Reason, Passion, & Social Cognition

Week 12, Part 1

Agenda for April 11

Paper feedback: 5 tips

Finish Attribution of Responsibility

Goldberg, Lerner & Tetlock (1999) paper

Reason, Passion, & Social Cognition

Week 12, Part 1

Paper Feedback: Five Tips

Tip 1: Be sure that your topic includes an independent variable (a specific emotion/mood) and a dependent variable (a specific cognitive process). Examples:

IV = Incidental fear, DV = investing in volatile stocks

IV = Desire, DV = “Choice” of sexual orientation IV = Anxiety, DV = Career decision making

Needs more specificity

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Paper Feedback:Five Tips, cont.

Tip 2: Organize info. in reviews; pay attention to the order in which you discuss facts. Possible organization:Elicitors of the emotion (what causes it)Correlates of the emotion (what kind of physiological and/or cognitive profile does it have?)

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Paper Feedback:Five Tips, cont.

Tip 3: Make crystal clear whether an idea is your own versus someone else’s. Example 1: “Anger is the primary emotion associated with justice.”

Implication: I invented this idea.

Example 2: “Anger is the primary emotion associated with justice (Solomon, 1994).”

Implication: Solomon invented this idea and now I’ll elaborate on it and/or use it to build my own hypothesis about anger & attributions.

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Week 12, Part 1

Paper Feedback:Five Tips, cont.

Tip 4: Note the structural difference between paper & outline: Thesis statement should appear in 1st paragraph of paper.

First paragraph contains four parts (see next slide):

1.Intro. sentence2.Hypothesis sentence linking IV & DV3.Clarification of hypothesis, if necessary4.Overview of what’s to come

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More on Tip 4: Sample 1st paragraph

(Topic sentence) “This paper examines the effects of anger (IV) on attributions of responsibility (DV).”

(Hypothesis sentence) “Based on a critical review of anger research and attribution research, I hypothesize that incidental anger induced in one situation will carry over and influence unrelated attributions in another situation.”

(Clarification of hypothesis) “Specifically, anger will increase the punitiveness of attributions.”

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More on Tip 4: 1st paragraph, cont.

(Overview sentence) “The next sections: (a) review theories and research supporting this hypothesis, (b) discuss ways to test this hypothesis, and (c) discuss important applications for this information.”

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Paper Feedback: Five Tips

Tip 5: Be alert to proper use of referencesIn body of paper, treat evidence from journal articles differently than information from books.

If article, describe study and results. Also, describe how it helps prove/disprove your hypothesis.

If book, statements are not necessarily supported by evidence. Perhaps general theory is useful?

Your reference list should only include the 3-5 sources that you have read and discussed in your paper.

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Week 12, Part 1

“Anybody can become angry -- that

is easy; but to be angry with the right

person, and to the right degree, and

at the right time, and for the right

purpose, and in the right way -- that

is not easy.”- Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

Brief review of anger research Content Effects: recursive relationship between blame &

anger

Blamecognitions Anger

Process Effects: heuristic thinking, focusing on blame

Functional Summary: Anger activates an implicit goal of redressing past transgressions

Research Questions

Do people routinely assign greater blame when they feel angry than when they do not feel angry

or Is it possible to detach the experience

of anger from the implicit social goals it activates?

Two routes towardmoderation of anger’s influences on judgment

Modify cognitive

awarenesscues

Modify cognitive closure

cues

Cognitive Awareness Study: Hypotheses

• Anger will amplify punitiveness Rationale: appraisal tendency

Anger arises out of blame attributions

• Accountability will attenuate punitiveness Rationale: cognitive awareness cue

Accountability to an unknown audience activates preemptive self-criticism

Question: Does it matter whether one is accountable for attributions or for reactions to anger prime?

• N = 291• Two “unrelated studies”

Study A: video study Study B: tort study• Accountability manipulation • Accountability manipulation (Communication Studies Post doc) (Legal Studies Post doc)

• Emotion-manipulation • 4 Tort cases (counterbalanced) • Open-ended questions • 5 Punitiveness items per tort• Emotion self-report

• Design: 3 x 2 x 4 mixed factorial

Cognitive Awareness Study: Method

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Vignette Differences

Story content (type of negligence) Person who experiences harm (self,

other) Type of harm (to human body, to

property) Severity of harm Degree of defendant intentionality

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Vignette: Used Car Salesman

Dave is a used-car salesman. Dave had always been honest with his customers in the past. One particular day, on his own initiative, he sold a customer a used car which he knew to have a hidden defect. As a consequence, the customer has to spend an additional, unexpected $1,000 to repair the car.

(Hamilton & Sanders, 1981)

Vignette: Assembly Line Foreman Joe is a foreman on an assembly line. The company

was trying to fill a large order and Joe did not want to stop the line. Joe had always been careful about safety procedures in the past. On this particular day, he noticed the safety guard was improperly attached but decided to do nothing until the end of the day. As a consequence, a worker lost two fingers.

(Hamilton & Sanders, 1981)

Vignette: Construction Worker You were walking down a street that was undergoing

construction when your foot fell through a hidden gap between two boards. Your ankle got caught in the gap as you fell forward, breaking both your ankle and your collar bone. You couldn't use crutches because of the broken collar bone, so you had to spend six months in a wheel chair.

You later found out that Mark, a construction worker, chose to leave the job site before adequately checking the boards that were covering the sidewalk. He did not check the boards because his shift was over and he was told that the construction workers would no longer be paid any overtime since this job was losing money.

The end-of-the-day guidelines that Mark received provided absolutely no instructions about how to check the safety of the site before leaving. At the time of the incident, he was the safety manager, a job he had long looked forward to obtaining.

Vignette: Parking Attendant You were on a motorscooter in the city when a car came out of

a hidden intersection and ran into you. As a result of the accident, you broke several bones that required you to be in a wheel chair for six months. You later discovered that the car that ran into you had been a "runaway": it was parked on the top of a steep hill and had rolled right into the intersection without any possibility for you to get out of the way.

The person who parked the car, Bill, works for a valet parking service. He had been told that the car’s parking break was not working correctly, but he chose to park it at the top of a hill because it was the first space available. He was in a hurry to park the rest of the cars in line so he could get good tips from customers.

Bill usually enjoyed his job; he had been parking cars with this agency for many years. Bill has never received any procedural guidelines at all about how to park cars with faulty parking brakes.

Dependent Variable: Punitiveness To what extent, if at all, should (the defendant) be

blamed for not preventing (X’s) injury? To what extent, if at all, should (the defendant) be

punished for not preventing (X’s) injury? To what extent, if at all, was (the defendant) reckless

and irresponsible in this situation? To what extent, if at all, was (the defendant)

negligent? How much money, if any, should (the defendant)

have to pay (X) for pain and suffering?

• Preliminary Analyses Main effect of priming on anger:

emotion-primed subjects (M anger = .41) neutral-emotion-primed subjects (M anger = - .77)

MANOVA for effects of tort case

results do not differ by vignette

Cognitive Awareness Study: Results

Appraisal-Tendency Effect: Anger Over Past Violence Amplifies Punitiveness in Tort Cases

-.20

-.15

-.10

-.05

.00

.05

.10

Pu

nit

iven

ess

(Z-s

core

)

Anger PrimeNeutral Prime

Pu

nit

iven

ess

(z-s

core

)Potential Cognitive Awareness Effect:

Accountability Attenuates Punitiveness

UnaccountableAccountable forVideo Reactions

Accountable forTort Attributions

-.40

-.30

-.20

-.10

.00

.10

.20

.30

.40

Two Possible Routes to Attenuation

• Heuristic: low-effort strategy Avoid appearing excessively

punitive Avoid considering complex patterns

of information

• Systematic: high-effort strategy Preemptively self-critical attempt to

anticipate objections Consideration of exacerbating and

extenuating circumstances in tort cases

Strategy for Disentangling Heuristic From Systematic Routes

• Examine cue utilization in judgment processDoes accountability: (a) switch on consideration of

mitigating factors?(b) switch off influence of anger?

Unaccountable

Perceived free willversus

coercion

Self-reported

anger

Punitiveness

.20* .10

Accountablefor video reactions

Punitiveness

.08 .25*

Perceived free willversus

coercion

Self-reported

anger

Accountable forresponsibilityattributions

Punitiveness

.05 .57*

Perceived free willversus

coercion

Self-reported

anger

Conclusions• Support for appraisal tendency prediction:

Anger increases punitiveness in unrelated tort judgments.

• Support for cognitive awareness prediction: Accountability alters cue utilization under both

accountability conditions.

• Support for Aristotle’s prediction: Controlling the influence of anger is not easy -- it requires

the sort of effortful and self-critical cognitive awareness that certain kinds of accountability stimulate.

Two routes towardmoderation of emotional influences on judgment

Modify cognitive

awarenesscues

Modify cognitive closure

cues

Cognitive Closure Study: Hypotheses

• Hypothesis: If justice is served after an anger-eliciting event,

participants will still get angry over the act of wrongdoing, but their incidental anger will not change the way they perceive future violations or their inclination to punish future transgressors.

• Manipulation: Justice feedback within the context of anger

Justice served or justice thwarted

Same emotion-induction procedure as previous study, except for justice-feedback manipulation

Same vignettes and punitiveness items as previous study

Cognitive Closure Study: Method

Anger Predicts Punitiveness Only When the Perpetrator is Not

Punished

10

b = .71*

b = .17

Pun

itiv

enes

s (z

-sco

re)

Anger (z-score)

Unpunished Punished

-1

1

-1

0

• Support for cognitive closure prediction: To the extent that a social problem is solved

and the disturbance is redressed, emotion no longer influences subsequent judgments -- even if the emotion persists experientially.

Cognitive Closure Study: Results

Overall Conclusions:

Specific emotions activate pre-programmed cognitive & perceptual tendencies. Tendencies guide thoughts even in situations

unrelated to the emotion-eliciting event.

Social factors (e.g., accountability & the achievement of social goals) moderate the impact of these pre-programmed tendencies.