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 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

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 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

Children's communication of the Linguistic Intergroup Bias and its impact upon cognitive inferences.

Item does not contain fulltextThe hypotheses that children use language strategically (e.g. as in the Linguistic Intergroup Bias) and with increasing strength with age were supported in an experiment with participants ranging in age from 8 to 19 years. In a second experiment, the impact of biased language use on participants' inferences was examined in a sample ranging in age from 5 to 11 years. It was shown for all age groups that participants' inferences were systematically influenced by the abstractness or concreteness of a message. The implications of these findings for the communication and transmission of stereotypes at an early age are discussed.10 p

Cultural perspectives on the linguistic representations of emotion and emotion events

It is argued that the linguistic representation of emotions and events giving rise to them is influenced by the cultural regulation of the relationship between a person and others. Such cultural variations are expected to be reflected in how emotions and emotion events are represented in language. The two studies provide support for the hypothesis that in a culture where relationships and interdependence are valued emotion terms function as relationship-markers and emotion events are represented by the use of concrete linguistic terms when compared with cultures that emphasise the value of the individual. Moreover, we also found support for the argument that emotion terms function predominantly as self-markers in cultures that value individuality and that they are represented by more abstract terms (adjectives, nouns). The implications of these findings are discussed

Communicating expectancies about others

Contains fulltext : 56812.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)The linguistic expectancy bias hypothesis predicts that, in general, person impressions are shared with others via subtle differences in the level of linguistic abstraction that is used to communicate expected and unexpected information about an individual. In a two-part communication experiment, we examined this hypothesis. In the first part of the experiment communicators were asked to provide a description of an event where a good friend had behaved in an expected or unexpected way. In the second part, recipients of these stories who were blind to the conditions under which the description was generated judged whether the story target's behavior was due to dispositional or situational factors. Behaviors in expected events were judged to be more dispositional relative to behaviors in unexpected events. As predicted, the level of linguistic abstraction mediated this effect. It is concluded that person impressions may be transmitted and formed at an interpersonal level via differential language use.10 p

On the inexplicability of the implicit: differences in the information provided by implicit and explicit tests

Implicit measures are often preferred to overt questioning in many areas of psychology. Their covert nature allows them to circumvent conscious expectations and biases, theoretically providing more objective indicators of people's true attitudes and bel iefs. However, we argue that implicit and explicit measures tap into different memory systems, so that the interpretation of implicit measures is not as straightforward as the interpretation of explicit measures. We conducted an experiment investigating the relation between implicit and explicit measures of person impressions. The results demonstrate that a single stimulus can have opposite effects on implicit and explicit measures, supporting the theory that the measures reflect the contents of different memory systems. We suggest that implicit measures reflect simple associations stored in a "slow-learning" memory system, while explicit measures reflect a combination of these associations with contextually dependent memories stored in a "fast-binding" memory system