Can externally activated trait concepts affect person judgments after encoding?,.

Current knowledge accessibility research assumes primed trait concepts to have no biasing effects beyond the encoding stage. In a series of studies, we challenge this assumption. We predict that trait concepts still can influence the person judgments of a predictor who previously stored the target person information through selective retrieval of trait congruent information. Our results consistently reveal assimilation effects when participants are primed with traits at judgment. Moreover, we identify two boundary conditions provide further evidence of the underlying selective retrieval process. First, assimilation effects only occur when stored target person instances apply to the externally activated knowledge and, second, when no prior target person impression is formed.Studies; Prisoner's dilemma game; Real life; Behavior; Altruism; Costly signaling; Research; Judgments; Knowledge; Effects; Information; Processes;

Exploring the role of consistency of social value orientations : temporal stability, reciprocal cooperation, and forgiveness.

Many studies of social interaction have incorporated the nature of social value orientations (pro-social vs. pro-self) as an important factor. This paper extends this literature by showing that the effect of the nature of social value orientations is moderated by the consistency of social value orientations (high vs. low). In three studies, we examined this moderating influence. In Study 1, we investigated the temporal stability of social value orientations and found that high consistent orientations are more stable than low consistent orientations. In Studies 2 and 3, we found evidence for the moderating impact of consistency of social value orientations on reciprocal cooperation and forgiveness. High consistent individuals were more likely to follow the nature of their social value orientation than low consistent individuals.

Consumer motivation to recycle when recycling is mandatory: Two exploratory studies.

Studies;

Do not prime hawks with doves : the impact of dispositions and situation-specific features on the emergence of cooperative behavior in mixed-motive situations.

In four experiments, we examined the impact of the nature and consistency of people's social value orientations on the emergence of cooperative behavior in conditions of neutral, morality or might priming. In line with Van Lange (2000), we expected social value orientations to have a greater impact in ambiguous (neutral priming) than in unambiguous (morality and might priming) situations. We also expected the later moderation to be higher among participants low in consistency (see also Hertel and Fiedler, 1998). Overall, participants' behavior shifted in prime-consistent ways. However, cooperation was reduced among high consistent pro-selfs primed with morality concepts. Experiments 2-4 replicate and generalize these findings, and reveal that high consistent pro-selfs exploited partners believed to be cooperative as a result of morality priming. Implications of these results are discussed in the wider context of interdependence theory, and in the context of automatic behavior effects.

Interpetative thinking and impression formation in a prisoner's dilemma game.

In three experiments we examined the notion that interpretative thinking guides impression formation when playing a prisoner's dilemma game. In a first experiment, we demonstrated that an interpretation goal is spontaneously triggered upon receiving ambiguous information about an interaction partner in the context of a prisoner's dilemma game. In Experiment 2, we examined whether in this context accessible knowledge is used as an interpretation frame for judging the interaction partner. Indeed, we found that subliminally primed extreme person exemplars led to an assimilation effect in person judgment in a prisoner's dilemma game, whereas they led to a contrast effect when person judgments were made in a control condition. Finally in experiment 3, priming a comparison goal before entering a prisoner's dilemma game led participants to use subliminally presented extreme exemplars again as a standard of comparison in the judgment of an interaction partner.Information; Knowledge;

About prisoners and dictators: the role of other-self focus, social value orientation, and sterotype primes in shaping cooperative behavior.

Six experiments examined the effects of person factors (i.e., social value orientation and consistency) and situation factors (i.e., stereotype primes) on cooperative behavior in various experimental games. Results indicated that the main and joint influences of person and situation factors on cooperative choices depend on the nature of the game (i.e., prisoner's dilemma or dictator game). Social value orientation, consistency, and primes affect cooperative behavior only in a dictator game, while these factors also lead to rumination about partner's behavioral intentions and personality (and therefore to different cooperative choices) in a prisoner's dilemma game. Differences between these games were explained in terms of the impact they have on other- and self-focus.Choice; Consistency; Dictator game; Effects; Factors; Prisoner's dilemma game; Social Value Orientation; Stereotype Priming; Value;

Effects of Messiness on Preferences for Simplicity

This research examines the effect of experiencing messiness, induced by a messy environment or by priming the concept of messiness, on consumers. We propose that messiness is an aversive state and consumers are motivated to attenuate this state by seeking simplicity in their cognitions, preferences, and choices. Six experiments support our theorizing. Experiments 1a-1c (conducted in the laboratory) and experiment 2 (conducted in the field) demonstrate that when messiness is salient, consumers form simpler product categorizations, are willing to pay more for a t-shirt with a simple picture, and seek less variety in their choices. Experiment 3 brings additional evidence for the underlying role of the need for simplicity by showing that when the need for simplicity is satiated, the effects of messiness disappear. A final experiment shows a boundary condition of the messiness effect: political conservatives are more susceptible to messiness primes compared to liberals

Human cooperation in groups: variation begets variation

Many experiments on human cooperation have revealed that individuals differ systematically in their tendency to cooperate with others. It has also been shown that individuals condition their behaviour on the overall cooperation level of their peers. Yet, little is known about how individuals respond to heterogeneity in cooperativeness in their neighbourhood. Here, we present an experimental study investigating whether and how people respond to heterogeneous behaviour in a public goods game. We find that a large majority of subjects does respond to heterogeneity in their group, but they respond in quite different ways. Most subjects contribute less to the public good when the contributions of their peers are more heterogeneous, but a substantial fraction of individuals consistently contributes more in this case. In addition, we find that individuals that respond positively to heterogeneity have a higher general cooperation tendency. The finding that social responsiveness occurs in different forms and is correlated with cooperativeness may have important implications for the outcome of cooperative interactions

Social Value Orientation, Expectations, and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas:A Meta-analysis

Interdependent situations are pervasive in human life. In these situations, it is essential to form expectations about the others’ behaviour to adapt one’s own behaviour to increase mutual outcomes and avoid exploitation. Social value orientation, which describes the dispositional weights individuals attach to their own and to another person’s outcome, predicts these expectations of cooperation in social dilemmas—an interdependent situation involving a conflict of interests. Yet, scientific evidence is inconclusive about the exact differences in expectations between prosocials, individualists, and competitors. The present meta-analytic results show that, relative to proselfs (individualists and competitors), prosocials expect more cooperation from others in social dilemmas, whereas individualists and competitors do not significantly differ in their expectations. The importance of these expectations in the decision process is further highlighted by the finding that they partially mediate the well-established relation between social value orientation and cooperative behaviour in social dilemmas. In fact, even proselfs are more likely to cooperate when they expect their partner to cooperate

Science that "knows" and science that "asks"

Clinician-researchers and experimental scientists do not speak the same language; they have different professional environments and different end-points in their research. This creates considerable problems of comprehension and communication, which constitute a major drawback in multidisciplinary work such as translational medicine. A stereotypic representation of both these worlds is presented as a starting point to encourage debate on this issue