Tobia Spampatti, Tobias Brosch, Evelina Trutnevyte, Ulf J. J. Hahnel
Psychological inoculations are hailed as one of the most promising evidence-based techniques to preemptively protect public support against negative information and events, especially in time-sensitive domains like climate change mitigation and energy transitions. However, field testing of these techniques is limited, and their ecological validity thus remains to be investigated. In Fall 2021, a prospecting campaign for geothermal exploration in Geneva, Switzerland deployed seismic trucks at night that created noise and seismic vibrations which could negatively affect public support for geothermal energy systems. Here, we employed a trust inoculation in a preregistered, longitudinal field study, to make the trustworthiness of the responsible utility company salient to protect public support of geothermal energy systems against this local negative event. Contrary to our expectations, we found no evidence that the event affected participants’ public support towards renewable energy, nor that the trust inoculation influenced said support. This could have been due to the unintended negative influence of the time delay between the delivery of the trust inoculation and the negative event, as the inoculation was more effective with the longest time delay between its delivery and the negative event, but had unintended negative consequences with the shortest delay. We conclude by placing these results in the growing psychological inoculations literature and providing recommendations for future field studies for psychological inoculations.
{"title":"A Preregistered Field Study of the Trust Inoculation Against a Negative Event Involving Geothermal Energy Systems","authors":"Tobia Spampatti, Tobias Brosch, Evelina Trutnevyte, Ulf J. J. Hahnel","doi":"10.1525/collabra.98755","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.98755","url":null,"abstract":"Psychological inoculations are hailed as one of the most promising evidence-based techniques to preemptively protect public support against negative information and events, especially in time-sensitive domains like climate change mitigation and energy transitions. However, field testing of these techniques is limited, and their ecological validity thus remains to be investigated. In Fall 2021, a prospecting campaign for geothermal exploration in Geneva, Switzerland deployed seismic trucks at night that created noise and seismic vibrations which could negatively affect public support for geothermal energy systems. Here, we employed a trust inoculation in a preregistered, longitudinal field study, to make the trustworthiness of the responsible utility company salient to protect public support of geothermal energy systems against this local negative event. Contrary to our expectations, we found no evidence that the event affected participants’ public support towards renewable energy, nor that the trust inoculation influenced said support. This could have been due to the unintended negative influence of the time delay between the delivery of the trust inoculation and the negative event, as the inoculation was more effective with the longest time delay between its delivery and the negative event, but had unintended negative consequences with the shortest delay. We conclude by placing these results in the growing psychological inoculations literature and providing recommendations for future field studies for psychological inoculations.","PeriodicalId":93422,"journal":{"name":"Collabra","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135709972","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cognitive decline often accompanies natural aging, which results in younger adults outperforming older adults, on average, on cognitive tasks requiring skills such as attention, memory, or reasoning. This performance gap between age groups persists even after people train on these tasks, but it remains unclear whether the gap persists when individuals, rather than groups, are compared at different training levels. In this paper, we analyzed 9,923 users between 18-90 years old (63% over 60) who performed a variety of cognitive tasks on an online cognitive training platform. We quantified an older adult’s potential to catch up to, or perform as well as, a younger adult. We found that the probability of catching up to someone decades younger increases with differential amounts of training on a variety of cognitive tasks. These findings suggest that age-related performance deficits can be overcome with additional training.
{"title":"Older Adults Catch Up to Younger Adults on Cognitive Tasks After Extended Training","authors":"Priyam Das, Mark Steyvers","doi":"10.1525/collabra.88156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.88156","url":null,"abstract":"Cognitive decline often accompanies natural aging, which results in younger adults outperforming older adults, on average, on cognitive tasks requiring skills such as attention, memory, or reasoning. This performance gap between age groups persists even after people train on these tasks, but it remains unclear whether the gap persists when individuals, rather than groups, are compared at different training levels. In this paper, we analyzed 9,923 users between 18-90 years old (63% over 60) who performed a variety of cognitive tasks on an online cognitive training platform. We quantified an older adult’s potential to catch up to, or perform as well as, a younger adult. We found that the probability of catching up to someone decades younger increases with differential amounts of training on a variety of cognitive tasks. These findings suggest that age-related performance deficits can be overcome with additional training.","PeriodicalId":93422,"journal":{"name":"Collabra","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136372841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
People sometimes feel autonomous—free to choose and able to control their actions; at other times, they feel restricted in what they can do and what the outcome will be. Based on Action Identification Theory, the present work examines whether autonomy influences how abstractly actions are represented. In 6 studies, high (vs. low) autonomy increased abstractness of action identification. Participants selected more abstract (vs. concrete) redescriptions of actions when they imagined wanting (vs. having) to perform these actions (Experiments 1a–1b), when autonomy was varied via situation descriptions (Experiments 2a–2b), via memory content (Experiment 3), and in an ecological setting (Study 4). Finding that high (vs. low) autonomy increased abstractness of action identification constitutes an extension of Action Identification Theory to incorporate social determinants.
{"title":"Free to See the Big Picture: Autonomy Increases Abstractness of Action Identification","authors":"Anita Körner, Felix J. Götz, Anand Krishna","doi":"10.1525/collabra.88165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.88165","url":null,"abstract":"People sometimes feel autonomous—free to choose and able to control their actions; at other times, they feel restricted in what they can do and what the outcome will be. Based on Action Identification Theory, the present work examines whether autonomy influences how abstractly actions are represented. In 6 studies, high (vs. low) autonomy increased abstractness of action identification. Participants selected more abstract (vs. concrete) redescriptions of actions when they imagined wanting (vs. having) to perform these actions (Experiments 1a–1b), when autonomy was varied via situation descriptions (Experiments 2a–2b), via memory content (Experiment 3), and in an ecological setting (Study 4). Finding that high (vs. low) autonomy increased abstractness of action identification constitutes an extension of Action Identification Theory to incorporate social determinants.","PeriodicalId":93422,"journal":{"name":"Collabra","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136204451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Shoshana N. Jarvis, Z. E. Ferguson, Jason A. Okonofua
Access to education is important for success as an adult. Exclusionary discipline (e.g., suspensions) reduces opportunities for students to complete their education and be strong candidates for future jobs. Black students face a disproportionately high risk of disciplinary action. Thus, it is important to understand when and how racial disparities in suspensions emerge in order to reduce their disproportionate negative impacts on Black students. Past research found racial disparities emerge after two misbehaviors among teachers and just a single misbehavior among assistant principals. The current research tests the generalizability of racial disparities in discipline from principals across the United States and a psychological process that potentially contributes to the racial disparities: their perception of their professional role relative to that of teachers. In this procedure and with a diverse sample, principals did not endorse significantly different amounts of discipline for Black and White students. We explore potential explanations of these null results in the discussion.
{"title":"A Test of Racial Disparities in Principals’ Disciplinary Decisions in a National Sample","authors":"Shoshana N. Jarvis, Z. E. Ferguson, Jason A. Okonofua","doi":"10.1525/collabra.88326","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.88326","url":null,"abstract":"Access to education is important for success as an adult. Exclusionary discipline (e.g., suspensions) reduces opportunities for students to complete their education and be strong candidates for future jobs. Black students face a disproportionately high risk of disciplinary action. Thus, it is important to understand when and how racial disparities in suspensions emerge in order to reduce their disproportionate negative impacts on Black students. Past research found racial disparities emerge after two misbehaviors among teachers and just a single misbehavior among assistant principals. The current research tests the generalizability of racial disparities in discipline from principals across the United States and a psychological process that potentially contributes to the racial disparities: their perception of their professional role relative to that of teachers. In this procedure and with a diverse sample, principals did not endorse significantly different amounts of discipline for Black and White students. We explore potential explanations of these null results in the discussion.","PeriodicalId":93422,"journal":{"name":"Collabra","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136207696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
That behavioral sciences are overrepresented by some countries, in terms of samples and authors, is a well-documented finding. Considering the immediate policy implications, the present study explored whether this bias also exists for research on the coronavirus pandemic. Preprints posted on PsyArXiv between two time periods in 2020 (March-April and May-December) with keywords related to “COVID-19” were sourced and their participant and author composition were assessed. Western and rich democracies were overrepresented in terms of authors and participants; preprints posted by authors from western and democratic countries were cited more and were published in journals with a higher impact factor. Implications, especially regarding a reductionist bifurcation of research as “WEIRD” or “non-WEIRD,” are discussed.
{"title":"Too WEIRD, Too Fast? Preprints About COVID-19 in the Psychological Sciences","authors":"Arathy Puthillam","doi":"10.1525/collabra.74331","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.74331","url":null,"abstract":"That behavioral sciences are overrepresented by some countries, in terms of samples and authors, is a well-documented finding. Considering the immediate policy implications, the present study explored whether this bias also exists for research on the coronavirus pandemic. Preprints posted on PsyArXiv between two time periods in 2020 (March-April and May-December) with keywords related to “COVID-19” were sourced and their participant and author composition were assessed. Western and rich democracies were overrepresented in terms of authors and participants; preprints posted by authors from western and democratic countries were cited more and were published in journals with a higher impact factor. Implications, especially regarding a reductionist bifurcation of research as “WEIRD” or “non-WEIRD,” are discussed.","PeriodicalId":93422,"journal":{"name":"Collabra","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135637150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Thomas Meyer, Pascal Schlechter, Lisa Schlichting, Nexhmedin Morina
Academic self-concept (ASC) is a prominent predictor of educational achievement and student mental health. Although it is widely accepted that ASC is fundamentally comparative, little is known about different comparison types driving students’ ASC construal and its impact on mental health. Therefore, we examined whether self-evaluations relative to criteria-based, social, temporal, dimensional, and counterfactual comparison standards represent independent factors that contribute to general ASC. Next, we assessed the association of general ASC and its comparison-based facets with achievement emotions and psychopathology. University students (N=348) completed an online survey of general ASC as well as subordinate comparison-based ASC facets, positive and negative achievement emotions, psychological distress, and symptoms of student burnout. We further assessed comparison frequency, student task values, and achievement levels. Factor analysis indicated that criteria-based, social, temporal, dimensional, and counterfactual standards reflect mainly distinct yet correlated comparison domains. General ASC construal was most strongly based on the criteria-based and social facets. Favourable general ASC predicted lower learning-related anxiety, psychological distress, and student burnout. Largely similar correlations emerged for all comparison-based ASC facets, whereby the criteria-based and social facets were particularly strong predictors of learning-related anxiety. Our findings support the view that ASC construal relies on comparisons with multiple standards. Criteria-based and social comparisons were particularly dominant and may be the main drivers of learning-related anxiety. Carefully designed follow-up studies with longitudinal designs and interventions are warranted.
{"title":"The Struggle Is Relative: A Comparative Processing Perspective on Academic Self-Concept and Student Mental Health","authors":"Thomas Meyer, Pascal Schlechter, Lisa Schlichting, Nexhmedin Morina","doi":"10.1525/collabra.88330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.88330","url":null,"abstract":"Academic self-concept (ASC) is a prominent predictor of educational achievement and student mental health. Although it is widely accepted that ASC is fundamentally comparative, little is known about different comparison types driving students’ ASC construal and its impact on mental health. Therefore, we examined whether self-evaluations relative to criteria-based, social, temporal, dimensional, and counterfactual comparison standards represent independent factors that contribute to general ASC. Next, we assessed the association of general ASC and its comparison-based facets with achievement emotions and psychopathology. University students (N=348) completed an online survey of general ASC as well as subordinate comparison-based ASC facets, positive and negative achievement emotions, psychological distress, and symptoms of student burnout. We further assessed comparison frequency, student task values, and achievement levels. Factor analysis indicated that criteria-based, social, temporal, dimensional, and counterfactual standards reflect mainly distinct yet correlated comparison domains. General ASC construal was most strongly based on the criteria-based and social facets. Favourable general ASC predicted lower learning-related anxiety, psychological distress, and student burnout. Largely similar correlations emerged for all comparison-based ASC facets, whereby the criteria-based and social facets were particularly strong predictors of learning-related anxiety. Our findings support the view that ASC construal relies on comparisons with multiple standards. Criteria-based and social comparisons were particularly dominant and may be the main drivers of learning-related anxiety. Carefully designed follow-up studies with longitudinal designs and interventions are warranted.","PeriodicalId":93422,"journal":{"name":"Collabra","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135783329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Philosophical and psychological literature has suggested that death anxiety has a profound impact on people’s lives and is a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human. Such claims motivated us to examine how people express their emotions and attitudes toward death in short free-text responses. We explored a qualitative dataset where 803 Americans stated their thoughts about either death or physical pain (toothache). Comparing these, we found that death prompts caused the expression of less negative affect and more positive affect than toothache prompts. The reactions to death were quite diverse and did not appear to be dominated by existential anxiety. We discuss whether this pattern may be due to psychological defense against death causing negative emotions, or whether the pattern reveals a “true” preference for contemplating death rather than toothache. The article serves as a companion for an open dataset, to allow other researchers to explore and reuse it.
{"title":"Nothing Is Certain Except Taxes and the Other Thing: Searching for Death Anxiety in a Large Online Sample","authors":"Sina Storelv, Bjørn Sætrevik","doi":"10.1525/collabra.87507","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.87507","url":null,"abstract":"Philosophical and psychological literature has suggested that death anxiety has a profound impact on people’s lives and is a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human. Such claims motivated us to examine how people express their emotions and attitudes toward death in short free-text responses. We explored a qualitative dataset where 803 Americans stated their thoughts about either death or physical pain (toothache). Comparing these, we found that death prompts caused the expression of less negative affect and more positive affect than toothache prompts. The reactions to death were quite diverse and did not appear to be dominated by existential anxiety. We discuss whether this pattern may be due to psychological defense against death causing negative emotions, or whether the pattern reveals a “true” preference for contemplating death rather than toothache. The article serves as a companion for an open dataset, to allow other researchers to explore and reuse it.","PeriodicalId":93422,"journal":{"name":"Collabra","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136209771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
While the importance of mental simulation during literary reading has long been recognized, we know little about the factors that determine when, what, and how much readers mentally simulate. Here we investigate the influence of a specific text characteristic, namely verb tense (present vs. past), on mental simulation during literary reading. Verbs usually denote the actions and events that take place in narratives and hence it is hypothesized that verb tense will influence the amount of mental simulation elicited in readers. Although the present tense is traditionally considered to be more “vivid”, this study is one of the first to experimentally assess this claim. We recorded eye-movements while subjects read stories in the past or present tense and collected data regarding self-reported levels of mental simulation, transportation and appreciation. We found no influence of tense on any of the offline measures. The eye-tracking data showed a slightly more complex pattern. Although we did not find a main effect of sensorimotor simulation content on reading times, we were able to link the degree to which subjects slowed down when reading simulation eliciting content to offline measures of attention and transportation, but this effect did not interact with the tense of the story. Unexpectedly, we found a main effect of tense on reading times per word, with past tense stories eliciting longer first fixation durations and gaze durations. However, we were unable to link this effect to any of the offline measures. In sum, this study suggests that tense does not play a substantial role in the process of mental simulation elicited by literary stories.
{"title":"Readers’ Insensitivity to Tense Revealed: No Differences in Mental Simulation During Reading of Present and Past Tense Stories","authors":"L. S. Eekhof, Anita Eerland, Roel M. Willems","doi":"10.1525/COLLABRA.121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/COLLABRA.121","url":null,"abstract":"While the importance of mental simulation during literary reading has long been recognized, we know little about the factors that determine when, what, and how much readers mentally simulate. Here we investigate the influence of a specific text characteristic, namely verb tense (present vs. past), on mental simulation during literary reading. Verbs usually denote the actions and events that take place in narratives and hence it is hypothesized that verb tense will influence the amount of mental simulation elicited in readers. Although the present tense is traditionally considered to be more “vivid”, this study is one of the first to experimentally assess this claim. We recorded eye-movements while subjects read stories in the past or present tense and collected data regarding self-reported levels of mental simulation, transportation and appreciation. We found no influence of tense on any of the offline measures. The eye-tracking data showed a slightly more complex pattern. Although we did not find a main effect of sensorimotor simulation content on reading times, we were able to link the degree to which subjects slowed down when reading simulation eliciting content to offline measures of attention and transportation, but this effect did not interact with the tense of the story. Unexpectedly, we found a main effect of tense on reading times per word, with past tense stories eliciting longer first fixation durations and gaze durations. However, we were unable to link this effect to any of the offline measures. In sum, this study suggests that tense does not play a substantial role in the process of mental simulation elicited by literary stories.","PeriodicalId":93422,"journal":{"name":"Collabra","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49064867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
People perceive the same situation described in direct speech (e.g., John said, “I like the food at this restaurant”) as more vivid and perceptually engaging than described in indirect speech (e.g., John said that he likes the food at the restaurant). So, if direct speech enhances the perception of vividness relative to indirect speech, what are the effects of using indirect speech? In four experiments, we examined whether the use of direct and indirect speech influences the comprehender’s memory for the identity of the speaker. Participants read a direct or an indirect speech version of a story and then addressed statements to one of the four protagonists of the story in a memory task. We found better source memory at the level of protagonist gender after indirect than direct speech (Exp. 1–3). When the story was rewritten to make the protagonists more distinctive, we also found an effect of speech type on source memory at the level of the individual, with better memory after indirect than direct speech (Exp. 3–4). Memory for the content of the story, however, was not influenced by speech type (Exp. 4). While previous research showed that direct speech may enhance memory for how something was said, we conclude that indirect speech enhances memory for who said what.
{"title":"The Influence of Direct and Indirect Speech on Source Memory","authors":"Anita Eerland, Rolf A. Zwaan","doi":"10.1525/COLLABRA.123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/COLLABRA.123","url":null,"abstract":"People perceive the same situation described in direct speech (e.g., John said, “I like the food at this restaurant”) as more vivid and perceptually engaging than described in indirect speech (e.g., John said that he likes the food at the restaurant). So, if direct speech enhances the perception of vividness relative to indirect speech, what are the effects of using indirect speech? In four experiments, we examined whether the use of direct and indirect speech influences the comprehender’s memory for the identity of the speaker. Participants read a direct or an indirect speech version of a story and then addressed statements to one of the four protagonists of the story in a memory task. We found better source memory at the level of protagonist gender after indirect than direct speech (Exp. 1–3). When the story was rewritten to make the protagonists more distinctive, we also found an effect of speech type on source memory at the level of the individual, with better memory after indirect than direct speech (Exp. 3–4). Memory for the content of the story, however, was not influenced by speech type (Exp. 4). While previous research showed that direct speech may enhance memory for how something was said, we conclude that indirect speech enhances memory for who said what.","PeriodicalId":93422,"journal":{"name":"Collabra","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1525/COLLABRA.123","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46466248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Anita Eerland, Andrew M. Sherrill, Joseph P. Magliano, Rolf A. Zwaan
Imperfective aspect (i.e., Mark was punching John) is interpreted by the language processing system as a dynamic, unfolding sequence of actions, whereas perfective aspect (i.e., Mark punched John) is interpreted as a complete whole. A recent study showed that grammatical aspect can influence perceptions of intentionality for criminal actions (Hart & Albarracin, 2011). The current study builds on this finding. Five experiments examine whether grammatical aspect can also influence perceptions of blame, a concept related to intentionality. There were no effects of grammatical aspect on judgments of blame but the results showed an effect of narrated order (Experiments 1–3). First-mentioned actions made the agent more to blame for the outcomes than last-mentioned actions. This effect was not due to the order of the blame questions (Experiment 2) or influenced by the chronological order of the events (Experiment 3). Experiments 4 and 5 showed strong effects of grammatical aspect on temporal dynamics and revealed an interesting new finding. Grammatical aspect can influence the mental representation of a non-mentioned action. We discuss our results in light of the current literature on grammatical aspect effects.
{"title":"The Blame Game: An investigation of Grammatical Aspect and Blame Judgments","authors":"Anita Eerland, Andrew M. Sherrill, Joseph P. Magliano, Rolf A. Zwaan","doi":"10.1525/COLLABRA.113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/COLLABRA.113","url":null,"abstract":"Imperfective aspect (i.e., Mark was punching John) is interpreted by the language processing system as a dynamic, unfolding sequence of actions, whereas perfective aspect (i.e., Mark punched John) is interpreted as a complete whole. A recent study showed that grammatical aspect can influence perceptions of intentionality for criminal actions (Hart & Albarracin, 2011). The current study builds on this finding. Five experiments examine whether grammatical aspect can also influence perceptions of blame, a concept related to intentionality. There were no effects of grammatical aspect on judgments of blame but the results showed an effect of narrated order (Experiments 1–3). First-mentioned actions made the agent more to blame for the outcomes than last-mentioned actions. This effect was not due to the order of the blame questions (Experiment 2) or influenced by the chronological order of the events (Experiment 3). Experiments 4 and 5 showed strong effects of grammatical aspect on temporal dynamics and revealed an interesting new finding. Grammatical aspect can influence the mental representation of a non-mentioned action. We discuss our results in light of the current literature on grammatical aspect effects.","PeriodicalId":93422,"journal":{"name":"Collabra","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46496926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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