Age-moderated effects of consequence and intent information on punishment: an intuitive prosecutorial interpretation.

In responding to wrongdoings, people simultaneously pursue the goals of social control and fairness to the wrongdoer. Social control necessitates stronger weighting of consequences than causes; fairness entails the opposite. The authors hypothesized that the developmental shift from overweighting consequence to overweighting intent when determining levels of punishment illustrates a shift from a default defender of the normative order to a motivated crusader of fairness to the wrongdoer. Thus, punishment should increase slightly for intentional wrongdoings but decrease substantially for accidental wrongdoings as people age. In an experiment on disciplinary action in Singapore, 9-, 13-, and 17-year-olds learned about the consequences of and intentions behind wrongdoings by peers and predicted consistency of the same act in the future, assigned blame to the wrongdoers, and recommended punishment for them. Results supported hypotheses derived from a fair-but-biased-yet-correctible model of intuitive prosecutors.

Reacting to headline news: circumstances leading to causal explanations versus implicational concerns.

How do people react to the headline news they receive? According to the model of people as intuitive scientists (Kelley, 1972; Ross, 1977), people-like scientists-make causal explanations (i.e., why did an event take place?) and assign responsibility to the person, the situation, or both. However, a more recently proposed social-functionalist model (Tetlock, 2002) views people less as intuitive scientists trying to understand the world and more as intuitive prosecutors trying to protect a fragile social order. Thus, implicational concerns (i.e., how would it affect people's lives, properties, and liberties?) with the news can also be likely reactions. Given the prescriptions of these models, the present authors tested the hypotheses that news reports evoke both causal explanations and implicational concerns among viewers, and that the degree of the two reactions depends on the valence (positive vs. negative) and theme (whether it is unusual or social order-linked) of the news. Singaporeans (N = 80) read one piece of headline news that represented a crossed level of valence (negative vs. positive) and theme (unusual vs. social order), and indicated the likelihood of causal explanations and implicational concerns as their first response to it. As hypothesized, positive news led to a greater likelihood of showing implicational concerns than of making causal explanations, the difference being reversed in the case of negative news; unusual news led to a greater likelihood of making causal explanations than of showing implication concerns; the likelihood of having implicational concerns with news related to social order was higher than making that of causal explanations; and the two responses were equally likely in the case of negative news. Overall, these results support a view of people as intuitive prosecutors interested in both causal explanations of and implicational concerns with a news report.

The relative effects of competence and likability on interpersonal attraction.

Undergraduate students in Singapore (N = 80) learned about the competence (low vs. high) and likability (low vs. high) of a future interaction partner and indicated their attraction toward that stranger. The effect of likability was two times as large as that of competence. Because of the additive effects of the two manipulated factors on attraction, the authors interpreted the preference for lovable fools over competent jerks as an outcome of a generalized supremacy of likability over competence.

Mediators of the effects of cold-warm communication on attraction toward online service providers.

Undergraduate students (N = 120) in Singapore sought advice from the experimenter's confederate via e-mail or phone. After receiving a scripted warm or cold reply from the online service provider, participants rated their general attitude toward the service provided, positive and negative affect, and attraction toward the service provider. The effect of warm versus cold communication on attraction toward the online service provider was partly mediated by general attitude, positive affect, and negative affect. The results indicate that attitude that influences attraction through affect can itself be a mediator when it is formed through online interactions.

Competitive versus cooperative attitudes in crossed categorization effects: testing the category dominance and equivalence models.

Participants' (N = 256) competitive or cooperative attitudes toward national groups were activated by their reading 1 of 2 selected newspaper articles. Participants then judged the competence and attractiveness of a stranger who was categorized, separately for race and nationality, as belonging to an out-group or in-group. As predicted, the activated competitive attitude produced responses prescribed by the model of category dominance by nationality. In the condition of cooperative attitudes, however, competence responses were consistent with the model of equivalence (i.e., no effect of category) and attraction responses were consistent with the model of category dominance by race. The authors discuss reasons for the discrepant models in the condition of cooperative attitudes and the implications of these findings.

Attitudes, personal evaluations, cognitive evaluation and interpersonal attraction: on the direct, indirect and reverse-causal effects.

The authors hypothesized that (1) attraction toward a stranger based on attitudinal similarity is automatic, but cognitive evaluation of the stranger's quality before the measurement of attraction can make attraction nonautomatic or controlled; (2) personal evaluations from the stranger activate automatic attraction and cognitive evaluation; (3) controlled attraction from attitudes and automatic attraction and cognitive evaluation from personal evaluations engender reverse-causal effects (i.e. they mediate each other); and (4) attraction and cognitive evaluation are distinct constructs. Attitudinal similarity between the participant and the stranger or personal evaluations of the former by the latter were varied in Experiment 1 (N=96), and were crossed with each other in Experiment 2 (N=240). Orders of response measurement were either cognitive evaluation followed by attraction or attraction followed by cognitive evaluation. Results confirmed the hypotheses. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Intergroup perception as a compromise between in-group bias and fair-mindedness.

Previously, perceived competence of and attraction toward targets categorized by race showed in-group bias and no bias, respectively. Consequently, previous investigators regarded intergroup perception as a compromise between the norms of in-group bias and fair-mindedness. An alternative hypothesis for such findings is that attraction is not as relevant a dimension for intergroup discrimination as is competence. To test contrasting predictions of these hypotheses, the present authors asked participants from the majority and minority groups in Singapore (ns = 320) to evaluate either competence of or attraction toward one of the five targets. Consistent with the hypothesis that intergroup perception is a compromise, both dimensions yielded a uniform but weak in-group bias. The participants' equating of the in-group with one out-group further illustrated fair-mindedness. The authors discussed implications of the findings.