Mood and representations of behaviour: The how and why

Based on the idea that mood helps to tune cognitive processes to current demands, we hypothesised that mood should influence the abstraction level in which people think about behaviour, and that such mood - induced differences in cognitive attention should be manifested in behaviour descriptions. In this study, participants re-described a number of daily behaviours in their own words after a mood manipulation. As predicted, people in a positive mood were more likely to re-describe behaviours in general why terms, whereas people in a negative mood were relatively more likely to re-describe behaviours in specific how terms. The findings are discussed with respect to the role of mood in processes of behaviour regulation.© 2005 Psychology Press Ltd

The magic spell of language. Linguistic categories and their perceptual consequences

Language is a tool that directs attention to different aspects of reality. Using participants from the same linguistic community, the authors demonstrate in 4 studies that metasemantic features of linguistic categories influence basic perceptual processes. More specifically, the hypothesis that abstract versus concrete language leads to a more global versus local perceptual focus was supported across 4 experiments, in which participants used (Experiment 1) or were primed either supraliminally (Experiments 2 and 3) or subliminally (Experiment 4) with abstract (adjectives) or concrete (verbs) terms. Participants were shown to display a global versus specific perceptual focus (Experiments 1 and 4), more versus less inclusiveness of categorization (Experiments 2 and 3), and incorporation of more rather than less contextual information (Experiment 3). The implications of this new perspective toward the language-perception interface are discussed in the context of the general linguistic relativity debate. © 2007 American Psychological Association

Gender as a moderator of the effects of the love motive and relational context on sexual experience.

The moderator effect of gender on (i) the relation between adolescents' sexual experience on the one hand; and (ii) their orientations towards the type of relational and emotional commitment that they expect to be present before engaging in a sexual relationship, and (iii) having a steady partner on the other was examined. We hypothesized that the relations between these facets would be stronger for women. We utilized u random sample of 253 British adolescents interviewed twice with a 1-year interval LISREL multigroup analysis with mean structures was used to test the hypotheses, thus offering the opportunity of detecting moderator as well as main effects of gender. Differential effects of emotional and relational commitment and having a steady partner relationship on sexual experience supported the hypotheses

The question-answer paradigm: You might regret not noticing how a question is worded.

In 2 experiments the authors investigated how verb choice in question formulation influences respon-dents ' answers. These studies show that (a) as hypothesized, the choice of verb type (action vs, state) in forming a question influences interviewees ' narratives systematically by impacting, inter alia, which individual is implicitly described as the causal originator of a social event; (b) interviewees are not aware of how their answers are manipulated; and (c) others who listen to or read the very same answers are sensitive to the linguistic differences in the narratives that are shaped by verb choices in question formulation. The implications of these findings for the self-fulfilling prophecy are discussed. How one answers questions can have dramatic consequences. It can make a difference between getting or losing a job, being convicted or released, and being trusted or distrusted. Obviously, the way one asks questions is also crucial and can have similar existential implications, such as making the difference between getting married or being dumped or between going out on a date or picking daisies. In two studies, we investigated ho