The attentional myopia model of behavioral control was tested in an experiment investigating the relationship between physiological arousal and aggression. Drawing on previous work linking arousal and narrowed attentional focus, the model predicts that arousal will lead to behavior that is relatively disinhibited in situations in which promoting pressures to aggress are highly salient. In situations in which inhibitory pressures are more salient, the model predicts behavior that is relatively restrained. In the experiment, 81 male undergraduates delivered noise-blasts against a provoking confederate while experiencing either high or low levels of physiological arousal and, at the same time, being exposed to cues that served either to promote or inhibit aggression. In addition to supporting the predictions of the model, this experiment provided some of the first evidence for enhanced control of aggression under conditions of heightened physiological arousal. Implications for interventions designed to reduce aggression are discussed. KeywordsAggression; Attention; Myopia; Self-control; Self-regulation Arousal leaves us mind-blind.Malcolm Gladwell (2005, p. 229) The costs of aggression are undeniable, ranging from personal injury to societal malaise. It is therefore not surprising that psychologists have long pursued a better understanding of aggression and its causes, as well as methods to enable individuals to better control their Correspondence to: Andrew Ward, Department of Psychology, Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore, PA 19081, award1@swarthmore.edu, or to Traci Mann, now at the Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Elliott Hall, 75 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455, mann@umn.edu. J. David Creswell is now at Carnegie Mellon University, and Jeffrey P. Ebert is now at Harvard University The first two authors share first authorship status on this article; Andrew was just a bit more aggressive than Traci. aggressive tendencies (for reviews, see Anderson & Bushman, 2002;Berkowitz, 1993). Although aggression, like many psychological phenomena, is multi-faceted and multiplydetermined, one factor that has been consistently implicated in aggression is physiological arousal (Lindsay & Anderson, 2000). NIH Public AccessAccording to Anderson and Bushman (2002), arousal can influence aggression in three ways. First, classic research linking arousal to aggression suggests that arousal can amplify aggressive responses. According to Hebb (1955), for example, arousal acts to energize, or strengthen, whatever behavior is most appropriate in the situation (see also Yerkes & Dodson, 1908). Thus, in situations that typically feature some level of aggressive response, an aroused individual would be expected to display exceptionally aggressive behavior (Geen & O'Neal, 1969).Second, in a process known as excitation transfer (Zillmann, 1988), arousal produced by non-aggressive sources, such as exercise, can be misattributed to sources of provocation, inviting angry retaliation. Research i...
Research has begun to reveal the malleability of implicit prejudice. One measure of this construct, the race Implicit Association Test (IAT), represents a widely-used tool to assess individuals’ positive and negative associations with different racial groups. In two studies, we demonstrate the capacity of salient pressures to alter implicit racial responses. In Study 1, an enhancement of promoting pressures through an explicit instruction to stereotype was sufficient to increase pro-White bias on the IAT. In Study 2, an enhancement of inhibiting pressures through a simple instruction to avoid stereotyping was sufficient to reduce pro-White bias. Taken together, the studies suggest that implicit prejudice is amenable to voluntary control through the use of simple, direct means.
According to an oft-quoted piece of folk wisdom, if one wants something accomplished, the best person to ask is a busy person. We tested a version of this proposition in two studies. Study 1 exposed participants to a helping request in which cues promoting the relevant behavior were made more salient than those inhibiting it. Study 2 featured a request in which inhibiting cues were made more salient than cues promoting the behavior. In both studies, participants who were “busied” by high cognitive load showed more influence of the dominant behavioral pressure than did participants under minimal load. The results suggest that busy people can respond more to a helping appeal, but only when cues facilitating helping are more salient than those discouraging it.
Recent media accounts have highlighted opposition to evolutionary theory among certain groups and individuals in the United States. At the same time, evolutionary psychology, which relies on evolutionary theory to explain and predict human behavior, remains a controversial academic discipline. In the following two studies, we investigated the relation between willingness to support evolutionary theory in general and willingness to support key tenets of evolutionary psychology. Our results revealed a double dissociation, whereby endorsers of human evolution displayed relatively weak support for claims derived from evolutionary psychology, whereas non-endorsers of human evolution displayed relatively strong support for such claims. This latter support remained strong, though diminished, when the relation between evolutionary theory and evolutionary psychology was made explicit to respondents. The results suggest that strong support or opposition regarding human evolution does not carry over into corresponding attitudes toward evolutionary psychology.
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