Hope you enjoyed your vacation

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3 20 07

• Hope you enjoyed your vacation
• Now time to suffer/study!
• 2 days from now Midterm 3
• Ch 9 psychoanalytic approaches historic
• Ch 10 psychoanalytic modern
• Ch 11 motives and personality
• Ch 12 cognitive topics in personality
• And associated lecture material

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3 20 07

• Ch 12 cognitive topics in personality
• 1. Some material from chapter 12
• Perception Field dependence vs independence
• Interpretation Learned helplessness
  explanatory style
• 2. MacLeod Role of interpretation in anxiety
• 3. Accessible attitudes
• perception behavior (Fazio)
• SWB (Robinson)

3
Chapter 12 Cognitive Topics in Personality

• Using information from sense organs
• To make a meaningful percept
• Perception is often subjective, variable

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Chapter 12 Cognitive Topics in Personality

• Necker cube

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Chapter 12 Cognitive Topics in Personality

• Making sense of event
• Interpreting it
• E.g., Seen in TAT interpretations

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Chapter 12 Cognitive Topics in Personality

• Beliefs about what is important to pursue
• Such beliefs have consequences
• (wont really be talking about this today)

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Chapter 12 (Cognitive Topics in Personality)

• Brain must fill in certain facts
• Such fill in could reflect personality

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Chapter 12 (Cognitive Topics in Personality)

• Herman Witkins studied for 30 years
• Wrote a book (1954) called Person Through
  Perception

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Chapter 12 (Cognitive Topics in Personality)

• They see the forest rather than the trees
• holistic style of perception
• Difficulty locating the smaller objects in larger
  scene
• They see the trees rather than the forest
• analytic style of perception
• Locate the specific objects more quickly

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Chapter 12 Cognitive Topics in Personality

• Embedded figures
• Lets time for 1 min
• How many could
• You find?

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Chapter 12 (Cognitive Topics in Personality)

• More dependent on social feedback
• Strong interest in being around others
• More influenced by situation context
• More intuitive
• More autonomous in social relations
• More impersonal, detached
• Prefer non-social situations
• More analytical

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Chapter 12 (Cognitive Topics in Personality)

• Jump, twist, eventually wimper and endure
• But did not rather, passive immobility
• Called learned helplessness
• When you decide nothing you can do
• You give up trying

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Chapter 12 (Cognitive Topics in Personality)

• Person tries to escape situation
• If own efforts never seem to change the situation
• One gives up
• I tried before
• And failed
• This situation will be no different (even when it
  is different)

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Chapter 12 (Cognitive Topics in Personality)

• Reformulated learned helplessness model
• What matters it the explanations people have for
  failures

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Chapter 12 (Cognitive Topics in Personality)

• Reformulated learned helplessness
• Internal oneself is the cause of a poor outcome
  (e.g., bad grade)
• External situational factors (e.g., harsh
  grading) are the cause
• Stable factors unlikely to change (like own
  abilities)
• Unstable factors likely to change (like not
  enough sleep)
• Global attributions likely to have many
  consequences (e.g., low intelligence)
• Specific attributions more specific (e.g.,
  ones ability to take chemistry tests)

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Chapter 12 (Cognitive Topics in Personality)

• Explanatory style
• Internal its me
• Stable it wont change
• Global Im a failure in other realms too
• External its situation
• Unstable situation will change
• Specific Im not a failure in general

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Chapter 12 (Cognitive Topics in Personality)

• Health outcomes age 45-60
• Pessimistic people more likely to be dead later
• 1. Pessimistic person may not engage in health
  protective behaviors
• 2. Pessimistic person may lack social support
• 3. Pessimism does seem to compromise immune
  function (almost like your immune system gives up
  too)

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Chapter 12 Cognitive Topics

• Hand out word fragment test
• Please write class name on top
• E.g., fuzzy navel
• Complete return
• Also necker cube
• Was front of cube to left or right?
• Write down what you saw at top

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Word Fragments Perception

• THRI _ _ THRILL THRIFT
• CHE _ _ CHEER CHEAP
• _ URIOUS FURIOUS CURIOUS
• GLO _ _ Y GLOOMY GLOSSY
• Rusting Larsen (1998)
• E correlates with of positive completions
• N correlates with of negative completions
• Will report back on whether this is true later

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Anxiety and Interpretation (MacLeod)

• Aaron Becks theory of cognitive bias in anxiety
• selective attention to threatening information
• A good deal of support
• selective memory for threatening information
• Not much support
• interpretation of ambiguous threats as threats
• Not yet investigated

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Anxiety and Interpretation (MacLeod)

• Used sentences that could be threatening or not
• Subject asked to read each sentence and hit the
  spacebar for the next one
• If sentence 2 is seen as a plausible continuation
  of sentence 1, person is _________________________
  _________
• Easily understood continuation shorter reaction
  time
• Confusion longer reaction time

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Anxiety and Interpretation (MacLeod)

• Hypotheses
• Method
• Sentence 1 was ______________________________
• Sentence 2 was either consistent with
• ______________ interpretation (e.g., growth
  height)
• ______________ interpretation (e.g., growth
  tumor)
• Hypotheses

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Anxiety and Interpretation (MacLeod)

• Measured by STAI (e.g., I worry a lot)
• Selection for low high anxiety groups
• Low 25-35 on anxiety questionnaire
• High 45-55 on anxiety questionnaire
• Sentences
• The doctor examined little Emilys growth
• Non-threatening Her height had changed little
  since the last visit
• Threatening Her tumor had changed little since
  the last visit

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Anxiety and Interpretation (MacLeod)

• Results
• target
• no threat threat diff
• Trait anxious 2,673 2,610 63
• Non-anxious 2,669 2,744 -75

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Anxiety and Interpretation (MacLeod)

• Conclusions
• Interpreted more negatively by those high in
  anxiety
• Interpreted less negatively by those low in
  anxiety
• 2. Supports the idea that anxious
  _______________________________________
• 3. Could interpretation (as threatening) be
  responsible for trait anxiety?

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Fazio Powell (1997) Likes and Dislikes

• Fazio Williams (1986)
• Prior to 84 election, Reagan vs. Mondale
• Months later
• 1. Perception of Reagan-Mondale debate
• 2. Voting behavior

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Fazio Powell (1997) Likes Dislikes

• Why did they measure reaction time to evaluate
  Reagan Mondale?

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Fazio Powell (1997) Likes Dislikes

• Whose attitudes should better predict perception
  of debates and voting?
• Sally likes Mondale but takes her 15 seconds to
  say so
• Lisa likes Mondale takes her 3 seconds to say so

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Fazio Powell (1997) Likes and Dislikes

• Fazio Williams (1986)
• Lisa, 3 seconds, should have more predictive
  relations
• Fast/Reagan Reagan clearly won debate
• Fast/Mondale Mondale clearly won debate
• Fast/Reagan voted for Reagan
• Fast/Mondale voted for Mondale

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Fazio Powell (1997) Likes Dislikes

• Direct connection
• Same stuff always recalled
• Behavior will be consistent with attitude
• No direct connection
• Will recall different stuff each time
• Behavior will be less consistent with attitude

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Fazio Powell (1997) Likes and Dislikes

• Fazio Williams (1986)
• Conclusions
• 1. All attitudes not equally strong
• 2. Fast attitudes are stronger attitudes
• 3. Perception behavior more consistent with
  attitudes if attitude judgment was quick

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The accessibility of negative evaluations
(Robinson)

• Minor negative stimuli
• World is full of them
• Headaches
• Body odor
• Stale coffee
• Meetings
• Such minor negative events interfere with
  well-being
• However, perhaps not all individuals interpret
  such events negatively

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The accessibility of negative evaluations
(Robinson)

• Accessibility evaluation (Fazio model)
• Attitude association between object
  evaluation
• Object beets
• Evaluation yuck
• Such object-evaluation associations differ
  between individuals
• Some fast to evaluate negative objects as
  negative
• Some slow to evaluate negative objects as
  negative
• Such accessible evaluations (as negative) might
  influence well-being

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The accessibility of negative evaluations
(Robinson)

• In this sense
• Negative evaluations, negative reactions
• Inescapable for those with accessible attitudes

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The accessibility of negative evaluations
(Robinson)

• However, something different than traits (E N)

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The accessibility of negative evaluations
(Robinson)

• These words were only slightly negative
• Needle
• Dust
• Seat
• Insect
• Vinegar
• Control task
• Animal (e.g., fox) vs. not animal (e.g., plate)
• To control for baseline speed
• Resulting measure

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The accessibility of negative evaluations
(Robinson)

• Study 1
• Not related to traits
• E BAD SPEED, r -.08
• N BAD SPEED, r -.21
• Related to emotional states
• BAD SPEED PA, r .06
• BAD SPEED NA, r -.28
• BAD SPEED somatic symptoms, r -.32

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The accessibility of negative evaluations
(Robinson)

• Study 2
• Not related to traits
• E BAD SPEED, r .02
• N BAD SPEED, r -.10
• Related to life satisfaction
• BAD SPEED life satisfaction, r .29

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The accessibility of negative evaluations
(Robinson)

• Study 3
• Not related to traits
• E BAD SPEED, r .09
• N BAD SPEED, r .02
• Related to emotional states
• BAD SPEED PA, r .06
• BAD SPEED NA, r -.20
• BAD SPEED somatic symptoms -.19
• Related to momentary interpretations
• BAD SPEED reward, r -.02
• BAD SPEED threat, r -.20
• BAD SPEED classification, r .19

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The accessibility of negative evaluations
(Robinson)

• Conclusions
• BAD SPEED predicted states, although not
  correlated with traits
• A risk factor for own happiness
• More NA
• More somatic symptoms
• Daily events evaluated more negatively
• Traits cannot be changed
• Processes can
• Thus, accessibility approach more optimistic
  about likelihood of change
• Not so far fetched
• We can train our thinking processes
• And this has consequences
• E.g., training away from threat (MacLeod)