Non-political anger shifts political preferences towards stronger leaders

Past research has shown that anger is associated with support for confrontational and punitive responses during crises, and notably with the endorsement of authoritarian ideologies. One important question is whether it is anger generated specifically in a political context that explains the association between anger and specific political preferences or whether any feeling of anger would be associated with changes in political attitudes. Here, we tested the effect of non-politically motivated incidental anger on the preference for strong leaders. In line with past research, we predicted that anger would increase preferences for strong leaders. Across two experiments, we exposed participants to an anger induction task. Before and after this experimental manipulation, we measured participants’ political leader preferences by asking them to choose between the faces of two leaders they would vote for in a hypothetical election. The level of self-reported anger predicted the probability of choosing more dominant-looking and less trustworthy-looking leaders after the induction, suggesting that even non-political incidental anger increases preferences for strong leaders

Conceptual distortions of hand structure are resistant to changes in stimulus information

Hands are commonly held up as an exemplar of well-known, familiar objects. However, conceptual knowledge of the hand has been found to show highly stereotyped distortions. Specifically, people judge their knuckles as farther forward in the hand than they actually are. The cause of this distal bias remains unclear. In Experiment 1, we tested whether both visual and tactile information contribute to the distortion. Participants judged the location of their knuckles by pointing to the location on their palm directly opposite each knuckle with: 1) a metal baton (using vision and touch) 2) a metal baton while blindfolded (using touch), 3) a laser pointer (using vision). In Experiment 2, we investigated whether judgments are influenced by visual landmarks such as the creases at the base of each finger on the palm. Participants localized their knuckles on either a photograph or a silhouette of their hand. In both experiments, clear distortions were found across conditions, of generally similar magnitude. These results show that distal bias is resistant to changes in the stimulus information and does not rely on any specific stimulus cue or single sensory modality, suggesting that such mislocalisations reflect a conceptual misrepresentation of hand structure

Eating and body image: does food insecurity make us feel thinner?

Body image distortions are common in healthy individuals and a central aspect of serious clinical conditions, such as eating disorders. This commentary explores the potential implications of body image and its distortions for the insurance hypothesis. In particular, we speculate that body image may be an intervening variable mediating the relation between perceived food scarcity and eating behavior

News about newspaper advertisers: To what extent can corporate advertising budgets predict editorial uptake and coverage of corporate press releases?

News value theory aims to predict a story’s chance of being selected for publication based on news factors and ascribed news values. News values can also predict the coverage of corporate press releases. For news decisions, a newspaper’s revenue model may force editors to consider whether the source of a press release is an advertising client, despite the ‘separation of church and state’. In addition, for business journalism, corporate press releases have become an increasingly important news source. This study combines news values and advertiser weight to predict news coverage of press releases of banks in the news of partly and fully advertising-funded newspapers in Switzerland. Results show that advertiser importance can explain press release coverage concerning article length and tone in few cases, but has no universal news value. Public relations material is also not used as editorial subsidy for news. Larger companies are more successful in terms of press release uptake. However, their articles consist of a greater share of non-public relations material. Thus, our findings confirm editorial independence instead of copy-paste or obsequious journalism

Stimulus displays for Experiment 2.

<p>The background was made subjectively isoluminant with respect to the bright red inducers for each participant. This reduced the illusion in the Kanizsa condition (a) while the control condition (b) stayed perceptually the same as in Experiment 1.</p

Configuration of the stimulus display for the Kanizsa condition (a) and the control condition (b).

<p>The 8 stimuli were placed radially around the fixation dot in both conditions. A change (50% of the trials) always involved a rotation of the two middle inducers of one stimulus. The trial timings are depicted in (c) and the stimulus displays in (d). There were two sensory memory conditions: Iconic Memory (IM) and Fragile Memory (FM). In these two conditions, the cue was presented after the memory array, but before the test array. In the Working Memory condition (WM), the cue was presented just after presentation of the test array. Sensory memory is erased by the test array.</p

Two types of stimuli used in Experiment 1.

<p>In the Kanizsa condition (a) the inducers formed an illusory triangle. In the control condition (b) the same inducers were configured in such a way that no illusion was formed.</p

Mean percentage correct for Experiment 1 (a) and 2 (b).

<p>In Experiment 1 (a), performance on all memory types was higher for the Kanizsa condition (dark blue) compared to the control condition (light blue; difference scores in black). Importantly, the boost for sensory memory (IM and FM) was larger than the boost for working memory (WM). In Experiment 2 (b), performance for the Kanizsa condition was again higher compared to the control condition, but the boost was the same for each memory type. Error bars depict standard errors. ***p<.001; *p<.05.</p