The rippling dynamics of valenced messages in naturalistic youth chat.

Even though human behavior is largely driven by real-time feedback from others, this social complexity is underrepresented in psychological theory, largely because it is so difficult to isolate. In this work, we performed a quasi-experimental analysis of hundreds of millions of chat room messages between young people. This allowed us to reconstruct how-and on what timeline-the valence of one message affects the valence of subsequent messages by others. For the highly emotionally valenced chat messages that we focused on, we found that these messages elicited a general increase of 0.1 to 0.4 messages per minute. This influence started 2 s after the original message and continued out to 60 s. Expanding our focus to include feedback loops-the way a speaker's chat comes back to affect him or her-we found that the stimulating effects of these same chat events started rippling back from others 8 s after the original message, to cause an increase in the speaker's chat that persisted for up to 8 min. This feedback accounted for at least 1% of the bulk of chat. Additionally, a message's valence affects its dynamics, with negative events feeding back more slowly and continuing to affect the speaker longer. By reconstructing the second-by-second dynamics of many psychosocial processes in aggregate, we captured the timescales at which they collectively ripple through a social system to drive system-level outcomes.

Unconscious thought reduces intrusion development: a replication and extension.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Intrusive images after a traumatic event, a hallmark feature of post-traumatic stress disorder, are suggested to develop because the trauma memory is disorganized and not integrated into autobiographical memory. Unconscious Thought Theory predicts that information can be conceptually organized after a period of unconscious thought (UT), more so than after conscious thought (CT). We aimed to test the hypothesis that UT decreases intrusions and increases conceptual organization in memory. METHODS: Participants were shown a stressful film and were required to perform an UT task, a CT task, or a distraction task. Intrusions of the film, intrusion qualities, and sequence memory were measured afterwards. RESULTS: We confirmed our hypothesis that UT (versus CT or mere distraction) leads to fewer intrusions, thereby replicating earlier research. Contrary to prediction, we found no difference between the conditions on sequence memory. In addition, conscious thought appeared to increase intrusion nowness and arousal. LIMITATIONS: The analogue design and healthy participant sample prevent from generalizing results to other populations. Intrusion frequency and qualities were assessed immediately after the film thereby prohibiting us from drawing conclusions about any long-term effects. CONCLUSIONS: Engaging in unconscious thought after a stressful film can reduce intrusion frequency. This has potential implications for clinical interventions to prevent initial stress symptoms. The underlying mechanism remains unclear for now and provides an avenue for future research.

Good morning creativity: task reactivation during sleep enhances beneficial effect of sleep on creative performance.

Both scientists and artists have suggested that sleep facilitates creativity, and this idea has received substantial empirical support. In the current study, we investigate whether one can actively enhance the beneficial effect of sleep on creativity by covertly reactivating the creativity task during sleep. Individuals' creative performance was compared after three different conditions: sleep-with-conditioned-odor; sleep-with-control-odor; or sleep-with-no-odor. In the evening prior to sleep, all participants were presented with a problem that required a creative solution. In the two odor conditions, a hidden scent-diffuser spread an odor while the problem was presented. In the sleep-with-conditioned-odor condition, task reactivation during sleep was induced by means of the odor that was also presented while participants were informed about the problem. In the sleep-with-control-odor condition, participants were exposed to a different odor during sleep than the one diffused during problem presentation. In the no odor condition, no odor was presented. After a night of sleep with the conditioned odor, participants were found to be: (i) more creative; and (ii) better able to select their most creative idea than participants who had been exposed to a control odor or no odor while sleeping. These findings suggest that we do not have to passively wait until we are hit by our creative muse while sleeping. Task reactivation during sleep can actively trigger creativity-related processes during sleep and thereby boost the beneficial effect of sleep on creativity.

Predicting soccer matches after unconscious and conscious thought as a function of expertise.

In two experiments, we investigated the effects of expertise and mode of thought on the accuracy of people's predictions. Both experts and nonexperts predicted the results of soccer matches after conscious thought, after unconscious thought, or immediately. In Experiment 1, experts who thought unconsciously outperformed participants in all other conditions. Whereas unconscious thinkers showed a correlation between expertise and accuracy of prediction, no such relation was observed for conscious thinkers or for immediate decision makers. In Experiment 2, this general pattern was replicated. In addition, experts who thought unconsciously were better at applying diagnostic information than experts who thought consciously or who decided immediately. The results are consistent with unconscious-thought theory.

On making the right choice: the deliberation-without-attention effect.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is not always advantageous to engage in thorough conscious deliberation before choosing. On the basis of recent insights into the characteristics of conscious and unconscious thought, we tested the hypothesis that simple choices (such as between different towels or different sets of oven mitts) indeed produce better results after conscious thought, but that choices in complex matters (such as between different houses or different cars) should be left to unconscious thought. Named the "deliberation-without-attention" hypothesis, it was confirmed in four studies on consumer choice, both in the laboratory as well as among actual shoppers, that purchases of complex products were viewed more favorably when decisions had been made in the absence of attentive deliberation.