Juliana E Trach,Megan T deBettencourt,Angela Radulescu,Samuel D McDougle
{"title":"Rewards transiently and automatically enhance sustained attention.","authors":"Juliana E Trach,Megan T deBettencourt,Angela Radulescu,Samuel D McDougle","doi":"10.1037/xge0001727","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001727","url":null,"abstract":"Our ability to maintain a consistent attentional state is essential to many aspects of daily life. Still, despite our best efforts, attention naturally fluctuates between more and less vigilant states. Previous work has shown that offering performance-based rewards or incentives can help to buffer against attentional lapses. However, such work is generally focused on long timescales and, critically, does not dissociate between task-based motivation (i.e., where reward is contingent on attention performance) versus more generic motivation or arousal accounts of reward effects. Here, we investigated the influence of reward feedback on attentional vigilance during a simultaneous sustained attention and reinforcement learning (RL) task. Crucially, rewards were tied only to the RL task rather than to attentional performance. We assessed the impact of two core components of RL-reward and surprise-on short-term fluctuations in attentional vigilance. In two experiments (N = 161), we demonstrated that intermittent, attention-independent rewards transiently boosted vigilance on a timescale of seconds. We did not find consistent evidence that surprises modulated vigilance. In a third experiment (N = 135), we observed that even passively received rewards elicit transient boosts in sustained attention. Together, these findings suggest that rewards transiently buffer against attentional lapses to improve vigilance, likely through generic increases in arousal or motivation. These results point to a fundamental relationship between reward and sustained attention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":"73 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Thomas I Vaughan-Johnston, Devin I Fowlie, Laura E Wallace, Mark W Susmann, Leandre R Fabrigar
{"title":"The preference for attitude neutrality.","authors":"Thomas I Vaughan-Johnston, Devin I Fowlie, Laura E Wallace, Mark W Susmann, Leandre R Fabrigar","doi":"10.1037/xge0001703","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001703","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Much research has noted people's tendency toward extremity. This work has made it clear that some people prefer to hold extreme views and might leave the impression that when biases and preferences occur, they primarily favor extremity. In contrast, in the present work, we examine the possibility that some people prefer attitudinal neutrality across two pretesting samples, three main studies, and two supplementary studies (<i>N</i><sub>total</sub> = 1,873). The preference for neutrality is distinguished from low preference for extremity, as well as from an interest in collecting balanced information. We also show that the preference for neutrality is related to a sometimes uncritical and biased pursuit of attitudinal neutrality, paralleling effects found in the attitude extremity literature. The preference for neutrality is related to dispositional attitudinal neutrality and ambivalence, political centrism, a preference for other people with neutral versus extreme views, and biased responding to messages arbitrarily framed as \"moderate\" versus extreme. Implications for politically polarized attitudes, persuasion, and intellectual humility are discussed. The preference for neutrality may pose a substantial challenge for creating a shared understanding of the world and addressing pressing social issues. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143006284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What does a verbal working memory task measure? The process-specific and age-dependent nature of attentional demands in verbal working memory tasks.","authors":"Steve Majerus","doi":"10.1037/xge0001716","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001716","url":null,"abstract":"Most models of verbal working memory (WM) consider attention as an important determinant of WM. The detailed nature of attentional processes and the different dimensions of verbal WM they support remains, however, poorly investigated. The present study distinguished between attentional capacity (scope of attention) and attentional control (control of attention) and examined their respective role for two fundamental dimensions of verbal WM: the retention of item versus serial order information and the simple versus complex nature of WM tasks. Three hundred four young and older adult participants performed simple or complex recall or reconstruction tasks involving the retention of item and/or serial order information, as well as attention tasks estimating scope and control of attention abilities. In young participants, scope of attention measures was most robustly associated with all WM tasks; control of attention measures were additionally involved when item and order information had to be maintained in more complex WM tasks. Older adult participants presented a similar pattern of results with, however, a tendency for increased reliance on control of attention already for the simple storage of information, and this most robustly for serial order information. These results reveal the task-dependent and partly age-dependent intervention of scope and control of attention in verbal WM measures, calling for dynamic models of verbal WM and attention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
William J Mitchell,Joanne Stasiak,Steven Martinez,Katelyn Cliver,David Gregory,Samantha Reisman,Helen Schmidt,Vishnu P Murty,Chelsea Helion
{"title":"Emotion regulation strategy use and forecasting in response to dynamic, multimodal stimuli.","authors":"William J Mitchell,Joanne Stasiak,Steven Martinez,Katelyn Cliver,David Gregory,Samantha Reisman,Helen Schmidt,Vishnu P Murty,Chelsea Helion","doi":"10.1037/xge0001715","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001715","url":null,"abstract":"Successful emotion regulation (ER) requires effective strategy selection. Research suggests that disengagement strategies (e.g., distraction) are more often selected than engagement strategies (e.g., reappraisal) as emotional experiences intensify. However, the extent to which ER strategy choice in controlled circumstances reflects strategy usage during complex, multimodal events is not well understood. The present research uses dynamic, multimodal stimuli (i.e., a haunted house, horror movies) to examine the association between affective intensity and regulatory strategy usage among untrained participants-individuals given no prior regulation instructions or direction. Both a preliminary study (n = 54) and Study 1 (n = 118) failed to find relationships between emotional intensity and strategy usage to downregulate emotions as participants navigated a haunted house. Distraction was self-reported to be less successful than reappraisal at high intensities, contrary to expectations. Participants in Study 2 (n = 152) forecasted regulation strategy usage based upon descriptions of emotionally regulated experiences from the preliminary haunted house study. Affective intensity predicted which strategies forecasters predicted they would use; though, forecasters overpredicted how often distraction was used in practice. Study 3 (n = 242) incorporated strategy usage and forecasting within the same design by showing untrained participants video stimuli of varying intensity and capturing their regulatory responses. Forecasters again predicted using distraction more often than strategy users did in practice. Forecasters also overpredicted how effectively distraction reduced negative affective intensity relative to what strategy users reported. These results may highlight a disconnect between strategy fittedness when self-regulation occurs in uncontrolled, highly intense, or complex circumstances. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":"70 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142989144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Does communicating measurable diversity goals attract or repel historically marginalized job applicants? Evidence from the lab and field.","authors":"Erika L Kirgios, Ike Silver, Edward H Chang","doi":"10.1037/xge0001699","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001699","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Many organizations struggle to attract a demographically diverse workforce. How does adding a measurable goal to a public diversity commitment-for example, \"We care about diversity\" versus \"We care about diversity and plan to hire at least one woman or racial minority for every White man we hire\"-impact application rates from women and racial minorities? Extant psychological theory offers competing predictions about how historically marginalized applicants might respond to such goals. On one hand, measurable diversity goals may raise belongingness concerns among marginalized group members who are uncomfortable with being recruited and hired based on their demographics. On the other, measurable goals might increase organizational attraction by signaling that marginalized group members are more likely to be hired. In a preregistered field experiment (<i>n</i> = 5,557), including measurable diversity goals in job advertisements increased application likelihood among marginalized group members-women and racial minorities-by 6.5%, without sacrifices to candidate quality. These field effects were primarily driven by White women, who were 10.5% more likely to apply after seeing a measurable diversity goal. Follow-up studies with women (total <i>n</i> = 893, preregistered) and racial minorities (total <i>n</i> = 865, preregistered) suggest that although measurable diversity goals signal a more instrumental approach to diversity, they also increase perceived strategic benefits and beliefs that the organization's commitment is genuine among both groups, which in turn are tied to increased willingness to apply. We discuss the tensions marginalized group members face when evaluating organizational diversity initiatives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142971048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Prediction that conflicts with judgment: The low absolute likelihood effect.","authors":"Chengyao Sun, Robyn A LeBoeuf","doi":"10.1037/xge0001721","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001721","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>How do people predict the outcome of an event from a set of possible outcomes? One might expect people to predict whichever outcome they believe to be most likely to arise. However, we document a robust disconnect between what people predict and what they believe to be most likely. This disconnect arises because people consider not only relative likelihood but also absolute likelihood when predicting. If people think that an outcome is both the most likely to arise and has a high absolute likelihood of arising, they regularly predict it to arise. However, if people believe that an outcome is the most likely to arise but has a low absolute likelihood (e.g., it has a 20% chance, and other outcomes have smaller chances), they less often choose it as their prediction, even though they know it is most likely. We find that, when the most likely outcome has a low absolute likelihood, the final outcome feels hard to foresee, which leads people to use arbitrary prediction strategies, such as following a gut feeling or choosing randomly, instead of predicting more logically. We further find that predictions are less likely to depart from the most likely outcome when manipulations encourage people to focus more on relative likelihood and less on the low absolute likelihood. People also exhibit a smaller disconnect when advising others than when predicting for themselves. Thus, contrary to common assumptions, predictions may often systematically depart from likelihood judgments. We discuss implications for research on judgments, predictions, and uncertainty. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142971020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yi-Fei Hu, Joseph Heffner, Apoorva Bhandari, Oriel FeldmanHall
{"title":"Goals bias face perception.","authors":"Yi-Fei Hu, Joseph Heffner, Apoorva Bhandari, Oriel FeldmanHall","doi":"10.1037/xge0001717","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001717","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Faces-the most common and complex stimuli in our daily lives-contain multidimensional information used to infer social attributes that guide consequential behaviors, such as deciding who to trust. Decades of research illustrates that perceptual information from faces is processed holistically. An open question, however, is whether goals might impact this perceptual process, influencing the encoding and representation of the complex social information embedded in faces. If an individual were able to factorize information so that each dimension is separately represented, it might enable flexibility. Having a goal, for example, might mean that only goal-relevant dimensions are leveraged to inform behavior. Whether people are able to build such factorized representations remains unknown, largely due to natural correlations between social attributes. We overcome these confounds using a new statistical face model that orthogonalizes perceived facial attractiveness and trustworthiness. Across three experiments (<i>N</i> = 249), we observe that only in some contexts can humans successfully factorize multidimensional social information. When there is a clear goal of assessing another's trustworthiness, people successfully decompose these social attributes. The more an individual factorizes, the more they entrust money to others in a subsequent trust game. However, when the goal is to assess attractiveness, irrelevant information about trustworthiness is so potent that it biases how attractive someone is perceived-a trustworthiness \"halo effect.\" In contrast, in goal-agnostic environments, we do not find any evidence of factorization; instead, people encode multidimensional social information in an entwined and holistic fashion that distorts their perceptions of social attributes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142971014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Suhaib Abdurahman, Nils K Reimer, Preni Golazizian, Elisa Baek, Yixuan Shen, Jackson Trager, Roshni Lulla, Jonas Kaplan, Carolyn Parkinson, Morteza Dehghani
{"title":"Targeting audiences' moral values shapes misinformation sharing.","authors":"Suhaib Abdurahman, Nils K Reimer, Preni Golazizian, Elisa Baek, Yixuan Shen, Jackson Trager, Roshni Lulla, Jonas Kaplan, Carolyn Parkinson, Morteza Dehghani","doi":"10.1037/xge0001714","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001714","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Does aligning misinformation content with individuals' core moral values facilitate its spread? We investigate this question in three behavioral experiments (<i>N</i><sub>1<i>a</i></sub> = 615; <i>N</i><sub>1<i>b</i></sub> = 505; <i>N</i>₂ = 533) that examine how the alignment of audience values and misinformation framing affects sharing behavior, in conjunction with analyzing real-world Twitter data (<i>N</i> = 20,235; 809,414 tweets) that explores how aligning the moral values of message senders with misinformation content influences its dissemination in the context of COVID-19 vaccination misinformation. First, we investigate how aligning messages' moral framing with participants' moral values impacts participants' intentions to share true and false news headlines and whether this effect is driven by a lack of analytical thinking. Our results show that framing a post such that it aligns with audiences' moral values leads to increased sharing intentions, independent of headline familiarity, and participants' political ideology but find no effect of analytical thinking. Furthermore, we find that moral alignment facilitates sharing misinformation more so than true information. Next, we use natural language processing to determine messages' moral framing and senders' political ideology. We find that an alignment of moral framing and ideology facilitates the spread of misinformation. Our findings suggest that (a) targeting audiences' core values can be used to influence the dissemination of (mis)information on social media platforms; (b) partisan divides in misinformation sharing can be, at least partially, explained through alignment between audiences' underlying moral values and moral framing that often accompanies content shared online; and (c) this effect is driven by motivational factors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142970987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yeray Mera, Ariana Modirrousta-Galian, Gemma Thomas, Philip A Higham, Tina Seabrooke
{"title":"Erring on the side of caution: Two failures to replicate the derring effect.","authors":"Yeray Mera, Ariana Modirrousta-Galian, Gemma Thomas, Philip A Higham, Tina Seabrooke","doi":"10.1037/xge0001707","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001707","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>It has been claimed that deliberately making errors while studying, even when the correct answers are provided, can enhance memory for the correct answers, a phenomenon termed the derring effect. Such deliberate erring has been shown to outperform other learning techniques, including copying and underlining, elaborative studying with concept mapping, and synonym generation. To date, however, the derring effect has only been demonstrated by a single group of researchers and in a single population of participants. This article presents two independent, preregistered replication attempts of the derring effect. In Experiment 1, participants studied 36 term-definition concepts in a within-subjects, laboratory study. On error-correction trials, participants were presented with a term-definition concept and were asked to generate an incorrect definition before correcting it. Error-correction trials were compared with copy trials, where participants simply copied the term-definition concepts and underlined the key concepts. Experiment 2 was an online study in which participants studied trivia facts using a similar protocol. Memory for the studied facts was then tested either immediately (Experiments 1 and 2) or after 2 days (Experiment 1). Unlike the original demonstrations of the derring effect, cued-recall performance did not significantly differ between the error-correction and copy conditions, and the Bayes factors provided moderate support for the null hypothesis in both experiments. We discuss potential explanations for our findings and consider them in relation to key theories and the broader literature on the role of errors in learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142971010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Birte Moeller, Christian Beste, Alexander Münchau, Christian Frings
{"title":"Large scale event segmentation affects the microlevel action control processes.","authors":"Birte Moeller, Christian Beste, Alexander Münchau, Christian Frings","doi":"10.1037/xge0001681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001681","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>How do we make sense of our surroundings? A widely recognized field in cognitive psychology suggests that many important functions like memory of incidents, reasoning, and attention depend on the way we segment the ongoing stream of perception (Zacks & Swallow, 2007). An open question still is, how the structure generated from a perceptual stream translates into behavior. To address this question, we combined the findings in event segmentation literature with another influential body of literature that analyzes mechanisms behind the control of individual actions (Frings et al., 2020). Specifically, we analyzed how two very basic mechanisms in action control (binding and retrieval) are affected by boundaries between events. Two comic scenarios with different characters were used to implement events and boundaries between events. In two experiments, we measured binding and retrieval between individually executed responses that could be part of the same or separate events. In Experiment 1, we found larger binding effects for responses that were integrated within an event than for responses that had to be integrated across an event boundary. In Experiment 2, we found that the effect of retrieval of a past response on further actions was hampered by an event boundary. Together, the experiments indicate that the structure we pick up from our environment can translate into ongoing action via modulation of the two basic mechanisms binding and retrieval. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":15698,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142971017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}