Illusions of knowledge due to mere repetition.

Repeating information increases people's belief that the repeated information is true. This truth effect has been widely researched and is relevant for topics such as fake news and misinformation. Another effect of repetition, which is also relevant to those topics, has not been extensively studied so far: Do people believe they knew something before it was repeated? We used a standard truth effect paradigm in four pre-registered experiments (total N = 773), including a presentation and judgment phase. However, instead of "true"/"false" judgments, participants indicated whether they knew a given trivia statement before participating in the experiment. Across all experiments, participants judged repeated information as "known" more often than novel information. Participants even judged repeated false information to know it to be false. In addition, participants also generated sources of their knowledge. The inability to distinguish recent information from well-established knowledge in memory adds an explanation for the persistence and strength of repetition effects on truth. The truth effect might be so robust because people believe to know the repeatedly presented information as a matter of fact.

Attitude Formation in More- and Less-Complex Social Environments.

We investigate how the complexity of the social environment (more vs. less groups) influences attitude formation. We hypothesize that facing a larger number of groups renders learning processes about these groups noisier and more regressive, which has two important implications. First, more-complex social environments should lead perceivers to underestimate actual group differences. Second, because most people usually behave positively, more-complex social environments produce negatively biased attitudes and cause perceivers to overestimate the frequency of "negative" individuals among groups. We tested these predictions in five attitude formation experiments (N=2,414). Participants' attitudes and learned base rates of positive and negative group members proved more regressive in complex social environments, that is, with multiple groups, compared with less-complex environments, that is, with fewer groups. In a predominantly positive social environment, this regression caused participants to form more negative group attitudes and more strongly overestimate negative individuals' prevalence among groups.

The relative effectiveness of conditioning one or two attributes to a brand.

Attribute conditioning refers to the phenomenon that target stimuli acquire specific attributes by pairing them with stimuli possessing these attributes. We apply attribute conditioning to a marketing context where brands are often displayed with stimuli possessing semantic attributes to establish brand-attribute associations. In particular, we examine whether it is more effective from a brand image perspective to associate a brand with only one attribute, two related attributes, or two unrelated attributes. Across four experimental studies, we find that pairing a single attribute (e.g., athletic) with a brand is most effective for building brand-attribute associations and that pairing multiple, related attributes (athletic and healthy) is more effective than pairing multiple, unrelated attributes (athletic and smart). Supplementing this finding, an analysis of observational data from real brands suggests that attributing two orthogonal attributes to a brand is associated with negative effects on marketing-relevant outcomes. Our findings extend previous research on multiattribute conditioning and highlight the importance of the number and relationship between attributes for building effective brand associations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

People underestimate the influence of repetition on truth judgments (and more so for themselves than for others).

People judge repeated statements as more truthful than new statements: a truth effect. In three pre-registered experiments (N = 463), we examined whether people expect repetition to influence truth judgments more for others than for themselves: a bias blind spot in the truth effect. In Experiments 1 and 2, using moderately plausible and implausible statements, respectively, the test for the bias blind spot did not pass the significance threshold set for a two-step sequential analysis. Experiment 3 considered moderately plausible statements but with a larger sample of participants. Additionally, it compared actual performance after a two-day delay with participants' predictions for themselves and others. This time, we found clear evidence for a bias blind spot in the truth effect. Experiment 3 also showed that participants underestimated the magnitude of the truth effect, especially so for themselves, and that predictions and actual truth effect scores were not significantly related. Finally, an integrative analysis focusing on a more conservative between-participant approach found clear frequentist and Bayesian evidence for a bias blind spot. Overall, the results indicate that people (1) hold beliefs about the effect of repetition on truth judgments, (2) believe that this effect is larger for others than for themselves, (3) and underestimate the effect's magnitude, and (4) particularly so for themselves.

A cognitive-ecological approach to temporal self-appraisals.

We investigate self-appraisals over time using a cognitive-ecological approach. We assume that ecologically, negative person attributes are more diverse than positive ones, while positive person attributes are more frequent than negative ones. We combine these ecological properties with the cognitive process of similarity- and differences-based social comparisons to predict temporal self-appraisals. The resulting cognitive-ecological model predicts that people should evaluate similarities with themselves over time positively, whereas differences would be evaluated more negatively. However, because positive attributes are reinforced over time relative to negative attributes, we predicted an asymmetry to emerge such that distinct attributes of the past self (past differences) would be most negative. Six experiments (total N = 1,796) and an integrative data analysis confirmed the cognitive-ecological model's predictions for temporal self-appraisals. However, we found no evidence for motivated self-perception across time. We discuss the implications of these findings for temporal self-appraisal theory and other aspects of self and identity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Truth by repetition Without repetition: Testing the effect of instructed repetition on truth judgments.

Past research indicates that people judge repeated statements as more true than new ones. An experiential consequence of repetition that may underly this "truth effect" is processing fluency: Processing statements feels easier following their repetition. In three preregistered experiments (N = 684), we examined the effect of merely instructed repetition (i.e., not experienced) on truth judgments. Experiments 1-2 instructed participants that some statements were present (vs. absent) in an exposure phase allegedly undergone by other individuals. We then asked them to rate such statements based on how they thought those individuals would have done. Overall, participants rated repeated statements as more true than new statements. The instruction-based repetition effects were significant but also significantly weaker than those elicited by the experience of repetition (Experiments 1 and 2). Additionally, Experiment 2 clarified that adding a repetition status tag in the experienced repetition condition did not impact truth judgments. Experiment 3 further showed that the instruction-based effect was still detectable when participants provided truth judgments for themselves rather than estimating other people's judgments. We discuss the mechanisms that can explain these effects and their implications for advancing our understanding of the truth effect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Towards Substrate-Reagent Interaction of Lochmann-Schlosser Bases in THF: Bridging THF Hides Potential Reaction Site of a Chiral Superbase.

The metalation of N,N-dimethylaminomethylferrocene in THF by the superbasic mixture of n BuLi/KOt Bu proceeds readily at low temperatures to afford a bimetallic Li2 K2 aggregate containing ferrocenyl anions and tert-butoxide. Starting from an enantiomerically enriched ortho-lithiated aminomethylferrocene, an enantiomerically pure superbase can be prepared. The molecular compound exhibits superbasic behavior deprotonating N,N-dimethylbenzylamine in the α-position and is also capable of deprotonating toluene. Quantum chemical calculations provide insight into the role of the bridging THF molecule to the possible substrate-reagent interaction. In addition, a benzylpotassium alkoxide adduct gives a closer look into the corresponding reaction site of the Lochmann-Schlosser base that is reported herein.

Relational versus structural goals prioritize different social information.

People gather information about others along a few fundamental dimensions; their current goals determine which dimensions they most need to know. As proponents of competing social-evaluation models, we sought to study the dimensions that perceivers spontaneously prioritize when gathering information about unknown social groups. Because priorities depend on functions, having relational goals (e.g., deciding whether and how to interact with a group) versus structural goals (e.g., getting an overview of society) should moderate dimensional priorities. Various candidate dimensions could differentiate perceivers' impressions of social groups. For example, the Stereotype Content model argues that people evaluate others in terms of their Warmth (i.e., their Sociability and Morality) and Competence (i.e., their Ability and Assertiveness). Alternatively, the Agency-Beliefs-Communion (ABC) model proposes conservative-progressive Beliefs. Five studies (N = 2,268) found that participants consistently prioritized learning about targets' Warmth. However, goal moderated priority: When participants had a relational goal, such as an unknown group increasing in their neighborhood, they showed more interest in targets' Sociability, a facet of Warmth. When participants had a structural goal, such as an unknown group increasing in their nation, they showed more interest in the groups' Beliefs, as well as increased interest in Competence-related facets. Diverse methods reveal interest in all dimensions, reconciling discrepancies among social-evaluation models by identifying how relational versus structural goals differentiate priorities of the fundamental dimensions proposed by current models. Results have implications for fundamental dimensions of social cognition, more generally. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Monetary incentives do not reduce the repetition-induced truth effect.

People rate and judge repeated information more true than novel information. This truth-by-repetition effect is of relevance for explaining belief in fake news, conspiracy theories, or misinformation effects. To ascertain whether increased motivation could reduce this effect, we tested the influence of monetary incentives on participants' truth judgments. We used a standard truth paradigm, consisting of a presentation and judgment phase with factually true and false information, and incentivized every truth judgment. Monetary incentives may influence truth judgments in two ways. First, participants may rely more on relevant knowledge, leading to better discrimination between true and false statements. Second, participants may rely less on repetition, leading to a lower bias to respond "true." We tested these predictions in a preregistered and high-powered experiment. However, incentives did not influence the percentage of "true" judgments or correct responses in general, despite participants' longer response times in the incentivized conditions and evidence for knowledge about the statements. Our findings show that even monetary consequences do not protect against the truth-by-repetition effect, further substantiating its robustness and relevance and highlighting its potential hazardous effects when used in purposeful misinformation.

Rational Dictators in the Dictator Game Are Seen as Cold and Agentic but Not Intelligent.

In Dictator Games, dictators decide how much of a given endowment to send to receivers with no further interactions. We explored the social inferences people draw about dictators from the dictators' money amount sent and vice versa in 11 experiments (N = 1,425): Participants rated "unfair" dictators, who sent little or no money, as more agentic, but less communal than "fair" dictators, who sent half of the endowment. Conversely, participants expected more agentic and conservative but less communal dictators to send less money than less agentic, more liberal, or more communal dictators. Participants also rated unfair dictators as less intelligent but expected less intelligent dictators to send more money. When participants played the Dictator Game with real money, only self-reported communion predicted the money amount sent. Thus, participants' inferences might not reflect reality, but rational social actors should not only fear to appear unfair but also unintelligent.

Fluent processing leads to positive stimulus evaluations even when base rates suggest negative evaluations.

Fluency is the experienced ease of ongoing mental operations, which increases the subjective positivity of stimuli attributes. This may happen because fluency is inherently positive. Alternatively, people may learn the meaning of fluency from contingencies within judgment-contexts. We test pseudocontingencies (PCs) as a mechanism through which fluency's meaning is learned. PCs are inferred correlations between two attributes due to the observation of their jointly skewed base rates - people relate what is frequent in one attribute to what is frequent in the other. Using online seller evaluations as the dependent variable, we manipulated base rates of seller name-fluency and seller reputation, creating conditions where name-fluency aligned positively or negatively with reputation. However, participants evaluated high-fluency name sellers more positively across base-rate conditions, although we observed negative PCs between seller reputation and a fluency-neutral dimension in a follow-up study. We discuss the implications for the debate regarding fluency's positive vs. malleable nature.

THF-solvated Heavy Alkali Metal Benzyl Compounds (Na, Rb, Cs): Defined Deprotonation Reagents for Alkali Metal Mediation Chemistry.

The incorporation of heavy alkali metals into substrates is both challenging and essential for many reactions. Here, we report the formation of THF-solvated alkali metal benzyl compounds [PhCH2 M ⋅ (thf)n ] (M=Na, Rb, Cs). The synthesis was carried out by deprotonation of toluene with the bimetallic mixture n-butyllithium/alkali metal tert-butoxide and selective crystallization from THF of the defined benzyl compounds. Insights into the molecular structure in the solid as well as in solution state are gained by single crystal X-ray experiments and NMR spectroscopic studies. The compounds could be successfully used as alkali metal mediating reagents. The example of caesium showed the convenient use by deprotonating acidic C-H as well as N-H compounds to gain insight into the aminometalation using these reagents.

Explaining Negativity Dominance without Processing Bias.

In a recent study, Shin and Niv explain both negativity and positivity biases in social evaluations as a function of the diversity and low frequency of events. We discuss why negative information is indeed more diverse and less frequent, and highlight the implications beyond social evaluations.

The Role of Relational Qualifiers in Attribute Conditioning: Does Disliking an Athletic Person Make You Unathletic?

In attribute conditioning (AC), neutral stimuli (CSs) acquire specific attributes through mere pairings with other stimuli possessing that attribute (USs). For example, if a neutral person "Neal" is paired with athletic "Wade," participants judge Neal as more athletic compared with when Wade would be unathletic. Building on Evaluative Conditioning research, we introduced relational qualifiers between CS and US to probe the contribution of propositional processes to the AC effect. Concretely, CSs either liked or disliked USs. Four experiments (total n = 1,002) showed that these relations moderate AC effects for athleticism ("athletic" vs. "unathletic"; Experiments 1-3) and relationship status ("single" vs. "in a relationship"; Experiment 4); for example, when Neal disliked athletic Wade, he was judged as unathletic. We discuss how these findings constrain process theories of AC.

Moses, money, and multiple-choice: The Moses illusion in a multiple-choice format with high incentives.

When people answer the question "How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark?", they usually respond with "two," although Moses does not appear in the biblical story of the Ark. We investigated this "Moses illusion" in a multiple-choice format and tested the influence of monetary incentives on the illusion's strength. Thereby, we addressed the role of a cooperative communication context for the illusion's emergence, as well as the role of participants' motivation. In four experiments (total N = 914), we found that the Moses illusion persists in a multiple-choice format. As the multiple-choice format realizes a cooperative context in which the correct answer is always available, we exclude a cooperative context explanation for the illusion. Monetary incentives reduced the strength of the illusion. However, the reduction was numerically and statistically small. We thereby show that the illusion is not due to violations of cooperative communications, and not due to a lack of motivation. The multiple-choice approach will facilitate further research on the Moses illusion and the data provide additional evidence for the Moses illusion's empirical robustness and constrain its theoretical explanations.

Incidental Attitude Formation via the Surveillance Task: A Preregistered Replication of the Olson and Fazio (2001) Study.

Evaluative conditioning is one of the most widely studied procedures for establishing and changing attitudes. The surveillance task is a highly cited evaluative-conditioning paradigm and one that is claimed to generate attitudes without awareness. The potential for evaluative-conditioning effects to occur without awareness continues to fuel conceptual, theoretical, and applied developments. Yet few published studies have used this task, and most are characterized by small samples and small effect sizes. We conducted a high-powered (N = 1,478 adult participants), preregistered close replication of the original surveillance-task study (Olson & Fazio, 2001). We obtained evidence for a small evaluative-conditioning effect when "aware" participants were excluded using the original criterion-therefore replicating the original effect. However, no such effect emerged when three other awareness criteria were used. We suggest that there is a need for caution when using evidence from the surveillance-task effect to make theoretical and practical claims about "unaware" evaluative-conditioning effects.

Repetition increases both the perceived truth and fakeness of information: An ecological account.

People believe repeated statements more compared to new statements - they show a truth by repetition effect. In three pre-registered experiments, we show that repetition may also increase perceptions that statements are used as fake news on social media, irrespective of the factual truth or falsehood of the statements (Experiment 1 & 2), but that repetition reduces perceptions of falsehood when the context of judgment is left unspecified (Experiment 3). On a theoretical level, the findings support an ecological account of repetition effects, as opposed to either a fluency-as-positivity or to an amplification account of these effects. On a practical level, they qualify the influence of repetition on the perception of fake news.

Aminopotassiation by Mixed Potassium/Lithium Amides: A Synthetic Path to Difficult to Access Phenethylamine Derivates.

Insights gained from a comparison of aminometalation reactions with lithium amides, potassium amides and mixed lithium/potassium amides are presented. A combination of structural characterization, DFT calculations and electrophile reactions of aminometalated intermediates has shown the advantages of using a mixed metal strategy. While potassium amides fail to add, the lithium amides are uncontrollable and eliminated, yet the mixed K/Li amides deliver the best of both systems. Aminopotassiation proceeds to form the alkylpotassium species which has enhanced stability over its lithium counterpart allowing for its isolation and thereby its further characterization.

Attitudes from mere co-occurrences are guided by differentiation.

People often form attitudes about objects, individuals, or groups by examining and comparing their attributes. Such attribute-based attitude formation is guided by a differentiation principle: Whether people come to like or dislike an attitude object depends on the object's attributes that differentiate it from other objects. Attributes that are redundant with previously encountered attitude objects are typically cancelled out. We tested whether the same differentiation principle applies to co-occurrence-based attitude formation, also known as Evaluative Conditioning. This form of attitude formation describes the phenomenon that attitudes are influenced by positive or negative stimuli that have co-occurred with attitude object, but which are not inherent attributes of the attitude object itself. Across 7 experiments (N = 1611), we consistently found that co-occurrence-based attitude formation is guided by the same differentiation principle as attribute-based attitude formation. Specifically, participants' attitudes toward unknown brands were most strongly influenced by positive or negative stimuli that distinctly co-occurred with a specific brand, and that differentiated that brand from previously encountered ones. Stimuli that redundantly co-occurred with multiple brands had weaker influences on brand attitudes. The results further suggest that differentiation operates at the learning stage during which distinct stimulus co-occurrences enjoy a processing advantage. We discuss the present findings' theoretical and practical implications for attitude formation and identify differentiation as a possible cause of biased attitudes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Similarity-based and rule-based generalisation in the acquisition of attitudes via evaluative conditioning.

Generalisation in learning means that learning with one particular stimulus influences responding to other novel stimuli. Such generalisation effects have largely been overlooked within research on attitude acquisition via Evaluative Conditioning (i.e. EC effects). In five experiments, we investigated whether and when generalisation of EC effects is based on similarity or on abstract rules. Experiments 1, 2a, 2b and 3 showed that participants who abstracted a rule during the learning phase used that rule for category judgments of novel stimuli. However, evaluative ratings of the same stimuli were unaffected by the learned rule but followed the similarity to learned stimuli. Experiment 4 showed that this similarity-based pattern of generalisation is not specific to evaluative ratings. Rather, resemblance between judgment task and learning task seems to determine whether acquired rules are taken into account. We discuss how dual-process and single-process models of EC may account for the obtained generalisation results.