Congruency Effect Research Articles

The relationship between responsibility attribution and session outcomes: Two‐dimension attribution and two‐person perspective

Blame attribution (who is to blame for problem causes) and solution attribution (who is to control problem solving) are two critical dimensions of responsibility attribution in psychotherapy. The present study aimed to (1) investigate the impacts of blame attribution and solution attribution on session outcomes from both client and therapist perspectives and (2) clarify the relationship between the therapist-client congruence of responsibility attribution and session outcomes. A total of 69 clients were recruited at a university counselling centre. Client-rated responsibility attribution (to what extent they were responsible for the causes and solution of their current concerns), therapist-rated responsibility attribution (to what extent they thought their clients should be responsible for the causes and solution of clients' current concerns), client-rated session quality and symptom level for each session were collected across 387 sessions. Multilevel regression was used to explore the relationship between responsibility attribution and session outcomes. Truth and bias model and response surface analysis were utilized to analyse the within-client and between-client client-therapist congruence effects. The main results included that (1) the clients with higher solution responsibility had more symptom improvement and higher evaluation of session quality (between-client level). A client's perceived solution responsibility predicted better session quality and fewer next session symptom levels (within-client level). (2) If a therapist attributed more solution responsibility to his/her client, the session quality was higher (within-client level). (3) Neither clients' nor therapists' perspectives on blame attribution directly affected session outcomes. But the higher the client's blame for his/her problem causes, the stronger the association between solution responsibility and symptom reduction (within-client level). (4) Higher within-client client-therapist congruence on blame responsibility led to better session outcomes. The clients' solution responsibility and client-therapist congruence on blame for problem causes contribute to session outcomes in psychotherapy.

Sleep bolsters schematically incongruent memories.

Our ability to recall memories is improved when sleep follows learning, suggesting that sleep facilitates memory consolidation. A number of factors are thought to influence the impact of sleep on newly learned information, such as whether or not we rehearse that information (e.g. via restudy or retrieval practice), or the extent to which the information is consistent with our pre-existing schematic knowledge. In this pre-registered, online study, we examined the effects of both rehearsal and schematic congruency on overnight consolidation. Participants learned noun-colour pairings (e.g. elephant-red) and rated each pairing as plausible or implausible before completing a baseline memory assessment. Afterwards, participants engaged in a period of restudy or retrieval practice for the pairings, and then entered a 12 h retention interval of overnight sleep or daytime wakefulness. Follow-up assessments were completed immediately after sleep or wake, and again 24 h after learning. Our data indicated that overnight consolidation was amplified for restudied relative to retested noun-colour pairings, but only when sleep occurred soon after learning. Furthermore, whereas plausible (i.e. schematically congruent) pairings were generally better remembered than implausible (i.e. schematically incongruent) pairings, the benefits of sleep were stronger for implausible relative to plausible memories. These findings challenge the notion that schema-conformant memories are preferentially strengthened during post-learning sleep.

Deliberate control over facial expressions in motherhood. Evidence from a Stroop-like task

The deliberate control of facial expressions is an important ability in human interactions, in particular for mothers with prelinguistic infants. Because research on this topic is still scarce, we investigated the control over facial expressions in a Stroop-like paradigm. Mothers of 2–6 months old infants and nullipara women produced smiles and frowns in response to verbal commands written on distractor faces of adults or infants showing expressions of happiness or anger/distress. Analyses of video recordings with a machine classifier for facial expression revealed pronounced effects of congruency between the expressions required by the participants and those displayed by the face stimuli on the onset latencies of the deliberate facial expressions. With adult distractor faces this Stroop effect was similar whether participants smiled or frowned. With infant distractor faces mothers and non-mothers showed indistinguishable Stroop effects on smile responses; however, for frown responses, the Stroop effect in mothers was smaller than in non-mothers. We suggest that for frown responses in mothers when facing infants, the effect of mimicry or stimulus response compatibility, leading to the Stroop effect, is offset by a caregiving response or empathy.

Does Giving and Receiving Helping Behavior Fit Matter? The Role of Neighboring Behavior Fit in Working Residents' Mental Health.

Ecological systems theory suggests that for individuals, the three domains of community, family, and work are connected and transfer resources among each other. In the community, residents receive and give helping behavior from and to their neighbors. Neighboring behavior underlies interactions among residents in the community, thereby influencing the work and family domains. Building on ecological systems theory, the authors propose that the compatibility of receiving and giving helping behavior among working residents is related to their mental health. Additionally, the authors propose that this congruence effect functions through work-family interference and meaning in life. Using a two-stage field questionnaire survey, this study collected data from 220 full-time Chinese working residents. Using polynomial regression and response surface analysis, receiving-giving neighboring behavior fit was found to be positively associated with mental health. Furthermore, receiving-giving neighboring behavior fit enhances mental health by decreasing work-family interference and promoting meaning in life. When giving and receiving neighboring behavior are imbalanced, working residents have higher levels of mental health when they received more neighboring behavior than they gave, in comparison to the condition when they gave more neighboring behavior than they received. Work-family interference represents inter-role conflict in which pressures from the family and work domains are mutually incompatible. Including both work to family interference and family to work interference, work-family interferences reflect the stress that working residents experience in their family and work domains. By exploring the mediating role of work-family interference, this study shows how the spillover of the benefits of neighboring behavior into the family and work domains enhances working residents' mental health. This study highlights the importance of balancing receiving and giving neighboring behavior for maintaining mental health, thus contributing both theoretically and practically to ecological systems theory.

The mind of the beholder: congruence effects in luxury product placements

This research demonstrates that viewers increase purchase intentions when they view luxury product placements in movie scenes, particularly when luxury associations are activated and when background scenes are congruent with the product’s luxury image. In Study 1, participants view a luxury handbag appearing against upscale congruent or downscale incongruent backgrounds. In Study 2, participants are primed to associate with high or low social classes before they view a luxury product placed in upscale or downscale movie scenes. In Study 3, participants read a news article that describes the placed luxury product as a genuine high-end product or as a discount brand.

Cross-modal Transfer of Valence or Arousal from Music to Word Targets in Affective Priming?

ABSTRACT This registered report considers how emotion induced in an auditory modality (music) can influence affective evaluations of visual stimuli (words). Specifically, it seeks to determine which emotional dimension is transferred across modalities – valence or arousal – or whether the transferred dimension depends on the focus of attention (feature-specific attention allocation). Two experiments were carried out. The first was an affective priming paradigm that will allow for the orthogonal manipulation of valence and arousal in both the words and music, alongside a manipulation to direct participants’ attention to either the valence or the arousal dimension. Secondly, a lexical decision task allowed cross-modal transfer of valence and arousal to be probed without the focus of participants’ attention being manipulated. Congruence effects were present in the affective priming task – valence was transferred in both the valence and arousal tasks, whereas arousal was transferred in the arousal task only. Contrary to predictions, the lexical decision task did not exhibit any congruence effects.

Mechanisms from Person–Environment Fit to Professional Identity of Social Workers in China: The Roles of Person-Organization Value Congruence and Collective Psychological Ownership

Person-environment fit is identified as a significant factor in facilitating individuals’ professional identity, however, the understanding of its underlying mechanisms is still limited, especially among social workers. This study aims to investigate the serial mediating effects of person-organizational value congruence and collective psychological ownership when associated with a person-environment fit and professional identity. A total sample of 5965 social workers is drawn from the China Social Work Longitudinal Study (CSWLS) 2019. Results reveal that a serial mediating path from person-organizational value congruence with collective psychological ownership is posited to operate between a person-environment fit and professional identity. This study not only provides theoretical contributions for how person-environment fit influences professional identity, but also discusses implications for policy and practice. Future research directions, such as the adoption of longitudinal designs, use of objective measurement methods, and examination of cross-cultural generalizability, are also provided in this study.

Peripersonal space around the upper and the lower limbs

Peripersonal space (PPS), the space closely surrounding the body, is typically characterised by enhanced multisensory integration. Neurophysiological and behavioural studies have consistently shown stronger visuo-tactile integration when a visual stimulus is presented close to the tactually stimulate body part in near space (within PPS) than in far space. However, in the majority of these studies, tactile stimuli were delivered to the upper limbs, torso and face. Therefore, it is not known whether the space surrounding the lower limbs is characterised by similar multisensory properties. To address this question, we asked participants to complete two versions of the classic visuo-tactile crossmodal congruency task in which they had to perform speeded elevation judgements of tactile stimuli presented to the dorsum of the hand and foot while a simultaneous visual distractor was presented at spatially congruent or incongruent locations either in near or far space. In line with existing evidence, when the tactile target was presented to the hand, the size of the crossmodal congruency effect (CCE) decreased in far as compared to near space, suggesting stronger visuo-tactile multisensory integration within PPS. In contrast, when the tactile target was presented to the foot, the CCE decreased for visual distractors in near than far space. These findings show systematic differences between the representation of PPS around upper and lower limbs, suggesting that the multisensory properties of the different body part-centred representations of PPS are likely to depend on the potential actions performed by the different body parts.

Revisiting congruence effects in diversity research: views of diversity initiatives and experiences of belonging in a New Zealand healthcare organization

PurposeThis study drew on person-organization fit and ideological psychological contract theories to test whether inclusiveness, operationalized as sense of belonging, could be explained by congruence/discrepancy between employees' personal value of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and employees' views of perceived organizational commitment to these initiatives. The study also examined whether sense of belonging, and perspectives of DEI initiatives, differed between majority [New Zealand European (NZE)] and minority [Māori/Pasifika (MP)] workers.Design/methodology/approachA total of 771 employees from a New Zealand healthcare organization completed an online survey. Further to mean difference tests to contrast majority and minority group experiences, polynomial regressions with response surface methodology were conducted to examine congruence effects on sense of belonging.FindingsWhile MP workers attributed greater personal value to DEI initiatives and viewed the organization as prioritizing these initiatives compared to NZ European (NZE) workers, MP workers experienced a lower sense of belonging. Further, the authors' results show that congruence at higher levels of personal and organizational importance ascribed to DEI initiatives was associated with greater sense of belonging. Contrary to the deficiency-based discrepancy effect proposed, the lowest levels of belonging were experienced at low levels of organizational commitment to DEI, regardless of personal diversity value. Additionally, MP were more susceptible to ideological psychological contract breach than NZE workers.Practical implicationsThe authors' study highlights that while positive diversity climate perceptions are closely linked to perceptions of inclusion, organizations will discern the factors that contribute to or undermine inclusiveness by also gaging personal value DEI initiatives and the unique experiences of minority and majority groups.Originality/valueThis study is the first to examine the effect of diversity-related value congruence on employees' sense of belonging, and to uncover racioethnic differences in these effects.

Effects of in-game brand congruity on esports consumers' implicit and explicit memory

PurposeThis study aims to examine the impacts of brand congruity of in-game brand placement on esports consumers' implicit and explicit memory.Design/methodology/approachA 2 × 2 × 2 experimental design (N = 224) was used with an automobile racing game, NASCAR Heat 5. A series of statistical analyses, including MANOVA and logistic regressions, was conducted to test the proposed hypotheses.FindingsThe results revealed that ads on virtual billboards in the video game primed participants to create an implicit memory. Also, incongruent brands that were not very familiar to gamers provided greater impact than congruent brands.Originality/valueThis research is the first to test both implicit and explicit memory and provide practical evidence for the possibility of implicit memory building in the esports context. In addition, the current study also examined the impact of congruity to answer the previously inconsistent results.

Influence of physical features from peripheral vision on scene categorization in central vision

ABSTRACT The spatial resolution of the human visual field decreases considerably from the center to the periphery. However, several studies have highlighted the importance of peripheral vision for scene categorization. In Experiment 1, we investigated if peripheral vision could influence the scene categorization in central vision. We used photographs of indoor and outdoor scenes from which we extracted a central disk and a peripheral ring. Stimuli were composed of a central disk and a peripheral ring that could be either semantically congruent or incongruent. Participants had to categorize the central disk while ignoring the peripheral ring or the peripheral ring while ignoring the central disk. Results revealed a congruence effect of peripheral vision on central vision, as strong as the reverse. In Experiment 2, we investigated the nature of the physical signal in peripheral vision that influences the categorization in central vision. We used either intact, phase-preserved, or amplitude-preserved peripheral rings. Participants had to categorize the central disk while ignoring the peripheral ring. Results showed that only phase-preserved peripheral rings elicited a congruence effect as strong as the one observed with intact peripheral rings. Information contained in the phase spectrum (spatial configuration of the scene) may be critical in peripheral vision.

Exploring the Effect of Personality Congruencies on Brand Identification and Purchase Intentions

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to examine how brand reputation and uniqueness impact customer brand identification and purchase intent. Utilizing the survey data of 712 respondents, the research has also discovered the influence of paired personality congruencies – brand-consumer, brand-celebrity and consumer-celebrity on reputation and uniqueness of the brand, brand identification and consumer attitude towards the advertisement and the brand. The results revealed the positive influence of brand-consumer and brand-celebrity personality congruencies on brand reputation. However, brand uniqueness was only impacted by brand-celebrity personality congruence. Significant moderating effect of consumer-celebrity personality congruence was observed. By integrating all the three-personality congruencies in a single framework with consumer-celebrity personality congruency as a moderating variable, the study augurs well to the body of knowledge on celebrity endorsement. Discovering some interesting observations pertaining to the personality congruencies, brand identification and consumer behavioral intentions, the study contributes by extending business and managerial implications.

Two face masks are better than one: congruency effects in face matching.

Although the positive effects of congruency between stimuli are well replicated in face memory paradigms, mixed findings have been found in face matching. Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, face masks are now very common during daily life outdoor activities. Thus, the present study aims to further explore congruency effects in matching faces partially occluded by surgical masks. Observers performed a face matching task consisting of pairs of faces presented in full view (i.e., full-view condition), pairs of faces in which only one of the faces had a mask (i.e., one-mask condition), and pairs of faces in which both faces had a mask (i.e., two-mask condition). Although face masks disrupted performance in identity match and identity mismatch trials, in match trials, we found better performance in the two-mask condition compared to the one-mask condition. This finding highlights the importance of congruency between stimuli on face matching when telling faces together.

A diffusion model for the congruency sequence effect.

Two-choice reaction tasks for which stimuli differ on irrelevant and relevant dimensions (e.g., Simon, flanker, and Stroop tasks) show congruency effects. The diffusion model for conflict tasks (DMC) has provided a quantitative account of the mechanisms underlying decisions in such conflict tasks, but it has not been applied to the congruency sequence effect (CSE) for which the congruency on the prior trial influences performance on the current trial. The present study expands analysis of the reaction time (RT) distributions reflected by delta plots to the CSE, and then extends the DMC to simulate the results. With increasing RT: (1) the spatial Simon effect was almost unchanged following congruent trials but initially became smaller and finally reversed following incongruent trials; (2) the arrow-based Simon effects increased following both congruent and incongruent trials, but more so for the former than the latter; (3) the flanker congruency effect varied quadratically following congruent trials but increased linearly following incongruent trials. These results were modeled by the CSE-DMC, extended from the DMC with two additional assumptions: (1) feature integration influences only the controlled processes; (2) following incongruent trials, the automatic process is weakened. The results fit better with the CSE-DMC than with two variants that separately had only one of the two additional assumptions. These findings indicate that the CSEs for different conflict tasks have disparate RT distributions and that these disparities are likely due to the controlled and automatic processes being influenced differently for each trial sequence.

Emotional intelligence congruence: the influence of leader and follower emotional abilities on job satisfaction

PurposeLimited research has been devoted to the entanglement of emotions between leaders and followers (i.e. emotional congruence) and how these emotions may be altering job satisfaction. Current research hints that a leader's emotional intelligence (EI) directly influences follower's satisfaction at work. Using the affective events theory (AET), emotional contagion theory (ECT) and the multi-level model of emotion and leadership, this research attempts to directly examine perceptions of the leader–follower relationship and the relationship's enhancement of follower job satisfaction.Design/methodology/approachThis paper employs a survey among 427 USA-based workers to test a moderated model of the relationship between follower and leader EI and job satisfaction. The hypothesized relationships and moderation effects are examined using the SPSS macro PROCESS (Hayes, 2018). Common method variance (CMV) was analyzed and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) is presented.FindingsDirect effects support the hypotheses that follower and leader EI contribute to the job satisfaction of followers. Moderation effects support the enhancing effect of EI congruence, such that the relationship between follower and leader EI and follower job satisfaction is stronger at higher levels of congruence.Originality/valueThese findings are significant in that the findings are among the first to examine leader and follower EI similarity and the similarity's effect on an employee's satisfaction at work. The findings highlight new opportunities for leadership and emotion researchers to better understand the leader–follower relationship.

Gesture-Speech Integration in Typical and Atypical Adolescent Readers.

This study investigated gesture–speech integration (GSI) among adolescents who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) and those with typical hearing. Thirty-eight adolescents (19 with hearing loss) performed a Stroop-like task in which they watched 120 short video clips of gestures and actions twice at random. Participants were asked to press one button if the visual content of the speaker’s movements was related to a written word and to press another button if it was unrelated to a written word while accuracy rates and response times were recorded. We found stronger GSI effects among DHH participants than hearing participants. The semantic congruency effect was significantly larger in DHH participants than in hearing participants, and results of our experiments indicated a significantly larger gender congruency effect in DHH participants as compared to hearing participants. Results of this study shed light on GSI among DHH individuals and suggest future avenues for research examining the impact of gesture on language processing and communication in this population.

Bilingualism and executive attention: Evidence from studies of proactive and reactive control.

According to some accounts, the bilingual advantage is most pronounced in the domain of executive attention rather than inhibition and should therefore be more easily detected in conflict adaptation paradigms than in simple interference paradigms. We tested this idea using two conflict adaptation paradigms, one that elicits a list-wide proportion-congruent effect and one that elicits an item-specific proportion-congruent effect. In both cases, the relevant finding is that congruency effects are reduced when the proportion of congruent to incongruent items is smaller. These effects are validated measures of proactive and reactive control, respectively, and are aspects of executive attention known to be associated with individual differences in working memory capacity. We reasoned that if bilingualism affects executive attention in a similar way as does working memory capacity, indices of proactive and reactive control should be comparably associated with continuous variation in language status and working memory capacity. In two experiments, we replicated previous findings that working memory capacity is associated with variation in congruency effects (suggesting greater reliance on proactive control). In contrast, language status had no consistent association with performance, save for a hint that bilingualism may be associated with greater reliance on reactive control. Thus, the bilingual advantage may exist, but not in proactive control or any other aspects of executive attention that have been proposed thus far. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Excess and Defect: How Job-Family Responsibilities Congruence Effect the Employee Procrastination Behavior.

PurposePrior work suggests that responsibility is negatively associated with employee procrastination behavior. Based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, we suggest this view is oversimplified and propose that procrastination can be induced when employees have congruent job and family responsibilities via the mediating effect of emotional exhaustion.MethodsThis is a quantitative study of the configurational approach. Survey data were collected from 323 employees at two stages in southern Chinese internet enterprises in September 2020. A randomized cluster sample was used and an anonymous self-assessment questionnaire was distributed to all selected respondents (employees). Samples involved different departments, and the procrastination phenomenon is more significant among them. SPSS20.2 and MPLUS 8.3 software and Response Surface Analysis Strategy were used to test the hypotheses.ResultsThe data analysis results indicated that: a) employee procrastination behavior is higher when employees’ job responsibility and family responsibility are congruent than the incongruent configurations. b) Procrastination is lower when job-family dyads are congruent at high levels of responsibility compared the low levels. c) Procrastination decreases as employees’ job and family responsibilities become more discrepant (ie, incongruent); employees with low job-high family responsibilities procrastinate more than those with high job-low family responsibilities. d) Additionally, employee-experienced emotional exhaustion mediates the relationship in four configurations between job-family responsibilities congruence and procrastination behavior.ConclusionDrawing on the conservation of resources theory, we proposed a model clarifying how varying combinations of job and family responsibilities affect employee procrastination behavior. The results showed that there are significant differences in the impact of different job-family responsibility combinations on employee procrastination behavior. Employee procrastination behavior is higher when employees’ job-family responsibility are congruent than the incongruent configurations. Additionally, employee-experienced emotional exhaustion mediates the relationship in four configurations between job-family responsibilities congruence and procrastination behavior.

A Multilevel Study of the Relationship between CSR Promotion Climate and Happiness at Work via Organizational Identification: Moderation Effect of Leader-Followers Value Congruence.

The purpose of the present study is to examine the effects of team level Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) promotion climate on work happiness of team members. Furthermore, we investigate the mediating role of organizational identification at individual level and the moderating role of leader–follower value congruence at the team level in the relationship between CSR promotion climate and work happiness, thus overcoming the limitations of previous studies which mainly focused on a unitary level of analysis. To this end, a multilevel analysis was used, dealing with team- and individual-level relationships; the sample comprises 70 teams and 336 employees from 23 Korean firms. Our empirical analysis revealed that a team CSR promotion climate positively influenced team members’ happiness at work and organization identification. Furthermore, organization identification partially mediated the relationship between team CSR promotion climate and happiness at the workplace. By interacting with team CSR promotion climate, leader–followers value congruence positively regulated the influence of team CSR promotion climate on happiness at work. In this process, for a group with high leader–follower value congruence, the team CSR promotion climate strengthens team members’ happiness at the workplace. The study utilizes a multilevel analysis method to simultaneously verify team- and individual-level elements positively affecting team members’ happiness at work. Through this method, it confirmed that CSR promotion climate and team organization identification positively influence happiness at work. The theoretical and practical implications are presented, and directions for future research with limitations of the study are discussed.

Context effects on object recognition in real-world environments: A study protocol

Background: The environments that we live in impact on our ability to recognise objects, with recognition being facilitated when objects appear in expected locations (congruent) compared to unexpected locations (incongruent). However, these findings are based on experiments where the object is isolated from its environment. Moreover, it is not clear which components of the recognition process are impacted by the environment. In this experiment, we seek to examine the impact real world environments have on object recognition. Specifically, we will use mobile electroencephalography (mEEG) and augmented reality (AR) to investigate how the visual and semantic processing aspects of object recognition are changed by the environment. Methods: We will use AR to place congruent and incongruent virtual objects around indoor and outdoor environments. During the experiment a total of 34 participants will walk around the environments and find these objects while we record their eye movements and neural signals. We will perform two primary analyses. First, we will analyse the event-related potential (ERP) data using paired samples t-tests in the N300/400 time windows in an attempt to replicate congruency effects on the N300/400. Second, we will use representational similarity analysis (RSA) and computational models of vision and semantics to determine how visual and semantic processes are changed by congruency. Conclusions: Based on previous literature, we hypothesise that scene-object congruence would facilitate object recognition. For ERPs, we predict a congruency effect in the N300/N400, and for RSA we predict that higher level visual and semantic information will be represented earlier for congruent scenes than incongruent scenes. By collecting mEEG data while participants are exploring a real-world environment, we will be able to determine the impact of a natural context on object recognition, and the different processing stages of object recognition.