Wendi L. Gardner

Beyond Bipolar Conceptualizations and Measures: The Case of Attitudes and Evaluative Space

All organisms must be capable of differentiating hostile from hospitable stimuli to survive. Typically, this evaluative discrimination is conceptualized as being bipolar (hostile-hospitable). This conceptualization is certainly evident in the area of attitudes, where the ubiquitous bipolar attitude measure, by gauging the net affective predisposition toward a stimulus, treats positive and negative evaluative processes as equivalent, reciprocally activated, and interchangeable. Contrary to conceptualizations of this evaluative process as bipolar, recent evidence suggests that distinguishable motivational systems underlie assessments of the positive and negative significance of a stimulus. Thus, a stimulus may vary in terms of the strength of positive evaluative activation and the strength of negative evaluative activation it evokes. Low activation of positive and negative evaluative processes by a stimulus reflects attitude neutrality or indifference, whereas high activation of positive and negative evaluative processes reflects attitude ambivalence. As such, attitudes can be represented more completely within a bivariate space than along a bipolar continuum. Evidence is reviewed showing that the positive and negative evaluative processes underlying many attitudes are distinguishable (stochastically and functionally independent), are characterized by distinct activation functions (positivity offset and negativity bias principles), are related differentially to attitude ambivalence (corollary of ambivalence asymmetries), have distinguishable antecedents (heteroscedacity principle), and tend to gravitate from a bivariate toward a bipolar structure when the underlying beliefs are the target of deliberation or a guide for behavior (principle of motivational certainty). The implications for societal phenomena such as political elections and democratic structures are discussed.

“I” Value Freedom, but “We” Value Relationships: Self-Construal Priming Mirrors Cultural Differences in Judgment

The distinction between relatively independent versus interdependent self-construals has been strongly associated with several important cultural differences in social behavior. The current studies examined the causal role of self-construal by investigating whether priming independent or interdependent self-construals within a culture could result in differences in psychological worldview that mirror those traditionally found between cultures. In Experiment 1, European-American participants primed with interdependence displayed shifts toward more collectivist social values and judgments that were mediated by corresponding shifts in self-construal. In Experiment 2, this effect was extended by priming students from the United States and Hong Kong with primes that were consistent and inconsistent with their predominant cultural worldview. Students who received the inconsistent primes were more strongly affected than those who received the consistent primes, and thus shifted self-construal, and corresponding values, to a greater degree.

The pleasures and pains of distinct self-construals: the role of interdependence in regulatory focus.

Regulatory focus theory distinguishes between self-regulatory processes that focus on promotion and prevention strategies for goal pursuit. Five studies provide support for the hypothesis that these strategies differ for individuals with distinct self-construals. Specifically, individuals with a dominant independent self-construal were predicted to place more emphasis on promotion-focused information, and those with a dominant interdependent self-construal on prevention-focused information. Support for this hypothesis was obtained for participants who scored high versus low on the Self-Construal Scale, participants who were presented with an independent versus interdependent situation, and participants from a Western versus Eastern culture. The influence of interdependence on regulatory focus was observed in both importance ratings of information and affective responses consistent with promotion or prevention focus.

Getting a Cue: The Need to Belong and Enhanced Sensitivity to Social Cues

To successfully establish and maintain social relationships, individuals need to be sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others. In the current studies, the authors predicted that individuals who are especially concerned with social connectedness—individuals high in the need to belong—would be particularly attentive to and accurate in decoding social cues. In Study 1, individual differences in the need to belong were found to be positively related to accuracy in identifying vocal tone and facial emotion. Study 2 examined attention to vocal tone and accuracy in a more complex social sensitivity task (an empathic accuracy task). Replicating the results of Study 1, need to belong scores predicted both attention to vocal tone and empathic accuracy. Study 3 provided evidence that the enhanced performance shown by those high in the need to belong is specific to social perception skills rather than to cognitive problem solving more generally.

Are there "his" and "hers" types of interdependence? The implications of gender differences in collective versus relational interdependence for affect, behavior, and cognition

In a recent review, S. E. Cross and L. Madson (1997) forwarded that many gender differences in social experience and behavior may be better understood through consideration of gender differences in independence and interdependence. In the current studies an expansion of the model to include both relational and collective aspects of interdependence was investigated (see R. F. Baumeister & K. L. Sommer, 1997). On the basis of the literature regarding gender differences in affect, behavior, and cognition, it was hypothesized that women would focus more on the relational aspects of interdependence, whereas men would focus more on the collective aspects of interdependence. Five studies in which gender differences in self-construals, emotional experience, selective memory, and behavioral intentions were examined supported the expansion of the model to include both relational and collective aspects of interdependence.

Social Exclusion and Selective Memory: How the Need to belong Influences Memory for Social Events

The need to belong has been forwarded as a pervasive human motive, influencing a range of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses. The current research explored the influence of belongingness needs on the selective retention of social information. Just as physical hunger results in selective memory for food-relevant stimuli, it was hypothesized that social hunger, aroused when belongingness needs were unmet, would result in selective memory for socially relevant stimuli. In two studies, the authors used a simulated computer chat room to present brief acceptance or rejection experiences to participants. Participants then read a diary containing both social and individual events. In both, rejection experiences resulted in selective memory for the explicitly social events of the diary. The implications of these results for the existence and consequences of a basic need to belong are discussed.

When you and I are "we," you are not threatening: the role of self-expansion in social comparison.

Many theories of self-evaluation emphasize the power of social comparison. Simply put, an individual is thought to gain esteem whenever she or he outperforms others and to lose esteem when he or she is outperformed. The current research explored interdependent self-construal as a moderator of these effects. Two studies used a priming task to manipulate the level of self-construal and investigate effects of social comparison in dyadic (Study 1) and group situations (Study 2). Both studies demonstrated that when the target for comparison is construed as part of the self, his or her successes become cause for celebration rather than costs to esteem. Additionally, gender differences in chronic relational and collective self-construals moderated the patterns of social comparison in a form similar to that of priming relational and collective self-construals.

On the Outside Looking In: Loneliness and Social Monitoring

The skill-deficit view of loneliness posits that unskilled social interactions block lonely individuals from social inclusion. The current studies examine loneliness in relation to social attention and perception processes thought to be important for socially skilled behavior. Two studies investigate the association between social monitoring (attention to social information and cues) and self-reported loneliness and number of close social ties. In Study 1, higher levels of loneliness are related to increased rather than decreased incidental social memory. In Study 2, individuals with fewer reported friends show heightened decoding of social cues in faces and voices. Results of these studies suggest that the attentional and perceptual building blocks of socially skilled behavior remain intact, and perhaps enhanced, in lonely individuals. Implications for recent models of belonging regulation and theories of loneliness are discussed.

Motivations for prevention or promotion following social exclusion: being rejected versus being ignored.

Social exclusion evokes powerful motivations and emotions. The present studies examined how these motivations and emotions might differ following exclusion that is explicit, active, and direct (i.e., when one is rejected) versus implicit, passive, and indirect (i.e., when one is ignored). It was hypothesized that being rejected should produce a sense of social loss and lead to more prevention-focused responses, including withdrawal from social contact, thoughts about actions one should not have taken, and increased feelings of agitation. In contrast, being ignored should produce a sense of failure to achieve social gain and lead to more promotion-focused responses, including reengagement in social contact, thoughts about actions one should have taken, and increased feelings of dejection. These hypotheses were supported across 4 studies in which people recalled or underwent experiences of being rejected or ignored. Past research on active versus passive exclusion is reexamined and found to be consistent with these hypotheses as well.

Attitudes to the Right: Evaluative Processing is Associated with Lateralized Late Positive Event-Related Brain Potentials

The authors recently developed a paradigm to investigate the evaluative categorization stage of attitudes using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). The present series of studies extended this approach by analyzing the spatial topography of the ERP over the lateral scalp region to address complementary questions regarding the nature of operations underlying the evaluative categorization stage of attitude processing. Consistent with the hypothesis that evaluative categorizations engage mechanisms associated with hedonic or global language processing, results revealed that the standardized amplitudes of the late positive potential of the ERP during evaluative categorizations were larger over the right than the left scalp region, whereas nonevaluative categorizations were associated with a symmetrically distributed ERP across the left and right scalp regions.