Biomedical subjects

Tanya L Chartrand

Publications and source records attributed to Tanya L Chartrand.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Being bad isn't always good: affective context moderates the attention bias toward negative information.

Research has demonstrated that people automatically devote more attention to negative information than to positive information. The authors conducted 3 experiments to test whether this bias is attenuated by a person's affective context. Specifically, the authors primed participants with positive and negative information using traditional (e.g., subliminal semantic priming) and nontraditional (e.g., social interactions) means and measured the amount of attention they allocated to positive and negative information. With both event-related brain potentials (Experiment 1) and the Stroop task (Experiments 2 and 3), results suggest that the attention bias to negative information is attenuated or eliminated when positive constructs are made accessible. The implications of this result for other biases to negative information and for the self-reinforcing nature of emotional disorders are discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed2006

High-maintenance interaction: inefficient social coordination impairs self-regulation.

Tasks requiring interpersonal coordination permeate all spheres of life. Although social coordination is sometimes efficient and effortless (low maintenance), at other times it is inefficient and effortful (high maintenance). Across 5 studies, participants experienced either a high- or a low-maintenance interaction with a confederate before engaging in an individual-level task requiring self-regulation. Self-regulation was operationalized with measures of (a) preferences for a challenging task with high reward potential over an easy task with low reward potential (Study 1) and (b) task performance (anagram performance in Study 1, Graduate Record Exam performance in Studies 2 and 3, physical stamina in Study 4, and fine motor control in Study 5). Results uniformly supported the hypothesis that experiencing high-maintenance interaction impairs one's self-regulatory success on subsequent, unrelated tasks. These effects were not mediated through participants' conscious processes and emerged even with a nonconscious manipulation of high-maintenance interaction.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Linking automatic evaluation to mood and information processing style: consequences for experienced affect, impression formation, and stereotyping.

According to the feelings-as-information account, a person's mood state signals to him or her the valence of the current environment (N. Schwarz & G. Clore, 1983). However, the ways in which the environment automatically influences mood in the first place remain to be explored. The authors propose that one mechanism by which the environment influences affect is automatic evaluation, the nonconscious evaluation of environmental stimuli as good or bad. A first experiment demonstrated that repeated brief exposure to positive or negative stimuli (which leads to automatic evaluation) induces a corresponding mood in participants. In 3 additional studies, the authors showed that automatic evaluation affects information processing style. Experiment 4 showed that participants' mood mediates the effect of valenced brief primes on information processing.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

The forest, the trees, and the chameleon: context dependence and mimicry.

Three studies examined the relation between context dependence in information processing and behavioral mimicry. In Experiment 1, a field-dependent cognitive style was related to a greater tendency to mimic a target's behavior. In Experiment 2 context dependence was experimentally manipulated, and results showed more mimicry in the session where a context-dependent processing style was induced compared with the session where a context-independent processing style was induced. Experiment 3 provided evidence for bidirectionality in the relation between context dependence and mimicry. Specifically, participants whose posture and behavior had been unobtrusively mimicked by an experimenter subsequently processed information in a more context-dependent manner than did nonmimicked participants. Taken together, these results illustrate the interplay between basic cognitive and behavioral processes.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

May I have your attention, please: electrocortical responses to positive and negative stimuli.

Previous research has shown that negative stimuli elicit more attention than do positive stimuli. However, this research has relied on response-based measures to assess attention. The current research uses the P1 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP) as a proximal index of attention allocation to valenced stimuli. In two studies, P1 amplitude was measured while participants evaluated positive and negative pictures. In both studies, principal components analysis showed that P1 amplitudes to frequent stimuli and to rare negative stimuli were larger than P1 amplitudes to rare positive stimuli. This is (a) evidence for the extremely rapid (<120 ms) differentiation of positive and negative stimuli and (b) process-based evidence for a negativity bias in attention allocation.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

It takes two to mimic: behavioral consequences of self-construals.

The present studies demonstrated the moderation of self-construal orientation on mimicry. Recent research has indicated that an interdependent self-construal is associated with assimilation of the other to the self whereas an independent self-construal is associated with minimizing the influence of others on the self (H. R. Markus & S. Kitayama, 1991; D. Stapel & W. Koomen, 2001). Therefore, the authors hypothesized that an interdependent self-construal would be associated with more mimicry than an independent self-construal. When self-construal orientations were experimentally primed, as in Studies 1 and 2, independent self-construals produced less nonconscious mimicry than interdependent self-construals. When self-construals were examined as cultural differences with either a chronically dominant independent (Americans) or interdependent (Japanese) construal of the self, these results were replicated.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Self-monitoring without awareness: using mimicry as a nonconscious affiliation strategy.

This research sought to extend the current conceptualization of self-monitoring by examining whether self-monitoring motives and behaviors can operate outside of conscious awareness. Two studies examined nonconscious mimicry among high and low self-monitors in situations varying in affiliative cues. Participants interacted with a confederate who shook her foot (Study 1) or touched her face (Study 2). In both studies, high self-monitors were more likely to mimic the confederate's subtle gestures when they believed the confederate to be a peer (Study 1) or someone superior to them (Study 2). Low self-monitors mimicked to the same degree across conditions. Thus, when the situation contains affiliative cues, high self-monitors use mimicry as a nonconscious strategy to get along with their interaction partner.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Using nonconscious behavioral mimicry to create affiliation and rapport.

Nonconscious behavioral mimicry occurs when a person unwittingly imitates the behaviors of another person. This mimicry has been attributed to a direct link between perceiving a behavior and performing that same behavior. The current experiments explored whether having a goal to affiliate augments the tendency to mimic the behaviors of interaction partners. Experiment 1 demonstrated that having an affiliation goal increases nonconscious mimicry, and Experiment 2 further supported this proposition by demonstrating that people who have unsuccessfully attempted to affiliate in an interaction subsequently exhibit more mimicry than those who have not experienced such a failure. Results suggest that behavioral mimicry may be part of a person's repertoire of behaviors, used nonconsciously, when there is a desire to create rapport.

Adult↗