Effect: An Artifact of Preference

Abstract: The “Mozart effect” reported by Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky (1993, 1995) indicates that spatial-temporal abilities are enhanced after listening to music composed by Mozart. We replicated and extended the effect in Experiment 1: Performance on a spatial-temporal task was better after participants listened to a piece composed by Mozart or by Schubert than after they sat in silence. In Experiment 2, the advantage for the music condition disappeared when the control condition consisted of a narrated story instead of silence. Rather, performance was a function of listeners' preference (music or story), with better performance following the preferred condition.

A Role for the Human Amygdala in Recognizing Emotional Arousal From Unpleasant Stimuli

Abstract: Functional neuroimaging and lesion-based neuropsycho- logical experiments have demonstrated the human amygdala's role in recognition of certain emotions signaled by sensory stimuli, notably, fear and anger in facial expressions. We examined recognition of two emotional dimensions, arousal and valence, in a rare subject with complete, bilateral damage restricted to the amygdala. Recognition of emotional arousal was impaired for facial expressions, words, and sentences that depicted unpleasant emotions, especially in regard to fear and anger. However, recognition of emotional valence was nor- mal. The findings suggest that the amygdala plays a critical role in knowledge concerning the arousal of negative emotions, a function that may explain the impaired recognition of fear and anger in patients with bilateral amygdala damage, and one that is consistent with the amygdala's role in processing stimuli related to threat and danger. Studies in humans provide strong evidence for neural systems that are specialized for the recognition of certain emotions. Some of the clearest evidence comes from studies of patients with damage to the amygdala, a brain structure long thought to play an important role in emotion. Bilateral amygdala damage disproportionately impairs the recognition of unpleasant emotions, especially fear, in facial expres- sions (Adolphs, Tranel, Damasio, & Damasio, 1994, 1995; Broks et amygdala may be critical to process a class of emotions that are high- ly arousing and related to threat and danger. We hypothesized that the human brain contains neural systems spe- cialized to recognize emotional arousal in negatively valenced stimuli, and that the amygdala is one key component of such systems. We test- ed this hypothesis by asking a rare subject with complete, selective bilateral amygdala damage to rate emotional stimuli explicitly with respect to the two attributes of arousal and valence.

Neural Recruitment and Cognitive Aging: Two Hemispheres Are Better Than One, Especially as You Age

Abstract: Several neuroimaging studies have reported that older adults show weaker activations in some brain areas together with stronger activations in other areas, compared with younger adults performing the same task. This pattern may reflect neural recruitment that compensates for age-related neural declines. The recruitment hypothesis was tested in a visual laterality study that investigated age differences in the efficiency of bihemispheric processing. Letter-matching tasks of varying complexity were performed under two conditions: (a) matching letters projected to the same visual field (hemisphere) and (b) matching letters projected to opposite visual fields (hemispheres). As predicted by the recruitment hypothesis, older adults generally performed better in the bilateral than unilateral condition, whereas younger adults showed this pattern only for the most complex task. We discuss the relation between these results and neuroimaging evidence for recruitment, and the relevance of the present bihemispheric ad...

Dissociable Neural Subsystems Underlie Abstract and Specific Object Recognition

Abstract: Participants named objects presented in the left or right visual field during a test phase, after viewing centrally presented same-exemplar objects, different-exemplar objects, and words that name objects during an initial encoding phase. In two experiments, repetition priming was exemplar-abstract yet visual when test objects were presented directly to the left cerebral hemisphere, but exemplar-specific when test objects were presented directly to the right cerebral hemisphere, contrary to predictions from single-system theories of object recognition. In two other experiments, stimulus degradation during encoding and task demands during test modulated these results in predicted ways. The results support the theory that dissociable neural subsystems operate in parallel (not in sequence) to underlie visual object recognition: An abstract-category subsystem operates more effectively than a specific-exemplar subsystem in the left hemisphere, and a specific-exemplar subsystem operates more effectively than an...

The Mystery of the Mozart Effect: Failure to Replicate

Abstract: The Mozart effect is the purported increase in spatial-reasoning performance immediately after exposure to a Mozart piano sonata. Several laboratories have been unable to confirm the existence of the effect despite two positive reports from the original laboratory. The authors of the original studies have provided a list of key procedural components to produce the effect. This experiment attempted to produce a Mozart effect by following those procedural instructions and replicating the procedure of one of the original positive reports. The experiment failed to produce either a statistically significant Mozart effect or an effect size suggesting practical significance. This general lack of effect is consistent with previous work by other investigators. We conclude that there is little evidence to support basing intellectual intervention programs on the existence of the Mozart effect.

Frontal Brain Electrical Activity in Shyness and Sociability

Abstract: A number of studies have shown that shyness and sociability may be two independent personality traits that are distinguishable across a variety of measures and cultures. Utilizing recent frontal activation–emotion models as a theoretical framework, this study examined the pattern of resting frontal electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in undergraduates who self-reported high and low shyness and sociability. Analyses revealed that shyness was associated with greater relative right frontal EEG activity, whereas sociability was associated with greater relative left frontal EEG activity. Also, different combinations of shyness and sociability were distinguishable on the basis of resting frontal EEG power. Although high-shy/high-social and high-shy/low-social subjects both exhibited greater relative right frontal EEG activity, they differed significantly on EEG power in the left, but not right, frontal lead. High-shy/high-social subjects exhibited significantly less EEG power (i.e., more activity) in the lef...

Birth Order Effects on Personality and Achievement Within Families

Abstract: We investigated birth order effects on personality and achievement in four studies (N = 1,022 families) including both stu- dent and adult samples. Control over a wide range of variables was effected by collecting within-family data: Participants compared their siblings (and themselves) on a variety of personality and achievement dimensions. Across four diverse data sets, first-borns were nominated as most achieving and most conscientious. Later-borns were nominat- ed as most rebellious, liberal, and agreeable. The same results obtained whether or not birth order was made salient (to activate stereotypes) during the personality ratings. Overall, the results sup- port predictions from Sulloway's niche model of personality develop- ment, as well as Zajonc's confluence model of intellectual achievement.