The authors test the hypothesis that low-effort thought promotes political conservatism. In Study 1, alcohol intoxication was measured among bar patrons; as blood alcohol level increased, so did political conservatism (controlling for sex, education, and political identification). In Study 2, participants under cognitive load reported more conservative attitudes than their no-load counterparts. In Study 3, time pressure increased participants' endorsement of conservative terms. In Study 4, participants considering political terms in a cursory manner endorsed conservative terms more than those asked to cogitate; an indicator of effortful thought (recognition memory) partially mediated the relationship between processing effort and conservatism. Together these data suggest that political conservatism may be a process consequence of low-effort thought; when effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases.

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A laboratory experiment examined the impact of a derogatory remark on expressions of prejudice toward a gay male leader. Students participated in same-sex groups with a male confederate who was obviously gay or presumably straight. Half of the participants in the gay condition heard a derogatory remark about the confederate. This resulted in 3 experimental conditions: gay/remark, gay/no remark, and straight/no remark. Participants evaluated the leader's abilities less favorably and evidenced more negative nonverbal behaviors toward him in the gay/remark condition than in the gay/no remark or straight/no remark conditions. These findings extend research on derogatory remarks to a nonracial minority and highlight the powerful effect of immediate social context on expressions of prejudice. 1 We dedicate this article to the memory of Michele G. Alexander, our dearly missed friend, mentor, and colleague.

This study investigated the production of linguistic prosody in subjects with left hemisphere damage (LHD). Three experiments involving the production of lexical stress in nouns vs verbs, compound nouns vs tag constructions, and echo questions vs statements were conducted. Acoustic measurements (fundamental frequency (F(0)), duration and amplitude) of the prosodic structures were examined and naive listeners were asked to identify the meanings of the utterances. The results of the acoustic measurements indicated that LHD subjects did not produce prosodic structures that were comparable to control subjects to convey different linguistic meanings in all three experiments. Naive listeners had greater difficulty identifying the intended meanings of the utterances produced by the LHD subjects than control subjects in all three experiments. The results suggest that the left hemisphere plays a role in the production of linguistic prosody.

Status hierarchies readily form in groups and, once established, limit lower-status group members' opportunities for contributing to and influencing group decisions. Recent findings, however, suggest that the type of task on which a group works may allow lower-status individuals to break through power and prestige orders in a cooperative way while conflicting with ideas of their higher-status group members. In this article, we review a research program that investigates how task structure relates to status and influence in small groups. In one experiment, using groups of three female students as participants, we found that open-structured tasks allow lower-status group members to participate, receive positive evaluations, and improve their status more than closed-structured tasks. In a second experiment, using groups of two female students and a female experimenter as participants, we found that open-structured tasks and lower-status confederates foster more divergent thinking and indirect influence than closed-structured tasks and higherstatus sources. Our findings contribute to the understanding of how immediate problem-solving environments contribute to status change and influence in small groups.