Social Valence Research Articles

Reactions to Objective and Subjective Interpersonal Evaluation: The Influence of Social Anxiety

High- and low-social-anxiety individuals' reactions to evaluative feedback were investigated. Subjects made accuracy ratings, attributions, and affective responses to feedback on test performance and an evaluation by a psychologist. The results provide support for both self-consistency and self-esteem notions, albeit in separate response domains. Significant interactions between social anxiety and evaluation valence were uncovered on two measures of cognitive responses. Subjects high in social anxiety rated favorable feedback as less accurate, and favorable evaluators as less perceptive, than subjects low in social anxiety Results on the affective measures, however, revealed that high-social-anxiety subjects were less happy with unfavorable feedback than their low-social-anxiety counterparts. The results are discussed in terms of the self-concept of the socially anxious individual, the differential impact of subjective and objective feedback, and implications for clinical intervention.

Leaders as eponyms: Individual and situational determinants of ruler eminence

AbstractThe eponymic theory of leadership maintains that the eminence of rulers depends on their utility as historical labels without regard for their personal attributes. The explanatory scope of this interpretation was tested, for methodological reasons, on a sample of 342 European hereditary monarchs. In support of eponymic theory: (a) About two‐thirds of the variance in leader eminence can be ascribed to the number of significant events occurring during the leader's tenure in office; (b) events with positive and negative social valence carry approximately equal and positive weight; (c) events over which the leader exerts considerable control have about the same weight as those over which personal control is virtually nonexistent; and (d) the effects of epochcentric bias and reign span are mediated by the number of significant events. But qualifying eponymic theory: (a) Eminence is not determined solely by the event tabulations (e.g., leader frame is a J‐curve function of intelligence and a U‐curve function of morality); (b) the number of events is not exclusively accounted for by reign span; and (c) reign span is not solely a function of life span (e.g., reign span is a positive linear function of assessed leadership). The results endorse a form of the theory in which some provision is made for intellectual and personality factors.

A comparison of normative and interactional explanations of group decision‐making: Social decision schemes versus valence distributions

Research on group decision‐making in speech communication has assumed interaction processes are important determinants of group decisions. However, major psychological theories of group decision‐making challenge this assumption. This study tested a prominent social psychological theory, Davis's Social Decision Scheme Model, against an interaction‐based model of group decision‐making, the Valence Distribution Model recently developed by McPhee, Poole, and Seibold. The theoretical rationale for the comparison was provided by the theory of structuration, which predicted the Valence Distribution Model would mediate the effect of Social Decision Schemes on group decisions. Results substantially supported this prediction.

Level of satiation on social reinforcers and valence of the reinforcing agent as determinants of social reinforcer effectiveness.

The joint effect of (a) level of satiation with social stimuli (relative satiation) and (b) attitude of the child toward the reinforcing agent (valence) on social reinforcer effectiveness was investigated. The experiment was conducted in two parts. In Session 1, the valence manipulation, which consisted in showing subjects a film that depicted Experimenter 1 as nice or mean, was performed by Experimenter 1. In Session 2, 3 days later, the relative satiation manipulation was performed by Experimenter 2. The criterion task, administered by Experimenter 1, immediately followed the satiation manipulation. The positive valence condition resulted in longer playing times and faster initial performance on the criterion task. No such effects were found for the satiation variable. Neither valence nor satiation manipulations had a significant effect on the change in rate measure of social reinforcer effectiveness. The relationship among the dependent measures and the failure to replicate earlier relative satiation findings were discussed.