Affective focus increases the concordance between implicit and explicit attitudes

Two attitude dichotomies - implicit versus explicit and affect versus cognition - are presumed to be related. Following a manipulation of attitudinal focus (affective or cognitive), participants completed two implicit measures (Implicit Association Test and the Sorting Paired Features task) and three explicit attitude measures toward cats/dogs (Study 1) and gay/straight people (Study 2). Based on confirmatory factor analysis, both studies showed that explicit attitudes were more related to implicit attitudes in an affective focus than in a cognitive focus. We suggest that, although explicit evaluations can be meaningfully parsed into affective and cognitive components, implicit evaluations are more related to affective than cognitive components of attitudes

The Use of the AHP in Civil Engineering Projects

Most engineering, economic, social and institutional decisions are made with explicit notions of optimal behavior and implicit human motivations. In such a process, manipulation of both tangible and intangible data and satisfaction of multiple criteria are essential to the success of decision-making. In this paper an approach to multiple-criteria decision making known as the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is presented. Some mathematical details of the procedure are briefly discussed. The application of the method to a real life civil engineering project for the selection of an appropriate bridge design is also presented.multi-criteria decision making, analytic hierarchy process, bridge design

Nursing Students\u27 Self-Efficacy and Attitude: Examining the Influence ofthe Omaha System In Nurse Managed Centers

Self-efficacy, or confidence, as an outcome behavior has been identified as influencing nursing job satisfaction and retention. Clinical learning environments and teaching strategies that build and support perceived self-efficacy are critical aspects of preparing new nurses for their entry and continuing role as professional nurses in today\u27s information-intensive data-management healthcare environment. The purpose of this pre-test post-test study is to measure, using the C-scale (Grundy, 1992), nursing students\u27 self-efficacy to perform patient assessment in Nurse Managed Centers (NMC) after one semester of using the Omaha System documentation framework. Nursing students\u27 attitudes of preparation for using Standardized Nursing Languages (SNL) in the future was also examined. Bandura\u27s (1977, 19986) theoretical model of self-efficacy provided the conceptual framework. Students\u27 overall self-efficacy scores increased significantly over the 12 week study. Use of the Omaha System \u27prepared a little\u27 to \u27very prepared\u27 90% of student nurses for future use of SNL. Continued use of the Omaha System documentation framework in Nurse Managed Center clinicals as a tool for understanding SNL is recommended.

Demonstrating the validity of the Video Game Functional Assessment-Revised (VGFA-R)

Problematic video play has been well documented over the course of the last decade. So much so the DSM-5 (APA, 2013) has included problematic video gaming as disorder categorized as Internet Gaming Disorder. The field of applied behavior analysis has been utilizing functional assessments for the last 30 years and has showed evidence of effective results across different populations and environments. Therefore, the purpose of this investigation (comprising three studies) was to validate an indirect functional assessment entitled the Video Game Functional Assessment-Revised (VGFA-R). Using academic experts in the field of video game addiction and applied behavioral analysis (n=6), the first study examined the content validity of the VGFA-R and was able to demonstrate the assessment exceeded the criterion for an established assessment. A second study comprising a survey of 467 gamers examined the factorability by using a confirmatory factor analysis, and found that VGFA-R had an overall variance above .60. Within the third laboratory-based study using gamers (n=11), the VGFA-R was examined for construct validity and found the VGFA-R was able to predict 85% of the appropriate function of behavior. Implications of the study are discussed along with the strengths and limitations of the study and future research directions

Feelings Tell Us Friend or Foe: Threat as Justification for Prejudice

Knowing how we feel about a group is enough to influence whether we perceive the group as threatening or non-threatening. Some theories assume that threat causes prejudice, such as integrated threat theory (ITT; Stephan & Renfro, 2002; Stephan & Stephan, 2000) and other cognitively-oriented models of prejudice. An affective primacy perspective (Crandall et al., 2011; Pryor et al., 1999; Zajonc, 1980) instead suggests that prejudice can cause perception of threat. Four experiments tested the hypothesis that prejudice causes heightened perception of threat, using affective conditioning to create negative (Expts. 1-3) or emotionally specific (disgust-provoking or fear-provoking; Expt. 4) affective associations with unfamiliar social groups. When a group was associated with negative affect, its members were stereotyped as more threatening and less warm (but no less competent) compared to when it was associated with positive affect (Expts. 1, 3). Conditioned prejudice increased perception of threat (Expts. 2 and 4), and caused a consistent pattern of behavioral response tendencies (Expts. 3 and 4). Groups associated with negative affect were more likely to be aggressed against, and less likely to be approached. The effect of conditioning was statistically reliable for judgments of warmth and threat, but not for judgments of competence (Expts. 1-3). Disgust conditioning increased perception of symbolic threat and realistic threat, and increased aggressive response tendencies (Expt. 4). The effect of disgust on aggressive behaviors was mediated by symbolic threat, and the effect of disgust on avoidance and approach behaviors was mediated by realistic threat. Together, the findings demonstrate that prejudice can cause perception of threat, which undermines the favored interpretation of the correlational basis of cognitively-oriented theories such as ITT. Correlational data in support of cognitively-oriented theories is consistent with both directional paths--threat can cause prejudice, and prejudice can cause perception of threat. Experiments are necessary to distinguish between threat's role as a cause for prejudice and threat's role as a justification of prejudice

Domain-general and Domain-specific Patterns of Activity Support Metacognition in Human Prefrontal Cortex

Metacognition is the capacity to evaluate the success of one's own cognitive processes in various domains; for example, memory and perception. It remains controversial whether metacognition relies on a domain-general resource that is applied to different tasks or if self-evaluative processes are domain specific. Here, we investigated this issue directly by examining the neural substrates engaged when metacognitive judgments were made by human participants of both sexes during perceptual and memory tasks matched for stimulus and performance characteristics. By comparing patterns of fMRI activity while subjects evaluated their performance, we revealed both domain-specific and domain-general metacognitive representations. Multivoxel activity patterns in anterior prefrontal cortex predicted levels of confidence in a domain-specific fashion, whereas domain-general signals predicting confidence and accuracy were found in a widespread network in the frontal and posterior midline. The demonstration of domain-specific metacognitive representations suggests the presence of a content-rich mechanism available to introspection and cognitive control

Evaluations and Emotion: Influencing Public Health Policy Preferences via Facial Affect

The dissertation study examines the role of emotion and visual imagery in framing effects on judgments and decision-making. More specifically, it asks whether emotion is the mechanism that accounts for the link between framing of messages and the effects of those messages. Its broadest theoretical goal is to illuminate how people aggregate and integrate information from various elements of a message in order to form a policy preference. A series of experimental studies were conducted. The main experiment systematically replicated a study (Levin and Chapman, 1993) that had added disease populations characteristics (AIDS and leukemia patients) to Tversky and Kahneman’s (1981) classic framing effects study. By adding emotion-laden visual portrayals, the current study tried to influence previously established patterns of preferences where people assigned the least popular option in each frame to the undervalued disease population (AIDS patients). In addition, two rival mediator hypotheses were tested to explain the mechanisms by which these patterns occurred: attributions of responsibility versus compassionate response. The main experiment produced significant differences in preferences. Participants who saw compassionate visual portrayals of AIDS patients were significantly less likely to assign the worst option in each frame to them. Only limited support was found for the attributions of responsibility mediating hypothesis, with AIDS responsibility ratings emerging as a potential weak mediator. At the broadest level, this study suggests that framing, characteristics of the disease population, and emotional consistency of visual portrayal are consequential for judgments. Preference patterns for subjects who saw a compassionate visual portrayal significantly differed from those who saw an uncompassionate portrayal or no image. Furthermore, when people are asked to make comparative judgments between two disease populations, their previous evaluations of the populations seem to influence preferences. Finally, visual characterizations of disease populations influence people’s preferences, specifically the facial display of emotion in an image used to represent a disease population. These findings have practical relevance for designing public health messages that seek to influence judgments related to behaviors such as giving, volunteering, establishing public policy, and allocating resources

Does wage rank affect employees' well-being?

How do workers make wage comparisons? Both an experimental study and an analysis of 16,000 British employees are reported. Satisfaction and well-being levels are shown to depend on more than simple relative pay. They depend upon the ordinal rank of an individual's wage within a comparison group. “Rank” itself thus seems to matter to human beings. Moreover, consistent with psychological theory, quits in a workplace are correlated with pay distribution skewness

Time Warp: Authorship Shapes the Perceived Timing of Actions and Events

It has been proposed that inferring personal authorship for an event gives rise to intentional binding, a perceptual illusion in which one's action and inferred effect seem closer in time than they otherwise would (Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002). Using a novel, naturalistic paradigm, we conducted two experiments to test this hypothesis and examine the relationship between binding and self-reported authorship. In both experiments, an important authorship indicator - consistency between one's action and a subsequent event - was manipulated, and its effects on binding and self-reported authorship were measured. Results showed that action-event consistency enhanced both binding and self-reported authorship, supporting the hypothesis that binding arises from an inference of authorship. At the same time, evidence for a dissociation emerged, with consistency having a more robust effect on self-reports than on binding. Taken together, these results suggest that binding and self-reports reveal different aspects of the sense of authorship.Psycholog