The web of coping resources and pathways to reemployment following a job loss.

Structural equation modeling analyses of data from 2 longitudinal community studies of recently laid-off workers examined the interrelationships and pathways from personal coping resources to job-search intensity and the extent and quality of reemployment at 2 follow-ups (at 6 months and at 12 or 24 months). In both studies, the proposed models for predicting reemployment and reemployment quality provided a good fit to the data with the same pattern of results, which demonstrated that job-search motivation increased reemployment at all follow-ups but did not affect reemployment quality. At both the 6- and 12-month follow-ups, level of depressive symptoms decreased the extent and quality of reemployment. The results also highlighted the dual role of financial strain, which on the one hand facilitates reemployment by increasing job-search motivation and job-search intensity and on the other hand inhibits it by increasing depressive symptoms. Since the Great Depression, social psychological research on job loss and unemployment has focused primarily on the negative mental health and physical outcomes of unemployment. Numerous studies doc-ument the negative impact of job loss on the mental health and well-being of unemployed worker

Correction of evident falsehood requires explicit negation

The danger of receiving false information is omnipresent, and people might be highly vigilant against being influenced by falsehoods. Yet, as research on misinformation reveals, people are often biased by false information, even when they know the valid alternative. The question is why? The current research explores the relative encoding strength of two opposing alternatives involved in the correction of falsehood: the false concept and the valid concept. These encoding strengths may be critical for what people remember and how they act upon receiving false information. We compared two triggers for the correction of falsehood—a sentence consisting of clearly false information (e.g., “honey is made by butterflies”) and a sentence consisting of an explicit negation of this information (e.g., “honey is not made by butterflies”). The general pattern of results from five experiments demonstrates that the valid concept (e.g., “bees”) exhibits a weaker presence in memory than the false concept (e.g., “butterflies”) following the comprehension of evidently false information as compared to its explicit negation. Thus, the current research provides an answer to the riddle of the persistence of false information: False information is less likely to be mentally corrected if it is not explicitly negated. Even when people detect that a sentence is false, they tend to focus on the false concept rather than on the valid concept. These findings shed new light on extant research and offer fresh insights about the processing of false information and related phenomena such as the reliance on misinformation

The informational basis of social judgments: Memory for integrated and nonintegrated trait descriptions

The representation of trait descriptions in memory depends not only on the properties of this information (e.g., whether it is consistent) but also on the operations performed on it (e.g., whether it has been integrated). If a set of traits merely has to be comprehended without being integrated (called a discrete judgment), then an inconsistent set is processed just as readily as a consistent one. However, if integration is required, that is, a coherent impression must be formed (called an integrative judgment), consistent trait descriptions are processed more rapidly than inconsistent ones. The effect of such differences in processing on the representation was shown in recognition memory performance: First, following integrative judgment a trait description was more accessible than following a discrete judgment. Second, under integrative judgment, memory for a consistent trait description was no greater than that for an inconsistent description, whereas under discrete judgment, memory for the former was superior to that for the latter. This suggests that when an impression is formed, namely, under integrative judgment, the traits describing a person are associated with each other via prior knowledge, and thus are represented as a unified structure; otherwise each trait is stored as a separate piece of information.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/25352/1/0000799.pd

The informational basis of social judgments: Using past impression rather than the trait description in forming a new impression

In making a new judgment, a person can access relevant past judgments and/or process the stimulus information underlying these judgments. The present study is concerned with (i) the conditions under which past judgments are used instead of stimulus information and (ii) the effects that repeated past judgments have on the representation of the stimulus information in memory. Three experiments were conducted using an impression formation task. Subjects were presented with trait descriptions of hypothetical individuals and were asked to make one, three, or five impression judgments on the basis of each description. It was hypothesized that a new impression will tend to be based on an old one, rather than on trait information, as a function of the ease with which the new impression can be inferred from the old. Ease of inference, in turn, will depend on the similarity of the two impressions and the availability of the past impression. The results of the three studies are consistent with this hypothesis: When past judgments were available, (Expermints 1 and 3), the extent to which they, rather than the trait information, determined the present judgment increased with the similarity between them. However, when another activity interpolated between the old and the new judgments (Experiment 2), thus making the past judgment more difficult to access, the tendency to use the latter diminished considerably. After judging, subjects were given a surprise recognition test for the trait information. Recognition accuracy was superior following a series of related judgments than following unrelated judgments, suggesting that the elaborations and inferences activated by the stimulus information tend to accumulate more under related judgments than under unrelated ones.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/25592/1/0000136.pd

The informational basis of social judgments: Memory for informative and uninformative arguments

This study investigates the encoding and retrieval of arguments in an opinion formation task. It is based on a model of opinion formation that partitions the latter process into initial encoding, elaborative encoding, integration, and decision. According to this model elaborative encoding depends on two factors: (i) the informativeness of the arguments and (ii) their thematic relatedness. Since it is reasonably well established that the likelihood of retrieving an argument is an increasing function of the amount of elaboration performed on it, the first hypothesis is straightforward, namely, that the memory for an argument will increase with its informativeness and with its thematic relatedness to other arguments. The second hypothesis assumes that by dint of their closer association with the decision, informative arguments occupy a more central position in the representation of an opinion than uninformative ones. This implies that an informative argument should be accessed and reported prior to an uninformative argument, even when differences in retrievability (i.e., probabilities of recall) are controlled. The findings were consistent with such an analysis.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/25124/1/0000557.pd

Impact of the JOBS intervention on unemployed workers varying in risk for depression

Reports the results of the JOBS II randomized field experiment that included a sample of 1,801 recent job losers, 671 of which participated in a modified version of the JOBS I intervention for unemployed workers (Caplan, Vinokur, Price, & van Ryn, 1989). The intervention focused on enhancing the sense of mastery through the acquisition of job‐search and problem‐solving skills, and on inoculation against setbacks. JOBS II was intended to prevent poor mental health and to promote high quality reemployment. The study tested whether the efficacy of the intervention could be increased by screening and oversampling respondents who were at higher risk for a significant increase in depressive symptoms. Results demonstrated that the intervention primarily benefited the reemployment and mental health outcomes of the high‐risk respondents. This suggests the feasibility of enhancing the efficacy of this preventive intervention by targeting, it for high‐risk unemployed workers who could be identified prospectively.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116921/1/ajcpbf02506922.pd

Integration and Abstraction in Impression Formation.

This paper explores how trait information is represented in memory, and how the representation is used in forming an impression of a person. It was hypothesized that a trait description is encoded in a dual form: one component containing the traits themselves (the trait information), and another which contains the abstract summary derived from these traits (the header information). To test this hypothesis individuals matched the emotional tone (Study I) or the physical characteristics (Study 2) of a probe-trait with homogeneous (e.g., all positive or all negative) and mixed (e.g., half positive and half negative) trait descriptions). It was found that when these individuals had previously integrated the information (i.e., formed an impression), matching performance with mixed descriptions was inferior to that with homogeneous descriptions. However, when integration had not taken place prior to the match, the mixed descriptions were processed no differently than the homogeneous ones. Studies 3 and 4 attempt to separate processing of the header information from that of the trait information, and to demonstrate how the processing of one code affects the other. It was postulated that a new judgement will tend to be based on an old one (i.e., the header information), rather than on the given information, to the extent that (i) the similarity between the two judgements increases; and (ii) it becomes easier to retrieve the old judgement while making the new one. These hypotheses were generally supported by the analyses of judgements latencies in both studies. It was also hypothesized that the same factors that promote use of the header information, would result in a weaker memory for trait information. The strength of these representations was indicated by recognition accuracy (Study 3) and ease of paired-associate learning (Study 4). Both measures indicated that trait descriptions were more available following similar judgements than following unrelated judgements. To explain this phenomenon, we suggested that each similar judgement adds elaborations to the representation, whereas each unrelated judgement creates a new memory code for the trait description.Ph.D.Social psychologyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/158523/1/8125198.pd

The informational basis of social judgments: Operations in forming an impression of another person

This paper describes four functionally distinct operations carried out in forming an impression of another person: Initial encoding, elaborative encoding, integration, and decision. These processes were identified empirically on the basis of their differential sensitivity to the amount and the consistency of information in a trait description. In Study 1 as the trait set increased in size, processing was hindered to the greatest extent during initial encoding, to a moderate extent during elaborative encoding, and least during the integration-decision interval. Varying consistency produced the opposite pattern of results, that is, an inconsistent trait description hindered processing the least during initial encoding, a moderate amount during elaborative encoding, and the most during the integration-decision interval. In Study 2 the quantity of information was manipulated via implicit knowledge, that is, the associative structure activated by the trait (rather than set size). Because implicit information is "preintegrated," implication-rich traits did not hinder initial or elaborative encoding more than implication-poor traits. The decision operation, however, was performed more rapidly with implication-rich traits than with implication-poor ones, which strongly suggests that once information is intergrated, the "richer" the representation, the easier it is to arrive at a decision.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/23992/1/0000241.pd