Wide perceiver
Exploring the Impact of Various Shaped Seating Arrangements on Persuasion
Rui (Juliet) Zhu & Jennifer Argo
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite the common belief that seating arrangements matter, little research has examined how the geometrical shape of a chair arrangement can impact persuasion. Across three studies, this research demonstrates that the shape of seating arrangements can prime two fundamental human needs which in turn influence persuasion. When seated in a circular shaped layout, individuals evaluate persuasive material more favorably when it contains family-oriented cues or majority endorsement information. In contrast, when seated in an angular shaped seating arrangement, individuals evaluate persuasive material more favorably when it contains self-oriented cues or minority endorsement. Further, results reveal that these responses to persuasive material arise because circular (angular) shaped seating arrangements prime a need to belong (need to be unique). Thus, this research shows that a subtle environmental cue - the shape of a seating arrangement - can activate fundamental human needs and consequently affect persuasion.
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The insurance effect: How the possession of gas masks reduces the likelihood of a missile attack
Orit Tykocinski
Judgment and Decision Making, March 2013, Pages 174-178
Abstract:
When a threat looms large in people's minds, they may seek protective measures that could mitigate the negative outcomes associated with this threat. Paradoxically, the possession of such protective measures may, in turn, inspire a sense of safety and reduce the perceived probability of the very threat that had originally triggered their acquisition. Thus, reminding people that they possess a medical insurance policy attenuated their perceived risk of suffering from health related misfortunes (Tykocinski, 2008). The current study conceptually replicates these findings and extends them to a different form of insurance. Reminding citizens in Israel of the fact that they possess gas masks significantly reduced their subjective estimates of the probability that Israel will be attacked by Iran.
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Getting a Grip on Memory: Unilateral Hand Clenching Alters Episodic Recall
Ruth Propper et al.
PLoS ONE, April 2013
Abstract:
Unilateral hand clenching increases neuronal activity in the frontal lobe of the contralateral hemisphere. Such hand clenching is also associated with increased experiencing of a given hemisphere's "mode of processing." Together, these findings suggest that unilateral hand clenching can be used to test hypotheses concerning the specializations of the cerebral hemispheres during memory encoding and retrieval. We investigated this possibility by testing effects of unilateral hand clenching on episodic memory. The hemispheric Encoding/Retrieval Asymmetry (HERA) model proposes left prefrontal regions are associated with encoding, and right prefrontal regions with retrieval, of episodic memories. It was hypothesized that right hand clenching (left hemisphere activation) pre-encoding, and left hand clenching (right hemisphere activation) pre-recall, would result in superior memory. Results supported the HERA model. Also supported was that simple unilateral hand clenching can be used as a means by which the functional specializations of the cerebral hemispheres can be investigated in intact humans.
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Why Are People Bad at Detecting Randomness? A Statistical Argument
Joseph Williams & Thomas Griffiths
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, forthcoming
Abstract:
Errors in detecting randomness are often explained in terms of biases and misconceptions. We propose and provide evidence for an account that characterizes the contribution of the inherent statistical difficulty of the task. Our account is based on a Bayesian statistical analysis, focusing on the fact that a random process is a special case of systematic processes, meaning that the hypothesis of randomness is nested within the hypothesis of systematicity. This analysis shows that randomly generated outcomes are still reasonably likely to have come from a systematic process and are thus only weakly diagnostic of a random process. We tested this account through 3 experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the low accuracy in judging whether a sequence of coin flips is random (or biased toward heads or tails) is due to the weak evidence provided by random sequences. While randomness judgments were less accurate than judgments involving non-nested hypotheses in the same task domain, this difference disappeared once the strength of the available evidence was equated. Experiment 3 extended this finding to assessing whether a sequence was random or exhibited sequential dependence, showing that the distribution of statistical evidence has an effect that complements known misconceptions.
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Does Green Mean Healthy? Nutrition Label Color Affects Perceptions of Healthfulness
Jonathon Schuldt
Health Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
The food industry has recently implemented numerous front-of-package nutrition labels to readily convey key aspects a food product's nutritional profile to consumers (e.g., calories and fat content). Although seemingly well-intentioned, such labels might lead consumers to perceive relatively poor nutrition foods in a healthier light. The present research explores whether one underresearched aspect of nutrition labels - namely, their color - might influence perceptions of a product's healthfulness. In Study 1, participants perceived a candy bar as healthier when it bore a green rather than a red calorie label, despite the fact that the labels conveyed the same calorie content. Study 2 examined the perceived healthfulness of a candy bar bearing a green versus white calorie label and assessed individual differences in the importance of healthy eating. Overall, results suggest that green labels increase perceived healthfulness, especially among consumers who place high importance on healthy eating. Discussion focuses on implications for health-related judgment and nutrition labeling.
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You taste what you see: Do organic labels bias taste perceptions?
Wan-chen Jenny Lee et al.
Food Quality and Preference, July 2013, Pages 33-39
Abstract:
Does simply believing that a processed food is organic improve how enjoyable it tastes, influence caloric estimations, or increase how much people are willing to pay for the item? In the present study, 115 participants recruited from a local shopping mall were asked to taste and evaluate three paired food samples (i.e., cookies, potato chips, and yogurt). Each of those food samples was labeled, specifying one of the items in the pair as ‘organic' and the other label specifying its counterpart as ‘regular', although they were identical and organically produced. Results found that participants estimated those foods with organic labels to be lower in calories than those without the organic label. Furthermore, foods with the organic label elicited a higher willingness-to-pay and yielded better nutritional evaluations (e.g., tastes lower in fat, higher in fiber) than foods without the organic label. Finally, results found that the effects of the organic label on caloric estimations were less pronounced among people who typically read nutritional labels, who often buy organic foods, and who often engage in pro-environmental activities. This underscores the idea that the health halo effect is primarily driven by automatic processing based on heuristics. Understanding how consumers use nutritional information on product labels has important implications for both public policy as well as processed food manufacturers who use such claims as tools to market their products.
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Edith Shalev & Vicki Morwitz
Journal of Consumer Psychology, April 2013, Pages 220-227
Abstract:
We show that counting downward while performing a task shortens the perceived duration of the task compared to counting upward. People perceive that less time has elapsed when they were counting downward versus upward while using a product (Studies 1 and 3) or watching geometrical shapes (Study 2). The counting direction effect is obtained using both prospective and retrospective time judgments (Study 3), but only when the count range begins with the number "1" (Study 2). Furthermore, the counting direction affects peoples' attitude toward the product, their likelihood of using it again, and their purchase intentions. We test several plausible accounts for the counting direction effect, including task difficulty, numerical anchoring, and arousal. We find preliminary evidence that downward counting feels shorter because it is more arousing than upward counting.
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Seeing or smelling? Assessing personality on the basis of different stimuli
Agnieszka Sorokowska
Personality and Individual Differences, July 2013, Pages 175-179
Abstract:
This study examines whether people can accurately assess personality on the basis of facial images and body odor and whether attractiveness influences these relationships. Three personality dimensions of target individuals - neuroticism, extraversion and dominance - were measured with the NEO Five-Factor Inventory, a one-item measure of dominance and the reports of close acquaintances. Naive observers assessed neuroticism and dominance at above-chance levels based on body odor, and they assessed extraversion (and in some cases, neuroticism) at above-chance levels based on either facial images alone or body odor and facial images presented together. The accuracy differed depending on the sex of the targets and the raters. In addition, facial and body odor attractiveness predicted the targets' personalities and the assessments of their personalities. These results show that the accuracy of personality assessment changes when judges assess different types of stimuli.
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Sarah Garfinkel et al.
Psychophysiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Mental functions are influenced by states of physiological arousal. Afferent neural activity from arterial baroreceptors at systole conveys the strength and timing of individual heartbeats to the brain. We presented words under limited attentional resources time-locked to different phases of the cardiac cycle, to test a hypothesis that natural baroreceptor stimulation influences detection and subsequent memory of words. We show memory for words presented around systole was decreased relative to words at diastole. The deleterious memory effect of systole was greater for words detected with low confidence and amplified in individuals with low interoceptive sensitivity, as indexed using a heartbeat counting task. Our observations highlight an important cardiovascular channel through which autonomic arousal impacts a cognitive function, an effect mitigated by metacognition (perceptual confidence) and interoceptive sensitivity.
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Debora Thompson & Elise Chandon Ince
Journal of Marketing Research, April 2013, Pages 228-240
Abstract:
This research examines the effect of processing fluency on judgments of agent competence. In the context of service relationships, four studies reveal that the experience of processing difficulty, or disfluency, enhances expectations of agent-exerted effort and competence, which in turn increase expected service value. When reading information about a target service, consumers interpret the difficulty of processing information as a signal of the level of skill required to execute the task, which highlights the agent's expected utility. The authors explore several moderators of this positive effect of disfluency, showing that it is attenuated under conditions that decrease the relevance of consumers' subjective experiences and it may be reversed on measures of experienced (vs. expected) service value.
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Raffaella Misuraca & Ursina Teuscher
Acta Psychologica, June 2013, Pages 176-180
Abstract:
Three experiments assessed whether maximizing and satisficing decision-making types were associated with differences in perception of time, as a consequence of their different cognitive workloads. Findings showed that maximizers and satisficers perceived time differently during decision-making, but not during other tasks. In particular, compared to satisficers, maximizers tended to underestimate time while choosing, independently of the number of options and the specific task requirements. Satisficers instead tended to underestimate time only when the number of options or the task requirements were more challenging. Our findings suggest that the perception of time may serve as a measure of the cognitive workload associated with decision-making types. The findings furthermore suggest that satisficers adopt a more malleable decision-making process than maximizers.
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The neural correlates of beauty comparison
Gayannée Kedia et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. How attractive someone is perceived to be depends on the individual or cultural standards to which this person is compared. But although comparisons play a central role in the way people judge the appearance of others, the brain processes underlying attractiveness comparisons remain unknown. In the present experiment, we tested the hypothesis that attractiveness comparisons rely on the same cognitive and neural mechanisms as comparisons of simple nonsocial magnitudes such as size. We recorded brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while participants compared the beauty or height of two women or two dogs. Our data support the hypothesis of a common process underlying these different types of comparisons. First, we demonstrate that the distance effect characteristic of nonsocial comparisons also holds for attractiveness comparisons. Behavioral results indicated, for all our comparisons, longer response times for near than far distances. Second, the neural correlates of these distance effects overlapped in a frontoparietal network known for its involvement in processing simple nonsocial quantities. These results provide evidence for overlapping processes in the comparison of physical attractiveness and nonsocial magnitudes.
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The association between the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) and hypnotizability
Richard Bryant et al.
Psychoneuroendocrinology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Hypnosis has puzzled scientists for centuries, and particularly the reason why some people are prone to engaging in suggested experiences discordant with external reality. Absorption in internal experience is one key component of the hypnotic response. The neuropeptide oxytocin has been posited to heighten sensitivity to external cues, and it is possible that individual differences in oxytocin-related capacity to engage in external or internal experiences influences hypnotic response. To test this proposal, 185 Caucasian individuals provided saliva samples for analysis of polymorphisms in the oxytocin receptor gene, COMT, and independently completed standardized measures of hypnotizability and absorption. Participants with the GG genotype at rs53576 were characterized by lower hypnotizability and absorption scores than those with the A allele; there was no association between hyponotizability and COMT. These findings provide initial evidence that the capacity to respond to suggestions for altered internal experience is influenced by the oxytocin receptor gene, and is consistent with evidence that oxytocin plays an important role in modulating the extent to which people engage with external versus internal experiences.
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Playing nice: A multi-methodological study on the effects of social conformity on memory
Lorena Deuker et al.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, March 2013
Abstract:
Conformity is an important aspect of social behavior. Two main motives have been identified: people may adapt their behavior to "play nice" despite knowing better (normative conformity) or they may accept the others' opinion as a valid source of information (informative conformity). Neuroimaging studies can help to distinguish between these two possibilities. Here, we present a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study on memory conformity in a real group situation. We investigated the effects of group pressure on activity in hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) which likely support informative and normative memory conformity, respectively. Furthermore, we related the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs4680 [called Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val158Met] on the gene coding for COMT to both behavior and fMRI activation. Homozygous Met-allele carriers (Val-) behaved more conformist than carriers of at least one Val-allele (Val+). In the neuroimaging data, we compared trials in which subjects were confronted with a majority of incorrect group responses to trials in which they were confronted with a majority of correct group responses. We found increased hippocampal activity when the majority of the group was correct, possibly indicating retrieval processes. Moreover, we observed enhanced activity in the ACC when the majority of the group was incorrect, suggesting that conformity was mostly normative. Most interestingly, this latter effect was more pronounced for Val- as compared to Val+ participants. This offers a speculative explanation for the higher behavioral levels of social conformity in Val- allele carriers, because their subjectively perceived conflict in the presence of an incorrect group majority may have been higher. Overall, this study demonstrates how the mechanisms leading to complex social behavior such as conformity can be studied by combining genetic analyses and fMRI in social neuroscience paradigms.
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In search of a surrogate for touch: The effect of haptic imagery on perceived ownership
Joann Peck, Victor Barger & Andrea Webb
Journal of Consumer Psychology, April 2013, Pages 189-196
Abstract:
Previous research has shown that individuals value objects more highly if they own them, a finding commonly known as the endowment effect. In fact, simply touching an object can create a perception of ownership that produces the endowment effect. In this paper, we extend this line of research in several ways. First, we show that haptic imagery, or imagining touching an object, can have the same effect on perceived ownership as physical touch. We then demonstrate that haptic imagery can lead to perceptions of physical control, which in turn increase feelings of ownership. Moreover, the more vivid the haptic imagery, the greater the perception of control and the feeling of ownership. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
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Warmer hearts, warmer rooms: How positive communal traits increase estimates of ambient temperature
Aleksandra Szymkow et al.
Social Psychology, Spring 2013, Pages 167-176
Abstract:
Conceptual representations of warmth have been shown to be related to people's perceptions of ambient temperature. Based on this premise, we hypothesized that merely thinking about personality traits related to communion (but not agency) influences physical experience of warmth. Specifically, the three studies revealed that (a) perceptions of temperature are influenced by both positive and negative attributes within the communion but not agency dimension, (b) the effect is stronger when traits indicate sociability rather than morality subdimension of communion, and (c) communion activation affects temperature perceptions independently of target's or self-perceptions.
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Affective judgement about information relating to competence and warmth: An embodied perspective
Sébastien Freddi et al.
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Several studies have shown that social judgement may be defined by two dimensions, competence and warmth. From a functional perspective, embodied theories have proposed that warmth may be associated with physical distance, whereas competence may be connected to a vertical motion (UPWARD/DOWNWARD). Two main studies were conducted to examine if approach-avoidance and vertical motion could influence affective judgements about traits representing these two social dimensions. Valence judgements about warmth traits that were moving towards the subject resulted in more positive judgement than when they were moving away (approach/avoidance). Furthermore, competence traits were judged more positively when they moved in an UPWARD direction, compared with when they moved DOWNWARD. A metacognitive account of confidence is offered to explain how cognitions about warmth and competence are connected to the physical world.
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Processing fluency, positive affect, and judgments of meaning in life
Jason Trent, Caroline Lavelock & Laura King
Journal of Positive Psychology, March/April 2013, Pages 135-139
Abstract:
This study examined the effects of processing ease on judgments of meaning in life (MIL), employing a common manipulation of fluency, font styles. One hundred and three adults completed a questionnaire assessing MIL with items printed in one of four fonts that differed in readability. We predicted that those who rated MIL items printed in easy-to-read fonts would report higher MIL than those who rated items presented in difficult-to-read fonts. Participants also completed a measure of the proposed mechanism for these effects, positive affect (PA). Results showed that, as predicted, easy reading led to higher MIL than difficult reading and these effects were explained by PA. Results not only extend the influence of processing fluency to such profound judgments as life's meaningfulness, but also lend further support to the very strong role of PA in judgments of MIL.