Implicit Evaluations Research Articles

Cultural Effects on English Language Teachers’ Judgments of Metaphoric Creativity: A Mixed‐Methods Approach

AbstractThis study explored cultural influences on English language teachers’ judgments of English metaphors created by Taiwanese learners of English. Based on a mixed‐methods approach, it delved into the rating severity and implicit evaluation criteria of two cultural groups of teachers: Taiwanese and Americans. Ten Taiwanese teachers and 10 American teachers evaluated 120 novel metaphoric expressions using the Consensual Assessment Technique (Amabile, 1996). Creativity in context: Update to the social psychology of creativity. They further filled out a creativity evaluation survey, which was designed to bring to light what qualities within the metaphors influenced their judgments of metaphoric creativity. With the teachers’ ratings being analyzed by means of many‐facet Rasch measurement, this study first indicated that the American teachers were more severe raters than the Taiwanese teachers, but no significant difference was found between them. Analysis of the evaluation survey further demonstrated that both cultural groups shared largely similar evaluation criteria; yet, two contrasts emerged between them. Specifically, the American teachers seemed to favor metaphors that expressed the creator's thoughts; by contrast, the Taiwanese teachers preferred metaphors that relied on readers’ imagination to work out the meanings. These findings shed light on implications for teaching creativity in English L2 classrooms and assessing learners’ creative language artifacts in an English L2 context.

A Second Chance for First Impressions? Exploring the Context-(In)Dependent Updating of Implicit Evaluations

Research on implicit evaluation has yielded mixed results, with some studies suggesting that implicit evaluations are relatively resistant to change and others showing that implicit evaluations can change rapidly in response to new information. To reconcile these findings, it has been suggested that changes in implicit evaluations can be limited to the context in which counterattitudinal information was acquired. The current research expands on evidence for such context-dependent changes by investigating whether two cases of rapid change—updating caused by a reinterpretation of earlier information and by exposure to diagnostic information—generalize across contexts or, instead, are limited to the context in which the qualifying information was acquired. Two experiments found that both reinterpretation of earlier information and diagnostic counterattitudinal information led to changes in implicit evaluations that generalized across contexts. Implications for the malleability of implicit evaluations and context-dependent changes in implicit evaluations are discussed.

Mechanisms underlying approach-avoidance instruction effects on implicit evaluation: Results of a preregistered adversarial collaboration

Previous research demonstrated that mere instructions to approach one stimulus and avoid another stimulus result in an implicit preference for the to-be-approached over the to-be-avoided stimulus. To investigate the mechanisms underlying approach-avoidance (AA) instruction effects, we tested predictions of a propositional account and an associative self-anchoring account in a preregistered adversarial collaboration. Consistent with the propositional account, Experiment 1 showed that avoidance instructions had a negative effect on implicit evaluations over and above the positive effect of approach instructions. Consistent with the associative self-anchoring account, Experiment 2 showed that changes in implicit self-stimulus linking mediated AA instruction effects on implicit evaluations. However, mediation was only partial, in that AA instructions showed a significant effect on implicit evaluations after controlling for implicit self-stimulus linking. Together, the results support the contribution of propositional processes to AA instruction effects; the results remain ambiguous regarding an additional contribution of associative self-anchoring.

Pyatigorsk State Linguistic University

Zavrumov Zaur Aslanovich – candidate of philology, professor assistant, rector deputy on scientific work and development of university intellectual potential. Pyatigorsk State Linguistic University. The article examines the intentionality and implication of irony from the perspective of its producer and recipient, which allows to identify and describe the functions of irony. The author postulates the existence of verbal and situational types of irony, the understanding of which is based on the knowledge of “compatibility” within the same context of the events, phenomena, objects of linguistic units. Decoding of irony is a cognitive mechanism, the implementation of which depends on the ability of the recipient to interpret the statements in the coordinates of the intentionality of the producer. The ironic meaning is the result of functioning of situational implicature. Receptive-interpretative activity aimed at decoding the ironic act that objectifies the specifics of irony as a pragmatic phenomenon which is always characterized by implicit evaluation. The multilevel nature of the phenomenon of irony makes polivarietiveness of its interpretation. Axiology statements, the underlying irony give grounds to consider it as the cognitive foundation of intentionality and implicational literary text, variously realized in different register fields: author, character, receptive and reflexiveinterpretative. Key words: irony, ironic discourse, ironic communication, intentionality, implicational, literary text .

Evaluation and Certainty in Analyst Reports: A Linguistic Analysis in the Polish Language

Studies of analyst reports and corporate disclosures written in the English language show that tone and other linguistic characteristics used in narratives convey information beyond that contained in hard, quantitative financial information. This paper extends the literature by focusing on analyst reports prepared in a non-English language and in a culture of high uncertainty avoidance. The goal of this paper is to determine what communication strategies are used by analysts who follow major companies listed at the Warsaw Stock Exchange in Poland. The Polish language uses verb conjugation like German or French, so the results of the study offer insights into international differences and the method used here can be applied to other languages. The culture of Poland is ranked high on the uncertainty avoidance scale of Hofstede (Kolman et al. 2003), compared to a low rating of the USA, which was the subject of previous studies. We find that analysts use a range of explicit and implicit evaluation strategies, as well as hedging strategies, which allow them to reduce their accountability for the recommendations they make. Analysts use subjectivisation (e.g. “our assessment”), depersonalization and time deixis (specific assessments of past, present, or future events) to manage the uncertainty associated with fundamental analysis.

The role of personality in the prediction of medical school performance

Attitudes are mental representations that help to explain why stimuli evoke positive or negative responses. Until recently, attitudes were often thought of as associations in memory. This idea inspired extensive research on evaluative conditioning (EC) and implicit evaluation. However, attitudes can also be seen as propositional representations, which, unlike associations, specify relational information and have a truth value. We review research on EC and implicit evaluation that tested the basic tenets of the propositional perspective on attitudes. In line with this perspective, studies show that both phenomena are moderated by relational and truth information. We discuss implications for the prediction and influencing of seemingly irrational behavior such as excessive alcohol intake and implicit racial bias.

Evidence of negative implicit attitudes toward individuals with a tattoo near the face

Three studies examined if people express negative implicit attitudes toward individuals with a tattoo near the face. In Study 1, participants who completed an Implicit Association Test (IAT) expressed moderately negative implicit attitudes toward individuals with a tribal tattoo on one side of the neck. Study 2 replicated Study 1 when the tattoo was symmetrical, suggesting that negative affect, and not processing fluency, underlies the implicit negative evaluation of individuals with a tribal tattoo near the face. Study 3 showed dissociation between explicit and implicit attitudes toward individuals with a tribal tattoo near the face, and that the negative implicit evaluation was attenuated if the tattoo image was an objectively positive symbol. The implications for displaying a tattoo near the face are discussed.

Procedural voronoi foams for additive manufacturing

Microstructures at the scale of tens of microns change the physical properties of objects, making them lighter or more flexible. While traditionally difficult to produce, additive manufacturing now lets us physically realize such microstructures at low cost. In this paper we propose to study procedural, aperiodic microstructures inspired by Voronoi open-cell foams. The absence of regularity affords for a simple approach to grade the foam geometry --- and thus its mechanical properties --- within a target object and its surface. Rather than requiring a global optimization process, the microstructures are directly generated to exhibit a specified elastic behavior. The implicit evaluation is akin to procedural textures in computer graphics, and locally adapts to follow the elasticity field. This allows very detailed structures to be generated in large objects without having to explicitly produce a full representation --- mesh or voxels --- of the complete object: the structures are added on the fly, just before each object slice is manufactured. We study the elastic behavior of the microstructures and provide a complete description of the procedure generating them. We explain how to determine the geometric parameters of the microstructures from a target elasticity, and evaluate the result on printed samples. Finally, we apply our approach to the fabrication of objects with spatially varying elasticity, including the implicit modeling of a frame following the object surface and seamlessly connecting to the microstructures.

Is cake more appealing in the afternoon? Time of day is associated with control over automatic positive responses to unhealthy food

Despite researchers considering time of day an important variable in studies on implicit food evaluations and food intake, time of day effects on implicit food evaluations have yet to be tested. Positive implicit evaluations of unhealthy food stimuli measured with an implicit association test (IAT) predict behaviour toward those stimuli, and are assumed to reflect automatic reactions outside of conscious awareness and control. However, recent research has revealed controlled processing to have an influence on IAT performance. The current study tested time of day effects on implicit evaluations of unhealthy food measured with an IAT, and specifically on automatic and controlled processes underlying IAT performance. A sample of 304 undergraduate women aged 17–25years completed a single-category IAT at varying times of the day. Results revealed that participation later in the day was associated with a more positive implicit evaluation of unhealthy food. This was mediated by a decrease in the ability to inhibit positive food reactions (i.e., controlled processing), rather than an increase in automatic positive reactions. The findings draw attention to the importance of considering time of day in studies measuring aspects of implicit cognition using tasks such as the IAT.

Study on the Web Courses Resources Recommendation System based on WP Algorithm

To solve the problem of low WEB course resources utilization rate and help users quickly find the high-quality course resources, a WEB course resources recommendation system based on WP algorithm was established. In this system, course resources were automatically classified using WP algorithm, and a course quality evaluation model based on user implicit evaluation was also set up. The experimental results showed that the method had a very good classification effect, and it could effectively narrow the scope of the resources searched by users and improve resource search quality.

Changing ‘gut feelings’ about food: An evaluative conditioning effect on implicit food evaluations and food choice

The aim of this study was to test the effect of an evaluative conditioning (EC) task on implicit food evaluations and choices between healthy and unhealthy food, and whether the effect of the EC task on food choice would be mediated by implicit food evaluations. To induce the EC effect on implicit food evaluations and food choice, images of healthy and unhealthy foods were repeatedly paired with images of positively and negatively valenced faces, the pairing (healthy-positive/unhealthy-negative or healthy-negative/unhealthy-positive) manipulated between participants. Implicit food evaluations were measured using an Implicit Association Task (IAT), and food choice was measured using a food decision-making task consisting of 22 choices between healthy and unhealthy food items. Results showed a direct effect of EC condition on implicit food evaluations, but not on explicit food choice for the whole sample. However, an indirect effect of the EC task on food choice, mediated by implicit food evaluations, was found. Contingency awareness – whether participants were aware that foods were being paired with valenced stimuli – did not affect the strength of the EC effect, nor did attention to the EC task. Surprisingly, emotional eating was found to moderate the effect of the EC task on both implicit food evaluations and food choice, showing that the EC task had an effect only for those who scored low on emotional eating. In conclusion, this study makes a unique contribution to the EC literature by showing that food choice can be altered by conditioning implicit food evaluations, but that this may only work for people who do not score particularly high on emotional eating.

Para assistir aos vilões Disney: abjeção e heteronormatividade em “A Pequena Sereia”

Compreendendo a cultura midiática como um dos principais espaços contemporâneos de (re)produção de sentidos acerca dos mais variados âmbitos da vida social, a partir dos quais são estruturados procedimentos de controle e exclusão de corpos, ideias e comportamentos, o presente trabalho objetiva desvelar e analisar criticamente a sutil estratégia discursiva empregada em filmes de animação dos Estúdios Disney, estratégia essa que cumpre em reiterar a “normalidade” das formas de identificação por gênero hegemônicas a partir da abjeção de identidades desviantes. Para tanto, empreendemos uma análise sociocultural da vilã Úrsula, de A Pequena Sereia (1989), valendo-nos de aspectos metodológicos próprios à semiótica e à Análise Crítica do Discurso. Mediante uma leitura informada pelos Estudos Culturais e pela Teoria Queer, observamos que o padrão de representação mobilizado na animação veicula uma implícita avaliação negativa das formas de ser e agir que frustram o binarismo heteronormativo, associando-as inequivocamente com crueldade e ganância.

Affect in the eyes: explicit and implicit evaluations

ABSTRACTThe present study investigated whether another individual’s gaze direction influences an observer’s affective responses. In Experiment 1, subjective self-ratings and an affective priming paradigm were employed to examine how participants explicitly and implicitly, respectively, evaluated the affective valence of direct gaze, averted gaze, and closed eyes. The explicit self-ratings showed that participants evaluated closed eyes more positively than direct gaze. However, the implicit priming task showed an inverse pattern of results indicating that direct gaze was automatically evaluated more positively than closed eyes were. Experiment 2 confirmed that the opposite patterns of results between the two tasks were not due to differences in presentation times of the gaze stimuli. The results provide evidence for automatic affective reactions to eye gaze and indicate a dissociation between explicit and implicit affective evaluations of eyes and gaze direction.

Implicit-Explicit Evaluative Discrepancies in Depression and Information Seeking

The present work examines whether discrepancies in implicit and explicit evaluations of depression predict discrepancy-relevant information seeking. Specifically, we predicted that as discrepancy in implicit and explicit evaluations of depression increased (i.e., greater implicit-explicit evaluative discrepancies), participants would report an increased preference for information related to depression, regardless of the direction of their discrepancy. Participants first selected whether to read a depression-related or a non-depression-related report and then reported their intent to engage in behaviors that would allow them to learn more about depression. Participants then completed the Implicit Association Test and the Perceived Devaluation-Discrimination scale, and these measures were used to compute the magnitude of evaluative discrepancy. As predicted, greater implicit-explicit evaluative discrepancies predicted preferences for the depression-related report and a greater desire to learn more about dep...

How to Modify (Implicit) Evaluations of Fear-Related Stimuli: Effects of Feature-Specific Attention Allocation.

We demonstrate that feature-specific attention allocation influences the way in which repeated exposure modulates implicit and explicit evaluations toward fear-related stimuli. During an exposure procedure, participants were encouraged to assign selective attention either to the evaluative meaning (i.e., Evaluative Condition) or a non-evaluative, semantic feature (i.e., Semantic Condition) of fear-related stimuli. The influence of the exposure procedure was captured by means of a measure of implicit evaluation, explicit evaluative ratings, and a measure of automatic approach/avoidance tendencies. As predicted, the implicit measure of evaluation revealed a reduced expression of evaluations in the Semantic Condition as compared to the Evaluative Condition. Moreover, this effect generalized toward novel objects that were never presented during the exposure procedure. The explicit measure of evaluation mimicked this effect, although it failed to reach conventional levels of statistical significance. No effects were found in terms of automatic approach/avoidance tendencies. Potential implications for the treatment of anxiety disorders are discussed.

Quality assessment of airport performance from the passengers' perspective

Passenger satisfaction has become a key factor for the operation of an airport. In recent years, a wide range of studies have analysed airport quality from many viewpoints but predominantly based on explicit and visible aspects of airport performance. Our paper suggests that passengers' assessments may also include implicit evaluation of features that are not directly observable regarding an airport's management and characteristics. We merge data from 111 international airports worldwide, including information on perceptions of quality by passengers, management and regulatory schemes and airport features. Our estimations show that private participation at airports leads to a higher perception of quality. In addition, we may infer a preferred institutional model, in which legislative aspects related to the industry are strongly regulated by the government but each airport may freely decide how to perform in the market. Our results are positioned in favour of a more market-oriented approach to airport management: the airport quality assessment improves when this is subject to market forces, such as competition in fares or the inclusion of private participation.

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.

Context Dependency at Recall: Decoupling Context and Targets at Encoding

Research suggests that context influences judgments and implicit evaluations (e.g., attitudes toward a person depend upon the context in which we encounter that person). Importantly, previous research presents contextual cues at encoding, such that participants learn about a target person in context. Here, we decouple the process of learning about targets from manipulations of context. Participants in our studies learned about the intelligence and athleticism of a novel male target in a neutral context. Subsequently, we implicitly measured participants’ attitudes toward the target in an intelligence-related or neutral context (Study 1) and in intelligence-related and athletic-related contexts (Study 2). In both studies, contextual cues (which were absent during encoding) influenced attitudes at retrieval.

When Affect Supports Cognitive Control – A Working Memory Perspective

Abstract The paper delineates a study of executive functions (EFs), construed as procedural working memory (WM), from a motivational perspective. Since WM theories and motivation theories are both concerned with purposive activity, the role of implicit evaluations (affects) observed in goal pursuit can be anticipated to arise also in the context of cognitive control, e.g., during the performance of the Stroop task. The role of positive and negative affect in goal pursuit consists in controlling attention resources according to the goal and situational requirements. Positive affect serves to maintain goals and means in the scope of attention (EF1), whereas negative affect activates the inhibition of non-functional contents, e.g., distractors and irrelevant objects (resulting in attention disengagement; EF2). Adaptation to conflict proceeds via sequential triggering of negative and positive affect (EF3). Moreover, it was demonstrated that the focus on action or reflection changes the scope of contents subjected to implicit (affective) control. Therefore, I suggest that the motivational system, to a large extent, plays the role of the Central Executive. The paper opens a discussion and proposes studies on affective mechanisms of cognitive control.

The embodiment of beauty: Evidence from viewing Chinese concrete words and pictographs.

How is beauty embodied? According to the viewpoint of embodied cognition, the aesthetic processing of words or pictographs has roots in their referential archetypes. Four experiments tested whether the beauty of referential archetypes was routinely activated during the explicit and implicit aesthetic evaluations of the font structures of concrete Chinese words and pictographs in congruent or incongruent font colour. Results showed font structures of simplified Chinese words and pictographs were judged to be more beautiful when they referred to beautiful archetypes; and this pattern was reversed when they referred to ugly archetypes. Moreover, judgement was facilitated when font colour was congruent for Chinese words and pictographs referred to beautiful archetypes. For those referred to ugly archetypes, judgement was inhibited in congruent font colour but facilitated in incongruent font colour, suggesting aesthetic perceptions of the font structures of Chinese words and pictographs were derived from their referential natural objects. The spontaneous generation hypothesis of beauty is proposed to account for these findings.