Advances In Social Psychology Research Articles

Implicit Evaluation Mechanisms in Marketing Research: an Overview of Formation and Measurement of Implicit Attitude

For a long time, examining the subtle and unintended effects of people's social environments on their thoughts and behaviors has been a central goal of social psychology researchers. Advances in social psychology have proven the importance of studying not only the conscious mechanisms of humans but also the "implicit" and "automatic" ones. Researchers in social psychology distinguish explicit attitudes, evaluations resulting from an introspective effort, from implicit attitudes, automatic evaluations of which the individual may not be aware. Cognitive psychology researchers have already proven that implicit beliefs are much more important in decision-making than explicit beliefs even in what might be considered rational and/or scientific realms. Greenwald and Banaji (1995) introduced the term implicit social cognition to describe cognitive processes that occur outside of human consciousness. Implicit social cognitions were initially applied to psychology, but they are beginning to be introduced in other disciplines, notably in marketing. This article aims to provide a conceptual framework of the implicit attitude and its measurement tools through a multidisciplinary theoretical exploration. Therefore, the research method used in this paper is the analysis of the classic literature. This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of implicit mechanisms in the marketing field. This review theoretically proves that the study of implicit social cognitions is a field of research with many challenges, particularly related to consumer behavior analysis because it allows marketers to understand influences unknown to the subject himself.

Original Interpretation of Attitudes in the Context of Advertising

Research on consumer attitudes and their change under advertising influence is becoming a defining feature in advertising communication. The present review aims to outline recent advances in social psychology on the concept of “attitude” with an emphasis on the possibility of consumer attitudes being shaped by various advertisements. Some models of attitude formation and change are discussed, as well as some current views on the stability and strength of attitudes as part of advertising. The importance of the general attitude towards advertising, the credibility of advertising, as well as the ways of promoting products and services to achieve the most effective perception, remembering and the achieved impact through advertising is emphasized. Generalizations are synthesized for future research on the different attitudes and achievement of advertising effectiveness as a marketing communication tool.

Call for Nominations for Editor-in-Chief of Social Psychology

Free AccessCall for Nominations for Editor-in-Chief of Social PsychologyPublished Online:November 06, 2019https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000405PDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditE-Mail SectionsMoreSocial Psychology is looking for a new Editor-in-Chief for an editorial term starting summer 2020. The journal covers all areas of social psychology, publishing innovative and methodologically sound research and serving as an international forum for scientific discussion and debate in the field of social psychology. Topics include all basic social psychological research themes, methodological advances in social psychology, as well as research in applied fields of social psychology. The journal is committed to principles of open science and replicability. It is published by Hogrefe Publishing. The journal maintains links to the social psychology section of the German Psychology Society (DGPs).Timeline and DetailsIdeally, the new Editor-in-chief should start onSeptember 1, 2020.The publisher provides administrative support as well as a budget for an editorial assistant and various other activities.More information can be obtained from the current Editor-in-Chief, Kai Epstude (k.epstude@rug.nl).More information about the journal can be found here: https://us.hogrefe.com/products/journals/social-psychologyNominations, including self-nominations, will be reviewed by the current editorial team. The final decision will be made in close coordination with the publisher and the board of the social psychology section of the DGPs. Nominations should be submitted via email by January 31, 2020, and should include a CV of the applicant as well as a letter of motivation.For the Editorial Team, Kai Epstude, University of Groningen, Department of Psychology, Grote Kruisstraat 2/1, 9712 TS, Groningen, The Netherlands, E-mail k.epstude@rug.nlFiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 0Issue 0ISSN: 1864-9335eISSN: 2151-2590 InformationSocial Psychology (2019), 0, pp. 1-1 https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000405.© 2019Hogrefe Publishing

Enhancing the Conceptualization and Measurement of Implicit and Explicit Affective Evaluations: A Case Study in Disordered Eating

AbstractAffective evaluations (i.e., evaluations of affectively evocative stimuli) play important roles in many behaviors, including clinically relevant behaviors like disordered eating. Understanding automatic and controlled affective evaluations can enhance prediction and treatment of more deliberate versus more impulsive clinical behaviors, respectively. However, methodological and theoretical shortcomings cloud the implicit affective evaluation literature, particularly as applied in clinical psychology. This article aims to improve the clinical science of implicit and explicit affective evaluation by capitalizing on theoretical and methodological advancements drawn from implicit social cognition. We recommend three key enhancements to the affective evaluation literature: improve the structural comparability between indirect and direct measures, assess evaluations on both valence and arousal dimensions of affect, and carefully characterize and select stimuli. Additional improvements to analytic approaches (e.g., mixed effects modeling and process dissociation) are also recommended. Such efforts will advance our theoretical understanding of the relative contributions of automatic and controlled processes to clinically relevant affective evaluation, thereby informing assessment and improving intervention. Applying advanced methodologies of implicit cognition to clinical phenomena will also reiterate and reinforce the use of these advances in social psychology.

Integrating psychometric and cultural theory approaches to formulate an alternative measure of risk perception

Psychometric and cultural theory are key approaches used to explain risk perceptions. However, both approaches explain only 20 and 5–10% of the variance of risk perceptions, respectively. Through advances in social psychology, terror management theory revealed that certain survey questions used in the psychometric approach primed thoughts of death. Such unintentional priming evoked defense mechanisms that would subconsciously activate participants’ cultural biases and values when answering some questions but not others. There are two implications: one, psychometric theorists need to modify their questionnaires to reduce the incidence of priming thoughts of death; and two, integrating the psychometric and cultural theory approaches may potentially explain a higher amount of variance in risk perceptions. Specifically, attitudes (psychometric approach), demographics, affect and past behavior collectively influence cultural biases, which in turn exert an effect on risk perception. However, such a model calls for an appropriate measure of the dynamic nature of cultural biases that current attitudinal measures fall short of. Drawing from methodology within industrial/organizational psychology, the Situational Judgment Test (SJT) is proposed as an alternative measure for risk perception. Steps to designing an SJT are outlined and followed through to culminate in a 10-item SJT that measures cultural biases.

Old Media Policy Failures, New Media Policy Challenges

This paper deals with two related subjects. The first is the past failure of economic analysis to trigger elimination of welfare-reducing public policies affecting the older mass media technologies, such as broadcasting. The second is some speculation about future policy issues that may continue or arise from the technical characteristics of the new broadband media, combined with advances in social psychology, neuroscience and behavioral economics. I draw two principal conclusions. First, the failure of economic analysis to stimulate fundamental reform of media regulation is due largely to the fact that policy makers have greater incentives to focus on the allocation of economic rents among interest groups than to promote consumer welfare. Second, it is clear that IP-based technology is replacing old media such as newspapers and broadcast stations. The technology has the potential to greatly enhance competition and diversity, and to reduce the cost of access by consumers and suppliers to each other. However, regulation is not likely to be reduced, because a whole new rationale for media regulation is being developed. The new rational will be a market failure, based on the adverse welfare effects of competitive media content that is responsive to consumers’ cognitive impairments. This paper was first presented at a 2009 University of Bayreuth conference on the future of public broadcasting in Germany. While my point of reference is media structure and policy in the United States, I believe that most of what I have to say is also applicable to other countries, including Germany and other members of the European Union. For example, new media technology is challenging the highly concentrated “public” structure of German television, and will continue to do so unless policymakers intervene. The externality rational for public television in Germany is of fading importance, but the argument for public control might be strengthened in the future by welfare-reducing market imperfections in commercial media content.

Perceived Parental Rearing Style, Self-Esteem and Self-Criticism as Predictors of Happiness

This study set out to determine to what extent three recalled parental (care, discouragement of behavioural freedom, denial of psychological autonomy), self-esteem, and self-criticism predicted self-rated happiness in a normal, non-clinical, population of young people in their late teens and early 20s. Three hundred and sixty-five participants completed four questionnaires: Parental Bonding Instrument (Parker, Tupling and Brown: 1979, British Journal of Medical Psychology 55, pp. 1–10), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg: 1965, Society and the Adolescent Self-Image (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ)), Self-Criticism Questionnaire (Brewin, Firth-Cozens, Furnham and McManus: 1992, Journal of Abnormal Psychology 101, pp. 561–566), and the Oxford Happiness Inventory (Argyle, Martin and Crossland: 1989, Recent Advances in Social Psychology: An International Perspective (Elsevier, North Holland)). Regressions showed self-esteem (the positive five items) to be the most dominant and powerful correlate of happiness. Maternal care was a significant correlate of both self-esteem and self-criticism. Maternal care was the only direct correlate of happiness when paternal and maternal rearing styles were examined together suggesting that the warmth showed by mothers towards their children was particularly beneficial in increasing the offsprings' scores on self-reported happiness.

Strategic identities in cyberspace.

This paper aims at describing, according to the recent advances in social psychology and Computer Mediated Communication, how identities are perceived and constructed in cyberspace. All interactions analyzed in this study were performed within "Euroland," a collaborative virtual environment. The interacting community was composed of students, teachers, and researchers working on a transnational educational project. Practices and dialogues within Euroland are analyzed using an ethnographic and conversational method. A sample of discourses and actions that occurred during 8 months of time, selected according to the research aims, was analyzed. During online connections, users were personified by an "Avatar." Avatars are able to walk, fly, and look around the virtual world. They are also able to build and manipulate three-dimensional objects, perform virtual actions, and chat with other connected users. Results showed that "Eurolanders" showed and constructed their identities using strategic "positioning" depending on the interactive situation. Identities are thus dynamic and strongly related to the context, created and constantly recreated by the users. It is concluded that specific features offered by the Euroland environment are exploited by the users as resources to play with, while moving from one strategic positioning to another. Cyber identities involve resources given by specific technological tools and by community. The cyber-identity construction process seems to be highly congruent to the advances in the dialogical perspective in psychology, where identities are considered in their conceptualizations as multiple, "multivoiced," "positioned," and context-dependent.

Recent Theoretical Advances in Social Psychology: Progress and Promises

Any special issue entitled advances in social psychology is bound to be disappointing to many segments of the field, since it makes possible invidious comparisons between what is included in the journal and what is not. We would like to begin by stating up front that what we have included in the special issue reflects both a sample of the styles of work submitted for consideration and our own editorial efforts to select pieces that would be provocative. The articles included in this special issue do not represent a random sampling of the most current theoretical developments in the field. However, they do provide a clear sense of progress, addressing old themes and substantive topics from new vantage points. The topics will be familiar to mainstream social psychologists: attitudes and behavior, socialization, the production and reproduction of culture, face-management and language use, person perception, the patterning of affiliation, group growth and development, collective action, and the emergence of social order. In addition, recent metatheoretical themes in sociological theorizing are reflected in the pages of this special issue: agency and structure, microprocesses and macrostructures and objective versus subjective perspectives on social reality (Ritzer, 1988). We will describe the nature of the contributions to this special issue and in doing so, draw more general implications of this work for future theoretical and empirical developments in social psychology.

Advances in Social Psychology During the Postcrisis Era

Advances in Social Psychology During the Postcrisis Era