Influence Judgments Research Articles

Stereotypical thinking about foods and perceived capacity to promote weight gain

The modern health media as well as the food and diet industries praise certain foods and food nutrients as being healthful while at the same time criticizing other foods and nutrients as promoters of obesity and disease. Do the categorical messages that much of the general public has assimilated concerning food influence judgements of the weight-enhancing properties of foods? In the present study a sample of adult participants (mostly middle-aged) rated the weight-enhancing characteristics of a group of snack names that possess positive health reputations (e.g. a banana) along with snack names that were more disreputable in terms of wholesomeness (e.g. bacon). The results indicated that lower-calorie (and in some cases lower-fat) disreputable snacks were generally perceived to promote greater weight gain than much higher-calorie (and in some cases higher-fat) reputable snacks. Beliefs about particular foods' goodness or badness as well as fat content were most often emphasized. The good versus bad message that Americans have assimilated concerning foods may be contributing to tendencies toward obesity.

Erratum: “Mothers and Fathers in the Workplace: How Gender and Parental Status Influence Judgments of Job‐Related Competence”

Erratum: “Mothers and Fathers in the Workplace: How Gender and Parental Status Influence Judgments of Job‐Related Competence”

Attributional Complexity and the Camera Perspective Bias in Videotaped Confessions

Prior research has established that simply altering the perspective from which a videotaped confession is recorded influences judgments of the confession's voluntariness and the suspect's guilt. This study examined whether, when evaluating a videotaped confession, a higher degree of attributional complexity would buffer people from the contaminating effects of camera perspective. We found that although people high and low in attributional complexity differed in their overall verdicts and voluntariness assessments, they were comparably swayed by the camera's perspective. That is, consistent with prior demonstrations of the camera perspective bias, the proportion of guilty verdicts and the proportion assessing the confession was voluntary were both significantly greater when the camera focused on the suspect rather than focused equally on the suspect and the interrogator. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Mothers and Fathers in the Workplace: How Gender and Parental Status Influence Judgments of Job‐Related Competence

We investigated the influence of gender and parental status on employment decisions. The shifting standards model predicts that parenthood polarizes judgments of women and men such that mothers are held to stricter employment standards than fathers. Social role theory predicts that parenting role, rather than gender, guides judgments of mothers and fathers. One hundred ninety‐six undergraduates at two universities evaluated a job applicant; the applicant was either male or female and was either single or married with two children. Results showed that parents were judged less agentic and less committed to employment than non‐parents. Parental status also interacted with gender, indicating that fathers were held to more lenient standards than mothers and childless men. We discuss theoretical and practical implications.

Human reactions to technological failure: How accidents rooted in technology vs. human error influence judgments of organizational accountability

Two experiments examine how the identification of technology as a causal factor in an organizational accident influences judgments of organizational accountability. In study 1, organizations were found to be held less accountable for their actions when a misfortune was rooted in a computer error than when rooted in human error. The predicted mechanism for this effect, counterfactual thinking, was confirmed. Specifically, technologically induced accidents were found to generate fewer counterfactual thoughts of better possible outcomes than similar accidents resulting from human error. Study 2 replicated the findings of study 1 in a more natural setting and using a less intrusive measure for counterfactual thoughts.

The role of intent and harm in judgments of prejudice and discrimination.

Four experiments examined how an actor's intent and the harm experienced by a target influence judgments of prejudice and discrimination. The presence of intent increased the likelihood that participants judged an actor as prejudiced and the actor's behavior as discriminatory. When intent was uncertain, harm influenced judgments of the behavior, which in turn influenced judgments of the actor, and participants were more cautious in their judgments about an actor than an actor's behavior. Harm also played a stronger role in targets' than observers' judgments. Understanding the role of intent and harm on perceptions of prejudice can help explain variations in targets' versus observers', and possibly targets' versus actors', judgments of discrimination and prejudice.

Technocratic and design stances toward communication expertise: how GDSS facilitators understand their work

This study investigates the shared, and often unstated, premises that frame the expert communication servicing of meeting facilitators who implement group decision support systems (GDSS). Nine premises about facilitating communication were reconstructed from the way practitioners use the concept "process" to describe the expert servicing they perform. The premises reveal how the facilitators treat an analytic distinction between process and content to be a natural fact about communication. This factual presumption entails a nascent philosophy of practice--"process management"--that facilitators use to persuade clients, and practitioners, about the trustworthiness and credibility of their servicing. The ironic consequence of this philosophy is the denial of the very influence and expert judgment they exercise in their professional action. This is not only problematic for individual practitioners and consumers of facilitation services but for the development of facilitation practice itself. The implications of this analysis for facilitation practice and applied communication research are discussed in terms of a "design stance" toward communication expertise which is an alternative to the "technocratic stance" that currently frames practitioner, consumer, and research interests in GDSS facilitators.

Cognitive issues in image quality measurement

Designers of imaging systems, image processing algorithms, etc., usually take for granted that methods for assessing perceived image quality produce unbiased estimates of the viewers’ quality impression. Quality judgments, however, are affected by the judgment strategies induced by the experimental procedures. In this paper the results of two experiments are presented illustrating the influence judgment strategies can have on quality judgments. The first experiment concerns contextual effects due to the composition of the stimulus set. Subjects assessed the sharpness of two differently composed sets of blurred versions of one static image. The sharpness judgments for the blurred images present in both stimulus sets were found to be dependent on the composition of the set as well as the scaling technique employed. In the second experiment subjects assessed either the overall quality or the overall impairment of manipulated and standard JPEG-coded images containing two main artifacts. The results indicate a systematic difference between the quality and impairment judgments that could be interpreted as instruction-based different weighting of the two artifacts. Again, some influence of scaling technique was observed. The results of both experiments underscore the important role judgment strategies play in the psychophysical evaluation of image quality. Ignoring this influence on quality judgments may lead to invalid conclusions about the viewers’ impression of image quality.

Does Experience Influence Judgements of Pain Behaviour? Evidence from Relatives of Pain Patients and Therapists

Judgments about an individual's pain can be profoundly important to sufferers. Relatively few studies have examined variables that may affect observers' judgments of the pain of others. The present article reports two studies investigating the relationship between different kinds of exposure to pain problems and observers' ratings of the pain intensity of patients. In the first study, 82 observers were classified into groups with positive and negative family histories of chronic pain. They viewed a videotape showing the facial expressions of shoulder pain patients undergoing physiotherapy assessments and rated the pain experienced by the subjects. In the second study, the data from observers having no experience with pain problems were compared with data collected from therapists having considerable experience with pain problems. Observers with a positive family history of chronic pain attributed greater pain to the patients than those with a negative family history of chronic pain. Professionals' pain judgments were lower than those of control subjects. Together, the findings imply that one's experiences with the different problems of pain patients may affect pain judgments. Alternative interpretations of the findings are considered.

Attributional Thoughts about Consumer Behavior

Two fundamental principles from attribution theory were examined for the role they might play in the psychology of the consumer. They are: (1) perceptions of causality along a stability dimension influence the anticipated likelihood of product satisfaction, and (2) perceptions of causality along a controllability dimension influence judgments of responsibility and retributive actions. Comments about the longevity of an attributional framework, methodological recommendations, and the heuristic value of the theory also are included.

Furrowing the Brow May Undermine Perceived Fame: The Role of Facial Feedback in Judgments of Celebrity

Two studies are reported that investigate whether facial expressions may influence judgments of fame. In the current research, the authors tested the hypothesis of whether feelings of mental effort influence judgments of fame. To test this hypothesis, participants were required to contract the corrugator muscle while judging the fame of persons depicted in a photo. In Experiment 1, participants who succeeded in maintaining the contraction during the entire task evaluated the targets to be less famous than did judges who did not succeed or were not required to engage in any facial contraction. In the second experiment, participants’ success at their muscle contraction was monitored by electromyograph (EMG) feedback and a control group had to activate a different (frontalis) facial muscle. The fame effect was replicated under those conditions. The present findings suggest that facial expressions may modify nonemotional feelings and the judgments that are based on them.

How Anecdotal Accounts in News and in Fiction Can Influence Judgments of a Social Problem’s Urgency, Causes, and Cures

This study examined whether accounts about individuals in concrete situations—read as news or fiction—influenced judgments about society at large. Participants (N = 95) read either no story or one of two anecdotal accounts about a teenager who was planning to drop out of high school. Whereas one account focused on problems stemming from the student’s inner-city high school, the other account emphasized the boy’s emotional and motivational problems. Results showed that both news and fictional stories influenced participants’ judgments about the causes of and solutions to the dropout problem in the United States (causal generalization) and about the urgency with which policy makers should attend to educational and health care reform (agenda setting). Among the mechanisms shown to facilitate causal generalization was the extent to which the accounts cued remindings from the readers’ stores of personal or mediabased experience. The role of stories in the judgment of social issues is discussed.

Affect in Electoral Politics

Recent U.S. history provides vivid illustrations of the importance of politicians' emotional displays in subsequent judgments of them. Yet, a review of empirical research on the role of affect (emotion, mood, and evaluation) in electoral politics reveals little work that has focused on the impact of candidates' emotional expression on voters' preferences for them. A theoretical framework is proposed to identify psychological mechanisms by which a target's displays of emotion influence judgments of that target. Findings from the emerging literature on emotions and politics challenge the traditional assumption of political science that voters make decisions based solely on the cold consideration of nonaffectively charged information. The affect and politics literature, although somewhat unfocused and broad, represents an interdisciplinary domain of study that contributes to the understanding of both electoral politics and social interaction more generally.

Need norm, demographic influence, social role, and justice judgment

The relationships of distributive justice norms (equity, equality, and need), social role, and demographic variables to judgments of fairness, satisfaction, employer obligation, and employee entitlement were investigated. Subjects functioning as recipient's co-workers, allocators, or observers responded to a need-based salary allocation situation. Multiple regression analyses showed that endorsement of the need norm was most important. Justice norms and demographics each predicted significant unique variance in all of the criterion judgments. Social role yielded significant differences for fairness judgments. The findings indicate that where a situation increases the salience of nonequity factors other justice norms, such as recipient needs, may become more important than the equity norm. The results also suggest the importance of respondent social roles and demographic characteristics in the study of justice judgments.

The Role of Body Weight, Waist-to-Hip Ratio, and Breast Size in Judgments of Female Attractiveness

It was demonstrated by Singh and Young (1995)that morphological features such as overall body fatdistribution measured by waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) andbreast size, influence judgments of femaleattractiveness, age, and desirability for relationships. Thepresent study was a replication and extension of thatresearch, using both male and female participants. Theresults supported the general findings of the original study, and as predicted, the effect of breastsize on attractiveness judgments depended on overallbody fat and WHR. The significance of interactionswithin the different morphological features whichdetermine female attractiveness were noted. Overall,there were surprisingly few sex differences. Results arediscussed in terms of the socio-biological theoriescurrently popular in the literature.

Perception of Accelerating Self-Motion: Global Optical Flow Rate Dominates Discontinuity Rate

Owen, Wolpert, and Warren (1984) proposed that egospeed may be perceived from global optical flow rate, discontinuity rate, or both. Previous psychophysical research found that both sources of information influence judgments of acceleration and control of egospeed, but that discontinuity rate dominated. However, the validity of these results is questionable due to problems with the visual stimuli used, such as confounding of discontinuity rate with proximal flow rate and low frame rates. The current study examined the relative contributions of global optical flow rate and discontinuity rate to perception of accelerating self-motion with stimuli that lacked these problems. I found that global optical flow rate accounted for 60% of the variability in acceleration judgments, compared with 0.86% for discontinuity rate. This result indicates that discontinuity rate exerts only a minor influence, and global optical flow rate is the primary basis for perception of accelerating self-motion, and hence, egospeed.

The Relationship Between Personal and National Concerns in Public Perceptions About the Economy

Although a large body of evidence has highlighted public perceptions of the national economy as a critical determinant of political evaluations, there is still considerable debate over how to interpret this relationship. Sociotropic voting is sometimes taken as evidence of civic-minded concern for collective conditions among the masses. Critics of this interpretation argue that self- interest operates indirectly through perceptions of national economic condi tions to influence political evaluations. We separate out the indirect self-interest explanation from the sociotropic voting model in order to evaluate this ex planation. We test the indirect self-interest hypothesis with both a cross-sec tional and longitudinal design using data from the 1990 and 1992 NES surveys. We find some support for the idea that personal experience influences judg ments of national economic conditions and, therefore, indirectly impacts political judgments. However, the evidence is weak overall. While personal and collective experience cannot be completely divorced, political judgments derive largely from collective-level considerations which are quite separate from personal economic experiences.

The relationship of the outcome and procedural fairness: How does knowing the outcome influence judgments about the procedure?

Justice theories distinguish between fair procedures and fair or favorable outcomes. However, it is not clear whether people can clearly separate judgments about procedures from knowledge of the outcomes of those procedures. Two experiments are reported which address that question. In both studies respondents evaluate the fairness of decision-making procedures. In one case those evaluations occur prior to knowing the outcome of the procedure (“behind the veil”), while in the other the outcome is known before the procedural evaluation (“in front of the veil”). Two hypotheses about outcome influence are tested: that knowing the outcome changes themeaning of procedural fairness and that knowing the outcome changes theweight given to procedural fairness. Findings of both studies suggest that prior knowledge about the outcome does not change the way people define the meaning of the fairness of a procedure. However, people place less weight on their judments about procedural fairness when evaluating the decision maker if they make those judgments already knowing the outcome of the procedure.

Elastic Justification: How Unjustifiable Factors Influence Judgments

When making judgments, one may encounter not only justifiable factors, i.e., attributes which the judge thinks that he/she should take into consideration, but also unjustifiable factors, i.e., attributes which the judge wants to take into consideration but knows he/she should not. It is proposed that the influence of an unjustifiable factor on one's judgment depends on the presence of elasticity (ambiguity) in justifiable factors; the influence will be greater if there is elasticity than if there is not. Two studies involving different contexts demonstrated the proposed elasticity effect and suggested that the effect could be a result of a self-oriented justification process. Implications of this research for decisions involving a should-vs-want conflict are discussed.

Exemplar-based model of social judgment.

As an alternative to algebraic and schematic models of social judgment, a new exemplar-based model holds that representations of specific individuals influence judgments about persons and groups. (a) As the perceiver encounters or thinks about an individual, a representation of that exemplar as interpreted by the perceiver is stored in memory. (b) When a target person is encountered later, known attributes of similar exemplars from memory influence judgments about the target. Similarity is modulated by the perceiver's attention to stimulus dimensions. (c) Social and motivational factors, including self-schemata, social context, and in-group/out-group dynamics, influence social judgment by affecting perceiver's attention to dimensions