The goal of the present investigation was to explore the effects of automatic emotion regulation on the desirability bias. The desirability bias is the tendency to believe that one will experience desirable outcomes and not experience undesirable outcomes. Previous research has demonstrated that the desirability bias is due to affective reactions to potential events. Further, deliberate emotion regulation has been shown to reduce the desirability bias. The present investigation explored whether the desirability bias can be reduced by priming a nonconscious goal to regulate emotion before experience of affective reactions to an event. Participants were primed to either express or regulate their emotions before playing a game of chance where cards could result in positive, negative or neutral outcomes. Results showed that the method of priming emotion regulation or expression did not effectively elicit nonconscious goals. Because the manipulation was not effective, the effect of automatic emotion regulation on the desirability bias could not be examined and there was no effect of the prime on bias. Despite the failed manipulation, the findings are still beneficial to the desirability bias literature in that they demonstrate a clear desirability bias in participants' predictions with the use of a within-subjects design. A follow up study using a stronger prime of regulation to test the influence of automatic emotion regulation in reducing the desirability bias is discussed.

Individuals who are members of stigmatized groups, such as lesbians, gays, and bisexuals, have cognitive deficits in situations that are threatening or hostile to the group in question. Stereotype threat and stigma threat research suggests these cognitive deficits occur in people who identify with stigmatized groups as a result of anxiety. Yet regulating impulses may also create cognitive deficits because it is effortful and diminishes the ability to perform cognitive tasks. This study investigates whether the regulation of undesired sexual impulses causes cognitive deficits in threatening situations even in people who do not identify with a stigmatized group. An implicit measure of sexual attraction to the same gender was administered to participants who self-identified as heterosexual (n = 317). Sexual impulses were primed by asking participants to write about an attractive person of the same or opposite sex or a neutral object. An interaction was found between implicit same sex attraction and the salience of same sex attraction in predicting self-control performance. Participants with a higher level of implicit same sex attraction performed worse on a self-control task after writing about the attractiveness of a same sex person. People with implicit same sex attraction who identify as heterosexual may have more difficulty with tasks requiring self-control or regulatory abilities as well as worse performance outcomes in work and school settings.

No description available.

Thesis (M.Comm. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

Reasoners who adopt the perspective of another can increase the proportion of logically valid inferences they make (Thompson, Evans, & Handley, 2005). A possible explanation is that shifting perspective promotes analytic reasoning. If this were the case, then shifting perspectives should also reduce the belief-bias effect. Furthermore, strong evidence should be preferred over weak evidence. To test this, 256 participants read twenty-four research descriptions that varied in evidence quality and degree of personal belief content. Participants indicated whether the data supported the researchers hypotheses. Belief bias was reduced when participants evaluated the data from the researchers perspective relative to their own. Evidence strength was an important determining factor in decision-making and it was sensitive to perspective and individual differences.

Reasoners who adopt the perspective of another can increase the proportion of logically valid inferences they make (Thompson, Evans, & Handley, 2005). A possible explanation is that shifting perspective promotes analytic reasoning. If this were the case, then shifting perspectives should also reduce the belief-bias effect. Furthermore, strong evidence should be preferred over weak evidence. To test this, 256 participants read twenty-four research descriptions that varied in evidence quality and degree of personal belief content. Participants indicated whether the data supported the researchers hypotheses. Belief bias was reduced when participants evaluated the data from the researchers perspective relative to their own. Evidence strength was an important determining factor in decision-making and it was sensitive to perspective and individual differences.

Anthropomorphism is a common phenomenon when people attribute human characteristics to non-human objects. It plays an important role in acceptance of robots in natural human environments. Various studies in the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) show that there are various factors that can affect the extent to which a robot is anthropomorphized. However, our knowledge of this phenomenon is segmented, as there is a lack of a coherent model of anthropomorphism that could consistently explain these findings. A robot should be able to adjust its level of anthropomorphism to a level that can optimize its task performance. In order to do that, robotic system designers must know which characteristics affect the perception of robots' anthropomorphism. Currently, existing models of anthropomorphism emphasize the importance of the context and perceiver in this phenomenon, but provide little guidelines regarding the factors of a perceived object that are affecting it. The proposed reverse process to anthropomorphization is known as dehumanization. In the recent years research in social psychology has found which characteristics are deprived from people who are perceived as subhumans or are objectified. Furthermore, the process of dehumanization is two dimensional rather than unidimensional. This thesis discusses a model of anthropomorphism that uses characteristics from both dimensions of dehumanization and those relating to robots' physical appearance to affect the anthropomorphism of a robot. Furthermore, involvement of implicit and explicit processes in anthropomorphization are discussed. In this thesis I present five empirical studies that were conducted to explore anthropomorphism in HRI. Chapter 3 discusses development and validation of a cognitive measurement of humanlikeness using the magnitude of the inversion effect. Although robot stimuli were processed more similarly to human stimuli rather than objects and induced the inversion effect, the results suggest that this measure has limited potential for measuring humanlikeness due to the low variance that it can explain. The second experiment, presented in Chapter 4 explored the involvement of Type I and Type II processing in anthropomorphism. The main findings of this study suggest that anthropomorphism is not a result of a dual-process and self-reports have a potential to be suitable measurement tools of anthropomorphism. Chapter 5 presents the first empirical work on the dimensionality of anthropomorphism. Only perceived emotionality of a robot, but not its perceived intelligence, affects its anthropomorphization. This finding is further supported by a follow up experiment, presented in Chapter 6, that shows that Human Uniqueness dimension is less relevant for a robot's anthropomorphiazability than Human Nature (HN) dimension. Intentionality of a robot did not result in its higher anthropomorphizability. Furthermore, this experiment showed that humanlike appearance of a robot is not linearly related with its anthropomorphism during HRI. The lack of linear relationship between humanlike appearance and attribution of HN traits to a robot during HRI is further supported by the study described in Chapter 7. This last experiment shows also that another factor of HN, sociability, affects the extent to which a robot is anthropomorphized and therefore the relevance of HN dimension in the process of anthropomorphization. This thesis elaborates on the process of anthropomorphism as an important factor affecting HRI. Without fully understanding the process itself and what factors make robots to be anthropomorphized it is hard to measure the impact of anthropomorphism on HRI. It is hoped that understanding anthropomorphism in HRI will make it possible to design interactions in a way that optimizes the benefits of that phenomenon for an interaction.

Metaphors have long been a subject of interest to philosophers, scholars and researchers. Recent insights into the nature and function of metaphor have spurred new interest in the persuasive effects of metaphor. To date, research on the relation between metaphors and attitudes has produced mixed findings. This paper argues that there are several limitations in previous models and designs and this work attempted to resolve several of them. The rationale for the study is based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of persuasion, which argues that cognitive elaboration is a strong predictor of attitudes. Researchers have posited that metaphors should evoke more cognitive elaboration than literal counterparts. This paper reports the results of a study that tested the relationship between metaphors, cognitive elaboration, and attitudes. Participants were exposed to one of 72 message conditions and responded to a set of psychological and attitude scales. Many of the hypotheses were not supported, including tests of the amount of cognitive effort that subjects reported and results related to attitude change by metaphor type. Results indicated that attitudes were stable across time, which is consistent with the ELM.

According to Joshua Greene’s dual-process theory, our moral judgments are processed in one of two systems in the brain referred to as the emotional (quick, unconscious) and rational (slow, conscious) system. The reason for why people tend to answer differently in the footbridge dilemma compared to the trolley dilemma is because the emotional system is dominating over the rational system. Research has demonstrated that patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage make more utilitarian judgments in moral dilemmas in relation to harmful situations. According to the dual-process theory, this is because the emotional system has been impaired which results in that the only working system is the rational system. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the dual-process theory tries to explain why our moral judgments tend to differ in some moral dilemmas. This thesis will also look at how the dual-process theory tries to explain why patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage make utilitarian judgments in relation to harmful situations. This thesis will sustain that the dual-process theory have gained strong empirical support, especially from the research that has been made on patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage. This thesis will also argue that some modifications needs to be made on the dual-process theory in order to make it stronger.

Thesis (M.Comm. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.