Balance, Agreement, and Positivity in the Cognition of Small Social Structures

Crockett, Walter H.

doi:10.1016/s0065-2601(08)60294-4

Cited by 77 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…28. Relations from balanced triads were learned better than those from unbalanced triads, and positive relations were learned better than negative ones, thus replicating past findings (Crockett, 1982;DeSoto, 1960;Picek, Sherman, & Shiffrin, 1975;Press, Crockett, & Rosenkrantz, 1969;Zajonc & Burnstein, 1965). …”

supporting

confidence: 82%

“…Concerning basic accuracies for mutual like/dislike sentiments associated with the name pairs, the observed positivity main effect is a classical finding and has been shown to occur regularly when using the PAL, independently of balance effects (Crockett, 1982, von Hecker, 1994. Again in line with these previous findings, accuracy levels for positive and negative relations were not statistically different when part of a balanced triad.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…In terms of the binary response format of the PAL, the positivity effect might reflect people's mild tendency to assume mutual liking between other people as a default (Nilsson & Ekehammar, 1987;Sears, 1983). The balance main effect, a classical finding as well (see Crockett, 1982) appears to be, for a large part, carried by the simple effect due to negative relations being especially well learned when part of a balanced triad (see the significant interaction). Zajonc & Burnstein (1965, p. 161) already noticed the particularly high error rates for negative relations from unbalanced triads.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Previous research has also repeatedly found that balanced social triads are perceived as making more sense, and, conversely, unbalanced triads are seen as more in need of additional explanations for them to make sense (Brown & van Kleeck, 1989;Crandall, Silvia, N'Gbala, Tsang, & Dawson, 2007;Rudolph & von Hecker, 2006). In the present context, we therefore assume that balanced triads would be seen as more coherent than unbalanced triads.To test the specific spatial predictions following from the assumption that balanced triads are more coherent than unbalanced triads, the present experiment uses pair-associate-learning (PAL) as a paradigm that has been used repeatedly in the past to investigate the ease of learning balanced versus unbalanced materials (e.g., Zajonc & Burnstein, 1965;Press et al, 1969; for an overview see Crockett, 1982). Basically, name pairs referring to fictitious people are the stimuli, and binary symbols denoting either mutual liking or disliking (e.g., "+" or "-") are the responses.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Spatial representation of coherence.

Hecker¹,

Hahn

Rollings³

2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Four experiments examined spatial correlates of the experience of coherence, that is, the extent to which propositions 'fit together'. Experiment 1 demonstrates for Heiderian triads (i.e., sets of liking/disliking relations between three fictitious persons) that name pairs from balanced triads, such as two friends commonly disliking a third person (high coherence) are seen as closer to each other in physical space as compared to name pairs from unbalanced triads, such as two persons disliking each other and having a common friend (low coherence). This pattern of results is conceptually replicated in two further experiments for categorical syllogisms. Two terms in conclusions from valid syllogisms (high coherence) were seen as spatially closer to each other than when two terms came from invalid syllogisms (low coherence). In the final two experiments, similar closeness effects are demonstrated for word pairs from scenarios that "made sense" in terms of causal connectedness (latent causality) as opposed to word pairs from scenarios perceived as causally unconnected. These findings are discussed in the context of spatial binding theories, applied psychology, and embodied cognition in general, and their methodological implications are highlighted.Word count: 184 1 In this research we seek to present evidence for spatial processing as a correlate, or mediating mechanism, of the experience of coherence. 'Coherence', or the extent to which claims or pieces of evidence 'fit' together, is a notion that is central to people's evaluation of information. It has consequently attracted interest from philosophers (e.g., Olsson, 2005;Bovens & Hartmann, 2003), cognitive scientists interested in theory formation and explanation (e.g., Thagard, 2000), and psychologists interested in the evaluation of evidence, testimony, and witness credibility (e.g., Berman & Cutler, 1996;Berman, Narby, & Cutler, 1995;Brewer, Potter, Fisher, Bond, & Luszcz , 1999;Harris & Hahn, 2009). The concept has also been used to shape or reformulate theories on action planning and goal-related reasoning (Thagard & Millgram, 1995), as well as impression formation, where judgments about other people have to be generated based on piecemeal information on traits and behaviours (Kunda & Thagard, 1996). Also, text and discourse comprehension has been described as a coherence problem, involving the simultaneous assignment of meanings to different words and expressions (Kintsch, 1988; MacDonald, Pearlmutter, & Seidenberg, 1994).At the most general level, coherence is seen as the degree to which a number of ideas make sense as an entire set. This criterion can be applied to propositions within theoretical systems, whereby coherence appears as a criterion for the truth of the whole system (e.g., Quine & Ullian, 1978). Closer to psychology, Thagard (2000) defined coherence in terms of parallel constraint satisfaction problems, whereby in a process of "mental balancing" (p. 3) complementary and conflicting pieces of information are integrated until they all f...

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supporting

confidence: 82%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

mentioning

confidence: 98%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Spatial representation of coherence.

Hecker¹,

Hahn

Rollings³

2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…Specifically, by the rule of antitransitivityone may infer that my enemy's enemy is my friend (Aronson & Cope, 1968); by the rule of transitivity one may infer that my friend's friend is also my friend, or my enemy's enemy is also my enemy (Crockett, 1982). Most of the existing work has exclusively focused on the quality of memory representations and on retrieval processes with respect to relational information (e.g., Picek, Sherman, & Shiffrin, 1975;Sent is & Burnstein, 1979).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Disambiguating a Mental Model: Influence of Social Context

Hecker

2004

Psychol Rec

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To date, little is known about how social context cues influence the processing of information about relations between people, as opposed to information about indidvidual persons. This research addresses the construction of mental clique representations from pairwise sympathy relations. Forty-one participants learned 4 patterns of mutual liking or disliking relations . Patterns were ambiguous in the sense that they allowed integration into either a 2-clique or a 3-clique mental model. Prior to learning each pattern , participants read a story in which a social context was made salient. The context consisted of either 2 or 3 factions , or parties. Participants with good memory for the learned sentiment structure showed evidence for model-based retrieval, and they tended to construct their mental models in line with the context implications. For these participants, specific cues from the social environment influenced how they perceived and recalled interpersonal relationships . Participants with poor memory did not show evidence for mental model construction, but tended to follow a more detail-based memorization process. Context influences were not visible in this group.

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