The influence of context on residents' evaluations: effects of priming on clinical judgment and affect.

Different lines of research have suggested that context is important in acting and learning in the clinical workplace. It is not clear how contextual information influences residents' constructions of the situations in which they participate. The category accessibility paradigm from social psychology appears to offer an interesting perspective for studying this topic. We explored the effect of activating medically irrelevant mental concepts in one context, so-called 'priming', on residents' interpretations as reflected in their judgments in another, work-related context. Obstetric-gynecologic residents participated in two unrelated-tasks experiments. In the first experiment residents were asked to indicate affect about a change in a routine procedure after performing an ostensibly unrelated 'priming' task which activated the concept of either ineffective coping or effective coping. The second experiment concerned residents' patient management decisions in a menorrhagia case after 'priming' with either action or holding off. Contextually activated mental concepts lead to divergent affective and cognitive evaluations in a subsequent medical context. Residents are not aware of this effect. The strength of the effect varies with residents' level of experience. Context influences residents' constructions of a work-related situation by activating mental concepts which in turn affect how residents experience situations. Level of experience appears to play a mediating role in this process.

Self-activation increases social comparison.

In a series of studies it was demonstrated that activating the self is sufficient to increase social comparison tendencies. Treating the relevant constructs as individual differences that can be measured as well as contextual variables that can be manipulated, the authors show that individual differences in self-activation are correlated with interest in social comparison information and that manipulations of self-activation cause changes in interest in social comparison. Self-certainty often has been portrayed as the primary determinant of social comparison interest. The present results suggest that self-activation affects interest in social comparison even when self-certainty is controlled.

I, we, and the effects of others on me: how self-construal level moderates social comparison effects.

In 5 studies, the authors investigate the impact of self-activation on the occurrence and direction of social comparison effects. They show that self-evaluative comparison effects are more likely to occur when self-related cognitions are made cognitively accessible. Contrast occurs when personal self-construals ("I") are accessible, whereas assimilation occurs when social self-construals ("we") are activated. These effects of self-construal activation are similar to the impact of self-unrelated information processing styles that are often associated with personal and social self-accessibility (i.e., differentiation and integration mind-sets). However, whereas self-construal activation elicits self-serving social comparisons, activation of self-unrelated processing styles results in non-self-serving social comparison effects. Implications of these results for understanding the cognitive processes underlying social comparison effects are discussed.

How far do we go beyond the information given? The impact of knowledge activation on interpretation and inference.

In a series of 4 studies, the inferential scope of assimilative knowledge accessibility effects was investigated. Evidence was found for the hypothesis that both the breadth and evaluative extremity of activated knowledge affect the range of evaluative inferences made during the interpretation of ambiguous targets. The scope of knowledge accessibility effects was larger when broad and extreme traits were primed than when narrow and moderate traits were primed. The contribution of the extremity component to this effect was stronger than the impact of the breadth component. Furthermore, the authors demonstrated that descriptive overlap between priming and target stimuli is not a necessary precondition for such interpretation effects to occur. Descriptive inapplicability may be compensated for when priming stimuli are sufficiently broad or extreme.

Distinctness of others, mutability of selves: their impact on self-evaluations.

The authors postulate that the outcome of social comparison processes is determined by the role social comparison information serves during the self-evaluation process. Assimilation is more likely in situations that instigate the inclusion of social comparison information in self-representations. Contrast is the more probable outcome when information about another person is used as a reference point for self-judgments. Whether comparison information instigates interpretation or comparison effects depends on the distinctness of this information as well as the perceived mutability of the self. The authors found support for their perspective using different types of manipulations of the distinctness construct, treating self-mutability as a contextual as well as an individual-difference variable, and measuring the effects of social comparisons on measures likely to reveal both assimilation and contrast effects (self-evaluative judgments and behavioral predictions), assimilation effects only (mood measures), and motivational self-repair effects (importance ratings of the focal comparison dimension).

The impact of accuracy motivation on interpretation, comparison, and correction processes: accuracy x knowledge accessibility effects.

Four studies provide evidence for the notion that there may be boundaries to the extent to which accuracy motivation may help perceivers to escape the influence of fortuitously activated information. Specifically, although accuracy motivations may eliminate assimilative accessibility effects, they are less likely to eliminate contrastive accessibility effects. It was found that the occurrence of different types of contrast effects (comparison and correction) was not significantly affected by participants' accuracy motivations. Furthermore, it was found that the mechanisms instigated by accuracy motivations differ from those ignited by correction instructions: Accuracy motivations attenuate assimilation effects because perceivers add target interpretations to the one suggested by primed information. Conversely, it was found that correction instructions yield contrast and prompt respondents to remove the priming event's influence from their reaction to the target.

Social categorization and perceptual judgment of size: when perception is social.

Social knowledge may affect not only people's thoughts and judgments but also their actual perceptions of physical magnitude. The physical magnitude of a stimulus is perceived in a relative way, comparing the magnitude of the target with surrounding context stimuli. Because similar objects invite comparison processes more easily than dissimilar objects ("similarity breeds comparability"), social knowledge can affect judgments of physical magnitude by determining what is perceived as (dis) similar. In Experiment 1, the authors show that social categorizations that are based on physical cues (e.g., gender) may affect the magnitude of perceptual contrast effects (the Ebbinghaus illusion). More important, in Experiment 2, the influence of social categorizations that have no physical bases is shown to affect the magnitude of perceptual contrast effects. Implications of these findings for theories of social knowledge effects are discussed.