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People's Beliefs (people + belief)
Selected AbstractsBelief in a Just World and Jury Decisions in a Civil Rape TrialJOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 5 2000Linda A. Foley When people's belief in a just world (BJW) is challenged, it can be restored by attributing blame to the victim or alleviating the victim's suffering. In criminal cases, jurors can attribute responsibility to victims, but cannot alleviate suffering. Participants (n= 106) heard a taped civil rape case. The effect of age of plaintiff, gender of participant, and type of participant on mock jurors' reactions to a plaintiff were examined. Participants evaluated responsibility of plaintiff and awarded monetary damages. It was hypothesized that, given this opportunity to compensate the victim, jurors would be less likely to derogate the victim. As hypothesized, women with high and low BJW attributed the same level of responsibility to the plaintiff but those with a high BJW awarded more monetaly damages. Men with high BJW awarded much less in damages than did men with low BJW. The just-world theory appears to explain many of the decisions made by mock jurors. [source] Planting false memories for childhood sexual abuse only happens to emotionally disturbed people,,not me or my friendsAPPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2009Kathy Pezdek Pezdek et al. (2006) reported that although imagining a plausible event increased people's belief in the event, imagining an implausible event did not. In response, Rubin and Berntsen (2007) conducted a survey and reported that only 17.8% considered it implausible that someone ,with longstanding emotional problems and a need for psychotherapy' could be a victim of childhood sexual abuse and forget the abuse. We replicated but qualified their findings; perceptions of the plausibility of this event for (a) respondents themselves and (b) other people in their cohort were substantially lower than the perceived general plausibility reported by Rubin and Berntsen. These findings limit the generalizability of Rubin and Berntsen's results to perceptions of personal plausibility and cohort plausibility, even for individuals indicating that they are likely to seek psychotherapy. Consequently, the risk of inducing false memories in psychotherapy may not be a ,substantial danger' as Rubin and Berntsen suggest. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Dynamic Interracial/Intercultural Processes: The Role of Lay Theories of RaceJOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 5 2009Ying-yi Hong ABSTRACT This paper explores how the lay theory approach provides a framework beyond previous stereotype/prejudice research to understand dynamic personality processes in interracial/ethnic contexts. The authors conceptualize theory of race within the Cognitive,Affective Personality System (CAPS), in which lay people's beliefs regarding the essential nature of race sets up a mind-set through which individuals construe and interpret their social experiences. The research findings illustrate that endorsement of the essentialist theory (i.e., that race reflects deep-seated, inalterable essence and is indicative of traits and ability) versus the social constructionist theory (i.e., that race is socially constructed, malleable, and arbitrary) are associated with different encoding and representation of social information, which in turn affect feelings, motivation, and competence in navigating between racial and cultural boundaries. These findings shed light on dynamic interracial/intercultural processes. Relations of this approach to CAPS are discussed. [source] How Predictive Appeals Affect Policy OpinionsAMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2009Jennifer Jerit When political actors debate the merits of a public policy, they often focus on the consequences of a bill or legislative proposal, with supporters and opponents making stark but contradictory predictions about the future. Building upon the framing literature, I examine how rhetoric about a policy's consequences influences public opinion. I show that predictive appeals work largely by altering people's beliefs about the impact of a policy. Following in the tradition of recent framing research, this article also examines how opinions are influenced when people are exposed to opposing predictions. The analysis focuses on two strategies that are common in real-world debates,the direct rebuttal (in which an initial appeal is challenged by a statement making the opposite prediction) and the alternate frame (which counters an initial appeal by shifting the focus to some other consequence). There are important differences in the effectiveness of these two strategies,a finding that has implications for the study of competitive framing and the policymaking process more generally. [source] How to think about the Modularity of Mind-ReadingTHE PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 199 2000Gregory Currie It has been suggested that the fixation of beliefs about people's beliefs, desires and intentions is modularized. We argue that this is unlikely. We argue that there is modularity lower down: social-intentional ,markers' are produced by an encapsulated mechanism intermediate between perception and belief-fixation, and that these markers make a distinctive contribution to the fixation of beliefs about the mental. But belief fixation itself is not modular. Finally, we suggest some complications to our simple picture, and some ways in which our thesis might shed light on pathologies of social understanding. [source] Can fabricated evidence induce false eyewitness testimony?APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 7 2010Kimberley A. Wade False information can influence people's beliefs and memories. But can fabricated evidence induce individuals to accuse another person of doing something they never did? We examined whether exposure to a fabricated video could produce false eyewitness testimony. Subjects completed a gambling task alongside a confederate subject, and later we falsely told subjects that their partner had cheated on the task. Some subjects viewed a digitally manipulated video of their partner cheating; some were told that video evidence of the cheating exists; and others were not told anything about video evidence. Subjects were asked to sign a statement confirming that they witnessed the incident and that their corroboration could be used in disciplinary action against the accused. See-video subjects were three times more likely to sign the statement than Told-video and Control subjects. Fabricated evidence may, indeed, produce false eyewitness testimony; we discuss probable cognitive mechanisms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] | |||||||||||||