Jeffrey D. Green

Attachment and Exploration in Adults: Chronic and Contextual Accessibility

It was predicted that attachment is associated with exploration in adults. An exploration scale that measures willingness to explore the physical, social, and intellectual environments was constructed. Study 1 measured chronic attachment patterns and found that both anxiety and avoidance correlated negatively with the desire to explore. Study 2 primed attachment styles by exposing participants to attachment-related sentences in an ostensible sentence memorization task. Participants primed with a secure style were more open to exploration than were participants primed with the insecure styles. Together, the results of Study 1 and Study 2 provide converging evidence that the behavior systems of attachment and exploration are linked in adults.

Combating Meaninglessness: On the Automatic Defense of Meaning

Research has found that a substantial portion of human cognition occurs beyond conscious awareness to satisfy the superordinate goal of maintaining meaning. Three experiments used a newly developed method to examine the features of meaning and how individuals automatically defend against threats to meaning. In Experiment 1, individuals who subliminally processed meaninglessness-related words, relative to those in a control group, reported being more religious and having more meaningful lives. Experiment 2 extended these results, as individuals whose meaning was threatened bolstered alternative domains of meaning (termed fluid compensation) by reporting higher self-esteem, need for closure, symbolic immortality, and a reduced need to belong. Experiment 3 ruled out an alternative explanation and clarified the effects of threatened meaning on one’s need to belong. These findings elucidate the processes of meaning maintenance in sustaining psychological equanimity. Implications for the automatic defense of meaning are discussed.

Third-Party Forgiveness: (Not) Forgiving Your Close Other's Betrayer

Building on attribution and interdependence theories, two experiments tested the hypothesis that close friends of victims (third parties) are less forgiving than the victims themselves (first parties). In Experiment 1, individuals imagined a scenario in which either their romantic partner or the romantic partner of a close friend committed the identical relationship offense. Third parties were less forgiving than first parties, a phenomenon we termed the third-party forgiveness effect. This effect was mediated by attributions about the perpetrators intentions and responsibility for the offense. In Experiment 2, first and third parties reported an actual offense and their subsequent unforgiving motivations. The third-party forgiveness effect was replicated and was mediated by commitment to the perpetrator. Perpetrator apology or amends to the victim increased third-party forgiveness. Future third-party research can expand interpersonal forgiveness research beyond the victim-perpetrator dyad.

Affect and Self-Focused Attention Revisited: The Role of Affect Orientation

Research examining the influence of affect on self-focused attention has concentrated exclusively on the valence dimension (i.e., negative-positive) of affect. The authors propose that the dimension of affect orientation (i.e., reflective-social) illuminates consider ably this relation. A reflective orientation refers to atendency for inaction, whereas a social orientation refers to a tendency for action. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that two opposite-valenced but reflective affective states (i.e., sadness and contentment) heighten self-focused attention, whereas two opposite-valenced but social affective states (i.e., thrill and anger) reduce self-focused attention. Affect was induced via an imagination task (Experiment 1) or an imagination task combined with musical selections (Experiment 2). Self-focused attention was assessed through the state version of the Private Self-Consciousness (PSC) scale (Experiment 1) or the state version of the PSC plus a behavioral intention measure (Experiment 2). The results confirmed the hypothesis.

Looking at me, appreciating you: Self-focused attention distinguishes between gratitude and indebtedness

We provide evidence that self-focused attention (both dispositional and situationally induced) affects the evaluation of a benefactor. Specifically, self-focused attention distinguishes between gratitude and indebtedness. In Study 1, gratitude correlated negatively with dispositional public self-focused attention and social anxiety, whereas indebtedness correlated positively with public self-focused attention and social anxiety. In Study 2, participants recalled a recent benefit under either high self-focused attention, induced via a mirror, or low self-focused attention. Highly self-focused individuals recalled increased indebtedness, but not gratitude, toward a benefactor, relative to those in the control condition. Self-focused individuals also felt less commitment and closeness to the benefactor. The implications for the link between self-focus and social emotions (and thus social life) are discussed.

Scent-evoked nostalgia

Can scents evoke nostalgia; what might be the psychological implications of such an evocation? Participants sampled 12 scents and rated the extent to which each scent was familiar, arousing and autobiographically relevant, as well as the extent to which each scent elicited nostalgia. Participants who were high (compared to low) in nostalgia proneness reported more scent-evoked nostalgia, and scents elicited greater nostalgia to the extent that they were arousing, familiar and autobiographically relevant. Scent-evoked nostalgia predicted higher levels of positive affect, self-esteem, self-continuity, optimism, social connectedness and meaning in life. In addition, scent-evoked nostalgia was characterised by more positive emotions than either non-nostalgic autobiographical memories or non-nostalgic non-autobiographical memories. Finally, scent-evoked nostalgia predicted in-the-moment feelings of personal (general or object-specific) nostalgia. The findings represent a foray into understanding the triggers and affective signature of scent-evoked nostalgia.

Two Sides to Self-protection: Self-improvement Strivings and Feedback from Close Relationships Eliminate Mnemic Neglect

People selectively forget feedback that threatens central self-conceptions, a phenomenon labeled mnemic neglect. Such forgetting serves to protect the self-system, but its rigid application may be associated with liabilities such as failing to learn about ones weaknesses. Two experiments tested the extent to which mnemic neglect is rigid or flexible. In Experiment 1, where self-improvement strivings were primed, mnemic neglect was absent: threatening and non-threatening feedback was recalled equally. In Experiment 2, participants received feedback either from a stranger or a close relationship. Participants recalled poorly threatening stranger feedback but recalled well threatening close-relationship feedback. Self-protection is flexible and strategic. Individuals recall well self-threatening feedback when they are concerned with self-improvement and when the feedback has ramifications for long-term relationships.

Forgiveness Increases Meaning in Life

Close relationships are a source of meaning in life. Interpersonal offenses can disrupt one’s sense of meaning within close relationships. To restore a sense of meaning, people may employ relational repair strategies such as forgiveness. We hypothesized that forgiveness is a meaning-making mechanism because it helps repair relationships, thus restoring the positive effects of relationships on meaning. Study 1 (N = 491) revealed that dispositional forgiveness and the degree of forgiveness following an offense were positively related to meaning in life. Study 2 (N = 210), a 6-month longitudinal study of romantic couples, revealed that participants who regularly forgave their partner reported increased meaning in life over time. In addition, forgiveness helped recover lost meaning among those participants reporting more frequent partner offenses. These results provide initial evidence that forgiveness recovers a sense of meaning in life after interpersonal offenses.

Mnemic neglect: Selective amnesia of one’s faults

ABSTRACT The mnemic neglect model predicts and accounts for selective memory for social feedback as a function of various feedback properties. At the heart of the model is the mnemic neglect effect (MNE), defined as inferior recall for self-threatening feedback compared to other kinds of feedback. The effect emerges both in mundane realism and minimal feedback settings. The effect is presumed to occur in the service of self-protection motivation. Mnemic neglect is pronounced when the feedback poses high levels of self-threat (i.e., can detect accurately one’s weakness), but is lost when self-threat is averted via a self-affirmation manipulation. Mnemic neglect is caused by self-threatening feedback being processed shallowly and in ways that separate it from stored (positive) self-knowledge. The emergence of mnemic neglect is qualified by situational moderators (extent to which one considers their self-conceptions modifiable, receives feedback from a close source, or is primed with improvement-related constructs) and individual differences moderators (anxiety, dysphoria, or defensive pessimism). Finally, the MNE is present in recall, but absent in recognition. Output interference cannot explain this disparity in results, but an inhibitory repression account (e.g., experiential avoidance) can: Repressors show enhanced mnemic neglect. The findings advance research on memory, motivation, and the self.

Perpetrators’ reactions to perceived interpersonal wrongdoing: The associations of guilt and shame with forgiving, punishing, and excusing oneself

Abstract We describe a model in which guilt and shame associate with reactions to wrongdoing among perpetrators of interpersonal harm. Individuals who reported wronging another person (N = 410) completed measures of perceived transgression severity, guilt and shame, and possible reactions to perpetration of wrongdoing (i.e., forgiving, punishing, and excusing oneself). Guilt positively predicted forgiving and punishing oneself, and negatively predicted excusing oneself of blame. Shame, in contrast, negatively predicted forgiving oneself and positively predicted punishing and excusing oneself. The observed patterns of associations between guilt and shame with perpetrators’ reactions to wrongdoing provide further support for the dual-process model of self-forgiveness. Implications for future basic and applied investigations are discussed.