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A match made in the laboratory: Persuasion and matches to primed traits and stereotypes
Abstract
This paper examines a novel means of increasing elaboration of persuasive messages. Whereas much previous research has focused on ways to promote actual self-relevance of the message (e.g., by changing the message to match the recipient), the present research uses priming manipulations to change the recipient to match the message. Across two studies, participants were primed with traits (e.g., extraversion) and stereotypes (e.g., African-American) before reading strong or weak advertisements that matched or mismatched the primed constructs. Participants were more influenced by the quality of arguments in messages that matched (rather than mismatched) the primed constructs. In Experiment 2, these results were observed only among individuals low in the other-directedness subscale of self-monitoring (i.e., people whose behavior is driven by their internal states). Results are interpreted within the Active-Self account, which suggests that primed constructs can become integrated into the working self-concept and influence behavior as though they were self-descriptive.
... This model argues that primes can influence the currently accessible contents of people's self-conceptions and that these currently accessible self-contents are important determinants of behaviour. Evidence for this prediction comes from data that: (1) showed that prime-to-behaviour effects are exaggerated among those who rely on self-conceptions (e.g., DeMarree, Wheeler, & Petty, 2005;Wheeler, DeMarree, & Petty, 2008); (2) revealed that shifts in selfconceptions are mediators of social behaviour (e.g., Hansen & Wänke, 2009;Wyer, Neilens, Perfect, & Mazzoni, 2011);and (3) documented parallel moderation of priming effects on both self-conceptions and behaviour (e.g., DeMarree et al., 2005;Dijksterhuis et al., 1998; for reviews see Wheeler et al., 2007Wheeler et al., , 2014. Much of the research in this area has activated stereotypes or measured outcomes that are inconsistent with participants' chronic self-conceptions (e.g., increased aggression or decreased test performance; Bargh et al., 1996;Wheeler, Jarvis, & Petty, 2001). ...
... For example, people shift their attitudes to be more like those of the primed social group (Horcajo, Briñol, & Becerra, 2009;Kawakami, Dovidio, & Dijksterhuis, 2003). In addition, people appear to feel psychologically closer to members of a primed group on both explicit (Wheeler et al., 2008) and implicit (Kawakami et al., 2012) measures, which could be an important precursor to prejudice reduction. People even appear to shift self-categorization, in that they pay more attention to information that is framed to appeal to members of the primed group at the expense of paying attention to information framed to appeal to one's own chronic identity (Wheeler et al., 2008). ...
... In addition, people appear to feel psychologically closer to members of a primed group on both explicit (Wheeler et al., 2008) and implicit (Kawakami et al., 2012) measures, which could be an important precursor to prejudice reduction. People even appear to shift self-categorization, in that they pay more attention to information that is framed to appeal to members of the primed group at the expense of paying attention to information framed to appeal to one's own chronic identity (Wheeler et al., 2008). In sum, the available literature reveals that changes in self-perceptions have implications beyond merely incorporating traits characteristic of a primed group into one's self-concept. ...
We argue that a person’s identity can be changed by seemingly irrelevant primes to the point where one expects to be treated as a member of an activated social group. We further argue that primes should only influence the self to the extent that they are seen as valid. We experimentally manipulated conditions that foster perceptions of prime validity using a head movement induction. Previous research has linked head nodding to higher levels of confidence than head shaking. Participants primed with the African American stereotype (versus control) expected more future discrimination, but only if they were nodding their heads. Results are discussed with respect to research on priming and validation processes.
... According to congruence theory, messages have greater impact when they are in line with the self-concept of the receiver (see Aaker 1999). When done correctly, microtargeted messages are in line with the priorities of the receiver, and congruent to their opinions, which would increase the chance of message scrutiny (to attend to the message's content) and, subsequently, the chance of influencing the message recipient (Chang 2006;Petty and Cacioppo 1986;Petty, Haugtvedt, and Smith 1995;Wheeler, Petty, and Bizer 2005;Wheeler, DeMarree, and Petty 2008). Issue-based congruent microtargeting can be an important way to appeal to the self-concept of the recipient by making a message personally salient, easy to understand, and by introducing a powerful argument on the basis of the receiver's personal situation, beliefs, behavior, and/or traits (e.g., Petty and Cacioppo 1986). ...
... Issue-based congruent microtargeting can be an important way to appeal to the self-concept of the recipient by making a message personally salient, easy to understand, and by introducing a powerful argument on the basis of the receiver's personal situation, beliefs, behavior, and/or traits (e.g., Petty and Cacioppo 1986). Indeed, scrutinized messages have been found effective in influencing people (Petty and Cacioppo 1986;Wheeler, DeMarree, and Petty 2008). ...
Political microtargeting is the subject of heated societal debate but not much is known about its effects, especially in non-US contexts. Microtargeting, used by political actors to send citizens tailored messages, could have the potential to overcome barriers that make generic political messages less effective. In this article, we present a small-scale field experiment, which serves as a case study to illustrate how microtargeting’s effects on citizens could be measured. The field experiment showed that receiving a microtargeted message via postal mail increased likelihood to vote for the microtargeting party, but this increase did not translate into actual votes.
... A critical aspect of issue involvement is the perceived linkage of a communication to the self (e.g., someone's personality), which is a well-established means of increasing message elaboration (Sahni et al., 2018). When people perceive a particular message to be matched with some part of their self (i.e., the message is made personally relevant or congruent), they engage in greater message scrutiny than when the message is perceived to be non-matching (Chang, 2006;Petty et al., 1995;Wheeler et al., 2005Wheeler et al., , 2008. Messages that are being processed with greater elaboration are more likely to influence citizens' thoughts and behaviors and are more likely to be resistant to counterarguments (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986;Wheeler et al., 2008). ...
... When people perceive a particular message to be matched with some part of their self (i.e., the message is made personally relevant or congruent), they engage in greater message scrutiny than when the message is perceived to be non-matching (Chang, 2006;Petty et al., 1995;Wheeler et al., 2005Wheeler et al., , 2008. Messages that are being processed with greater elaboration are more likely to influence citizens' thoughts and behaviors and are more likely to be resistant to counterarguments (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986;Wheeler et al., 2008). In other words, a careful elaboration of a message could lead to individuals being more persuaded by the intrinsic arguments in a persuasive message. ...
Political advertisers have access to increasingly sophisticated microtargeting techniques. One such technique is tailoring ads to the personality traits of citizens. Questions have been raised about the effectiveness of this political microtargeting (PMT) technique. In two experiments, we investigate the causal effects of personality-congruent political ads. In Study 1, we first assess participants' extraversion trait by means of their own text data (i.e., by using a personality profiling algorithm), and in a second phase, target them with either a personality-congruent or incongruent political ad. In Study 2, we followed the same protocol, but instead targeted participants with emotionally-charged congruent ads, to establish whether PMT can be effective on an affect-based level. The results show evidence that citizens are more strongly persuaded by political ads that match their own personality traits. These findings feed into relevant and timely contributions to a salient academic and societal debate.
... They found that participants were more persuaded by strong than weak messages and had higher levels of purchase intentions when the message was matched to participants' level of extraversion as opposed to when the message was mismatched. In addition, different levels extraversion can be primed, as Wheeler, DeMarree, & Petty (2008) primed individuals with extraversion or introversion and found similar matching effects as Wheeler et al. (2005). ...
... These effects were not found for high self-monitors. Similarly, Wheeler, DeMarree, and Petty (2008) found low self-monitors to show larger behavioral effects when primed. In another study, Myers and Sar (2013) found that high self-monitors are more susceptible to social approval cues, in that they can significantly increase consumers' brand evaluation and purchase intention. ...
The study of personality and individual differences is one of the oldest and most extensive literature in all of psychology (see Pervin, 1990; Barenbaum & Winter, 2008; Revelle, Wilt, & Condon, 2011). Variations in personality and individual differences have been linked to a vast array of behavioral, cognitive, and affective outcomes within the context of many social processes (e.g., see Chamorro-Premuzic, von Stumm, & Furnham, 2011; John, Robbins, & Pervin, 2008). The study of social influence is no exception. Over the past few decades, a sizeable amount of empirical literature has accumulated documenting the effects of numerous personality traits and individual differences in social influence processes such as conformity, compliance, obedience, and persuasion (e.g., see Briñol & Petty, 2005).
The goal of the present report is to provide an overview of the research literature on the role of personality and individual differences in social influence. Our overview will draw primarily from the discipline of social-personality psychology, but as will be seen, at various points we will also draw on research from areas as diverse as consumer behavior, organizational behaviour, communications, health psychology, clinical psychology, and political psychology. The intent of this report is not to provide a detailed scholarly review of the many individual studies comprising this literature (although a number of specific research findings will be discussed). Rather, our objective is to provide a more conceptual introduction to this area of research. In doing so, our focus will be on explicating a theoretical framework in which to organize this literature and reviewing the key themes and principles that have emerged in empirical research. The report will aim to provide the reader with a guide focused on the “forest rather than the trees.”
We will begin our report by providing an introduction to the key constructs in the personality/individual difference literature and the social influence literature, as well to some of the key methodological practices that have shaped this literature. In the second section of our report, we will introduce the reader to the wide array of personality and individual difference constructs that have been studied and illustrate how these constructs can be organized more parsimoniously within the context of a general conceptual framework. We will also discuss how this framework permits the many seemingly disparate effects associated with these constructs to be understood in the context of a relatively finite set of basic underlying psychological processes. Our review of this framework will conclude with a discussion of some of the general conclusions and implications that emerge from this conceptual perspective. In the third section of this report, we will turn our attention to a more detailed review of the empirical literature on the role of personality traits and individual differences in social influence. Our review of this literature will be structured along the lines of the framework presented. For each set of personality traits and individual differences, we will provide an introduction to the various individual characteristics making up this set, discuss the various effects that have been documented for each characteristic, and discuss the potential mechanisms that might be responsible for these effects. In the final section of the report, we will conclude with a general summary of the key empirical themes that have emerged from the literature and comment on some of the applied implications of this literature within the context of the Canadian Forces. We will also highlight important issues that remained to be resolved within the literature.
... Differences in these two forms of identity activation can lead to different outcomes (Wheeler & Berger, 2007). A chronically important identity resides . in a person's long-term memory, whereas a temporarily accessible identity is more similar to information stored in working memory (Wheeler;DeMarree, & Petty, 2008). Thus, it is likely that when an identity is made temporarily accessible it will exert a stronger effect on a person's imminent behavior immediately than one that is chronically self important. ...
... Differences in these two forms of identity activation can lead to different outcomes (Wheeler & Berger, 2007). A chronically important identity resides . in a person's long-term memory, whereas a temporarily accessible identity is more similar to information stored in working memory (Wheeler;DeMarree, & Petty, 2008). Thus, it is likely that when an identity is made temporarily accessible it will exert a stronger effect on a person's imminent behavior immediately than one that is chronically self important. ...
Why do consumers make the purchases they do, and which ones make them truly happy? Why are consumers willing to spend huge sums of money to appear high status? This handbook addresses these key questions and many more. It provides a comprehensive overview of consumer psychology, examining cutting-edge research at the individual, interpersonal, and societal levels. Leading scholars summarize past and current findings and consider future lines of inquiry to deepen our understanding of the psychology behind consumers' decision making, their interactions with other consumers, and the effects of societal factors on consumption. The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Psychology will act as a valuable guide for faculty as well as graduate and undergraduate students in psychology, marketing, management, sociology, and anthropology.
... Because people naturally strive for internal consistency (Sirgy 1982), the compatibility principle (Chernev 2004) suggests that arguments should emphasize the benefits that match the consumer's consumption goals to be persuasive. Yet, research also identified multiple important moderators that can diminish and even reverse the effects of a matching argument, e.g., strength of argument (Wheeler et al. 2008), involvement (Wang and Lee 2006), schema (Meyers-Levy and Tybout 1989), type of congruence (Noseworthy and Trudel 2011), and number of exposures (Landwehr et al. 2013). For example, several studies found that a mismatch can enhance consumers' attitudes and the level of persuasion (Chandon and Wansink 2007;Gill 2008;Wilcox et al. 2009), because consumers perceive a (moderate) mismatch as novel and stimulating, leading to greater elaboration and thus more persuasion (Goodstein 1993;Heckler and Childers 1992;Millar and Millar 1992). ...
... We contribute to the literature on matching effects in persuasion (Wheeler et al. 2005(Wheeler et al. , 2008 by demonstrating that the product type (hedonic versus utilitarian) moderates the effectiveness of matching versus mismatching argument types on processing and subsequent behavior. Second, we contribute to the literature on hedonic versus utilitarian products (Gill 2008;Melnyk et al. 2012) by uncovering the difference in how arguments influence processing of these products. ...
Message arguments influence beliefs about product benefits which influence overall product evaluations. Three studies show that matching hedonic versus utilitarian arguments and products enhance evaluations of utilitarian products, but not hedonic products. The results generalize across several argument manipulations and several product categories.
... For example, casting one's vote in a school (vs. another polling location) can increase the likelihood of one supporting a sales tax increase to fund education, even though people are unlikely to identify polling location as an input into their decision making (Berger, Meredith, & Wheeler, 2008). An extraordinarily wide range of behaviors can be affected by subtle environmental stimuli, such as walking speed (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996), speech volume (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2003), academic performance (Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 1998), economic decisions (Smeesters, Warlop, Van Avermaet, Corneille, & Yzerbyt, 2003), helping (Macrae & Johnston, 1998), and cleaning (Holland, Hendricks, & Aarts, 2005), just to name a few. ...
... One variable that affects usage of the self-concept in guiding behavior is self-monitoring (Snyder, 1974). Low self-monitors are more likely to act according to their perceived self-characteristics, and they also show larger prime-to-behavior effects (DeMarree, Wheeler, & Petty, 2005; Wheeler, DeMarree, & Petty, 2008; Wheeler, Morrison et al., 2008). This pathway can also explain contrast from (i.e., behavior inconsistent with) primed constructs. ...
Recent research has explored how the activation of social constructs via priming can affect behavior. Multiple mechanisms have received support, including direct activation of behavioral representations, goal activation, biases in person perception, biases in situation perception, and biases in self-perception. We review the evolving complexity of proposed prime-to-behavior mechanisms, discuss the predictions of each mechanism, and suggest some integrative principles that influence how and when primed constructs affect behavior.
... Both the source and product benefit appeal types need to be carefully considered, as motive inference processing varies depending on how the post was created. While prior work suggests the match between message appeals and product types enhances message persuasiveness (Wheeler et al., 2005(Wheeler et al., , 2008, findings on message appeals using utilitarian and hedonic benefits yielded inconsistent results (Klein & Melnyk, 2016). Applying the utilitarian-hedonic distinction in benefit appeal types, we contribute to the literature on utilitarian versus hedonic product benefit appeals by considering the source of the post. ...
Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are increasingly using social media as a communication platform to promote their charitable marketing efforts. The purpose of our research is to investigate how NPOs can enhance message effectiveness by utilizing a social media influencer and different product benefit appeals (utilitarian vs. hedonic) in their social media posts to enhance attitudes toward the donation campaign and word‐of‐mouth (WOM) intention, leading to higher donation behavior. Across two experimental studies, we show that an NPO's donation post (i.e., social media post promoting a donation campaign) is evaluated more favorably when paired with a hedonic benefit appeal, while an influencer's donation post is more favorable when paired with a utilitarian benefit appeal. Further, we find that the effects of source and product benefit appeal types on donation behavior are serially mediated by attitude toward the donation campaign and WOM intention. As the use of influencers is becoming increasingly popular to support fundraising and charitable causes, our findings provide timely implications for researchers and practitioners who are interested in optimizing NPO communication strategies in the digital landscape.
... 1 After establishing this important link, Study 2 aims to test the whole model using a two-wave survey design. Career Exploration -1 We are not the first to prime trait and examine its follow-up cognitive process in the experiment (e.g., Wheeler et al., 2008), and the prime of trait is workable based on empirical findings in neuroscience. According to the literature review conducted by Klein (2012), an autobiographical task asks participants to search memory for a personal experience in which they had manifested a specific trait. ...
Despite the well-established findings regarding the negative effect of impostor phenomenon (IP) on individuals’ career development, we know little about its underlying mechanism. It is also unclear whether IP differentially affects the way men and women manage their careers. Drawn upon ego depletion theory, we explored the relationship among IP, gender, ego depletion, and career preparatory activities via an experiment and a two-wave survey conducted in China. The results showed that the negative relationship between IP and career preparatory activities was mediated by ego depletion. We further found that gender moderated the indirect effect of IP on career preparatory activities via ego depletion, and this effect was stronger for women than men. Based on these new findings, some theoretical and practical implications were discussed.
... The most common type of personalized matching examined in the literature occurs between the message content and the recipient where some aspect of the message is made to align with a temporary or chronic aspect of the recipient. Some research, however, has shown it is also possible to modify the recipient's momentary state to match the message (e.g., via priming; Bayes et al., 2020;Li, 2016;Loersch et al., 2013;Wheeler et al., 2008). Creating message-to-person matches can be as simple as using the individual's name in the address of the appeal (Howard & Kerin, 2011;Sahni et al., 2018). ...
One of the most reliable and impactful methods for enhancing a persuasive appeal is to match an aspect of the proposal (i.e., its content, source, or the setting in which it is delivered) to an aspect of the consumer receiving it. This personalized matching in persuasion (also called tailoring, targeting, customizing, or personalizing) comprises a robust and growing literature. In the present review, we describe different types of persuasive matches, the primary characteristics of people that are targeted, and the key psychological mechanisms underlying the impact of matching. Importantly, although most research on personalized matching has concluded that matching is good for persuasion, we also describe and explain instances where it has produced negative (i.e., “backfire”) effects. That is, more than just the conclusion “matching is good” that many researchers have drawn, we analyze when and why it is good and when and why it can be ineffective – insight that can benefit marketers and consumers alike in understanding how personally matched appeals can impact attitudes and ultimately behavior.
... People who perceive a message as relevant and engage in greater message scrutiny than those who perceive a message as generic (Chang 2006;Wheeler et al. 2005). Scrutinized messages are more likely to influence citizens (Petty and Cacioppo 1986;Wheeler et al. 2008). A tailored deepfake is more likely to be perceived as relevant, which increases the chances of message scrutiny, which, in turn, increases the chances of influencing the citizen. ...
Deepfakes are perceived as a powerful form of disinformation. Although many studies have focused on detecting deepfakes, few have measured their effects on political attitudes, and none have studied microtargeting techniques as an amplifier. We argue that microtargeting techniques can amplify the effects of deepfakes, by enabling malicious political actors to tailor deepfakes to susceptibilities of the receiver. In this study, we have constructed a political deepfake (video and audio), and study its effects on political attitudes in an online experiment ( N = 278). We find that attitudes toward the depicted politician are significantly lower after seeing the deepfake, but the attitudes toward the politician’s party remain similar to the control condition. When we zoom in on the microtargeted group, we see that both the attitudes toward the politician and the attitudes toward his party score significantly lower than the control condition, suggesting that microtargeting techniques can indeed amplify the effects of a deepfake, but for a much smaller subgroup than expected.
... First, information consistent with one's regulatory focus is thought to be more self-relevant than inconsistent information. Thus, individuals maybe more motivated to process fit rather than non-fit information (Updegraff, Sherman, Luyster, & Mann, 2007;Wheeler, DeMarree, & Petty, 2008). Second, people "feel right" when they think about topics in a way that sustains their regulatory focus (Higgins, 2000;Lee, Keller, & Sternthal, 2010). ...
The technology acceptance model (TAM) has been widely used to gage IS adoption. Over the years, although research on the replications, extensions, and modifications of TAM has been prolific in adding antecedents and moderators to TAM, scant attention has been devoted to exploring TAM mediators. The current research attempts to deepen the understanding of TAM by delineating the underlying theoretical mechanisms of TAM relationships. In addition, we propose a parsimonious moderator, regulatory focus, to help integrate previously identified moderators, such as organizational, technological, and individual characteristics, that have been noted in prior studies. We report the results of one pilot study and two main studies in support of our proposed model, which serves to simplify and facilitate practical and managerial applications and implementation of TAM in IS strategy.
... The automatic influence of primed social category information on behavior also holds for individuals who are not members of the social category (Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 1998;Wheeler, DeMarree, & Petty, 2008;Wheeler, Jarvis, & Petty, 2001). University students primed with the stereotype of professors, for example, have been shown to do better on general knowledge tests than those who were primed with the stereotype of a cleaning lady (Hansen & Wänke, 2009). ...
We conducted three studies to examine the relationship between gender and persuasion. We tested the notion that making gender roles salient affects the strength of individuals’ attitudes and the way they respond to persuasive information. In Studies 1 and 2, we found that priming women with the female gender role reduced the strength of their attitudes (Study 1, N = 50) and increased their susceptibility to persuasion through a low-thought process (Study 2, N = 98). In Study 3, we manipulated the salience of both the female and male gender role among men and women and assessed persuasion to a counter-attitudinal message (N = 185). We found that the female and male primes affected men and women similarly, with the female prime causing participants to process messages superficially and the male prime leading to thoughtful message processing. These findings help to explain women’s slightly greater persuadability in meta-analyses and provide evidence of harms that stereotypes about women can cause. Moving forward, we urge researchers to be wary of gender salience in the research context, especially when conducting persuasion research.
... If the active-selfconcept underlies social modulation, then it was expected that greater modulation would occur for low self-monitors. This thinking was based on findings of low self-monitors being more likely to guide their primed response behaviour (e.g., select 'lucky' words) according to the observed primed-construct (e.g., observe a prime mask of '7', which is associated with being lucky) (DeMarree et al., 2005; see also Wheeler, DeMarree, & Petty, 2008). However, it appears that the priming effects reported previously in low self-monitors may be different to those pertaining to the mimicry of human actions. ...
Social primes (pro-social, anti-social) can modulate mimicry behaviour. To date, these social modulation effects have been explained by the primed incentive to affiliate with another (Social Top-Down Response Modulation; STORM) and the primed active-self-concept leading to behaviour that is either consistent or inconsistent with the prime-construct (Active-Self account). The present study was designed to explore the explanatory power for each of these accounts, and thereby gain a greater understanding of how social modulation unfolds. To do this, we assessed social modulation of motor contagion in individuals high or low in self-monitoring. It was reasoned that high self-monitors would modulate mimicry according to the primed social incentive, whereas low self-monitors would modulate according to the primed active-self-concept. Participants were primed with a pro-social and anti-social cue in the first-person and third-person perspective. Next, they completed an interpersonal observation-execution task featuring the simultaneous observation and execution of arm movements that were either congruent or incongruent to each other. Results showed increased incongruent movement deviation (motor contagion) for the anti-social compared to the pro-social prime in the high self-monitors only. Findings support the STORM account of mimicry by showing observers modulate behaviour based on the social incentive underpinning an interpersonal exchange.
... Important, the notion of agency can be considered one aspect of customization, where users individualize their content (Kalyanaraman & Sundar, 2006;Wheeler, DeMarree, & Petty, 2008;Wheeler, Petty, & Bizer, 2005). Various means of customizing the functionality, appearance, and characters in content facilitate feelings of control and enjoyment (Briñol & Petty, 2006;Celsi & Olson, 1988;Kalyanaraman & Sundar, 2006;Kamali & Loker, 2002;Noar, Crosby, Benac, & Troutman, 2011). ...
A key component differentiating interactive storytelling from non-interactive media is agency, or control over character choices. A series of experiments show that providing agency over a character increased the user-character connection, which then increased engagement in a character-consistent charitable act. Findings were observed in technologically simple online narratives that controlled for navigation/controller differences, graphics, sounds, lengthy play, and avatar customization. Effects emerged even though users did not practice these acts by making their character behave charitably. Findings were robust across happy and unfortunate endings and across first-, second-, and third-person narrative perspectives. Findings suggest promise for developing inexpensive “storygames” to encourage supportive behaviors.
... This is because processing primed content in self-relevant ways increases prime-to-behavior effects (e.g., Hull et al., 2002; Wheeler, Jarvis, & Petty, 2001). Internal state awareness, which by contrast is associated with greater awareness of one's internal states and resistance of the self-concept to change, reduces prime-to-behavior effects (Wheeler et al., 2008). Low self-monitors show larger prime-induced shifts in the active self-concept and behavior than do high self-monitors (DeMarree, Wheeler, & Petty, 2005). ...
In this paper, we provide a brief review of prime-to-behavior effects and discuss our theoretical model for such effects: the Active-Self Account. We also address recent discussions in the literature regarding the replicability of prime-to-behavior effects and outline features that can affect their existence and the likelihood of detecting such effects experimentally.
... If exposure to media or to any communication instance can serve as the source of construct activation, then the model that emerges is one of mediation of communication effects via a psychological process, in accordance with the model proposed by Tao andBucy (2007) andO'Keefe (2003). Curiously, though, empirical tests of the model in psychology have not pursued mediation for reasons of parsimony, inability to rule out third variables, and other reasons (see discussion of this issue by Wheeler, DeMarree, & Petty, 2008, p. 1044-1055). This appears to be an opportunity for communication scholars to explore this mechanism. ...
... In emphasizing the match between these two factors, we help bring the subliminal persuasion literature in line with the conclusions from more traditional persuasion research. That is, matching any influence attempt to a particular aspect of the person (Wheeler, DeMarree, & Petty, 2008) or situation (Petty, Wheeler, & Bizer, 2000) is a critical consideration for effectively changing individuals' attitudes. ...
Recent research on subliminal persuasion has documented effects primarily when people have a preexisting need related to the target of influence. Based on the situated inference model of priming effects (Loersch & Payne, 2011), we propose a novel matching mechanism and describe how it expands the circumstances under which subliminal primes can produce persuasive effects, doing so without a consideration of preexisting need states. In two studies, we alter the desirability of various products by selecting subliminal primes that address the basic questions participants consider while judging product desirability. Subliminal persuasion depends on the precise match between the subliminal primes and the question under consideration. These results are evident when the question participants consider varies naturally due to the type of product that is judged, and when the core question is directly manipulated by altering the aspect of a product on which participants focus.
... Thus, there remains a need to more thoroughly examine the different effects of self-identification on nonminorities' perceptions of diversity, and on intergroup relations. In the present research, we propose that labeling oneself as "White" (relative to "European American"), which connotes an absence of a "real" ethnic identity (McDermott & Samson, 2005), will decrease nonminorities' feelings of closeness to ethnic minorities (see Galinsky, Ku, & Wang, 2005;Wheeler, DeMarree, & Petty, 2008;Zhong, Galinsky, & Unzueta, 2008). This should in turn lead nonminorities to be less supportive of multiculturalism, an ideology that promotes the recognition of diverse (primarily minority) identities. ...
Multiculturalism (i.e., the recognition and celebration of cultural differences) has many potential benefits for society, including reduced prejudice among nonminorities and increased psychological well-being among ethnic minorities. Yet nonminorities generally tend to resist multiculturalism more than do minorities and believe that it is irrelevant to them. Two studies were conducted to examine why and under what conditions this is the case. In both studies, nonminority participants were randomly assigned to mark their race/ethnicity as either “White” or “European American” on a demographic survey, before answering questions about their interethnic attitudes. Results demonstrated that nonminorities primed to think of themselves as White (versus European American) were subsequently less supportive of multiculturalism and more racially prejudiced, due to decreases in identification with ethnic minorities. Implications for how to improve nonminorities' attitudes toward multiculturalism are discussed.
... It is somewhat curious that empirical tests of an activated self mechanism would not measure self-concept activation so that it could be studied as a mediator (for a discussion of this issue, see Wheeler, DeMarree, & Petty, 2008, pp. 1044-1055. ...
This chapter reviews conceptualizations of identity from the social identity perspective and other psychological perspectives on the self. Across these various models, identity is characterized as dependent on context and as composed of multiple components, with the components varying in both accessibility and weight as a function of contextual stimuli. Within a media-effects framework that links communication with behavioral effects, these features allow identity to serve both as a moderator of communication effects and (sometimes even at the same time) as a mediator of communication effects. The metaphor of a prism is offered to help conceptualize these dual and simultaneously occurring roles. Implications for persuasive communication design and evaluation are discussed.
... One of these phenomena is known as the effect of attributional labelling, where attributing a trait or characteristic to participants elicits behaviours consistent with the label (Henderlong & Lepper, 2002; Jensen & Moore, 1977; Toner, Moore, & Emmons, 1980). Equivalent effects were also observed in the field of persuasion – in one study, participants primed with the trait of extraversion or stereotypes towards Afro-Americans scrutinized the persuasive messages that matched the primes more thoroughly than the mismatched (Wheeler, DeMarree, & Petty, 2008). The authors suggested an explanation in terms of an active self concept (inspired by the concept of dynamic self, see Markus & Wurf, 1987): the primed contents can be temporarily included in the person's active, flexible part of the self-concept and thus affect behaviour. ...
The paper addresses the question of whether matching a persuasive message to a recipient's self-concept can enhance message processing. A large body of experiments within the Elaboration likelihood model proved that framing a message so as to be perceived as self-relevant led to more careful argument scrutiny. In this research, we matched the messages with previously assessed need for cognition - tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive tasks. Two possible sources of motivation to process a persuasive message were hereby confronted: dispositional (cognitive style) and situational (matching). Results showed a significant attitude change, but the main hypothesis was not confirmed: matched messages did not produce more argument processing activity than the mismatched. Manipulations did not have any significant effects on message processing of the high need for cognition participants. Contrary to expectations, participants low in their need for cognition elaborated the message more carefully when it was mismatched, that is when the message addressed them as persons inclined to careful thinking. Results can be explained within the framework of self-affirmation theory, which argues that providing people with an opportunity to affirm their sense of self-worth makes them more open to persuasion attempts, as well as more objective. Results are discussed from a wider theoretical and empirical perspective of motivation.
... Furthermore, simply priming a concept can lead people to identify with that concept and therefore process concept-relevant messages more. For example, simply priming extraversion leads people to process messages framed for extraverts more than messages framed for introverts and merely priming the concept of African Americans can enhance processing of messages framed for Blacks among White college students ( Wheeler, DeMarree, & Petty, 2008). In addition, people are more motivated to scrutinize information when they believe that they are solely responsible for message evaluation ( Petty, Harkins, & Williams, 1980), when they are individually accountable ( Tetlock, 1983), and when they expect to discuss the issue with a partner ( Chaiken, 1980). ...
This chapter reviews contemporary issues in attitudes and persuasion. We describe controversies regarding the underlying bases of attitudes and the debate over whether attitudes are stored memorial representations or constructed on the spot. We review the notion of implicit attitudes with particular attention paid to the various ways in which researchers conceptualize this construct. Next, we review current research on attitude change using the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) as an organizing framework. The ELM postulates that various motivational and ability factors affect the likelihood of thinking about a persuasive message in either a relatively objective or a biased way. When the likelihood of thinking is low, processing such as classical conditioning, affective priming, mere exposure, balance, self-perception, persuasion heuristics influence. When the likelihood of thinking is high, more cognitively effortful processes are responsible for attitude change. When thinking is high, the number, valence, and confidence in thoughts are important determinants of persuasion. Attitude change can occur in the absence of an explicit persuasive message as research on role playing, mere thought, and dissonance processes demonstrate. A number of theories describe the processes by which information is integrated and combined into an overall summary evaluation. The chapter concludes with a discussion of whether attitudes literally change, or whether old and new attitudes can coexist and jointly influence behavior.
Keywords:
attitudes;
cognitive response;
influence;
persuasion
... Interestingly, these primed constructs can affect the active self-concept both when they are personally relevant and when they are not (e.g., when they refer to an outgroup stereotype), although as we describe below, the extent and direction of influence can depend on factors such as perceived distinctiveness from the primed constructs, the salience of one's identity, and so forth. As some examples of prime-induced shifts in the self-concept, non-African Americans who are primed with the African-American stereotype shift their self-concepts in stereotype-consistent ways, such as feeling closer to African Americans (Wheeler et al., 2008a) and feeling more aggressive, consistent with the African-American stereotype of aggressiveness (DeMarree et al., 2005;Galinsky et al., 2008). Similarly, both men and women report reduced emotional sensitivity when primed with the male stereotype (Marx & Stapel, 2006), consistent with the stereotype of men as emotionally insensitive. ...
For more than a decade, researchers have convincingly shown that people's social behavior can be affected by primed constructs without people having any awareness of their influence. Earlier research proposed direct priming accounts for these effects, suggesting that primed constructs exert their effect on behavior in a relatively direct fashion without an intervening role for perceptual processes. In this chapter, we review evidence in favor of an indirect priming account for behavioral priming effects. In these indirect priming effects, a primed construct affects behavior via shifts in perceptions of a perceptual target. We review three types of indirect priming mechanisms: a self-perception, person-perception, and situation-perception mechanism. We also present various moderators that affect the direction and magnitude of each of the indirect priming effects. In addition, we identify factors, related to the attentional focus of the prime recipient, that indicate when each of the different mechanisms operates. Understanding the role of perceptual processes in the prime-to-behavior pathway can unravel more mysteries about the rich and complex nature of social behavior.
... An implication of the active-self account is that dominant chronic self-perceptions can be modified by primed selfperceptions. A study by Wheeler, DeMarree, and Petty (2008) supported this idea. Wheeler and his colleagues primed people with the trait concepts of either extraversion or introversion, and the primed individuals responded to persuasion in the same ways that actually extraverted and introverted individuals tend to. ...
Researchers disagree whether the correlation between cognitive test anxiety and test performance is causal or explainable by skill deficits, which lead to both cognitive test anxiety and lower test performance. Most causal theories of test anxiety assume that individual differences in cognitive test anxiety originate from differences in self-perceived competence. Accordingly, in the present research, we sought to temporarily heighten perceptions of competence using a priming intervention. Two studies with secondary- and vocational-school students (Ns = 219 and 232, respectively) contrasted this intervention with a no-priming control condition. Priming competence diminished the association between cognitive test anxiety and test performance by heightening the performance of cognitively test-anxious students and by lowering the performance of students with low levels of cognitive test anxiety. The findings suggest that cognitively test-anxious persons have greater abilities than they commonly show. Competency priming may offer a way to improve the situation of people with cognitive test anxiety.
... First, past research has revealed that matching message frames to people's psychological states can boost involvement and thus message elaboration, and elaboration fosters persuasion when message arguments are strong (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). This elaboration effect has been shown by matching message frames to message recipients' self-schemata (Wheeler, Petty, & Bizer, 2005), attitude functions (Petty & Wegener, 1998), feelings of confidence (Tormala, Rucker, & Seger, 2008), approach-avoidance orientations (Updegraff, Sherman, Luyster, & Mann, 2007), social identities (Mackie, Worth, & Asuncion, 1990), and primed trait concepts or stereotypes (Wheeler, DeMarree, & Petty, 2008). The rationale is that message frames that match, rather than mismatch, people's psychological states are perceived as more personally relevant (e.g., DeBono & Packer, 1991), which heightens involvement and motivates processing (Petty & Cacioppo, 1979), thus increasing persuasion in response to strong arguments. ...
Three studies explored think ("I think . . . ") versus feel ("I feel . . . ") message framing effects on persuasion.The authors propose a matching hypothesis, suggesting that think framing will be more persuasive when the target attitude or message recipient is cognitively oriented, whereas feel framing will be more persuasive when the target attitude or message recipient is affectively oriented. Study 1 presented cognitively and affectively oriented individuals with a think- or feel-framed message. Study 2 primed cognitive or affective orientation and then presented a think- or feel-framed message. Study 3 presented male and female participants with an advertisement containing think- or feel-framed arguments. Results indicated that think (feel) framing was more persuasive when the target attitude or recipient was cognitively (affectively) oriented. Moreover, Study 2 demonstrated that this matching effect was mediated by processing fluency. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Gaming literature largely treats customization as a monolithic concept. This article provides three experiments that test the differences between appearance customization and ability customization. While these three studies provided a degree of replication, they examined between 105 and 147 college students in three different video game scenarios (no game play, non-human avatar, and difficult game). While the results varied slightly based on the scenario, evidence emerged that appearance customization was more likely than ability customization to enhance participant attitude toward the game and likelihood to spend money on the game. The findings of these studies should inform the types of customization used in a variety of domains and should provide guidance on the design process to offer simple and cost-effective methods to improve sales and attitudes toward content. Specifically, appearance customization is a more effective way for organizations to influence users.
Actual–desired discrepancies in people’s self-concepts represent structural incongruities in their self-representations that can lead people to experience subjective conflict. Theory and research suggest that structural incongruities predict susceptibility to subtle influences like priming and conditioning. Although typically examined for their motivational properties, we hypothesized that because self-discrepancies represent structural incongruities in people’s self-concepts, they should also predict susceptibility to subtle influences on people’s active self-views. Across three studies, we found that subtle change inductions (self-evaluative conditioning and priming) exerted greater impact on active self-perceptions and behavior as actual–desired self-discrepancies increased in magnitude. Exploratory analyses suggested that these changes occurred regardless of the compatibility of the change induction with individuals’ desired self-views.
Past research studying the effects of regulatory fit on consumer choice decisions indicate that consumers possess favourable attitude towards products that are compatible with their regulatory orientations. The current research contends that regulatory fit by itself may not be sufficient for attracting consumers to purchase a product. Consumers will show a favourable attitude towards products that match their regulatory orientations only when the information related to the products that match their regulatory focus has a strong argument quality. The effects of regulatory fit will be reversed if the argument quality becomes weak. Findings from a series of experiments support this hypothesis. Regulatory focus was used as a chronic variable and a situational variable (between subjects) in the experiments. Argument strength was used as a between subjects variable. Choice favourability and choice likelihood measures were used as the dependent variables.
Consumers tend to have more favorable attitudes for their in-group brands than their out-group brands. However, little is known regarding how brand managers can overcome consumers' negative attitudes toward out-group brands. Drawing on the moral identity literature, the authors theorize that moral identity may enhance out-group (but not in-group) brand attitudes through decreased psychological distance. Four studies demonstrate that moral identity increases out-group brand attitudes. The authors also identify two important boundary conditions of this moral identity effect. These findings suggest that brand managers who want to overcome the less-than-favorable perceptions associated with out-group brands may benefit from drawing on consumers' moral identity in marketing communications. Theoretically, this research establishes that moral identity extends beyond prosocial behaviors to influence marketplace judgments (i.e., brand attitudes and categorization).
The objective of this thesis is to show that stereotypic beliefs about a social group can automatically influence the guidance of behavior by demonstrating that priming the disability stereotype alters subsequent motor performance in a way that is consistent with the specific content of the considered stereotype (poor performance). Thus, this thesis emphasizes that priming able-bodied persons with the disability stereotype leads to such an assimilation effect, an effect which appears to be particularly pronounced with persons who are familiar with the members of the primed social group. In addition, the presented thesis shows that disabled people are themselves unfavorably influenced by the negative stereotype associated with their membership group, especially in situations where these individuals could feel like being under examination.
Consumers tend to have more favorable attitudes for their in-group brands than their out-group brands. However, little is known regarding how brand managers can overcome consumers’ negative attitudes toward out-group brands. Drawing upon the moral identity literature, the authors theorize that moral identity may enhance out-group (but not in-group) brand attitudes through decreased psychological distance. Four studies demonstrate that moral identity increases out-group brand attitudes. Two important boundary conditions of this moral identity effect are also identified. These findings suggest that brand managers seeking to overcome the less than favorable perceptions associated with out-group brands may benefit from drawing upon consumers’ moral identity in marketing communications. Theoretically, this research establishes that moral identity extends beyond prosocial behaviors to influence marketplace judgments (i.e., brand attitudes and categorization).
Recent research has demonstrated the malleability of self-views to subtle situational influence but has not uncovered features of the self-concept representation that make it susceptible to such change. Using research on attitude ambivalence as a foundation, the current article predicted that the self would be most likely to respond to a subtle change induction when the targeted self-beliefs were objectively ambivalent (e.g., possessed both positive and negative features). Using self-esteem conditioning (Experiment 1) and outgroup stereotype priming (Experiment 2), it was found that people were more susceptible to subtle change inductions as objective self-ambivalence increased. Notably, the consistency between dominant self-views (positive or negative) and the change induction did not influence these results. These effects held for objective ambivalence, but not subjective ambivalence, and only when the objective ambivalence measure was relevant to the change induction. Mechanisms of the observed moderation and the implications of self-ambivalence for understanding self-change are discussed.
Self-monitoring is the extent to which individuals regulate self-presentation for the sake of desired public appearances. Snyder developed a Self-Monitoring Scale to measure individual differences on this construct. Since the measure could be insensitive to situational influences, it is uncertain whether the short-term self-monitoring elicited by certain social interactions could be examined. The present study explored the factor structures of a state self-monitoring scale which was adapted from 10 items of the Self-Monitoring Scale. Participants took part in an individual interview with an unfamiliar authority, and then completed the State Self-Monitoring Scale. Two samples of adolescents (N=98 and N=95) were tested. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis using the two samples indicated that the 9-item State Self-Monitoring Scale had two stable factors. There was a statistically significant difference on State Self-monitoring between adolescents with high and low academic achievement, supporting the validity of the scale.
The content of spontaneously activated racial stereotypes among White Americans and the relation of this to more explicit measures of stereotyping and prejudice were investigated. Using a semantic priming paradigm, a prime was presented outside of conscious awareness (BLACK or WHITE), followed by a target stimulus requiring a word–nonword decision. The target stimuli included attributes that varied in valence and stereotypicality for Whites and African Americans. Results showed reliable stereotyping and prejudice effects: Black primes resulted in substantially stronger facilitation to negative than positive stereotypic attributes, whereas White primes facilitated positive more than negative stereotypic traits. The magnitude of this implicit prejudice effect correlated reliably with participants’ scores on explicit racial attitude measures, indicating that people's spontaneous stereotypic associations are consistent with their more controlled responses.
Three experience-sampling studies explored the distributions of Big-Five-relevant states (behavior) across 2 to 3 weeks of everyday life. Within-person variability was high, such that the typical individual regularly and routinely manifested nearly all levels of all traits in his or her everyday behavior. Second, individual differences in central tendencies of behavioral distributions were almost perfectly stable. Third, amount of behavioral variability (and skew and kurtosis) were revealed as stable individual differences. Finally, amount of within-person variability in extraversion was shown to reflect individual differences in reactivity to extraversion-relevant situational cues. Thus, decontextualized and noncontingent Big-Five content is highly useful for descriptions of individuals' density distributions as wholes. Simultaneously, contextualized and contingent personality units (e.g., conditional traits, goals) are needed for describing the considerable within-person variation.
People approach pleasure and avoid pain. To discover the true nature of approach–avoidance motivation, psychologists need to move beyond this hedonic principle to the principles that underlie the different ways that it operates. One such principle is regulatory focus, which distinguishes self-regulation with a promotion focus (accomplishments and aspirations) from self-regulation with a prevention focus (safety and responsibilities). This principle is used to reconsider the fundamental nature of approach–avoidance, expectancy–value relations, and emotional and evaluative sensitivities. Both types of regulatory focus are applied to phenonomena that have been treated in terms of either promotion (e.g., well-being) or prevention (e.g., cognitive dissonance). Then, regulatory focus is distinguished from regulatory anticipation and regulatory reference, 2 other principles underlying the different ways that people approach pleasure and avoid pain.
Past research showed that considering a persuasive message in light of important rather than unimportant values creates attitudes that resist later attack. The traditional explanation is that the attitudes come to express the value or that a cognitive link between the value and attitude enhances resistance. However, the current research showed that another explanation is plausible. Similar to other sources of involvement , considering important rather than unimportant values increases processing of the message considered in light of those values. This occurs when the values are identified as normatively high or low in importance and when the perceived importance differs across participants for the same values. The increase in processing creates resistance to later attacks, and unlike past research, individual-level measures of initial amount of processing mediate value importance effects on later resistance to change. Important values motivate processing because they increase personal involvement with the issue, rather than creating attitudes that represent or express core values.
The self-concept literature is characterized by a continuing controversy over whether the self-concept is stable or malleable. In this article we suggest that it is both but that the stability observed for general descriptions of the self may mask significant local variation. In this study the social environment was varied by creating a situation in which subjects found themselves to be either very unique or very similar to others. Following this manipulation, subjects responded to a series of self-concept measures. Although the uniqueness and similarity subjects did not differ in the trait terms they used to describe themselves, they did differ systematically in their latency for these judgments, in positivity and negativity of their word associations, and in their judgments of similarity to reference groups. These findings imply that subjects made to feel unique recruited conceptions of themselves as similar to others, whereas subjects made to feel similar to others recruited conceptions of themselves as unique. The results suggest that very general self-descriptive measures are inadequate for revealing how the individual adjusts and calibrates the self-concept in response to challenges from the social environment.
In a recent meta-analysis, Johnson and Eagly (1989) questioned our conceptualization of and evidence for the effects of involvement on persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1979, 1986). In particular, they concluded that (a) what we had termed issue involvement represented two distinct types of involvement (outcome- versus value-relevant), (b) each type of involvement had unique effects on persuasion, and (c) outcome involvement effects may be obtained only by 1 group of researchers. We argue that although 2 distinct research traditions of involvement have emerged, our original position that the 2 categories of involvement induce similar processes in persuasion situations remains viable. Evidence from Johnson and Eagly's meta-analysis shows that as both types of involvement increase, argument quality becomes a more important determinant of attitudes. The greater message rejection found with involvement in value as compared with outcome studies can be explained in terms of confounding factors. Finally, we note that the outcome involvement effects that we reported initially have been replicated by other investigators, including Johnson and Eagly.
Three studies tested basic assumptions derived from a theoretical model based on the dissociation of automatic and controlled processes involved in prejudice. Study 1 supported the model's assumption that high- and low-prejudice persons are equally knowledgeable of the cultural stereotype. The model suggests that the stereotype is automatically activated in the presence of a member (or some symbolic equivalent) of the stereotyped group and that low-prejudice responses require controlled inhibition of the automatically activated stereotype. Study 2, which examined the effects of automatic stereotype activation on the evaluation of ambiguous stereotype-relevant behaviors performed by a race-unspecified person, suggested that when subjects' ability to consciously monitor stereotype activation is precluded, both high- and low-prejudice subjects produce stereotype-congruent evaluations of ambiguous behaviors. Study 3 examined high- and low-prejudice subjects' responses in a consciously directed thought-listing task. Consistent with the model, only low-prejudice subjects inhibited the automatically activated stereotype-congruent thoughts and replaced them with thoughts reflecting equality and negations of the stereotype. The relation between stereotypes and prejudice and implications for prejudice reduction are discussed.
Hypotheses about the persistence and resistance of attitudes and beliefs formed by individuals scoring high or low in Need for Cognition (NC; Cacioppo & Petty, 1982) were derived from the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). In Study 1, both high-NC and low-NC individuals formed evaluatively similar attitudes toward an unfamiliar attitude object (a new product) after exposure to a persuasive message (an advertisement). The newly formed attitudes of high-NC individuals decayed less than the newly formed attitudes of low-NC individuals over a 2-day period. In Study 2, both high-NC and low-NC individuals were persuaded by an initial message that a food additive was unsafe. However, when immediately exposed to a second countermessage arguing that the product was safe, the initial experimentally created beliefs of high-NC individuals were shown to be more resistant to change than the experimentally created beliefs of low-NC individuals.
How might being outcome dependent on another person influence the processes that one uses to form impressions of that person? We designed three experiments to investigate this question with respect to short-term, task-oriented outcome dependency. In all three experiments, subjects expected to interact with a young man formerly hospitalized as a schizophrenic, and they received information about the person's attributes in either written profiles or videotapes. In Experiment 1, short-term, task-oriented outcome dependency led subjects to use relatively individuating processes (i.e., to base their impressions of the patient on his particular attributes), even under conditions that typically lead subjects to use relatively category-based processes (i.e., to base their impressions on the patient's schizophrenic label). Moreover, in the conditions that elicited individuating processes, subjects spent more time attending to the patient's particular attribute information. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the attention effects in Experiment 1 were not merely a function of impression positivity and that outcome dependency did not influence the impression formation process when attribute information in addition to category-level information was unavailable. Finally, Experiment 3 manipulated not outcome dependency but the attentional goal of forming an accurate impression. We found that accuracy-driven attention to attribute information also led to individuating processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Life provides an endless stream of social comparison information. Because opportunities to compare with others are so abundant, social comparison theory traditionally assumes that people are selective in their comparison activities and primarily compare with deliberately selected standards. Recent research, however, demonstrates that social comparisons often occur spontaneously, even if no standard is explicitly provided or deliberately selected. We examined whether comparisons are so spontaneous that they are even engaged if people are fleetingly exposed to a potential standard—so fleetingly that they remain unaware of the standard. In three studies, participants were subliminally primed with moderate versus extreme, high versus low standards during self-evaluation. Results demonstrate that self-evaluations are influenced by subliminally presented standards. Specifically, self-evaluations are as- similated towards moderate standards and contrasted away from extreme standards. These self-evaluative consequences of subliminal standards, however, were only obtained if participants engaged in self-reflection during standard exposure. These findings emphasize that social comparisons are truly ubiquitous processes that are engaged even for fleeting exposure to standard information.
Two experiments examined the affective consequences associated with selfmonitoring in a job application context. Study 1 examined reactions of high and low self-monitors to slides of interviewers whose faces fit or did not fit an occupation. It was hypothesized that high self-monitors would experience the most negative affect when the face did not fit the occupational stereotype because such a mismatch would provide unclear or conflicting cues for expected behavior, whereas low self-monitors would experience the most negative affect when the face matched the stereotype because expectations for stereotypical behavior would constrain their expression of self. Results confirmed the hypotheses. In Study 2, subjects were asked to give the “right answers” on a personality test to get a job which either fit or did not fit their personality. Low self-monitors, more concerned with accurate self-presentation, experienced heightened negative affect if the job did not fit their personality, whereas high self-monitors who are accustomed to controlling their self-presentation experienced less negative affect. In both studies, situational cues or demands that conflicted with the motivational concerns of self-monitoring style differentially produced negative affect for high and low self-monitors. Implications of making hiring decisions on the basis of interviews and other devices subject to impression management were discussed.
Four studies examine the strength of feelings of White guilt, the relationship between White guilt and possible antecedents to this guilt, and the consequences of White guilt for attitudes toward affirmative action. Even though mean White guilt tended to be low, with the mean being just below the midpoint of the scale, the range and variability confirms the existence of feelings of White guilt for some. White guilt was associated with more negative personal evaluations of Whites and the theoretical antecedents of stronger beliefs in the existence of White privilege, greater estimates of the prevalence of discrimination against Blacks, and low prejudice against Blacks. Finally, results indicate that White guilt mediated the relationship from White privilege and beliefs about the prevalence of discrimination to attitudes toward affirmative action, and both White guilt and prejudice independently predicted attitudes toward affirmative action.
Two studies were conducted to examine the hypothesis that matching the content of a persuasive message to the functional basis of people's attitudes enhances message scrutiny. In Study 1, high and low self-monitors were exposed to a message that matched or mismatched the functional basis of their attitudes (i.e., image appealfor high self-monitors and quality appealfor low self-monitors) and that -contained either strong or weak arguments. Attitudes were more strongly affected by message strength when the message arguments matched rather than mismatched thefunctional basis of the attitude. In Study 2, this outcome was especially characteristic of individuals who typically do not enjoy thinking (those low in need for cognition). These studies show that matching arguments to the functional basis of an attitude is not invariably beneficialfor persuasion but can enhance or reduce attitude change (compared to mismatched arguments) depending on the cogency of the matched information.
The present article offers a conceptual model for how the cognitive processes associated with perspective-taking facilitate social coordination and foster social bonds. We suggest that the benefits of perspective-taking accrue through an increased self-other overlap in cognitive representations and discuss the implications of this perspective-taking induced self-other overlap for stereotyping and prejudice. Whereas perspective-taking decreases stereotyping of others (through application of the self to the other), it increases stereotypicality of one’s own behavior (through inclusion of the other in the self). To promote social bonds, perspective-takers utilize information, including stereotypes, to coordinate their behavior with others. The discussion focuses on the implications, both positive and negative, of this self-other overlap for social relationships and discusses how conceptualizing perspective-taking, as geared toward supporting specific social bonds, provides a framework for understanding why the effects of perspective-taking are typically target-specific and do not activate a general helping mind-set. Through its attempts to secure social bonds, perspective-taking can be an engine of social harmony, but can also reveal a dark side, one full of ironic consequences.
We propose that to some extent, people treat the resources, perspectives, and identities of close others as their own. This proposal is supported by allocation, attribution, response time, and memory experiments. Recently, we have applied this idea to deepening understanding of feeling “too close” (including too much of the other in the self leading to feeling controlled or a loss of identity), the effects of relationship loss (it is distressing to the extent that the former partner was included in the self, liberating to the extent that the former partner was preventing self-expansion), ingroup identification (including ingroup in the self), and the effect of outgroup friendships on outgroup attitudes (including outgroup member in the self entails including outgroup member's identity in the self).
Consumer research using distinctiveness theory implies that targeted advertisements are most effective in contexts in which the targeted group is a numeric minority. The authors investigate the influence of group social status in addition to numeric status in a study of South African consumers. Results demonstrate that when social dimensions are incorporated, targeted advertisements can be effective even in contexts in which the targeted group is a numeric majority. Results also illustrate how consumer distinctiveness may exist at multiple levels of analysis. The authors discuss the implications of the results for understanding the influence of social context on consumer distinctiveness and responses to targeted marketing efforts.
We investigated the determinants of whether activated knowledge leads to be- havioral assimilation or to contrast. Whereas early studies concluded that be- havior assimilates to activated categories but contrasts from activated exemplars, more recent results suggest that the comparison relevance of a prime may predict the direction of its effect. Thus, in four experiments, we ma- nipulated the perceived relevance of category and exemplar primes. Behav- iors consistently assimilated to irrelevant primes and contrasted from relevant primes, regardless of the primes' exemplar-category status. Furthermore, par- ticipants who explicitly rejected a series of irrelevant self-exemplar compari- sons showed relative assimilation to subsequent exemplar primes, suggesting that experience can momentarily render extreme exemplars comparison irrelevant. The role of comparison relevance as a moderator of automatic behavior is discussed.
This study investigated 3 broad classes of individual-differences variables (job-search motives, competencies, and constraints) as predictors of job-search intensity among 292 unemployed job seekers. Also assessed was the relationship between job-search intensity and reemployment success in a longitudinal context. Results show significant relationships between the predictors employment commitment, financial hardship, job-search self-efficacy, and motivation control and the outcome job-search intensity. Support was not found for a relationship between perceived job-search constraints and job-search intensity. Motivation control was highlighted as the only lagged predictor of job-search intensity over time for those who were continuously unemployed. Job-search intensity predicted Time 2 reemployment status for the sample as a whole, but not reemployment quality for those who found jobs over the study's duration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A neglected aspect of the study of social cognition has been the way in which people select information for further processing from the vast amount available in social environments. A major contemporary model of attention holds that there are two separate types of processes that operate concurrently: a flexible but resource-limited control process that regulates the contents of conscious awareness, and a relatively inflexible automatic process that can attract attention to stimuli without conscious intent. Passive automatic processes, can either facilitate or inhibit active attentional processing, necessitating either less or more attentional effort, depending on the characteristics of the information that is currently present. On a dichotic listening task in which subjects attended to or ignored self-relevant stimuli, it was found that self-relevant information required less attentional resources when presented to the attended channel, but more when presented to the rejected channel, relative to neutral words. This differential capacity allocation occurred despite subjects' lack of awareness of the contents of the rejected channel. The results supported the existence and interaction of the two processes of attention in social information processing.
Gray (1981, 1982) holds that 2 general motivational systems underlie behavior and affect: a behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and a behavioral activation system (BAS). Self-report scales to assess dispositional BIS and BAS sensitivities were created. Scale development (Study 1) and convergent and discriminant validity in the form of correlations with alternative measures are reported (Study 2). In Study 3, a situation in which Ss anticipated a punishment was created. Controlling for initial nervousness, Ss high in BIS sensitivity (assessed earlier) were more nervous than those low. In Study 4, a situation in which Ss anticipated a reward was created. Controlling for initial happiness, Ss high in BAS sensitivity (Reward Responsiveness and Drive scales) were happier than those low. In each case the new scales predicted better than an alternative measure. Discussion is focused on conceptual implications.
Experiment 1 used the Implicit Association Test (IAT; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, Be J. L. K. Schwartz, 1998) to measure self-esteem by assessing automatic associations of self with positive or negative valence. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed that two IAT measures defined a factor that was distinct from, but weakly correlated with, a factor defined by standard explicit (self-report) measures of self-esteem. Experiment 2 tested known-groups validity of two IAT gender self-concept measures. Compared with well-established explicit measures, the IAT measures revealed triple the difference in measured masculinity-femininity between men and women. Again, CFA revealed construct divergence between implicit and explicit measures. Experiment 3 assessed the self-esteem IAT's validity in predicting cognitive reactions to success and failure. High implicit self-esteem was associated in the predicted fashion with buffering against adverse effects of failure on two of four measures.
Impressions are influenced by motivations stemming primarily from the target (e.g., interdependence), 3rd parties (e.g., accountability or time pressure), or the self. The current studies investigate motivations stemming primarily from the self. In Study 1, Ss were given dispositional feedback about their abilities to categorize or to individuate. In Study 2, they were given situational information about the appropriate norms to categorize or to individuate. As predicted, dispositional feedback influenced low self-monitors, and situational information influenced high self-monitors. Both altered attention to potentially individuating category-inconsistent attributes as well as requests for additional information. Causal models further illuminated the mediating processes. These results suggest that people's flexible self-concepts are an important source of motivation in impression formation.
Possible selves are elements of the self-concept that represent what individuals could become, would like to become, and are afraid of becoming. These representations of the self in the future are hypothesized to be an important component of effective performance. In Study 1, subjects either imagined being either successful in the future because of hard work, imagined being unsuccessful in the future despite hard work, or were given a positive mood inducement. These imagery manipulations were intended to increase the accessibility of specific possible selves. On a task involving effort and one involving persistence, subjects who imagined being successful performed the best. In Study 2, subjects either imagined being successful, imagined being unsuccessful, imagined another person being successful, or were put in a good mood. The success imagery group was relatively fast to accept positive, success-relevant possible selves as descriptive, and also relatively fast to reject negative, failure-relevant possib...
The authors conducted an empirical study to test McGuire's (1984) distinctiveness theory within an advertising context. First, following the distinctiveness theory postulate, they found that members of minority groups were more likely than majority groups to have their ethnicity salient. Furthermore, in applying distinctiveness theory to persuasion, they found that members of minority (versus majority) groups find an ad spokesperson from their own ethnic group to be more trustworthy and that increased trustworthiness led to more positive attitudes toward the brand being advertised. The authors draw implications for both advertising to ethnic/minority groups as well as for further research applications of distinctiveness theory.
This chapter describes the role of naïve theories of bias in bias correction in the flexible correction model. The notion of bias correction was reviewed across a variety of research domains. Corrections are often the result of people consulting their naive theories of the influence of potentially biasing factors on their perception of the target. This view differs from competing views of bias correction because a view of corrections based on perceivers' naive theories of bias allows for a more flexible set of corrections than those proposed by other current models of bias removal. The chapter illustrates that flexible correction model (FCM) principles demonstrate the relevance of the perspective to a variety of research areas (including persuasion, attribution, impression formation, stereotyping, and mood). Finally, this chapter hopes that research and theory based on flexible correction notions will help to build a unifying framework within which correction processes in many areas of psychology can be investigated and explained.
The moderating effect of self-monitoring on the relation between values and attitudes, and the extent to which self-monitoring schematicity accentuates this relationship were examined in a computer-assisted telephone interview (CATJ) survey. Subjects were polled on two policy issues, on their endorsement of values related to these issues, and on their self-monitoring tendencies. Response latency to the self-monitoring questions formed the self-monitoring schematicity index. Values predicted attitudes to a greater extent for low than for high self-monitors. Moreover, individuals who quickly answered questions about their self-monitoring tendencies (schematic low and high self-monitors) behaved more consistently with the tenets of the construct than individuals who answered the questions slowly. The implications of these results for theorizing about the influence of values on attitudes and for the role of schematicity in self-assessment in the personality domain are discussed.
How consistent are strangers' and intimates' judgments of stimulus people's personalities, and how is this interjudge consistency affected by stimulus persons' assessed self-monitoring and self-reported behavioral consistency? To answer these questions, 38 stimulus subjects rated themselves on the personality dimensions of extraversion and anxiety and also rated their cross-situational consistency on these dimensions. Strangers, friends, mothers, and fathers of stimulus persons also rated them on extraversion and anxiety. The results indicated that: For judgments of anxiety there was lower interjudge consistency for high than for low self-monitoring stimulus subjects. For judgments of extraversion there was no difference in interjudge consistency for low and high self-monitoring stimulus subjects. The results also showed that anxiety was a more “private” trait in that intimates' but not strangers' judgments correlated with stimulus subjects' self-reported anxiety (r = .50 and r = .11, respectively), while extraversion was a more “public” trait in that both intimates' and strangers' judgments correlated with stimulus subjects' self-reported extraversion (r = .42 and r = .51, respectively). These results suggest that self-monitoring of stimulus persons affects interjudge consistency of peroonality judgments particularly for “private” traits such as anxiety, which are most subject to expressive control and inhibition.
In two studies, the authors investigated guilt as a response to group-based advantage. Consistent with its conceptualization as a self-focused emotion, White guilt was based in self-focused beliefs in racial inequality. Thus, guilt was associated with belief in White privilege (Study 1) and resulted from seeing European Americans as perpetrators of racial discrimination (Study 2). Just as personal guilt is associated with efforts at restitution, White guilt was predictive of support for affirmative action pro-grams aimed at compensating African Americans. White guilt was not, however, predictive of support for noncompensatory efforts at promoting equality, such as affirmative action pro-grams that increase opportunities (Study 2). In contrast, the other-focused emotion of group-based sympathy was a more gen-eral predictor of support for different affirmative action policies. Our findings demonstrate the benefits and limits of group-based guilt as a basis of support for social equality and highlight the value of understanding the specific emotions elicited in inter-group contexts. World history, and six decades of social psychological research, suggest that social groups prefer to be at the top of societal hierarchies rather than at the bottom. For example, a great deal of work on ethnocentrism (for a review, see Brewer, 1986) and ingroup favoritism (for a review, see Mullen, Brown, & Smith, 1992) has shown that ingroups often create and defend advantages over outgroups. Beyond this understandable preference, however, we know little about how members of advan-taged groups actually experience intergroup inequality; very little research has examined how it feels to be advan-taged. It is typically assumed that members of advantaged groups feel good about their social position. Indeed, there is some evidence that the advantaged can experi-ence something akin to pride when they see themselves as superior to members of other groups (Branscombe & Wann, 1994; for a review, see Leach, Snider, & Iyer, 2002). However, there is reason to believe that those who are advantaged also might feel bad when systemic inequality illegitimately favors their group and disadvan-tages others (for a review, see Leach et al., 2002). For example, Shelby Steele (1990) has argued that Euro-pean Americans can feel guilty about the ways in which racial inequality advantages them and disadvantages African Americans. Such group-based guilt is debilitat-ing because it may undermine internal attributions for ingroup success (Branscombe, 1998) and may threaten the ingroup's identity as moral and good (Branscombe, Doosje, & McGarty, 2002). The possibility that members of advantaged groups experience their position relative to disadvantaged groups in different ways underscores the importance of group-based emotion in intergroup relations (Leach et al., 2002; Montada & Schneider, 1989; Smith, 1993). Intergroup emotions describe the specific ways in which
Social identity theory holds that social group memberships become part of the psychological self; affecting thoughts, feelings, and behavior. However, tests of this hypothesis to date have mainly involved judgmental dependent measures. A method adapted from Aron and associates can provide more direct evidence. Subjects made speeded self-descriptiveness judgments for a variety of traits. Responses were slower and involved more errors for traits on which the individual believed he or she mismatched an in-group, compared with matching traits. Matches or mismatches between the self and a salient out-group had no effect. This evidence suggests that cognitive representations of the self and an in-group are directly linked, to the point where reports about the self are facilitated for traits on which the self and in-group are perceived as similar, and inhibited for dissimilar traits.
The relationship between attitudes and behavior has been the topic of considerable debate. This article reports a meta-analysis of 88 attitude-behavior studies that reveals that attitudes significantly and substantially predict future behavior (mean r = .38; combined p <<. 000000000001). Relatively large and significant moderating effects were found for the attitudinal variables of attitude certainty, stability, accessibility, affective-cognitive consistency, and direct experience (mean q = .39). A smaller but significant moderating effect was found for self-monitoring (mean q = .29). Methodological factors associated with high attitude-behavior correlations included self-report measures of behavior (q =. 22), the use of nonstudents as subjects (q =. 17), and corresponding levels of specificity in the attitude and behavior measures (mean q = .47). The practical magnitude of attitude-behavior correlations is considered, as are the future directions of attitude-behavior research.
Snyder's original theory of self-monitoring implies that high self-monitors use role taking to control their expressive behavior and to align their conduct with others. But the evidence for this is mixed; it is not clear what kind of social cognition is associated with the alignment strategies used by high and low self-monitors. This issue is explored here by examining the relationships between self-monitoring and role-taking accuracy and propensity. High self-monitoring is found to be negatively correlated with role-taking propensity. This relationship is strongest for those who score high on the Other-Directedness factor of the Self Monitoring Scale. Scores on the Public Performing factor are found to be positively correlated with role-taking accuracy, whereas scores on the Other-Directedness factor are not. It is therefore suggested that some high self-monitors rely on imagery or behavioral scripts rather than role taking to align their conduct with others.
Two experiments demonstrated the impact of passively activated categories on the use of prime-relevant versus prime-irrelevant dimensions in later evaluations and preference judgments. In both experiments, concepts relevant to one of two dimensions of judgment were initially activated by requiring subjects to rehearse words in the course of a memory test. In supposedly unrelated subsequent tasks, subjects were asked to evaluate (in the first experiment) and choose between (in the second experiment) targets described as having positive attributes on one dimension and negative attributes on the other dimension. As predicted, subjects' evaluations and preferences reflected the greater impact of the information relevant to the primed dimension. Recall for the information presented in Experiment 2 provided some evidence for differential attention to the prime-relevant information as the mediating mechanism for the effect.
When people perceive a response (or outcome), whether their own or another person's, they represent it as being about something, and this thing that the response is about is inferred to be the source of the response. The first section of this article discusses natural assumptions underlying the operation of this aboutness principle and describes the problems with its use, illustrated by such well-established cases of social-cognitive shortcomings as the correspondence bias, representativeness error, misattribution, accessibility bias, and saying-is-believing effect. The second section uses the aboutness principle to review lay psychological theories discussed in this special issue, including people's theories of causality, stability, and change in personal attributes, conditions for valid memories or judgments, group attribute clusters, and persuasive influences.
Two studies examine the identity salience construct in a judgment formation context. Study 1 manipulates identity salience by heightening the self-importance of a consumer social identity, resulting in systematic changes in purchase intent of an identity relevant product. Study 2 shows that judgments of identity relevant stimuli are a function of exposure to an identity cue and the consumer's measured self-importance associated with the identity, particularly when the identity is diagnostic to the judgment. These results are discussed in terms of how they extend prior work on social identity, product preference formation, and attitude change.
Previous research has shown that self-schemas (cognitive generalizations about the self) influence the processing of information about the self. The present study examined the effects of self-schemas on processing information about other people. I n the first portion of the study, extravert schematics (those having self-schemas for extraversion), introvert schematics (those having self-schemas for introversion), and aschematics (those having neither self-schemas for extra-version nor self-schemas for introversion) were asked to find out about another person. To accomplish this, subjects selected questions from a list of questions that were designed to elicit information about extraversion, introversion, or dimensions unrelated to either. Results supported the hypothesis that people tend to seek information about others that is related to their self-schemas: Extravert schematics selected more extravert questions, and introvert schematics selected more introvert questions. In the second portion of the study, subjects listened to two tape-recorded interviews and then rated the interviewed persons on a number of traits, also indicating their confidence in the ratings. Extravert and introvert schematics were significantly more confident than aschematics only when their ratings were on schema-relevant dimensions. Results of the study are interpreted by suggesting that schematics are “experts” in their schematic domains.
Previous research has shown that self-schemas (cognitive generalizations about the self) influence the processing of information about the self. The present study examined the effects of self-schemas on processing information about other people. I n the first portion of the study, extravert schematics (those having self-schemas for extraversion), introvert schematics (those having self-schemas for introversion), and aschematics (those having neither self-schemas for extra-version nor self-schemas for introversion) were asked to find out about another person. To accomplish this, subjects selected questions from a list of questions that were designed to elicit information about extraversion, introversion, or dimensions unrelated to either. Results supported the hypothesis that people tend to seek information about others that is related to their self-schemas: Extravert schematics selected more extravert questions, and introvert schematics selected more introvert questions. In the second portion of the study, subjects listened to two tape-recorded interviews and then rated the interviewed persons on a number of traits, also indicating their confidence in the ratings. Extravert and introvert schematics were significantly more confident than aschematics only when their ratings were on schema-relevant dimensions. Results of the study are interpreted by suggesting that schematics are “experts” in their schematic domains.
Recent research has shown that information presented by untrustworthy endorsers is likely to be thoughtfully elaborated, whereas information presented by trustworthy endorsers is likely to be unthinkingly accepted (Priester & Petty, 1995). Study 1 manipulated argument quality and assessed cognitive responses to demonstrate that this influence of trustworthiness on persuasion holds for familiar endorsers likely to be used in actual advertisements. Study 2 demonstrated that trustworthiness can be influenced by individuals endorsing too many products, with similar persuasion consequences (i.e., untrustworthy endorsers prompt greater scrutiny of product-related attributes than trustworthy endorsers). Study 2 also found that the attitudes that resulted from an untrustworthy endorser came to mind faster, even when those attitudes were equivalently positive--thus demonstrating that elaboration can influence attitude accessibility. This research provides evidence that attitude extremity may not be a sufficient indicator of advertising effectiveness, in that equally extreme attitudes can vary as to the bases by which they were formed, their underlying strength, and their effectiveness. Further, this research provides theoretical and strategic insight into the use of trustworthy and untrustworthy endorsers.
People's reports on their own traits are facilitated by matches with their in-group's perceived traits and inhibited by mismatches (Smith & Henry, 1996). This suggests that the cognitive representations of the self and in-group overlap. The current study extends this finding in two ways. First, the match/mismatch reaction time effect is found to extend to attitudes as well as to traits. Second, the size of the match/mismatch effect correlates positively with several explicit measures of group identification. The relationship between explicit and implicit measures of group identification, and the relevance of these findings for theories of group identification, are discussed.
The present study examined the immediate and delayed effects of unobtrusive exposure to personality trait terms (e.g., "reckless," "persistent") on subjects' subsequent judgments and recollection of information about another person. Before reading a description of a stimulus person, subjects were unobtrusively exposed to either positive or negative trait terms that either could or could not be used to characterize this person. When the trait terms were applicable to the description of the stimulus person, subjects' characterizations and evaluations of the person reflected the denotative and evaluative aspects of the trait categories activated by the prior exposure to these terms. However, the absence of any effects for nonapplicable trait terms suggested that exposure to trait terms with positive or negative associations was not in itself sufficient to determine attributions and evaluations. Prior verbal exposure had little effect on reproduction of the descriptions. Moreover, no reliable difference in either evaluation or reproduction was found between subjects who overtly characterized the stimulus person and those who did not. Exposure to applicable trait terms had a greater delayed than immediate effect on subjects' evaluations of the stimulus person, suggesting that subjects may have discounted their categorizations of the stimulus person when making their immediate evaluations. The implications of individual and situational variation in the accessibility of different categories for judgments of self and others are considered.
The study of the self is now of concern to almost every part of social psychology. This chapter attempts to adopt two complementary theoretical perspectives in cognitive psychology and pursue their implications for research and for theory on the structure and function of the self-concept. These implications should be construed as hypotheses rather than conclusions. It concerns with the cognitive aspects of the self, however, there are problems that must be confronted. Self-assessment is represented by a process involving the direct look up of features associated with the self concept. Because of the widespread implications and the great interest in the self throughout the behavioral sciences, research and theorizing in this field have inevitably followed different approaches. In the chapter, the relatively new information-processing perspective and the way the concepts and methods employed in the study of memory and information processing generally contribute in important ways to understand the self-concept is reviewed. The self-concept may be construed as a set of features that are characteristic of the person and also distinguish him or herself from other individuals.
This chapter discusses the functional relation between perception and behavior. It presents a general perspective on perception and action along with elaborating the direct relation between perception and behavior and specifically on one consequence of this relation—namely, the imitation. The chapter describes the core concepts of social perception. Furthermore, the chapter examines all three forms of social perception that lead directly to corresponding overt behavioral tendencies. The cognitive approach that has dominated psychology for over 30 years has changed psychology's perspective on perception. Certainly, perception is essential for us to comprehend our environment but that does not mean that this understanding is an end in itself. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the perception-behavior link from a functional perspective. In specific, perception provides an understanding of the world. Social perception refers to the activation of a perceptual representation, which generally has a direct effect on social behavior. Perceptual inputs are translated automatically into corresponding behavioral outputs.
This paper describes a number of objective experiments on recognition, concerning particularly the relation between the messages received by the two ears. Rather than use steady tones or clicks (frequency or time‐point signals) continuous speech is used, and the results interpreted in the main statistically.
Two types of test are reported: (a) the behavior of a listener when presented with two speech signals simultaneously (statistical filtering problem) and (b) behavior when different speech signals are presented to his two ears.
