Norm conflicts and conditionals

Suppose that two competing norms, N1 and N2, can be identified such that a given person’s response can be interpreted as correct according to N1 but incorrect according to N2. Which of these two norms, if any, should one use to interpret such a response? In this paper we seek to address this fundamental problem by studying individual variation in the interpretation of conditionals by establishing individual profiles of the participants based on their case judgments and reflective attitudes. To investigate the participants’ reflective attitudes we introduce a new experimental paradigm called the Scorekeeping Task. As a case study, we identify the participants who follow the Suppositional Theory of conditionals (N1) versus Inferentialism (N2) and investigate to what extent internally consistent competence models can be reconstructed for the participants on this basis. After extensive empirical investigations, an apparent reasoning error with and-to-if inferences was found in one of these two groups. The implications of this case study for debates on the proper role of normative considerations in psychology are discussed

Contrast Effects in Spontaneous Evaluations: A Psychophysical Account

In the affective-priming paradigm, target stimuli are preceded by evaluatively polarized prime stimuli and then are to be classified as either good or bad as fast as possible. The typical and robust finding is assimilation: Primes facilitate the processing of evaluatively consistent targets relative to evaluatively inconsistent targets. Nevertheless, contrast effects have repeatedly been observed. The authors propose a new psychophysical account of normal (assimilative) and reversed (contrastive) priming effects and test new predictions derived from it in 5 studies: In Studies I and 2, the authors' account is shown to provide a better explanation of contrastive effects in a priming paradigm with two primes than the traditional attentional account does. Furthermore, as predicted by the new account, contrast effects emerge at an intermediate stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA, Study 3) and even with short SOAs when target onset takes participants by surprise (Study 4). Finally, the use of extremely valenced primes triggers corrective efforts (Study 5) as predicted. Implications for priming measures of evaluative associations are discussed

Learned predictiveness influences automatic evaluations in human contingency learning

<p>Experiments used an affective priming procedure to investigate whether evaluative conditioning in humans is subject to bias as a consequence of differences in the learned predictiveness of the cues involved. Experiment 1, using brief prime presentation, demonstrated stronger affective priming for cues that had been predictive of a neutral attribute prior to evaluative conditioning than for those that had been nonpredictive. Experiment 2, using longer prime presentation, found a reversed priming effect for previously predictive cues but not for previously nonpredictive cues. The implication is that the effect observed with brief prime presentation reflects the operation of fast-acting, automatic evaluation mechanisms and hence that evaluative conditioning can be biased by our previous learning about the predictiveness of cues.</p>