Accuracy Motivation Research Articles

Unfixing the fixed pie: a motivated information-processing approach to integrative negotiation.

Negotiators tend to believe that own and other's outcomes are diametrically opposed. When such fixed-pie perceptions (FPPs) are not revised during negotiation, integrative agreements are unlikely. It was predicted that accuracy motivation helps negotiators to release their FPPs. In 2 experiments, accuracy motivation was manipulated by (not) holding negotiators accountable for the manner in which they negotiated. Experiment 1 showed that accountability reduced FPPs during face-to-face negotiation and produced more integrative agreements. Experiment 2 corroborated these results: Accountable negotiators revised their FPPs even when information exchange was experimentally held constant. Experiment 2 also showed that accountability is effective during the encoding of outcome information. Negotiators appear flexible in their reliance on FPPs. which is consistent with a motivated information-processing model of negotiation.

Unfixing the fixed pie: A motivated information-processing approach to integrative negotiation.

Negotiators tend to believe that own and other's outcomes are diametrically opposed. When such fixed-pie perceptions (FPPs) are not revised during negotiation, integrative agreements are unlikely. It was predicted that accuracy motivation helps negotiators to release their FPPs. In 2 experiments, accuracy motivation was manipulated by (not) holding negotiators accountable for the manner in which they negotiated. Experiment 1 showed that accountability reduced FPPs during face-to-face negotiation and produced more integrative agreements. Experiment 2 corroborated these results: Accountable negotiators revised their FPPs even when information exchange was experimentally held constant. Experiment 2 also showed that accountability is effective during the encoding of outcome information. Negotiators appear flexible in their reliance on FPPs. which is consistent with a motivated information-processing model of negotiation.

How often did I do it? Experienced ease of retrieval and frequency estimates of past behavior

The present research investigates the role of experienced ease of retrieval in frequency estimates of personally performed past behavior. Based on the logic that it is more difficult to remember more than a few different personal instances of past bicycle use, we speculated that the experienced ease (or difficulty) associated with this task rather than the content of recall guides subsequent frequency estimates of past bicycle use. Furthermore, to test whether the possible influence of the experienced ease of recall can be attenuated, we investigated the effects of the number of recalled examples on the frequency estimates under low and high accuracy motivation conditions. Results of two experiments showed that participants' frequency estimates were lower after they had generated 8 rather than 3 examples. However, this effect did not emerge when participants were motivated to be accurate in their estimates.

The Effects of Motivation on Narrative Content and Structure

This study examined the effects of motivation on the content and structure of narratives. Forty triads of participants engaged in a 15-minute teamwork task. Following this task, participants were given either positive or negative feedback on their performance. Participants were then separated and told to write a narrative concerning their experiences. Participants were given instructions designed to induce either a self-interest motivation or an accuracy motivation when creating the narratives. Results showed that participants experiencing a self-interest motive constructed narratives emphasizing the participants’ positive contributions to the group task. Also, participants with a self-interest motive were more likely to emphasize self-related cognitions and actions. Narratives of accuracy-motivated participants included more details, were more focused on the consequences of actions, and had a tighter causal structure. Finally, feedback also affected both content and structure. Thus, motivation influences not just the content of a story but also how a story is constructed.

Effects of Outcome Dependency on Correspondence Bias

The literature on correspondence bias suggests that the bias is increased when perceivers depend on an actor because they are motivated to know the actor’s dispositions and predict future behavior. However, outcome dependency produces enhanced attention and accuracy motivation, which should facilitate situational correction and reduce the correspondence bias. An experiment was conducted in which both participants’ dependency on an actor and the actor’s behavioral freedom were manipulated. The correspondence bias was reduced among dependent participants but only in judgments that were highly relevant to predicting behavior that could affect their own outcomes. This reduction of the correspondence bias was associated with longer reading times. Furthermore, it was more pronounced in conditions in which the potential costs of an inaccurate dispositional inference were higher.

Resisting Stereotype Change: The Role of Motivation and Attentional Capacity in Defending Social Beliefs

We hypothesized that, by default, perceivers work to defend their social beliefs when counter stereotypic information is encountered. This process was expected to be circumvented when perceivers (a) adopt an accuracy orientation, or (b) lack the cognitive resources required for protecting their stereotypic beliefs. We examined this issue by manipulating perceivers' motivation and attentional capacity. Participants formed impressions of several targets displaying stereotype-consistent, -inconsistent, or -irrelevant behavior. Stereotypicality of participants' subsequent group perceptions was assessed via trait ratings. As predicted, following exposure to counter stereotypic information, participants maintained relatively greater levels of stereotyping when accuracy motivation was low and processing resources were high. We conclude that, although perceivers are typically motivated to defend their stereotypes, this process is effortful and can be disrupted by the imposition of a cognitive load or superseded by the induction of accuracy motivation.

Accuracy Motivation, Consensus Information, and the Law of Large Numbers: Effects on Attitude Judgment in the Absence of Argumentation

This study examined the influence of majority opinion on attitudes in the absence of persuasive argumentation. Participants who were either high or low in accuracy motivation were presented with an opinion poll that conveyed consensus information and the sample size of the poll. According to the law of large numbers (LLN), large polls provide more reliable estimates of consensus than smaller polls. Results generally supported predictions. Less-motivated participants tended to be influenced by consensus regardless of poll size, whereas highly motivated participants based attitudes on this information only if the poll was reliably large. Thus, participants who were highly motivated seemed to appreciate the LLN when making their attitude judgments. Consistent with the heuristic-systematic model, process measures indicated that consensus influenced attitudes through both heuristic and biased systematic processing under high motivation, but it influenced attitudes only via heuristic processing when motivation was low.

Motivated Cognitive Processing and Attitude Change

Two experiments investigated cognitive processing and attitudes under different motivations. In Experiment 1, 63 participants had either strong nondirectional (accuracy) or directional (defensive, impression) motives. Accuracy motivation resulted in extensive objective processing. Defensive motivation resulted in extensive biased processing. Impression motivation resulted in extensive processing that was directional in some measures but balanced in other measures. Cognitive processing mediated the effects of motivation on attitudes, which were stable across measurements. In Experiment 2, 44 participants processed under two combined strong motivations. Accuracy was successfully combined with directional motivation in both processing and attitudes. It reduced bias when combined with impression motivation but not when combined with defensive motivation. Two opposing directional motivations were difficult to combine, and participants eventually abandoned extensive processing.

The impact of accuracy motivation on interpretation, comparison, and correction processes: Accuracy × knowledge accessibility effects.

Four studies provide evidence for the notion that there may be boundaries to the extent to which accuracy motivation may help perceivers to escape the influence of fortuitously activated information. Specifically, although accuracy motivations may eliminate assimilative accessibility effects, they are less likely to eliminate contrastive accessibility effects. It was found that the occurrence of different types of contrast effects (comparison and correction) was not significantly affected by participants' accuracy motivations. Furthermore, it was found that the mechanisms instigated by accuracy motivations differ from those ignited by correction instructions: Accuracy motivations attenuate assimilation effects because perceivers add target interpretations to the one suggested by primed information. Conversely, it was found that correction instructions yield contrast and prompt respondents to remove the priming event's influence from their reaction to the target.

The effect of accuracy motivation on face function in person perception

The present study investigated the effects of accuracy motivation and face attractiveness on person perception. Sixty-two female undergraduate and professional school students participated in an experiment. Half of them were motivated to form accurate impression by experimental manipulations of accountability (expecting to describe their impression later to a third party). After studying behavioral descriptions and photograph of target, they were asked to form impression and recall the descriptions. Main results were as follows: (1) On social desirability, accuracy motivation reduced the effect of positive face. (2) Accuracy motivation induced subjects to recall more behavioral descriptions.

Burden of proof in detection of submaximal effort

The recent increase in workers' compensation litigation and the escalating costs of healthcare have created a need for accurate identification of individuals who put forth submaximal effort during functional capacity testing. This paper reviews methods healthcare professionals can use to prove submaximal efforts and specifically addresses the importance of test reliability, subjective and objective measures of submaximal effort (including the DASH questionnaire, 5-rung and rapid exchange grip strength measures, forced-choice testing and the MMPI), techniques used to elicit maximal effort and test accuracy and patient motivations and examiner biases. Use of these methods will contribute to the establishment of a functionally sound healthcare system.

Contingent Processes of Source Identification

Effective communication requires that consumers attribute the message content to its intended source. The proposed framework distinguishes four types of source identification processes—cued retrieval, memory-trace refreshment, schematic inferencing, and pure guessing—and delineates their contingencies. Two experiments examine portions of the framework, and experiment 2 introduces a new methodology for decomposing multiple processes. Findings suggest that when cued retrieval fails, consumers try to refresh the original memory trace for the learning episode—a process that is effortful. They invoke schematic inferencing only if the original memory trace cannot be refreshed. Reliance on cued retrieval seems to require little processing capacity. If there is some motivation for accuracy, pure guessing appears to be invoked only as a last resort.

Forming Shared Impressions Through Conversation: An Adaptation of the Continuum Model

This article adapts the assumptions of the continuum model of impression formation to address the development of shared impressions in dyads. Two experiments tested the additional assumption that the development of shared impressions depends on consensus motivation. Consensus motivation should focus conversation around stereotype-consistent information and encourage shared stereotypic impressions. However, when dyads are motivated by both consensus and accuracy, they should increase focus on stereotype-inconsistent information, then form shared individuated impressions. In both experiments, hypotheses generally were confirmed regarding consensus motivation. However, hypotheses regarding accuracy motivation met with mixed success; individuating processes were detected but failed to encourage individuated impressions. The discussion explores reasons why these experiments provide only partial support for the extended continuum model.

Accuracy motivation attenuates covert priming: The systematic reprocessing of social information.

Three studies tested the hypothesis that assimilation of impressions to primed constructs is a product of relatively superficial processing and is unlikely to occur when behavioral information about a target person is processed systematically. In Study 1, the impressions of accuracy-motivated Ss did not assimilate to covertly primed trait constructs, although the impressions of unmotivated Ss did. Studies 2 and 3 showed that when Ss become accuracy motivated after exposure to target information, both retrieval of that information and opportunity for effeortful processing of it were necessary to eliminate assimilation effects. In addition, accuracy-motivated Ss showed no special attention to primes or awareness of their influence on judgment

Accuracy motivation attenuates covert priming: The systematic reprocessing of social information.

Accuracy motivation attenuates covert priming: The systematic reprocessing of social information.

Brand name as a heuristic cue: The effects of task importance and expectancy confirmation on consumer judgments

Previous research on brand name utilization in consumer judgments has yielded mixed results. In this study, we attempted to understand brand name effects within the framework of the heuristic-systematic model. Subjects read a message that portrayed a new product as possessing either important or unimportant attributes, and the product was associated with either a favorable brand name or an unfavorable brand name. Brand name valence was thus either congruent or incongruent with attribute importance. Accuracy motivation was also manipulated by varying the importance of subjects' processing task. Results show that low-task importance subjects' evaluations were influenced only by brand name valence. High-task importance subjects' evaluations were affected only by attribute importance in the incongruent conditions, whereas both attribute importance and brand name valence influenced evaluations in the congruent conditions. The findings indicate that both consumers' level of motivation, and the extent to which brand name based expectations are confirmed by subsequent processing of attribute information moderate brand name utilization. Also, the results extend previous research relevant to the heuristic-systematic model's additivity and attenuation assumptions.

INFORMATION PROCESSING AND THE MODIFICATION OF AN "IMPULSIVE CONCEPTUAL TEMPO"

HEIDER, ELEANOR ROSCH. Information Processing and the Modification of an Impulsive Conceptual Tempo. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1971, 42, 12761281. 80 middle-class and 80 lower-class boys were tested on a visual and a verbal task under 3 conditions designed to modify an tempo. For both tasks, instructions which contained an explanation of appropriate task strategy were more efective in reducing errors and lengthening response latency for lower-class impulsive Ss than was either an enforced delay of response or increased motivation for accuracy.

Optimal informational discrepancies for persistent communication

Motivation for accuracy was predicted to lead to an inverted-U effect of interpersonal disagreement on amount of task-relevant discussion. A method was developed for experimentally creating interpersonal discrepancies along two dimensions—implicational structure (IS) and content of information—and validated on 130 undergraduate subjects. Subsequently, 3 levels of discrepancy in IS and in content were produced within 36 randomly composed dyads, all of whom were motivated for accuracy of decisions. Amount of talking was significantly greater in the intermediate IS discrepancy dyads than in the low or high IS discrepancy dyads. Content discrepancy in itself had no significant effect. The results support an optimal arousal hypothesis of communication, and point to a limitation in the linear discrepancy hypothesis.