Ingroup ambivalence and experienced discomfort: the moderating roles of affective versus cognitive attitudinal basis, group identification, as mediated by negative beliefs about the ingroup.

Prior research has found individuals' reactions to vary depending on whether such associations are activated by emotions (an affective basis) or by beliefs (a cognitive basis) about the object's properties. Accordingly, this conceptual distinction should be relevant also for the discomfortive responses to one's ambivalent attitudes regarding fellow group members (or the ingroup). Findings from two studies support the argument that ambivalence-associated discomfort a) is a general tendency when it regards affect-based ambivalence towards fellow group members, while b) only holds for the more identified group members when ambivalence concerns beliefs about the ingroup, and for this latter group members c) this tendency is driven by the strength of their negative beliefs about the ingroup or fellow group members.

Alfred Binet and experimental psychology at the Sorbonne laboratory.

Between 1892 and 1904, Alfred Binet (1857-1911) produced, in the psychology laboratory of the Sorbonne, a whole set of original works that still remains little known today. He integrated the laboratory, directed by the psychophysiologist Henry Beaunis (1830-1921), in 1891. We describe the circumstances that led Binet to take the direction of this laboratory in 1895 and present scientific investigations that were conducted there by Binet and his collaborators. For Binet, the laboratory was not narrowly limited to a set of rooms where experiments were conducted by means of sophisticated devices (experimental psychology), it was also a working area, regularly organized, where all the psychological documents were classified, whatever their origin (descriptive psychology). We show that Binet was a pioneer who is still little recognized in various areas of experimental psychology. Binet suffered, at the time, from the indifference of his contemporaries, but he especially regretted not being able to attract students to his laboratory due to the absence of diploma-offering programs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Power of the desired self: Influence of induced perceptions of the self on reasoning.

This research shows that the motivation to posses a desired characteristic (or to avoid an undesired one) results in self-perceptions that guide people's use of base rate in the Lawyer-Engineer problem (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973). In four studies, participants induced to believe (or recall, Exp. 2) that a rational cognitive style is success-conducive (or an intuitive cognitive style failure-conducive) subsequently viewed themselves as more rational and relied more on base rate in their probability estimates than those induced to believe that a rational cognitive style is failure-conducive (or an intuitive cognitive style success-conducive). These findings show that the desired self had an influence on reasoning in the self-unrelated lawyer-engineer task, since the use of base rates was mediated by changes in participants' perceptions of their own rationality. These findings therefore show that the desired self, through the working self-concept that it entails, constitutes another factor influencing people's use of distinct modes of reasoning.

Maintaining a Positive Self-Image by Stereotyping Others: Self-Threat and the Stereotype Content Model.

The present study examines how target group's stereotype content (on warmth and competence dimensions) influences subsequent target evaluation following self-threat related to one's competence. Participants first received threatening or non-threatening feedback on their competence. They evaluated then a job candidate who was stereotyped either as competent and cold (Asian) or as warm and incompetent (working mother). As predicted, threatened participants derogated only the Asian target on her perceived warmth and her suitability for a job, but did not derogate the working mother. Moreover, perceived warmth mediated the observed differences in the evaluation of the targets' job suitability. These results extend research on self-threat and prejudice by including Stereotype Content Model in this link.

In search of information that confirms a desired self-perception: motivated processing of social feedback and choice of social interactions.

The present studies examined how the motivation to see oneself as characterized by desirable attributes may influence feedback seeking and social preferences. In Study 1, participants were first led to believe that extraversion or introversion is conducive of success. Next, they received false feedback about themselves, related to extraversion and to introversion. In a surprise recall, extraversion-success participants remembered extraversion feedback more accurately and introversion feedback less, compared to introversion-success participants. Study 2 examined preferences for others as potential sources of feedback. The findings revealed that extraversion-success participants preferred others who perceived them as extraverted, whereas introversion-success participants preferred others who perceived them as introverted. Thus, people appear to rely on how others regard them to realize a desired self-perception. These processes, oriented more toward social and interpersonal aspects of the self, complement the more intrapersonal processes of motivated self-perception studied in the past.