Stimulus Person Research Articles

Contextual cues as a source of response bias in personality questionnaires: The case of the NEO‐FFI

Two experiments demonstrated the susceptibility of a standard personality inventory to response bias elicited by contextual cues. In Study 1, participants who completed the NEO‐FFI in a simulated application for a job stereotypically associated with extraversion (a journalist) scored higher on the extraversion scale than those who completed it under standard instructions. The increase occurred in response to the job label ‘journalist’ and in response to a job description stressing extraversion‐related qualities. In Study 2, a priming procedure was used to elicit cognitive response distortions. Participants exposed to an extraverted stimulus person scored higher on extraversion than participants completing the NEO‐FFI under standard instructions. No effects were found on the remaining scales of the NEO‐FFI. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Success Attributions and More: Multidimensional Extensions of the Sexual Attribution Bias to Failure Attributions, Social Emotions, and the Desire for Social Interaction

According to the recently discovered sexual attribution bias (SAB), young adults attribute the success of same-aged, same-sex attractive stimulus persons in a more derogative way than the success of less attractive same-sex persons, whereas this pattern is reversed for members of the opposite sex. Because this bias has so far only been investigated with respect to attributions in success scenarios, two studies examined its potential transferability to other psychological variables and settings: Study 1 (N = 419) demonstrated analogous biases for emotions and the desire for social interaction, and Study 2 (N = 509) revealed that the SAB can also be extended to failure scenarios.

Judgment of other people's facial expressions of emotions is influenced by their concurrent affective hand movements

We investigated whether emotional information from facial expression and hand movement quality was integrated when identifying the expression of a compound stimulus showing a static facial expression combined with emotionally expressive dynamic manual actions. The emotions (happiness, neutrality, and anger) expressed by the face and hands were either congruent or incongruent. In Experiment 1, the participants judged whether the stimulus person was happy, neutral, or angry. Judgments were mainly based on the facial expressions, but were affected by manual expressions to some extent. In Experiment 2, the participants were instructed to base their judgment on the facial expression only. An effect of hand movement expressive quality was observed for happy facial expressions. The results conform with the proposal that perception of facial expressions of emotions can be affected by the expressive qualities of hand movements.

Is perceived childlessness a cue for stereotyping? Evolutionary aspects of a social phenomenon

The present research investigates the moderating role of the “child factor” in impression formation. 307 university students (148 males, 159 females) were asked to assess 14 traits related to physical attractiveness, resource accruing potential, and emotional stability. The stimulus person was either accompanied by a child or shown individually. As expected, targets depicted with children were believed to be more family‐committed and to possess greater parenting skills. The child factor also favourably biased respondents’ assessments in terms of honesty, faithfulness, and maturity. Women with children were assumed to be less ambitious, while men with children were believed to be more generous and possess higher status and financial security. All results are discussed within the greater evolutionary context of kin selection and the “good‐parent process”. It is hypothesized that the negative stereotyping of the voluntary childfree is a by‐product of cues that infer prosocial behaviour ‐ similar to those used in mate selection.

Am I the Right Candidate? Self-Ascribed Fit of Women and Men to a Leadership Position

Women are assumed to show a self-ascribed lack-of-fit to leadership positions compared to men (Heilman Research in Organizational Behavior 5:269–298, 1983). The present study examined whether this gender difference would diminish when agency is accounted for and whether a stimulus person’s gender would alter women’s self-ascribed fit. German management students (91 women, 95 men) received a fictitious recruitment advertisement for a leadership position that portrayed a man, a woman, or both a man and a woman. Participants indicated their perceptions of agency and suitability to the advertised position. As predicted, women judged themselves as less suitable for the leadership position than men and participants’ self-reported agency mediated this effect. Furthermore, all participants felt most suitable if a male and a female stimulus person were portrayed.

Enhanced Power within a Predicted Narrow Band of Theta Activity During Stimulation of Another by Circumcerebral Weak Magnetic Fields After Weekly Spatial Proximity: Evidence for Macroscopic Quantum Entanglement?

We tested if entanglement could be demonstrated between two non-sibling brains with only a history of spatial proximity if one brain was exposed to a consciousness-structured, continuously accelerating, circumcerebral magnetic field to access this connection. Four pairs of strangers met and remained within one meter of each other for one hour, twice per week, for four weeks. After this period the brain of the stimulus person of the pair, who was seated in a closed chamber, was exposed successively to six (5 min each) different complex circumcerebral magnetic fields that were rotated counterclockwise. Quantitative monopolar electroencephalographic measurements over the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes were collected by computer for the response person of the pair who was seated in another room. The predicted increase in electroencephalographic power within the 5.0 Hz to 5.9 Hz band over the temporal lobes (but none of the other lobes), similar to that observed previously for siblings, was noted for the response persons when the stimulus persons received frequency modulated, circumcerebral magnetic fields at 20 msec rates of change per solenoid. The response persons also reported unusually intense sensed presences, anger, and sexual arousal during these periods.

Which thoughts can kill a boxer? Naive theories about cognitive and emotional antecedents of suicide

We investigated naive theories regarding the association among beliefs, emotions and behaviours to test Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy's (REBT) assumption that rational cognitions and adaptive emotions lead to functional behaviours whereas irrational cognitions and maladaptive emotions trigger dysfunctional reactions. We applied an experimental between-subjects design. Participants read newspaper articles about the defeat of a boxer. In one condition, the authentic article informed participants that he committed suicide and in the other, a fictitious article about the same defeat described the athlete as successfully continuing his career. Different question formats were employed to assess participants' assumptions about the stimulus person's defeat-related cognitions and emotions: rating scales, sentence completion and free responses. Participants assumed significantly more irrational beliefs (e.g. I absolutely have to win) on the side of the boxer in the suicide scenario than in the non-suicide version. This finding was obtained by directive and non-directive assessment methods. Additionally, participants expected the suicidal stimulus person to be experiencing maladaptive emotions (e.g. depression, guilt) whereas a successful resumption of his career lead to expectations of adaptive affects (e.g. sadness, concern). Ratings of the functionality revealed that sadness, fear, annoyance and concern were expected to be more functional than depression, anxiety, rage and guilt. The results show that naive psychological theories about the antecedents of dysfunctional behaviour are in accordance with theoretical assumptions of REBT: Irrational beliefs are viewed to be connected with maladaptive emotions and to result in dysfunctional behaviour, and adaptive emotions are thought to be of higher functional value than their maladaptive counterparts. The use of different question formats and a between-subject design excluded that results are due to methodological artifacts or contrast effects.

Stereotypes as Shared Beliefs: Effects of Group Identity on Dyadic Conversations

Two experiments examined the influence of stereotypes on dyadic conversations. Undergraduate students listened to a recorded interview of a student who was described as either a member of their in-group or of an out-group. The interview contained stereotype-consistent (SC) and stereotype-inconsistent (SI) descriptions of each group. Participants' conversations about the stimulus person were content-analyzed. One most consistent result was that for the out-group target, participants made more SI than SC utterances and spent more time discussing SI information. The difference between SC and SI utterances disappeared (Study 2) or was reversed (Study 1) for the in-group target. These patterns were observed particularly when the stimulus information contained a balanced combination of SC and SI characteristics. Furthermore, the stereotypicality of the conversations was related not only to the participant's own judgments but also to the partner's judgments. The significance of studying stereotypes as collectively shared intergroup attitudes is discussed.

Crossover of burnout: An experimental design

Two studies tested the hypothesis that burnout may cross over from one person to another. In Study 1, teachers were randomly exposed to a bogus newspaper article in which a colleague expressed himself negatively about his work (burnout condition), or about a topic unrelated to work (control condition). The results showed that participants' burnout (exhaustion and depersonalization) was higher in the burnout condition compared to the control condition. In Study 2, soldiers were randomly exposed to a videotape of a burned-out or an engaged colleague who was either similar in profession and status (soldier), or who had a considerably higher status (squadron leader). The results were partly consistent with those of Study 1, and confirmed the crossover of burnout (cynicism and reduced professional efficacy). In line with predictions, a significant interaction effect for cynicism revealed that the crossover of burnout is moderated by similarity with the stimulus person.

Ability, luck, and looks: An evolutionary look at achievement ascriptions and the sexual attribution bias.

Female and male participants (in their early 20s) attributed the success of same-aged (Study 1A-1C) male and female stimulus persons of varying attractiveness to ability, effort, luck, and looks. Consistent with the evolutionary prediction that mating motivation and intrasexual competition determine achievement ascriptions, female participants explained the success of attractive women with luck more and with ability less (i.e., in a derogative way) than they explained the success of less attractive female stimulus persons. However, when the stimulus person was male, women attributed his success to ability more and to luck less (i.e., glorifying) when he was attractive than when he was unattractive. Male participants made derogative attributions for attractive male stimulus persons and unattractive female stimulus persons and glorifying ascriptions for unattractive male stimulus persons and attractive female stimulus persons. We label this pattern of findings sexual attribution bias. The bias disappeared when prepuberty stimulus persons were used as targets (Study 2) and reversed for gay men (Study 3).

Not fair for me! The influence of personal relevance on social justice inferences

In this paper, we argue that the personal relevance of a situation primarily influences spontaneous inferences about social justice, and not necessarily affects explicit justice judgments. To test this hypothesis, two studies manipulated personal relevance and assessed justice inferences and judgments: Participants read descriptions of fair or unfair events happening to stimulus persons referred to with first-person versus third-person pronouns (Experiment 1) or as “a friend” versus “a stranger” (Experiment 2). We then measured spontaneous justice inferences (using the probe recognition paradigm) and explicit justice judgments (using rating scales). As predicted, both studies showed stronger spontaneous justice inferences for high personal relevance descriptions, of unjust events specifically, whereas explicit justice judgments were not significantly influenced by our personal relevance manipulations. These findings suggest that especially the spontaneous component of the justice judgment process is sensitive to personal relevance.

Empathy and Emotional Responsiveness in Delinquent and Non‐delinquent Adolescents

AbstractTwo groups of male adolescents, incarcerated young offenders (N = 64, mean age = 16.3 years) and a comparison group of community youth (N = 60; mean age = 16.6 years), were administered the Empathy Continuum (measuring cognitive‐affective responses to persons in emotionally evocative videotaped vignettes) and questionnaire measures of empathy, emotional responsiveness, guilt, shame, and antisocial attitudes and behaviors. Although both groups endorsed general statements of empathy, young offenders responded with empathy less often to particular persons in particular situations, and reasoned regarding their empathic responses in more self‐referencing ways. They also described their emotional responses to stimulus persons as less intense. In addition to the expected group differences, responsive empathy was a stronger predictor of delinquency than self‐reported antisocial behavior, and correctly classified 69 percent of young offenders and comparison youths. Although guilt was consistently related to lower self‐reported antisocial attitudes and behaviors, guilt (and shame) only weakly differentiated the two groups, limiting the usefulness of the TOSCA‐A as a predictor of delinquency.

Increasing Self-Regulatory Strength Can Reduce the Depleting Effect of Suppressing Stereotypes

Three longitudinal studies and one correlational study tested the hypothesis that increasing self-regulatory strength by regular self-regulatory exercise would reduce the intrapsychic costs of suppressing stereotypes. Participants tried to resist using stereotypes while describing or talking to a stimulus person. Participants whose habitual motivation to suppress stereotypes was low exhibited impaired Stroop and anagram performance after the suppression task, presumably because of self-regulatory depletion (i.e., a reduction of self-regulatory strength following prior use). Two weeks of self-regulation exercises (such as using one's nondominant hand or refraining from cursing) eliminated this effect. These findings indicate that self-regulatory exercise can improve resistance to self-regulatory depletion and, consequently, people can suppress stereotypes without suffering subsequent decrements in task performance.

Sources of accuracy in the empathic accuracy paradigm.

In the empathic accuracy paradigm, perceivers make inferences about the naturalistically occurring thoughts and feelings of stimulus persons, and these inferences are scored for accuracy against the stimulus persons' self-reported thoughts and feelings. The present study investigated sources of accuracy in this paradigm by presenting the stimulus tape in several cue modalities (full video, audio, transcript, or silent video) and with differing instructions (infer thoughts and feelings, infer thoughts, or infer feelings). Verbal information contributed the most to accuracy, followed by vocal nonverbal cues. Visual nonverbal cues contributed the least, though still at levels above zero. When asked to infer feelings, perceivers appeared to shift attention toward visual nonverbal cues and away from verbal cues, and the reverse occurred when they were asked to infer thoughts. The study contributes to understanding of factors contributing to accuracy in the empathic accuracy paradigm.

Masculine = Competent? Physical Appearance and Sex as Sources of Gender-Stereotypic Attributions

In two experiments, the influence of physical appearance and sex on the attribution of leadership competence was analyzed. Participants (male/female) reacted to stimulus persons from one of four groups varying in terms of sex (male/female) and physical appearance (feminine/masculine). The stimulus persons were introduced via photographs. Dependent measures referred to the attribution of leadership characteristics and were measured either directly via ratings or indirectly via a recognition test. In both experiments, participants attributed higher degrees of leadership competence to persons with typically masculine appearance than to persons with typically feminine appearance, regardless of the person’s sex. Only in the experiment with indirect measurement were male persons attributed a higher degree of leadership competence than female persons.

The effects of mood on spontaneous and online impression formation during personal information encoding:Varying inputted individuating information on targets as judgment cues

This study examined the effect of mood on spontaneous and online impression formation when personal information was encountered. In an experiment (N=72), a time constraint was imposed in judging to assure that participants were forming spontaneous impression in encoding. The results showed a greater mood effect was found under limited time conditions as compared to non-limited time conditions, when the inputted individual information was highly related to the trait to be evaluated. On the other hand, the impression was not affected by mood regardless of time constraints, when the inputted individual information was less related to the trait to be evaluated. The implications of the results, when the inputted information was directly useful, were that the initial spontaneous impression affected by mood was utilized to form final judgments. However, the implication of the results, when the inputted information was of little use, it was difficult for participants to utilize the initial spontaneous impressions in forming final judgments, even if the initial impression was affected by mood. Therefore participants rated the stimulus person neutrally because they could not clearly does.

The Differential Effect of Skin Color on Attractiveness, Personality Evaluations, and Perceived Life Success of African Americans

Skin color in relation to perceived attractiveness, personality ratings, and perceived life success of African Americans was investigated in a 2 (sex of participant) 2 (skin color of stimulus person) 2 (sex of stimulus person) design. Based on prior research, Skin Color Sex of Stimulus Person and Sex of Participant Skin Color interactions were hypothesized. Lighter skinned African American women and dark-skinned African American men were expected to receive higher attractiveness, personality, and life success ratings from White participants. In addition, women were expected to rate dark-skinned individuals higher. The results obtained supported the hypotheses for perceived life success only. African American women with fair skin were rated higher than fair-skinned African American men on intelligence and parenting skills. In addition, women rated dark-skinned individuals higher than men did on intelligence. Women also rated the dark-skinned individuals higher than fair-skinned individuals on enthusiasm. Findings are discussed in terms of marketplace theory.!

Effects of Trait Hostility and Self-Relevanceon Social Information Processing

Hostile individuals' negative evaluations of and anger toward others could result from information-processing biases associated with encoding, memory, or both. Further, these biases may stem from a hostile person's motivation to protect the self and may therefore be strongest under conditions of self-directed threat. In this research, we examined these issues in laboratory and naturalistic settings. In Experiment 1 (N = 80), hostile individuals' initial appraisals of a stimulus person were more negative but only under self-directed threat. In Experiment 2 (N = 110), hostile participants initially reported fewer interactions as positive and reported more anger in their own interactions but not in others' interactions. In neither study did results reveal hostility-related memory effects. Findings suggest that hostile individuals may be primarily motivated to detect social threats directed at the self and that memory effects may only emerge when such threats are more direct and explicit.

Meta-Cognition about Biological Sex and Gender-Stereotypic Physical Appearance: Consequences for the Assessment of Leadership Competence

Previous findings are inconsistent with regard to whether men are judged as being more or less competent leaders than women. However, masculine-relative to feminine-looking persons seem to be judged consistently as more competent leaders. Can this different impact of biological sex and physical appearance be due to the disparate availability of meta-cognitive knowledge about both sources? The results of Study 1 indicated that individuals possess meta-cognitive knowledge about a possible biasing influence of persons' biological sex, but not for their physical appearance. In Study 2, participants judged the leadership competence of a male versus female stimulus person with either masculine or feminine physical appearance. In addition, the available cognitive capacity was manipulated. When high capacity was available, participants corrected for the influence of stimulus persons' sex, but they fell prey to this influence under cognitive load. However, the effect of physical appearance was not moderated by cognitive capacity.

Enhanced power within a specific band of theta activity in one person while another receives circumcerebral pulsed magnetic fields: a mechanism for cognitive influence at a distance?

Four pairs of adult siblings served once as either the stimulus or the response person in two sessions separated by one week. While the brain of the stimulus person, who was seated in a closed chamber, was exposed successively to six different complex magnetic fields for 5 min. each quantitative monopolar electroencephalographic measurements over the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes were collected by computer for the response person who was seated in another room. The six configurations of fields served as different stimulus patterns and had been designed to affect consciousness. As predicted theoretically, a significant increase in electroencephalographic power within the 5.0-Hz to 6.0-Hz band over the frontal and occipital lobes was noted for the response persons when the stimulus persons received one of the six specific patterns of weak (1 microTesla range) magnetic fields. This magnetic stimulus was presented for 100 msec. with changes in rate of 20 msec. to each of the eight solenoids that were equally spaced in the horizontal plane around the head of the stimulus person. Derivatives within this narrow frequency band had been hypothesized to be a source of the "binding factor" for the cohesive cerebrogenic electromagnetic fields producing consciousness. The results suggest that an appropriate altered state of one brain can effect specific predictable frequencies of the electroncephalographic activity of another distant brain which is genetically related.