Defying Unjust Authority: An Exploratory Study

This research explores the psychological factors potentially involved in fostering disobedience to an unjust authority. Our paradigm was modeled after that of the Utrecht Studies on Obedience (Meeus and Raaijmakers European Journal of Social Psychology 16:311-324, 1986) in which participants are ordered to give each of 15 increasingly hostile comments to a participant/victim whenever he fails a trial. Although 30% of our sample followed commands to insult the other participant (confederate), the majority did refuse to do so at some point in the escalating hostility sequence. Our procedure utilized conditions known from prior research to increase the ratio of disobedience to obedience: proximity of teacher to learner plus remote authority. In order to better understand some of the cognitive and affective processes that may predict such defiant behaviour, we utilized a variety of measures, among them, behavioural observations, individual difference assessments, and in depth post-experimental interviews

Dispositional self-consciousness and hypnotizability

The abeyance of self-consciousness (SC) during hypnosis has beendiscussed as a central aspect of hypnosis, yet dispositional SC hasbeen very rarely evaluated as a correlate of hypnotizability. In thisstudy (N = 328), the authors administered the Harvard Group Scaleof Hypnotic Susceptibility (HGSHS), the Inventory Scale of HypnoticDepth (ISHD), and the Self-Consciousness Scale-Revised (SCS-R).Women tended to score higher than men on the HGSHS, besidesexperiencing greater ISHD automaticity. The Discontinuity (with everydayexperiences) subscale of the ISHD correlated with the Public Self-Consciousness scale of the SCS-R and with the Private Self-Consciousness subscale (using simple, quadratic, and cubic regressions).Being concerned about the perception of others related toexperiencing hypnosis as discontinuous with everyday life, whichalso related to being more introspective and interested in subjectivityat the middle range of scores. The article concludes with suggestionson how to pursue the implications of these results, including testingfor nonlinear relations

Time perspective and experience of depression, stress, and loneliness among adolescents in youth educational centres

Time perspective is of key significance in overcoming an identity crisis in adolescence. Re-search using the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI) was conducted on a group of 311 adolescents (aged 13-18) in several youth educational centres in south-eastern Poland. The research was designed to identify the significance of time perspective when it comes to levels of depression, stress and loneliness experienced in conditions of institutional rehabilitation and education. Linear regression analysis demonstrated the following: a positive past focus reduces the intensity of anxiety and depression; a positive past and future focus results in reduced depression, loneliness and stress; the experience of stress combined with depression enhances the significance of time perspective for the feeling of loneliness; and a low level of family loneliness reduces depression

Out of Mind, Out of Sight: Unexpected Scene Elements Frequently Go Unnoticed Until Primed

Abstract The human visual system employs a sophisticated set of strategies for scanning the environment and directing attention to stimuli that can be expected given the context and a person's past experience. Although these strategies enable us to navigate a very complex physical and social environment, they can also cause highly salient, but unexpected stimuli to go completely unnoticed. To examine the generality of this phenomenon, we conducted eight studies that included 15 different experimental conditions and 1,577 participants in all. These studies revealed that a large majority of participants do not report having seen a woman in the center of an urban scene who was photographed in midair as she was committing suicide. Despite seeing the scene repeatedly, 46 % of all participants failed to report seeing a central figure and only 4.8 % reported seeing a falling person. Frequency of noticing the suicidal woman was highest for participants who read a narrative priming story that increased the extent to which she was schematically congruent with the scene. In contrast to this robust effect of inattentional blindness, a majority of participants reported seeing other peripheral objects in the visual scene that were equally difficult to detect, yet more consistent with the scene. Follow-up qualitative analyses revealed that participants reported seeing many elements that were not actually present, but which could have been expected given the overall context of the scene. Together, these findings demonstrate the robustness of inattentional blindness and highlight the specificity with which different visual primes may increase noticing behavior

Social Representations of Hero and Everyday Hero: A Network Study from Representative Samples

The psychological investigation of heroism is relatively new. At this stage, inductive methods can shed light on its main aspects. Therefore, we examined the social representations of Hero and Everyday Hero by collecting word associations from two separate representative samples in Hungary. We constructed two networks from these word associations. The results showed that the social representation of Hero is more centralized and it cannot be divided into smaller units. The network of Everyday Hero is divided into five units and the significance moves from abstract hero characteristics to concrete social roles and occupations exhibiting pro-social values. We also created networks from the common associations of Hero and Everyday Hero. The structures of these networks showed a moderate similarity and the connections are more balanced in case of Everyday Hero. While heroism in general can be the source of inspiration, the promotion of everyday heroism can be more successful in encouraging ordinary people to recognize their own potential for heroic behavior

Anyone Can Become a Troll: Causes of Trolling Behavior in Online Discussions

In online communities, antisocial behavior such as trolling disrupts constructive discussion. While prior work suggests that trolling behavior is confined to a vocal and antisocial minority, we demonstrate that ordinary people can engage in such behavior as well. We propose two primary trigger mechanisms: the individual's mood, and the surrounding context of a discussion (e.g., exposure to prior trolling behavior). Through an experiment simulating an online discussion, we find that both negative mood and seeing troll posts by others significantly increases the probability of a user trolling, and together double this probability. To support and extend these results, we study how these same mechanisms play out in the wild via a data-driven, longitudinal analysis of a large online news discussion community. This analysis reveals temporal mood effects, and explores long range patterns of repeated exposure to trolling. A predictive model of trolling behavior shows that mood and discussion context together can explain trolling behavior better than an individual's history of trolling. These results combine to suggest that ordinary people can, under the right circumstances, behave like trolls.Comment: Best Paper Award at CSCW 201

Academic Cheating and Time Perspective: Cheaters Live in the Present Instead of the Future

The goal of this research was to explore the relationship pattern of individual differences in time perspective and the frequency of self-reported academic cheating behavior among Hungarian high school students (N1 = 252, Mage = 16.46, SDage = 1.16; N2 = 371, Mage = 16.56, SDage = 1.18). According to the results of structural equations modeling, Future time perspective had a negative direct relationship with cheating, while Present hedonistic time perspective had a direct positive relationship with cheating. Moreover, academic motivations mediated the relationships between time perspectives and academic cheating. Future time perspective had direct negative relationship with amotivation and direct positive relationship with intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Considering the malleability of time perspective, we claim both academic motivations and cheating can be influenced by time perspective

What Is the Structure of Time? A Study on Time Perspective in the United States, Poland, and Nigeria

The aim of this article was to analyze the fit of the model of time perspective, measured by the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI; Zimbardo and Boyd, 1999), to data collected in three countries: the United States (N = 283), Poland (N = 510), and Nigeria (N = 357). Confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory structural equation modeling, an expected parameter change and parallel analysis were used. The best-fitted model of time perspective was the one in the United States, and the least fitted model was the one in Nigeria. Possible sources of misspecifications in the model of time perspective were discussed. We also present an analysis of the fit of the four-factor model of time perspective. The four-factor model was very well fitted in the United States and in Poland. Results were discussed in the context of clock time and event time theory