Michaela Wänke

When impulses take over: moderated predictive validity of explicit and implicit attitude measures in predicting food choice and consumption behaviour.

Recent theories in social psychology suggest that explicitly measured attitudes are particularly valuable for the prediction of deliberate, controlled behaviour. In contrast, implicitly measured attitudes are assumed to be more important for the prediction of less controlled, more impulsive behaviour. Yet, conclusive evidence for the differential predictive validity of both measures is scarce. We hypothesized that limitations of different control resources would lead to functionally equivalent effects. In Study 1, cognitive capacity moderated the predictive validity of both explicit and implicit attitude measures in a choice task. Self-regulatory resources led to similar patterns for eating (Study 2) and drinking behaviour (Study 3). In addition to the predictive validity of implicit and explicit attitude measures, in Study 3 we more closely investigated the relative contributions of explicitly measured attitudes and general restraint standards as two distinct, but complementing constructs that are dependent on control resources.

There are many reasons to drive a BMW: Does imagined ease of argument generation influence attitudes?

The effects of imagined versus actual ease of self-generating product-related information were investigated. An ad invited recipients to name either one reason or 10 reasons for (against) choosing a BMW over a Mercedes. Participants who complied with the task experienced the retrieval of one reason as easier than the retrieval of 10 reasons. Participants who did not comply nevertheless imagined the former as easier than the latter. Independent of whether ease was actually experienced or merely imagined, participants evaluated BMW more (less) favorably and Mercedes less (more) favorably when the retrieval was easy rather than difficult.

The Truth About the Truth: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Truth Effect:

Repetition has been shown to increase subjective truth ratings of trivia statements. This truth effect can be measured in two ways: (a) as the increase in subjective truth from the first to the second encounter (within-items criterion) and (b) as the difference in truth ratings between repeated and other new statements (between-items criterion). Qualitative differences are assumed between the processes underlying both criteria. A meta-analysis of the truth effect was conducted that compared the two criteria. In all, 51 studies of the repetition-induced truth effect were included in the analysis. Results indicate that the between-items effect is larger than the within-items effect. Moderator analyses reveal that several moderators affect both effects differentially. This lends support to the notion that different psychological comparison processes may underlie the two effects. The results are discussed within the processing fluency account of the truth effect.

The availability heuristic revisited : experienced ease of retrieval in mundane frequency estimates

The availability heuristic proposes that the phenomenal experience of ease of recall serves as a source of information in making frequency or probability judgments. However, ease of recall and amount of recall have typically been confounded in empirical tests. A misattribution approach was used to isolate the impact of the phenomenal experience. As expected, subjects provided the lowest frequency estimates when they believed that an irrelevant context variable facilitated recall, and the highest estimate when they believed that a context variable inhibited recall. Thus, their judgments were mediated by the perceived diagnosticity of the phenomenal experience of ease of recall, as predicted by the availability heuristic.

Predicting Voting Behavior with Implicit Attitude Measures The 2002 German Parliamentary Election

Implicit measures of attitudes are commonly seen to be primarily capable of predicting spontaneous behavior. However, evidence exists that these measures can also improve the prediction of more deliberate behavior. In a prospective study we tested the hypothesis that Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures of the five major political parties in Germany would improve the prediction of voting behavior over and above explicit self-report measures in the 2002 parliamentary elections. Additionally we tested whether general interest in politics moderates the relationship between explicit and implicit attitude measures. The results support our hypotheses. Implications for predictive models of explicitly and implicitly measured attitudes are discussed.

The color red reduces snack food and soft drink intake

Based on evidence that the color red elicits avoidance motivation across contexts (Mehta & Zhu, 2009), two studies investigated the effect of the color red on snack food and soft drink consumption. In line with our hypothesis, participants drank less from a red labeled cup than from a blue labeled cup (Study 1), and ate less snack food from a red plate than from a blue or white plate (Study 2). The results suggest that red functions as a subtle stop signal that works outside of focused awareness and thereby reduces incidental food and drink intake.

Truth From Language and Truth From Fit: The Impact of Linguistic Concreteness and Level of Construal on Subjective Truth

In four experiments, the impact of concreteness of language on judgments of truth was examined. In Experiments 1 and 2, it was found that statements of the very same content were judged as more probably true when they were written in concrete language than when they were written in abstract language. Findings of Experiment 2 also showed that this linguistic concreteness effect on judgments of truth could most likely be attributed to greater perceived vividness of concrete compared to abstract statements. Two further experiments demonstrated an additional fit effect: The truth advantage of concrete statements occurred especially when participants were primed with a concrete (vs. abstract) mind-set (Experiment 3) or when the statements were presented in a spatially proximal (vs. distant) location (Experiment 4). Implications for communication strategies are discussed.

Political Ideology at Face Value

Four studies demonstrated that perceivers were able to identify the political attitudes of unknown politicians on a left–right dimension when the targets were merely shown in photographs. In Study 1, party membership provided an objective criterion for political attitudes, whereas actual voting behavior served as a validity criterion in Studies 2, 3a, and 3b. All studies yielded ratings highly chance accuracy. Additional ratings suggest that perceived dominance may partly account for the effect. Moreover, perceivers were more accurate when they rated politicians whose attitudes were opposite to their own position, reflecting a more liberal criterion for out-group than for in-group members. Finally, politicians who were rated accurately had higher chances of being reelected to the following parliamentary session.

Next to a Star: Paling, Shining, or Both? Turning Interexemplar Contrast into Interexemplar Assimilation

Four studies, set in the political and marketing domain, investigated how an extreme exemplar influences the evaluation of more moderate exemplars. In Studies 1 to 3, an extremely positive exemplar (star) elicited contrast in the evaluation of more moderate exemplars. However, the contrast effect was eliminated when the shared category membership of the star and the respective exemplar was made salient. Rather than relying on categorization, Study 4 manipulated interexemplar assimilation by using comparison processes to draw attention to the features shared with an extreme exemplar. Whether the extreme exemplar caused contrast or assimilation depended on the direction of comparison with which target and context stimulus were compared. All studies, in particular Studies 3 and 4, suggest that interexemplar contrast and interexemplar assimilation work in parallel rather than alternatively.

Money and Thinking: Reminders of Money Trigger Abstract Construal and Shape Consumer Judgments

The idea of money reminds consumers of personal strength and resources. Such cues have been found to increase the level of mental construal. Consequently, it was hypothesized and found in five experiments that reminders of money trigger abstract (vs. concrete) mental construals. Participants were primed with money or money-unrelated concepts. Money primes caused a preference for abstract over concrete action identifications (experiment 1), instigated the formation of broader categories (experiment 2), and facilitated the identification of global (vs. local) aspects of visual patterns (experiment 3). This effect extended to consumer judgments: money primes caused a focus on central (vs. peripheral) aspects of products (experiment 4) and increased the influence of quality of parent brands in evaluations of brand extensions. Priming with a little money (experiment 3) or expenditures (experiment 5) did not trigger abstract construals, indicating that the association between money and resources drives the effect.