Harry M. Wallace

The Effects of Success versus Failure Feedback on Further Self-Control

Past work has found that performing one self-control task leads to decrements on subsequent efforts at self-control. The present experiment compared two possible explanations for these decrements, one being a depletion of energy resources, and the other being self-attribution of failure from the first task. Participants performed a Stroop color-word task (an initial self-control exercise) or not, and some received success or failure feedback about their performance. Performing the self-control task led to impaired persistence on a subsequent figure-tracing task, consistent with the energy-depletion model. Success versus failure feedback had no effect, contradicting the self-attribution model.

Psychological Skills Do Not Always Help Performance: The Moderating Role of Narcissism

Psychological skills are typically viewed as beneficial to performance in competition. Conversely, narcissists appear to thrive in competitive environments so should not need psychological skills to the same degree as less narcissistic individuals. To investigate this moderating hypothesis high-standard ice-skaters completed measures of narcissism, psychological skills, and anxiety before performing their competition routine during training. A week later, participants performed the same routine in competition. Performance was operationalized as the difference between competition and training scores. Moderated regression analyses revealed that narcissism moderated the relationship between psychological skills and performance. Psychological skill effectiveness depends on an individuals degree of narcissism.

Survival and Change in Judgments: A Model of Activation and Comparison

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses a model of judgment maintenance and change, known as “activation/comparison model” that specifies the various processes that take place at the time of making a judgment on the basis of memory-based and online information. This model proposes that attitude maintenance and change depend on three processes: recalling a prior attitude, recalling or receiving other attitude-related information, and comparing the prior attitude with attitude-related information. The activation/comparison model assumes that all three processes can elicit attitude change and maintenance under different conditions. The chapter describes the nature and predicted effects of attitude activation and information comparison on attitude change and maintenance. When prior attitude accessibility elicits attitude maintenance in the absence of comparative processes, prior attitude accessibility accelerates comparison and changes when comparative cues are present. Comparative principles are identified and the implications of this model are discussed in relation to prior theorizing on change in attitudes and non-evaluative judgments.

When People Evaluate Others, the Level of Others’ Narcissism Matters Less to Evaluators Who Are Narcissistic

Prior studies have documented how people in general respond to others’ narcissism, but existing research offers few clues about whether and how evaluator narcissism influences judgments of traits associated with narcissism. Participants completed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and then evaluated hypothetical target persons. Target narcissism was conveyed through a single trait description (Study 1), a list of traits (Study 2), or Facebook content (Study 3). Narcissistic qualities were reliably viewed unfavorably, but narcissistic participants were comparatively less bothered by target narcissism and less positive in their judgments of targets without narcissistic qualities. In each study, symptoms of the presence or absence of narcissism had less impact on the social judgments of participants who were narcissistic.

How Judgments Change Following Comparison of Current and Prior Information

Although much observed judgment change is superficial and occurs without considering prior information, other forms of change also occur. Comparison between prior and new information about an issue may trigger change by influencing either or both the perceived strength and direction of the new information. In four experiments, participants formed and reported initial judgments of a policy based on favorable written information about it. Later, these participants read a second passage containing strong favorable or unfavorable information on the policy. Compared to control conditions, subtle and direct prompts to compare the initial and new information led to more judgment change in the direction of a second passage perceived to be strong. Mediation analyses indicated that comparison yielded greater perceived strength of the second passage, which in turn correlated positively with judgment change. Moreover, self-reports of comparison mediated the judgment change resulting from comparison prompts.

I Knew It All Along, Unless I Had to Work to Learn What I Know

After receiving knowledge regarding some topic, people usually overestimate their prior topic knowledge. Two experiments investigated whether people would claim less prior knowledge if they worked to earn their present knowledge. In Study 1, students finishing a psychology course claimed less precourse psychology knowledge if they reported devoting more effort toward the course. In Study 2, the knew-it-all-along effect was stronger for participants who were simply given the answers to questions than for participants who studied for 20 minutes to learn the answers. Both cognitive and motivational factors can account for the observed effects of effort investment on retrospective knowledge judgments.