Westerners tend to believe in individual agency more than in Eastern cultures. 

(Example: A Westerner explains a lone fish separated form the group as wanting to "do it's own thing". Easterners explain that the fish is swimming alone behind the group because it is being "punished by the others".)

1.White Bear Study

2.Dream Control Study

3.Mood Study

1.Rating stockings study

2.Emotional responses to stories study

White Bear Study

Mood Control Study

Dream Study 

• Group 1 was told explicitly NOT to think about their crush before they went to bed. Group 2 was told explicitly to think as much as they wanted about this special person before bed.
• Group 1 dreamed about their crush significantly more than those in Group 2.
• This study is similiar to the White Bear study, in that it also shows the paradoxical effect of thought suppression (the more you try not to think about something, the more preoccupied you will become with that thought). This is called the Rebound Effect.

Rating Stockings Study

• Four identical pairs of stockings were presented to a group of people at a mall. The people were told to rate their favorite pair and then also to explain their choice.
• All different answers were given for choice (softness, durability, etc.). Position of the stockings had the greatest impact, although nobody was aware that it had influenced their choice.
• This study shows that people are often not aware of why they think certain things, or what influences their choices.
• It also shows that people have a biased preference for things on the right-hand side.

Reading Passages Study

• Participants were given a passage of Rabbit, Run to read. Some were given passages with highly emotionally (in other words, gruesome and disturbing) content, others were given passages of the same book without this content.
• P's picked between description of baby drowning vs. description of messy room as being the most emotionally affecting. 
• People falsely predicted that the highly emotional content (baby drowning) would effect the emotional impact of the story.
•  When the actual passages were given to P's, however, it did not matter whether they received the emotional passage or not.
• This study shows that our predictions of what will effect us emotionally are often wrong.

Studies that support the claim that our choices are influenced both by explicit rules and by non-concious (implicit) ideas about our choices:

1.Private vs. Public study

Private vs. Public Study

• Group 1 was asked to judge the character of a person they'd never met (Jill) based on facts given about them (ex: she spilled coffee once at a job interview). Group 2 was told to do the same thing, except they were informed beforehand that this wasn't a real person, and that the survey was purely hypothetical.
• The results of this study show that we are accurate about whether information will influence our judgement- as long as there are explicit rules about that information and the characteristic being judged.
• Basically, this study shows that our judgements are more inaccurate when there are fewer explicit rules. This whole study relates to automaticity.
• Example of explicit rule: People who get good grades are more intelligent.
• Example of implicit rule: When people do clumsy things, they become more likable.

Studies that support the claim that we are Motivated Towards Certainty:

1.Intuitive storytelling study

2.Choosing a vacation study

3.Gambling study

Intuitive Storytelling Study

• Subjects watched a short clip of different non-social objects (shapes) moving in random ways. They were then asked to explain what these shapes were doing.
• This study showed that people infer intentions to the behaviors of themselves and others, even when behavior is random and made up of non-social objects.

Choosing A Vacation Study

• When given the choice to go on a vacation before knowing if they have passed a recently taken test, to to not go on vacation at all, or to pay 20$ to wait a few days until they found out their test score, most people chose the third option. 
• The results show that people will often choose the option that most reduces uncertainty, such as paying 20$ to wait long enough to know their test score. 

Gambling Study

-Showed that people were willing to try

a second time, whether they won or lost

the first round. If the outcome of the

first round is not known, they are more

likely to reduce uncertsainty by rejecting

the second round.

What studies support the theory of Cognitive Dissonance?

1. Chinese Customer Study

2. Cognitive Dissonance Study

3.Monkeys and M&Ms Study

Chinese Customer Study

-Explicit claims made by hotel owners of having a prejudiced view of Chinese people in a survey, (even claiming that they wouldn't serve them) was inconsistent with their actions- they readily served a small group of Chinese travelers prior to taking the survey.

-Once hotel owners took in attractive, kind, polite Chinese customers, they changed their attitudes to non-racist ones.

-This study shows that we change our attitudes to match our behavior, because not doing so is psychologically uncomfortable.

Task vs. Description Study

-Participants had to perform a boring task.

-One group then had to describe the task to someone else either as boring (honest description) or as enjoyable (false description)

-The group who was made to describe the task to someone else as enjoyable rated their experience doing the task as worse than those who did not have to lie (even if the liars were getting paid more)

-This study shows that we are psychologically uncomfortable when our attitudes do not match our behavior. 

Monkeys and M&Ms Study

-Monkeys were made to choose between their two most preferred colors of M&Ms. After making this choice, monkeys then rated the color they didn't select as being less preferable than their original rating of the color.

-This shows that cognitive dissonance has an evolutionary basis (monkeys are closely related to humans)

Studies that support the claim of Automaticity:

1.Rudeness study

2. Old people word study

3.Race/Hostility study

Metacognition

The study of the way in which cognitive experience can influence cognitive content (In other words, how our experience of thinking influences our actual thoughts).

Assertiveness Study ("How assertive are you?")

-P's were asked to recall either 6 or 12 examples of either assertive or unassertive behavior. They were then asked to rate their own assertiveness.

-The more assertive traits asked to recall, the less assertive P's felt themselves to be. Additionally, the more unassertive traits asked to recall, the more assertive P's felt themselves to be.

-How it relates to metacognition- the (more challenging) cognitive experience of recalling 12 examples of assertiveness/unassertiveness made the subject think differently about their own assertiveness.

1.Stock market study

2. "How Pretty Is This" study

3. Dollar Bills Study

Stock Market Study

-This study set out to explore whether processing fluency effects the (short-term) value of stocks.

-Study 1 was a correlative observation that compared the pronunce-ability of a company's three-letter stock ticker code. They found that the more pronouncable set of numbers increased in value significantly more than the awkard-to-pronounce codes.

-Study 2 was a real lab experiment took the previous study further. P's (princeton undergrads) were asked to estimate the future for stocks based on their easy or hard pronounce-ability, over a period of one year. The more fluent stocks had significantly higher predictions for success.

-How it relates to fluency:

Our unconscious mind correlates easier to pronounce things with greater success. This influences our conscious decision to predict the success of certain stocks.

Fluency

-There is more to thinking than thought content.

-Many studies have shown that both conscious and unconscious experiences that occur during your thought process will influence your evaluations.

-Fluency is an example of this phenomenon. Fluency is when people unconsciously use their sense of how easy (or fluently) it is to recall something to gauge how true something is, at least of themselves.

"How pretty is this?" Study

-P's were asked to rate the prettiness of different pictures flashed for 2 sec.s each on a screen.

-Between each picture, they were shown a "mask" (an image they were not aware of, as it is flashed too fast too see) for 25 ms.

-Some masks were outlines of the proceeding figures (matched), some were outlines of different figures (unmatched).

-The pictures proceeded by matched masks were judged as prettier than the unmatched pictures.

-How this study relates to fluency: The matched masked were shown to aid perceptual fluency, and were therefore rated as prettier.  

Dollar Bill Study

-P's estimated the quantity of different items that could be purchased with two single dollar bills (familiar condition) and one two-dollar bill (unfamiliar condition).

-P's estimated that they could buy more with the two singles, when in fact the two amounts were the same.

-How this study relates to fluency: things that are more familiar to us, like single dollar bills, are easier (more fluent) to process, and so they also seem easier to manage in real life than a strange two-dollar bill.

Fluency and Ease

Studies that support idea of fluency & ease:

Naive Theories

-Theories we have about the implications of the experience of cognitive processes to explain the content of cognitive processes.

-Example: fluency effects may be driven by a naive theory stating that the childhood memories that come more easily to mind are the ones that occurred with greater frequency.

Font Study

-P's who read a passage in an easy to read font (like print) were more likely to perceive the activity as easier, and less boring. 

-How it relates to fluency&ease: shows that the perceived ease of reading about an activity influences our judgement of its actual difficulty level- we are inclined to think the activity itself it easier.

Childhood Study ("Are naive theories malleable?")

-P's were asked to recall either 4 or 12 childhood events (not specifically good or bad). P's were then given different theories explaining difficulty of recall: Group 1 was told that difficulty of recall meant that the events were bad (we avoid bad memories). Group 2 was told this difficulty meant that the events were good (we don't dwell on happy memories). 

-P's rated their childhood according to whether memory of events was a negative or positive thing. Group 1 (memory loss of events=they were bad) rated their childhoods as better when recalling 12 events . Group 2  (memory loss of events=they were good) rated theirs as worse when recalling 12 events. 

Weather vs. Mood Study

-People were interviewed by telephone either on sunny or rainy days. They were primed to think about the weather (with a comment on it) or not. 

-Without the weather prime, when asked about their mood, people attributed it to something in their lives. 

-Shows that when people are asked to evaluate their quality of life, they usually base their answer on the weather, or on their mood at the time.

-This study proves that people use their mood as information. 

Manic Thinking Study

-Tested whether the speed of thoughts affected mood.

-P's read either happy or sad statements at different speeds (slowly or quickly). 

-It does; The faster thinking that a task demanded, the more positive P's felt.

Embodiment

-Idea that our brain doesn't work independently from our body (mind-body connection). 

-Also, the idea that we base abstract concepts metaphorically on concrete physical experiences (those that are a result of being in our bodies!).

Studies that support the idea of embodiment:

1. Doing is for thinking study

2. Ego vs. Time study

3.Warm or Cold Study

4. Product Evaluation Study

5. Human Touch Study

"Doing is for thinking" Study- includes "Lifeguards" "Bike riding", and "Slow or Fast"

-P's were made to either move slowly (like the elderly stereotype) or to move around with life-vest padding (the clumsy fat person stereotype). They then had to evaluate a neutral person based on both stereotypic and neutral traits.

-Those who were told to walk either slowly or normally took a lexical-decision task, which also gauged stereotype activation through recognition of stereotype-relevant words flashed on a screen. 

-The movements worked to trigger stereotype activation. The "movement" group were more likely to judge a neutral person through a stereotypic lens than the control group.

Experiencing Time (Goes along with Embodiment)

-The experience of being in our body also seems to influence how we think about time.

-Time is an abstract concept; we appear to use the concept of space (our physical experience of the world) as a metaphor for time.

"Ego vs. Time" studies

-In one study, people at both a train station and a airport were asked When Wednesday's meeting would be if it had been "pushed forward".

-They could either answer Friday (which would mean that they view their ego as moving forward through time) or Monday (they view time as coming towards in the present). 

-In the other study, people on the lunch line were asked the same thing question. 

-You know the answer to both of these studies and what they mean (I think)!

Warm or Cold Study

 -Hypothesis: mere tactile experiences of physical warmth should activate ideas/feelings of interpersonal warmth and behavior towards others.

-P's, after holding a cup of either iced or hot coffee, were then asked to fill out fill out a personality questionnare based on a brief meeting. Some of the traits related to warm or cold.

-Hyp. was correct; "hot coffee" group rated neutral person as more friendly (though difference was slight). 

Product Evaluation Study

-In this study, the experimenters were also "blind" to the condition. P's received either hot or cold therapeutic pads. They could then choose to either keep the gift (treat themselves) or give it to a friend (treat a friend).

-Those in the "hot pad" condition were significantly more likely to want to give the pad to a friend. 

-This study shows that our physical experience of temperature effects our level of interpersonal warmth (physical warmth promotes interpersonal warmth).

Influences of Human Touch

Weight Study

-Similiar to the Touch study, eccept the concepts of physical weight activating metaphors like importance was eccplored.

-P's evaluated a job canidate while completing a survey on either a heavy or light clipboard.

-Those with the heavy clipboard viewed the canidate as being more serious about the job, but less likely to get along with people. They also rated their task as more important.

Roughness Study

-P's that had completed a puzzle made with sandpaper pieces rated the task as more difficult than those given the smooth pieces. 

Hard vs. Soft Study

-P's who were primed with touching a block of wood (rather than a piece of blanket) rated the person from the proceeding ambiguous interaction as more strict/rigid.

Free Will Perception Study 

-Test that determined Free Will through agency experience, and physicality.

-Adult humans perceive themselves as having the most of all three qualities. (Unlike God, who only has agency, or a Baby, who experiences the world but can't make it's own choices)

Prerequisites to Free Will

Recognizing one's own will.

Agency 

The ability to concsiously determine our own behavior. 

Rebound Effect

Automaticity

-The idea that there is a distinction between controlled and automative cognitive processes.

-The duality between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind (instinctual).

-Also the idea that things in our environment influence our thoughts and behavior (on the subconscious level)

Rudeness Study

-P's had to study a list of rudeness-related words.

-P's primed with rudeness were quicker to interrupt interviewer than those in the control group. 

-Study shows us that social behavior can be automatically and unconsciously triggered with environmental cues. 

Old people word study

-P's studied a list of elderly-related words (florida, retirement, prunes, etc.). They weer then asked to walk a required distance.

-How it relates to automaticity: similair to the rudeness study, those primed with old-words walked slower than those primed with age-neutral words.

Hostility/Race study 

-P's had to do a boring task on the computer. In between questions, a face appeared for a trace amount of time (milliseconds). P's had no time to register the face consciously.

-Face was either black or white.

-P's were then given the message that they had to do the task over again.

-People primed with the black face showed more hostility to the interviewer when given the fatal message.

-This study shows that stereotype threat can influence us implicitly (subconsciously).

Car Decision Study

-P's had to decide which car to buy. When there were 12 variables, people were better off to think intuitively/instinctively when making their decision.

-When there were only 4 variables, people were better off thinking in a conscious deliberative way/logically.

-This study shows us the limits of logical thought. Deliberative thought (weighing out pro's and con's) is more precise, but suffers from low capacity problems.

Nodding study

-P's were given headphones and told that in order to test the "comfort and durability" of the product, they had to continuously nod. 

-P's were then given an argument about a certain topic. They were asked at the end whether they agree with the argument or not.

-The group that was primed to nod agreed with the argument more often than the control group.

-Relates to embodiment- the motion of nodding persuades us (unconsciously) to have thoughts typically associated with the motion (like agreement).