Biomedical subjects

A S Manstead

Publications and source records attributed to A S Manstead.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

Social context effects on facial activity in a negative emotional setting.

Evidence for A. J. Fridlund's (e.g.. 1994) "behavioral ecology view" of human facial expression comes primarily from studies of smiling in response to positive emotional stimuli. Smiling may be a special case because it clearly can, and often does serve merely communicative functions. The present experiment was designated (a) to assess the generalizability of social context effects to facial expressions in response to negative emotional stimuli and (b) to examine whether these effects are mediated by social motives, as suggested by the behavioral ecology view. Pairs of friends or strangers viewed film clips that elicited different degrees of sad affect, in either the same or a different room; a control group participated alone. Dependent variables included facial activity, subjective emotion, and social motives. Displays of sadness were influenced by stimulus intensity and were lower in all social conditions than in the alone condition. Unexpectedly, social context effects were also found for smiling.

Affect↗

PubMed1996

Intergroup norms and intergroup discrimination: distinctive self-categorization and social identity effects.

Manipulation of in-group and out-group norms of discrimination and fairness allowed for the operation of competing social identity principles concerning in-group bias, conformity, and group distinctiveness. The combined effects of these principles on in-group bias were first examined in a modified minimal-group setting (Study 1). Results demonstrated that participants' allocation strategies were in accord with the in-group norm. Furthermore, dissimilar norms resulted in greater use of positive differentiation allocation strategies. However, in natural groups (Study 2), more in-group bias was found when both group norms were similar and discriminatory. The results confirm the importance of in-group norms and demonstrate differences between experimental and natural groups in the applicability of competing social identity and self-categorization principles.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1995

Behavioural characteristics and involvement in different types of traffic accident.

Recent research has shown risk of road traffic accident involvement to be associated with the tendency to commit driving violations, fast driving, and a lack of thoroughness in decision making. It has also been shown that three broad types of accident can be used to categorise more than 70% of drivers' brief written descriptions of their accidents. These categories are "shunts" (rear-end collisions), right-of-way violations, and loss-of-control accidents. Furthermore, for each accident type the role of the reporting driver may be defined as active (striking) or passive (struck) depending on the position of his/her vehicle. This paper reports two studies examining the extent to which measures of tendency to commit violations (measured by the Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ)), frequency of fast driving (measured by the Driving Style Questionnaire (DSQ)) and thoroughness in decision making (measured by the Decision Making Questionnaire (DMQ)) are associated specifically with involvement in each of the main accident types. The results showed that a high DBQ-violation score was associated with accidents in general, both active and passive, and specifically with active loss-of-control accidents and passive right-of-way accidents. High DSQ-speed and low DMQ-thoroughness were associated with active but not passive accidents, high DSQ-speed with active right-of-way violations, and low DMQ-thoroughness was specifically associated with active shunts and active right-of-way violations. The implications of these results are discussed.

Accidents, Traffic↗

PubMed1994

Face perception in children with autism and Asperger's syndrome.

Children with diagnoses of either autism or Asperger's syndrome were matched on measures of verbal mental age with nonautistic control children. They were tested on their abilities to process both facial and nonfacial stimuli. There were no significant differences between the low ability autistic and control groups, but the high ability autistic and Asperger's children performed significantly worse than controls across all tests. Group averages masked substantial individual variation. The results are seen as indicating a general perceptual deficit that is not specific to faces or emotions. This appears to be a common correlate of autism and Asperger's syndrome, rather than a core symptom.

Aptitude↗

PubMed1994

The influence of personal and collective self-esteem on strategies of social differentiation.

The present study distinguished between personal self-esteem (PSE) and collective self-esteem (CSE) as determinants of in-group bias in an intergroup context. Subjects performed a group task, the product of which they subsequently evaluated ('own' group), along with solutions allegedly produced by another 'in-group' (similar nationality), and an 'out-group' (different nationality). This provided the opportunity for intragroup discrimination (own vs. in-group), and both direct (own vs. out-group) and indirect (in-group vs. out-group) strategies of intergroup discrimination. It was predicted that subjects high in CSE would differentiate more than subjects low in CSE, both directly and indirectly, but that intergroup discrimination would also result from high PSE. The relationship between the in-group and out-group was also manipulated by varying the salient out-group. It was predicted that subjects motivated to enhance social identity (high CSE) would differentiate more, directly and indirectly, when the out-group was seen as having a more competitive relationship with the in-group. Although this manipulation was unsuccessful, a follow-up suggested that the out-group predefined as less competitive was actually a more relevant comparison group in the context of the task, which is consistent with effects of this manipulation. Overall PSE and CSE were both found to influence differentiation at the intragroup and intergroup level, both independently and interactively. However, whereas high PSE led to greater positive differentiation, low CSE had this effect, and a combination of high PSE and low CSE produced the most consistent pattern of positive in-group differentiation across both out-group conditions. Possible mechanisms which account for this pattern are discussed and the relationship between dimensions of self-esteem and group differentiation is reappraised in the light of these findings.

Adult↗

PubMed1992

Determinants of intention to commit driving violations.

Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour was used to measure the attitudes and intentions of a large stratified sample of drivers (N = 881) towards four driving violations. Measures were taken of respondents' attitudes to four imaginary scenarios depicting their commission of the four violations concerned. Demographic subgroups of drivers within the sample were differentiated on the basis of their beliefs about and evaluations of their commission of the violations. We were able to identify attitude items differentiating the younger, statistically more "accident liable" drivers in the sample from their older, and statistically safer counterparts. The implications of using this approach to inform future road safety campaigns are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1984

Predicting mothers' choice of infant feeding method.

There is relatively little published research concerning the relationship between mothers' attitudes towards methods of feeding infants and their choice of breast-feeding or bottle-feeding as methods of feeding their own babies. The present study used Fishbein & Ajzen's theory of reasoned action to analyse the impact of the attitudes, perceived norms and beliefs of 50 primiparous mothers on (i) their intentions to breast-feed or bottle-feed, assessed antenatally; and (ii) their self-reported use of breast-feeding and bottle-feeding during the first six weeks of the baby's life. The findings were generally consistent with the theory of reasoned action. Attitudes to the infant feeding methods accounted for a large and significant amount of variation in infant feeding behaviour. However, there were some aspects of the findings that were not entirely consistent with the theory. Attitudes to behaviour contributed significantly and independently to the prediction of behaviour, and beliefs about the consequences of behaviour explained a near-significant amount of variation in intentions, beyond that already accounted for by attitudes and normative beliefs. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1983

Predicting and understanding mothers' infant-feeding intentions and behavior: testing the theory of reasoned action.

The present study examines the applicability of Fishbein and Ajzen's theory of reasoned action to the prediction and understanding of how primiparous and multiparous mothers intended to feed their infants and how they actually fed these infants during the 6 weeks following delivery. Measures of attitudes to behavior, subjective norms, and behavioral intentions were taken during the last trimester of pregnancy. Behavior was assessed by self-report 6 weeks postpartum. In most respects the findings supported the theory of reasoned action. However, attitudes to behavior were found to make an independent and significant contribution to the prediction of infant-feeding behavior, and the previous behavior of multiparous mothers explained an independent and significant proportion of variation in their behavioral intentions. The relative importance of the attitudinal and normative components of the theoretical model tended to vary according to whether the mothers had direct experience of the criterion behavior. Further analysis revealed that mothers who breast-fed during the 6-week postpartum period differed from those who bottle-fed exclusively during this period on a number of behavioral beliefs, outcome evaluations, and normative beliefs, and on one measure of motivation to comply. The implications of these findings for the theory of reasoned action are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1981

An examination of the role played by meaning of feedback and attention to feedback in the "Valins effect".

This study assesses the role played by the variables of meaning and attention in mediating the cognitive effects of false autonomic feedback, first reported by Valins. In the context of a study of the physiological correlates of selective attention, subjects were instructed either to attend or to ignore pulsed sounds that were described either as veridical heart rate feedback or simply as electronic "bleeps." These auditory stimuli were presented in parallel with slides illustrating skin diseases. Consistent with previous findings, slides associated with acceleration of the pulsed sounds were subsequently rated as significantly more unpleasant than those associated with no change in the speed of these sounds. However, this effect was not contingent on the apparent meaning of these sounds (heart rate vs bleeps) but was contingent on the degree of attention paid to the sounds. The "Valins effect" was only obtained when subjected attended to the sounds. The implications of these findings for the interpretation of the cognitive effects of false autonomic feedback are discussed.

Adolescent↗