Joseph Cesario

Making Message Recipients “Feel Right” How Nonverbal Cues Can Increase Persuasion

Nonverbal cues are an inherent component of most persuasive appeals. We use regulatory-fit theory as a framework for understanding the effect of nonverbal cues on a messages effectiveness, and as a foundation for developing a new persuasion technique. We propose that when the nonverbal cues of a message source sustain the motivational orientation of the recipient, the recipient experiences regulatory fit and feels right, and that this experience influences the messages effectiveness. Experimental results support these predictions. Participants experiencing regulatory fit (promotion-focus participants viewing messages delivered in an eager nonverbal style, prevention-focus participants viewing messages delivered in a vigilant nonverbal style) had more positive attitudes toward a messages topic and greater intentions to behave in accordance with its recommendation than did participants experiencing nonfit. Feeling right was also greater for participants experiencing fit than for those experiencing nonfit and was associated with greater message effectiveness. Regulatory-fit theory provides a framework for making precise predictions about when and for whom a nonverbal cue will affect persuasion.

Priming, Replication, and the Hardest Science

Concerns have been raised recently about the replicability of behavioral priming effects, and calls have been issued to identify priming methodologies with effects that can be obtained in any context and with any population. I argue that such expectations are misguided and inconsistent with evolutionary understandings of the brain as a computational organ. Rather, we should expect priming effects to be highly sensitive to variations in experimental features and subject populations. Such variation does not make priming effects frivolous or capricious but instead can be predicted a priori. However, absent theories specifying the precise contingencies that lead to such variation, failures to replicate another researcher’s findings will necessarily be ambiguous with respect to the inferences that can be made. Priming research is not yet at the stage where such theories exist, and therefore failures are uninformative at the current time. Ultimately, priming researchers themselves must provide direct replications of their own effects; researchers have been deficient in meeting this responsibility and have contributed to the current state of confusion. The recommendations issued in this article reflect concerns both with the practice of priming researchers and with the inappropriate expectations of researchers who have failed to replicate others’ priming effects.

The Ecology of Automaticity: How Situational Contingencies Shape Action Semantics and Social Behavior

What is the role of ecology in automatic cognitive processes and social behavior? Our motivated-preparation account posits that priming a social category readies the individual for adaptive behavioral responses to that category—responses that take into account the physical environment. We present the first evidence showing that the cognitive responses (Study 1) and the behavioral responses (Studies 2a and 2b) automatically elicited by a social-category prime differ depending on a person’s physical surroundings. Specifically, after priming with pictures of Black men (a threatening out-group), participants responded with either aggressive behavior (fight) or distancing behavior (flight), depending on what action was allowed by the situation. For example, when participants were seated in an enclosed booth (no distancing behavior possible) during priming, they showed increased accessibility of fight-related action semantics; however, when seated in an open field (distancing behavior possible), they showed increased accessibility of flight-related action semantics. These findings suggest that an understanding of automaticity must consider its situated nature.

Of Mice and Men What Animal Research Can Tell Us About Context Effects on Automatic Responses in Humans

Automatic responses play a central role in many areas of psychology. Counter to views that such responses are relatively rigid and inflexible, a large body of research has shown that they are highly context-sensitive. Research on animal learning and animal behavior has a strong potential to provide a deeper understanding of such context effects by revealing remarkable parallels between the functional properties of automatic responses in human and nonhuman animals. These parallels involve the contextual modulation of attitude formation and change (automatic evaluation), and the role of contextual contingencies in shaping the particular action tendencies in response to a stimulus (automatic behavior). Theoretical concepts of animal research not only provide novel insights into the processes and representations underlying context effects on automatic responses in humans; they also offer new perspectives on the interface between affect, cognition, and motivation.

Increasing or decreasing interest in activities: the role of regulatory fit.

What makes peoples interest in doing an activity increase or decrease? Regulatory fit theory (E. T. Higgins, 2000) provides a new perspective on this classic issue by emphasizing the relation between peoples activity orientation, such as thinking of an activity as fun, and the manner of activity engagement that the surrounding situation supports. These situational factors include whether a reward for good performance, expected (Study 1) or unexpected (Study 2), is experienced as enjoyable or as serious and whether the free-choice period that measures interest in the activity is experienced as enjoyable or as serious (Study 3). Studies 1-3 found that participants were more likely to do a fun activity again when these situational factors supported a manner of doing the activity that fit the fun orientation-a reward or free-choice period framed as enjoyable. This effect was not because interest in doing an activity again is simply greater in an enjoyable than a serious surrounding situation because it did not occur, and even reversed, when the activity orientation was important rather than fun, where now a serious manner of engagement provides the fit (Study 4a and 4b).

Incidental Experiences of Regulatory Fit and the Processing of Persuasive Appeals

This article examines how the subjective experiences of “feeling right” from regulatory fit and of “feeling wrong” from regulatory non-fit influence the way people process persuasive messages. Across three studies, incidental experiences of regulatory fit increased reliance on source expertise and decreased resistance to counterpersuasion, whereas incidental experiences of regulatory non-fit increased reliance on argument strength and increased resistance to counterpersuasion. These results suggest that incidental fit and non-fit experiences can produce, respectively, more superficial or more thorough processing of persuasive messages. The mechanisms underlying these effects, and the conditions under which they should and should not be expected, are discussed.

On the association between loneliness and bathing habits: nine replications of Bargh and Shalev (2012) Study 1.

Bargh and Shalev (2012) hypothesized that people use warm showers and baths to compensate for a lack of social warmth. As support for this idea, they reported results from two studies that found an association between trait loneliness and bathing habits. Given the potential practical and theoretical importance of this association, we conducted nine additional studies on this topic. Using our own bathing or showering measures and the most current version of the UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell, 1996), we found no evidence for an association between trait loneliness and a composite index of showering or bathing habits in a combined sample of 1,153 participants from four studies. Likewise, the aggregated effect size estimate was not statistically significant using the same measures as the original studies in a combined sample of 1,920 participants from five studies. A local meta-analysis including the original studies yielded an effect size estimate for the composite that included zero in the 95% confidence interval. The current results therefore cast doubt on the idea of a strong connection between trait loneliness and personal bathing habits related to warmth.

Perceptual Bias in Threat Distance: The Critical Roles of In-Group Support and Target Evaluations in Defensive Threat Regulation

Across two studies, we investigate how perceptions of distances to out-group threats may be critically regulated by the presence or absence of one’s in-group and by beliefs regarding the potential for danger from the out-group. Threat regulation includes biases in the distance one perceives a threat, such that threats are perceived as relatively more distant by more formidable compared to less formidable individuals. We demonstrate that whether participants are alone or surrounded by their in-group modulates perceptual biases regarding an out-group male’s proximity, depending on the degree to which participants evaluate out-group males negatively. Our findings illustrate how investigations of the psychology of motivated biases may benefit from a consideration of such perceptual biases within the functional workings of defensive threat regulation systems (McNaughton & Corr, 2004) and the strategic logic of animal conflict (Parker, 1974).

A Bayesian model-averaged meta-analysis of the power pose effect with informed and default priors : The case of felt power

ABSTRACTEarlier work found that – compared to participants who adopted constrictive body postures – participants who adopted expansive body postures reported feeling more powerful, showed an increase in testosterone and a decrease in cortisol, and displayed an increased tolerance for risk. However, these power pose effects have recently come under considerable scrutiny. Here, we present a Bayesian meta-analysis of six preregistered studies from this special issue, focusing on the effect of power posing on felt power. Our analysis improves on standard classical meta-analyses in several ways. First and foremost, we considered only preregistered studies, eliminating concerns about publication bias. Second, the Bayesian approach enables us to quantify evidence for both the alternative and the null hypothesis. Third, we use Bayesian model-averaging to account for the uncertainty with respect to the choice for a fixed-effect model or a random-effect model. Fourth, based on a literature review, we obtained an em...

How can preregistration contribute to research in our field

Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology (CRSP) is a novel journal for preregistered research (so-called registered reports, RR) in the field of social psychology. It offers RR-only publications, with the possibility of adding exploratory analysis and data as well. After submission of introduction, hypotheses, methods, procedure, and analysis plan, submitted manuscripts are reviewed prior to data collection. If the peer review process results in a positive evaluation of the manuscript, an initial publication agreement (IPA) is issued upon which publication of the manuscript (given adherence to the registered protocol) independent of the obtained results is possible. CRSP seeks to complement the publication options in our field by making transparent confirmatory and exploratory research possible.