Equity theory has long been used to predict individuals' responses to equity and inequity. Tests of these predictions have been inconsistent, particularly for inequitable conditions of low inputs and high outcomes, or overreward. Based on empirical evidence pointing to the powerful effects of moods on cognitive tasks, this study incorporates mood into equity theory's propositions, with the expectation that considering mood will enhance equity theory's predictive power. Specifically, as Wyer and Carlston's (1979) "feelings-as-information" hypothesis suggests, subjects who receive favorable outcomes may use their positive outcome-based mood in judging the fairness of the situation. Cognitive research suggests that positive mood reduces the accuracy of judgments, which would explain the inconsistencies in equity perceptions. However, Schwarz and Clore (1983) discovered that the effect of mood on judgments may be eliminated if the mood can be attributed to a logical external source. Two studies were conducted using similar procedures with different overrewards and external sources. In both studies, overrewarded subjects rated the fairness of being overrewarded and the fairness of the procedures used to allocate the reward. These ratings were analyzed to assess the effects that subjects' inputs, outcomes, and procedures had on their perceptions of fairness. Two groups were given the opportunity to attribute their moods to a source other than the reward. It was hypothesized that mood effects on fairness judgments would be eliminated when subjects were able to attribute their mood to its correct source (i.e., undeserved reward) or to an incorrect but logical source (i.e., music or cheerful surroundings). Specifically, the elimination of the effect of positive mood should serve to increase accuracy in judgments of fairness. The hypothesis that subjects who were treated with fair procedures would view their outcome as more distributively fair was supported in both studies. In Study 1, the hypotheses regarding changes in judgment accuracy as a function of external attribution of positive mood were not supported. The results of Study 2, which used a different overreward and transient source, revealed that external attribution of positive mood had a significant effect on subjects' fairness ratings. / Master of Science

Although more than 2500 articles published since 1970 deal with facial attractiveness, few have addressed whether characteristics of the beholder might influence such judgments. The present study considers whether misattribution and/or distraction contribute to a hypothesized change in males' ratings of female facial attractiveness when state anxiety is increased. Results obtained were consistent with distraction theory but were also interpretable through an alternative misattribution explanation. Participant relationship status was also found to be a significant predictor of attractiveness ratings and suggested the possibility that relationship status might interact with state anxiety to uniquely influence males’ attractiveness ratings for female faces. Implications and applications of these findings are discussed for clinical, social, and developmental psychology and recommendations given for future research into this and related phenomena.

Although more than 2500 articles published since 1970 deal with facial attractiveness, few have addressed whether characteristics of the beholder might influence such judgments. The present study considers whether misattribution and/or distraction contribute to a hypothesized change in males' ratings of female facial attractiveness when state anxiety is increased. Results obtained were consistent with distraction theory but were also interpretable through an alternative misattribution explanation. Participant relationship status was also found to be a significant predictor of attractiveness ratings and suggested the possibility that relationship status might interact with state anxiety to uniquely influence males’ attractiveness ratings for female faces. Implications and applications of these findings are discussed for clinical, social, and developmental psychology and recommendations given for future research into this and related phenomena.

Exposure to misleading post-event information can result in impaired memory for the original event. Two theoretical mechanisms (i.e., retrieval blocking and source misattribution) have been proposed as explanantions for the occurrence of the misinformation effect. The impact of context on the occurrence of these errors has been examined to determine if changing the context between events reduces the misinformation effect. Previous findings indicate that context plays a different role in each of these mechanisms; however, experimental differences in the paradgms used to examine retrieval blocking and source misattribution have made comparisons between these mechanisms difficult. The present study examined the role of context in eyewitness memory using the same materials, manipulations, and procedures to determine if context does, in fact, have a different impact on these mechanisms. Results indicate that changing the context between events reduces the occurrence of source misattribution but does not ameliorate the impact of retrieval blocking.

Successful episodic recollection occurs when an event properly binds with its context. Source misattribution demonstrates incorrect binding of a memory with its contextual information. By contrast, false memories are memories of events that did not occur. Although theoretically they should not be bound with contextual information, often, false memories are accompanied by contextual information. This phenomenon is known as content borrowing. This thesis project examined the differences between the two contextual memory errors. The DRM paradigm was used to induce both source misattributions and content borrowing. This allowed the neural differences between the two to be directly tested. No differences were found between source misattribution and content borrowing. However, false memories with content borrowing showed different neural activations from true memory with correct source, true memory with incorrect source, and correct rejection. This suggests that false memories and source misattributions may represent similar errors in memory that rely on gist memory traces. / Master of Science

Extant attention theories explain how individuals direct attention towards different stimuli. However, the theories are relatively silent about how attention is switched off, other than the idea that attention to a stimulus may cease because another stimulus overwhelms the first in its demand for attention. We theorized that individuals have a tendency to ‘not switch off’ attention from a current process, in the absence of a competing stimulus that wrenches attention away from it. We present evidence consistent with this attentional bias – individuals continue attending to an ongoing mundane process until it reaches its ‘end’, even when that attention is normatively unwarranted, namely under conditions where (1) they cannot control or influence the process and (2) they are aware of the outcome with a reasonable degree of certainty as well. Moreover, since attention is a limited capacity resource, such attentional hijacking is negatively hedonically marked which gets mis-attributed to salient available targets. Consequently, we also demonstrate decreased positivity in attitudes towards entities associated with the incomplete process.

Our memory is prone to distortions which in everyday life can lead to mistaken memories. This thesis investigates memory distortion. In addition, one might recall (e.g. an event) correctly but misremember the source of the event (e.g. place or time of the event); this particular type of memory distortion is called source amnesia. Here, an overview of cognitive theories of memory distortion as well as the neuroscience behind memory distortion is provided. In addition, the particular memory distortion of source amnesia where one is unable to acquire when or where a fact was learned is further investigated. Results indicate that an overlap of qualities related to the information being learned causes information to be linked to wrong sources, thus creating distorted memories. Misinformation is also indicated to produce impairment in memory. In memory distortions, memory impairments are representative in various areas of the brain, including the hippocampus and the amygdala in the medial temporal lobes as well as in the frontal cortex and in the visual cortex. These key areas are also closely related to brain aging in Alzheimer´s disease and in schizophrenia, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and in drug and alcohol abuse. Individuals inflicted with these disease symptoms seem to be more prone to source amnesia compared to controls. The limitations and future directions of what we can study regarding memory distortion and source amnesia are also presented in this thesis.

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The aim of this study was to find if manipulating fluency, that is, the ease of processing, could affect confidence ratings about whether an event occurred in the respondents&rsquo / past. To test the familiarity misattribution hypothesis, which states that familiarity caused by fluent processing can be misattributed to past experience if the source of fluency cannot be identified, two methods were used: a revelation task, which was anagram solving and repetition priming. In the revelation task the familiarity misattribution hypothesis and the activation based hypothesis were tested by presenting one of the words in each one of the Life Event Inventory (LEI) items as an anagram or an unrelated anagram before the LEI, respectively. Higher confidence ratings for LEIs with an anagram compared to LEIs without anagrams would indicate that a revelation effect. A revelation effect was not observed for either condition. Therefore, the previous findings of revelation effect for autobiographical memories (Bernstein et al., 2002) could not be replicated when Turkish counterparts of LEI and anagrams were used. In the repetition priming experiments, the participants&rsquo / awareness of the source of fluency was manipulated by presenting either a subliminal or a supraliminal prime before they responded to a LEI item. The prime was either the same as the verb of the LEI sentence, or a different verb. Participants gave higher confidence ratings if subliminal primes were identical to, rather than different from, the verb of the sentence. If the participants were aware of seeing the primes, this difference disappeared. These results were consistent with the familiarity misattribution hypothesis.

The internet is a consistent presence in people's daily lives. As people upload, download, and offload information to and from this cloud mind, the line between people's own minds and the cloud mind of the internet may become increasingly blurry. Building on the theory of transactive memory, the current research uses 2 pilot studies and 6 experiments to explore the possibility that using the internet to access information may cause people to become one with the cloud--to lose sight of where their own minds end and the mind of the internet begins, and to lose track of which memories are stored internally and which are stored online. These experiments explore three key factors that may lead to blurred boundaries between the self and the cloud: accessing the internet through a familiar access point or transactive memory partner (i.e., Google), having the "feeling of knowing" that often accompanies internet search, and experiencing the "knew it all along" effect when this feeling of knowing is falsely confirmed. These factors are often present when accessing information online, and may lead people to misattribute internet-related outcomes and characteristics to the self. / Psychology