I can tell
Being Observed Magnifies Action
Janina Steinmetz et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We test the hypothesis that people, when observed, perceive their actions as more substantial because they add the audience’s perspective to their own perspective. We find that participants who were observed while eating (Study 1) or learned they were observed after eating (Study 2) recalled eating a larger portion than unobserved participants. The presence of others magnified both desirable and undesirable actions. Thus, observed (vs. unobserved) participants believed they gave both more correct and incorrect answers in a lab task (Study 3) and, moving to a field study, the larger the audience, the larger the contribution badminton players claimed toward their teams’ successes as well as failures (Study 4). In contrast to actions, inactions are not magnified, because they are unobservable; indeed, observed (vs. unobserved) participants believed they solved more task problems but did not skip more problems (Study 5). Taken together, these studies show that being observed fundamentally alters the subjective magnitude of one’s actions.
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Die Hard in Notting Hill: Gender Differences in Recalling Contents from Action and Romantic Movies
Peter Wühr & Sascha Schwarz
Applied Cognitive Psychology, July/August 2016, Pages 491–503
Abstract:
We investigated the impact of movie genre preferences on memory for movie content. Starting from a well-documented gender gap in movie preferences, we predicted that women would recall more contents from a romantic movie than from an action movie, whereas men were expected to recall more contents from an action movie than from a romantic movie. In two experiments, male and female participants watched 30-minute clips from action and romantic movies and then answered 30 questions on movie content and additional questions. Both experiments showed that women recalled relatively more information from a romantic movie than from an action movie, whereas men showed the opposite pattern. Further analyses showed that these effects were independent from participants' familiarity with the movie and not mediated by participants' liking of a particular movie. In general, the results of our study provide further evidence for an effect of (gender-related) interests on memory performance.
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People Use Psychological Cues to Detect Physical Disease From Faces
Konstantin Tskhay, John Paul Wilson & Nicholas Rule
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous theoretical work has suggested that people can accurately perceive disease from others’ appearances and behaviors. However, much of that research has examined diseases with relatively obvious symptoms (e.g., scars, obesity, blemishes, sneezing). Here, we examined whether people similarly detect diseases that do not exhibit such visible physical cues (i.e., sexually transmitted diseases). We found that people could indeed identify individuals infected with sexually transmitted diseases significantly better than chance from photos of their faces. Perceptions of the targets’ affective expression and socioeconomic status mediated participants’ accuracy. Finally, increasing participants’ contamination fears improved their sensitivity to disease cues. These data therefore suggest that people may use subtle and indirect psychological markers to detect some physical diseases from appearance.
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Sounds Big: The Effects of Acoustic Pitch on Product Perceptions
Michael Lowe & Kelly Haws
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is meaning in sound that transcends language. Structural differences in the sound of a spokesperson's voice or piece of background music can influence a consumer's perception of product attributes through cross-modal inference. This article examines how differences in acoustic pitch in marketing communications influence consumer's perceptions of product size. Through six studies the authors find that when associated with a product, lower pitch in voice or music leads consumers to infer a larger product size. Further, evidence shows that this pitch-size effect occurs through a process of visual mental imagery, which can be facilitated through stronger visualization cues delivered via auditory channels and reduced when size perceptions are assessed directly in the presence of visual product information. The cross-modal effects between auditory stimuli and physical products represent an unexplored influence on consumer perception and behavior with important managerial and theoretical implications.
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Patrick Dunlop et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Overclaiming — in which individuals overstate their level of familiarity with items — has been proposed as a potential indicator of positive self-presentation. However, the precise nature and determinants of overclaiming are not well understood. Herein, we provide novel insights into overclaiming through 4 primary studies (comprising 6 samples) and a meta-analysis. Based on past empirical work and theoretical discussions suggesting that overclaiming may be the result of several processes — including an egoistic tendency to self-enhance, intentional impression managing behavior, and memory biases — we investigate various potential dispositional bases of this behavior. We hypothesized that overclaiming would best be predicted by a dispositional tendency to be curious and explorative (i.e., high Openness to Experience) and by a dispositional tendency to be disingenuous and self-centered (i.e., low Honesty-Humility). All studies provided support for the first hypothesis; that is, overclaiming was positively associated with Openness. However, no study supported the hypothesis that overclaiming was associated with Honesty-Humility. The third and fourth studies, where multiple mechanisms were compared simultaneously, further revealed that overclaiming can be understood as a result of knowledge accumulated through a general proclivity for cognitive and aesthetic exploration (i.e., Openness) and, to a lesser extent, time spent in formal education.
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Electrical Stimulation of Visual Cortex Can Immediately Improve Spatial Vision
Robert Reinhart et al.
Current Biology, 25 July 2016, Pages 1867–1872
Abstract:
We can improve human vision by correcting the optics of our lenses. However, after the eye transduces the light, visual cortex has its own limitations that are challenging to correct. Overcoming these limitations has typically involved innovative training regimes that improve vision across many days. In the present study, we wanted to determine whether it is possible to immediately improve the precision of spatial vision with noninvasive direct-current stimulation. Previous work suggested that visual processing could be modulated with such stimulation. However, the short duration and variability of such effects made it seem unlikely that spatial vision could be improved for more than several minutes. Here we show that visual acuity in the parafoveal belt can be immediately improved by delivering noninvasive direct current to visual cortex. Twenty minutes of anodal stimulation improved subjects’ vernier acuity by approximately 15% and increased the amplitude of the earliest visually evoked potentials in lockstep with the behavioral effects. When we reversed the orientation of the electric field, we impaired resolution and reduced the amplitude of visually evoked potentials. Next, we found that anodal stimulation improved acuity enough to be measurable with the relatively coarse Snellen test and that subjects with the poorest acuity benefited the most from stimulation. Finally, we found that stimulation-induced acuity improvements were accompanied by changes in contrast sensitivity at high spatial frequencies.
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Rainer Schneider
Applied Cognitive Psychology, July/August 2016, Pages 650–654
Abstract:
Recently, a series of experiments demonstrated that direct stimulation of the olfactory system by means of an odor inhaler targets brain areas associated with stress reduction and pain relief. This paper follows up on these findings and investigates whether such effects can also be found for inhalers specially designed to increase attention and concentration. In a three-armed, randomized, controlled experiment participants' cognitive ability to discriminate between similar visual stimuli was tested either with or without the use of an odor inhaler. Concentration, visual scanning speed, and accuracy were assessed to gauge differential effects. Both odor inhalers outperformed the control condition where no odor was used. The effects were large and showed in all parameters. The direct application of specially designed essential oil compositions enhances attention and concentration when used during short-term breaks in a stressful and attention-demanding cognitive task.
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Caroline Lustenberger et al.
Current Biology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Transient episodes of brain oscillations are a common feature of both the waking and the sleeping brain. Sleep spindles represent a prominent example of a poorly understood transient brain oscillation that is impaired in disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. However, the causal role of these bouts of thalamo-cortical oscillations remains unknown. Demonstrating a functional role of sleep spindles in cognitive processes has, so far, been hindered by the lack of a tool to target transient brain oscillations in real time. Here, we show, for the first time, selective enhancement of sleep spindles with non-invasive brain stimulation in humans. We developed a system that detects sleep spindles in real time and applies oscillatory stimulation. Our stimulation selectively enhanced spindle activity as determined by increased sigma activity after transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) application. This targeted modulation caused significant enhancement of motor memory consolidation that correlated with the stimulation-induced change in fast spindle activity. Strikingly, we found a similar correlation between motor memory and spindle characteristics during the sham night for the same spindle frequencies and electrode locations. Therefore, our results directly demonstrate a functional relationship between oscillatory spindle activity and cognition.