Fluent Essays

Write a response (500 words) Social media has a significant impact in our society. How might this influence our social attributions? Explain. Does social media influence our internal attributes or external attributes? Why or why not? Which theoretical position best describes how modern technology affects how people infer causal relationships and the dispositional characteristics of others? Support your choice.This assignment requires that at least three additional scholarly research sources related to this topic, and at least one in-text citation from each source be included.References:Adams, J. M., & Hart, W. (2015). Can the means justify the ends? A pleasant journey toward a goal increases the value of the goal. Social Cognition, 33(2), 133-148. doi:10.1521/soco.2015.33.2.133Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (2017). Social cognition: From brains to culture (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Retrieved from http://www.gcumedia.com/digital-resources/sage/201...Maris, S., Claes, J., van Damme, C., & Hoorens, V. (2016). Indirect stereotype change in artificial and real-life stereotypes. Social Cognition, 34(1), 55-80. doi:10.1521/soco.2016.34.1.55 Ramasubramanian, S. (2011). The impact of stereotypical versus counterstereotypical media exemplars on racial attitudes, causal attributions, and support for affirmative action. Communication Research, 38(4), 497-516. doi:10.1177/0093650210384854 adams__2015_.pdf maris__2016_.pdf ramasubramanian__2011_.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview Social Cognition, Vol. 33, No. 2, 2015, pp. 133–148 ADAMS AND HART THE INFLUENCE OF ATTAINMENT MEANS ON GOALS Can the Means Justify the Ends? A Pleasant Journey toward a Goal Increases the Value of the Goal John Milton Adams and Will Hart University of Alabama Is it possible for the means to justify the ends? In two experiments, we showed that people tend to value a goal more after they engage in a pleasant (vs. unpleasant) attainment means to the goal. In Experiment 1, participants rated a close-relationship-maintenance goal as more valuable after they had written a pleasant (vs. unpleasant) letter to a loved one, and this effect was mediated by the feelings evoked in the letter (as indexed by lexical positivity). In Experiment 2, participants showed greater willingness to further pursue a help-psychology-research goal after they engaged in a pleasant attainment means (playing a video game) relative to after they engaged in an unpleasant attainment means (circling letters) to this goal. This effect was mediated by participants’ positive feelings during the task, and it vanished when the main task (the video game; circling letters) was seen as an attainment means to an unrelated goal. Presumably, attainment-means positivity spreads along cognitive links to related (but not unrelated) goals. The effects did not appear to be driven by demand or general-mood effects. “Sometimes it’s the journey that teaches you about your destination.” —Aubrey D. Graham In prior research, there has been much focus on how perceptions of goals influence perceptions of related attainment means (i.e., goal-striving behaviors). For example, according to various theories of motivation, that people tend to approach attainment means more vigorously if their goal is valuable, within reach, and fresh on their mind (Bandura, 1977, 1982; Bargh, 1997; Deci & Ryan, 2000; Festinger, 1942; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Each of these prior theories posits that goals deterAddress correspondence to John Adams, Department of Psychology, University of Alabama, Box 873048, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487; E-mail: adams.john.m@gmail.com. © 2015 Guilford Publications, Inc. 133 134 ADAMS AND HART mine the value of related attainment means. This idea is intuitive, because means are defined by their service to goals (Carver & Scheier, 1982, 1998). Consequently, the majority of research on goal pursuit has focused on this phenomenon (see Bargh, Gollwitzer, & Oettingen, 2010). In the present research, instead of the intuitive phenomenon wherein the end goal controls the value of the attainment means (Carver & Scheier, 1982; Deci & Ryan, 2000; Fishbach, Shah, & Kruglanski, 2004; Kruglanski et al., 2002), we focus on a phenomenon wherein the attainment means controls the value of the end goal. Specifically, we propose that the hedonic experience of an attainment means (e.g., whether it is pleasant vs. unpleasant) can influence the perceived value of a related goal. To date, prior research has focused on how affect can act as a signal of progress or commitment to a goal (Albarracin & Hart, 2011; Carver & Scheier, 1990, 1998; Custers & Aarts, 2005; Fishbach & Dhar, 2005; Fishbach, Eyal, & Finkelstein, 2010). But, the issue of how the hedonic feelings toward a means influences goal appraisal has not yet been explored. Hence, the current research seeks to contribute to the burgeoning literature addressing the relation between goals and affective experiences (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 2012; Chiew & Braver, 2011; Custers & Aarts, 2010; Fishbach et al., 2004; Marien, Aarts, & Custers, 2012). A well-developed understanding of this effect would advance understanding of goal appraisal and adoption processes, and it would provide a variety of practical applications in education, business management, and public policy. Many popular models of motivation and goal pursuit stress the role of perceived goal progress in determining subsequent motivated behavior (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1982, 1990; Fishbach, Dhar, & Zhang, 2006; Förster, Grant, Idson, & Higgins, 2001; Förster, Liberman, & Higgins, 2005; Lewin, 1935; Locke & Latham, 1990; Zeigarnik, 1927). In these models, goal progress is often conceptualized in terms of progress amounts, progress rates, or the completion status of goals (e.g., goal accomplishment). Goal progress (e.g., amounts and rates) is presumed to influence the valuation, pursuit, and accessibility of goals. Indeed, much research generally supports the main tenets of these models (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1998; Fishbach & Ferguson, 2007). For example, goals tend to become less pressing when people make quick progress toward them (Carver & Scheier, 1998), and goals can become inhibited once they are completed (e.g., Förster et al., 2005; Zeigarnik, 1927). But, what if all progress is not created equal? Perhaps the same amounts/rates of progress could have different motivational consequences when other factors are considered. Indeed, we propose that the pleasantness (vs. unpleasantness) of goal progress can influence goal valuing. Although untested, this idea is plausible. For one, goal-systems theory postulates that the pleasant (or unpleasant) feelings associated with progressing toward a goal might spread to the goal (Kruglanski et al., 2002; Fishbach et al., 2004). Second, other work shows that positive (negative) affect can infuse goals with more or less value (e.g., Custers & Aarts, 2005). When these two ideas are bridged, it would follow that engaging in pleasant progress would infuse goals with more value than unpleasant progress. The current research aims to demonstrate that experiencing pleasant (vs. negative) feelings THE INFLUENCE OF ATTAINMENT MEANS ON GOALS 135 while engaging in an “attainment means” (i.e., progressing toward a goal) can increase motivation toward related goals. As such, we seek to address a novel feature of goal progress that might influence motivation. Importantly, there is some research that could be interpreted as consistent with our theory. For example, some studies have reported a positive correlation between enjoyment for academic tasks and academic achievement (Gottfried, 1985a, 1985b, 1990; Lloyd & Barenblatt, 1984). This research is typically understood as suggesting that academic-task enjoyment and academic achievement both follow from the satisfaction of some overarching goal (e.g., to demonstrate competence; Deci & Ryan, 2000). However, it is also possible that academic-task enjoyment (i.e., positive experiences during progress) infuses academic goals with value, which promotes academic-achievement motivation. Overview of Experiments The present research tests the hypothesis that engaging in progress toward a goal with a pleasant (vs. unpleasant) attainment means causes individuals to place greater value toward the goal. Experiment 1 tests this hypothesis with a self-report measure of goal value, and Experiment 2 tests this hypothesis with a behavioral measure of goal pursuit. Value and pursuit are presumed to be highly related concepts such that, all things being equal, people tend to pursue goals that they value more highly (Atkinson, 1964; Förster et al., 2005). Importantly, our mechanistic explanation for the effect suggests a moderation prediction. If the present effects are in fact due to the spreading of affect from means to related goals (e.g., Kruglanski et al., 2002), then artificially destroying links between means and goals should prevent this “spreading of affect” and in turn prevent the effect of attainment-means pleasantness on goal value. Experiment 2 tests this moderation prediction: a pleasant (vs. unpleasant) attainment means should only lead to increased goal value if the attainment means is clearly related to the goal in memory. Furthermore, each experiment uses a mediation analysis (or moderated mediation analysis) to test the idea that differences in participants’ feelings during goal pursuit are responsible for subsequent differences in related goal valuation. Experiment 1 In Experiment 1, participants wrote a letter to a loved one as an attainment means for their goal to maintain close relationships. Participants were asked to write a letter to a close friend or family member, and in the letter they were asked to describe either positive events (pleasant-means condition), negative events (unpleasant-means condition), or events with no specificity (neutral-means condition). We predicted that participants in the pleasant-means (vs. unpleasant-means) condition would subsequently report that relationship-maintenance goals were more valuable (i.e., more important). Further, we predicted that this effect would be 136 ADAMS AND HART mediated by the positivity (vs. negativity) of participants’ feelings during letter writing. In this study, we operationalized feelings as the affective positivity of the language (indexed by the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, or LIWC; Pennebaker, Francis, & Booth, 2001) participants used in the in the letter-writing task. Although consciously reporting feelings can sometimes alter the way these feelings naturally manifest in judgment and behavior (e.g., Schwarz & Clore, 1996), more implicit measures are less likely to suffer this problem. Furthermore, prior research suggests that this LIWC measure would be an effective index of affective feelings (Alpers et al., 2005; Kahn, Tobin, Massey, & Anderson, 2007; Tausczik & Pennebaker, 2010). Method Participants and Design. Participants consisted of 170 (73 male)1 undergraduate psychology students participating for course credit. Participants were recruited toward the end of the Spring 2012 semester; as much data as possible were collected before the semester ended. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: pleasant means, neutral means, or unpleasant means. Each participant wrote a letter to a loved one about recent (positive, neutral, or negative) life events. Consistency of Perceived Goal Progress between Conditions. Pilot-testing revealed that people view “writing a positive letter” and “writing a negative letter” as equally productive ways to maintain relationships. In other words, the pilot showed that people associate writing letters to loved ones as a means to the target goal, which is central to the assumption that these two concepts are linked in memory (see Kruglanski et al., 2002). Specifically, we asked participants to rate their agreement with the following statement: “To strengthen a close relationship, it is just as important to discuss unpleasant information as it is to discuss pleasant information” (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree). A one-sample t-test indicated that the average response to this item (M = 4.53, SD = 0.58) was significantly higher than the midpoint of the scale, t(134) = 30.5, p < .001 (see also, Laurenceau, Barrett, & Pietromonaco, 1998). Considering this large effect (d = 2.64), the letter-writing task was probably viewed as an effective means for making progress on a relationshipmaintenance goal in each condition.2 Procedure and Measures. Participants were told that the study concerned styles of communication and that they would be asked to write a letter to a loved one. After choosing a recipient, each participant was asked to rate their closeness with this person (1 = not close at all, 9 = extremely close). 1. Gender did not moderate any of the reported effects in either experiment. 2. It is possible that participants in this pilot study assumed that they were being asked about unpleasant and pleasant relationship-relevant information (vs. general information). Still, even if some participants made this assumption, we would argue that the results of this pilot study are useful for demonstrating relatively equal progress between conditions in Experiment 1. For example, it does not seem immediately obvious why participants who would think that it is equally important to discuss unpleasant and pleasant relationship-relevant information would not feel the same way about unpleasant and pleasant general information (or vice versa). Ultimately, the issue of holding goal progress constant between conditions will be more clearly addressed in Experiment 2. THE INFLUENCE OF ATTAINMENT MEANS ON GOALS 137 In the pleasant-means condition, participants were instructed, “Describe how your semester at University of Alabama is going, and FOCUS ONLY ON THE THINGS THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY.” Participants in the unpleasant-means condition were instructed, “Describe how your semester at UA is going, and FOCUS ONLY ON THE THINGS THAT MAKE YOU UNHAPPY.” Participants in the neutral-means condition were instructed, “Describe how your semester at UA is going. You can write about whatever you’d like.” Affective Feelings During Letter Writing (Mediator). The proposed mechanism for the predicted effect is that participants’ letter-writing condition should influence their affective feelings, which should spread to a related goal (close-relationship maintenance). To measure the affective-feelings mediator, we measured the positivity (vs. negativity) of participants’ feelings during the letter-writing task using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, or LIWC (Alpers et al., 2005; Kahn et al., 2007; Pennebaker et al., 2001; Tausczik & Pennebaker, 2010). Specifically, we combined “emotional positivity” and “emotional negativity” into a net “affective feelings” score by subtracting participants’ “negative emotions” score from their “positive emotions” score. Measurement of Goal Value. After the letter-writing manipulation, participants reported the value they assigned to a close-relationship maintenance goal, amongst other goals (presented in random order), using two items (1 = not important at all, 9 = extremely important). The other goals were included to rule out the possibility that participants in the pleasant-means condition showed a generalized tendency to appraise all goals positively (Fishbach & Labroo, 2007) and to limit the transparency of the hypothesis (i.e., to reduce the influence of demand characteristics). The two critical close-relationship-goal items were: (1) “How important is it for you to maintain close relationships with your family?” (2) “How important is it for you to maintain close relationships with your friends?” The other, non-relationship maintenance goal-related items probed the importance of fitness, making money, and eating healthily. After these items, participants responded to a funnel debriefing procedure (Bargh & Chartrand, 2000). No participant indicated awareness of the true purpose of the study. Data Exclusion Criteria. First, we reasoned that participants who did not feel close to the recipient of their letter might not activate the critical relationship-maintenance goal. Furthermore, these individuals failed to follow the basic instruction to write the letter to a close other. Thus, we excluded eight participants because they reported a lack of closeness with the recipient of their letter (< 5 on a 9-point scale).3 We removed one additional participant based on the participant’s LIWC score. This participant was in the pleasant-means condition, but LIWC analysis of his/ her letter indicated that 4.55\% of words indicated negative emotions, which was four standard deviations higher than the mean emotional negativity (M = 0.71, SD = 0.94) in the pleasant-means condition. 3. Using “closeness” as a moderator was not practical because of the low variability in this factor. 138 ADAMS AND HART Results The two items assessing value of the relationship-maintenance goal were highly correlated (r = 0.47, p < .001), so they were averaged into an index of close-relationship-maintenance value. This close-relationship-maintenance value was submitted to a one-way ANOVA with experimental condition as the predictor. This analysis revealed a significant between-conditions difference, F(2, 158) = 3.92, p = .02. Post hoc comparisons using the Fisher least-significant-difference test revealed a significant difference between close-relationship-maintenance value in the pleasant-means condition (M = 8.52, SD = 0.65) and the unpleasant-means condition (M = 8.08, SD = 0.82), p = .006. The neutral condition (M = 8.28, SD = 0.82) fell in between the unpleasant-means and pleasant-means conditions but did not significantly differ from either of these conditions, ps > .13. Mediation Analysis. To test whether the effect of experimental condition on closerelationship goal value was mediated by participants’ affective feelings (indexed by LIWC) during the letter-writing task, we first probed the influence of condition on feelings. A one-way ANOVA with condition as the predictor for affective feelings revealed a significant effect of condition, F(2, 158) = 78.38, p < .001. The positivity of participants’ affective feelings in the pleasant-means condition (M = 8.45, SD = 3.11) was significantly greater than it was in the neutral-means condition (M = 5.98, SD = 3.20) and the unpleasant-means condition (M = 1.19, SD = 2.85). All pairwise comparisons were significant (ps < .001). Because experimental condition was significantly related to the positivity of participants’ affective feelings (as indexed by LIWC), and affective-feelings positivity was significantly related to relationship-maintenance-goal value, r(161) = .241, p = .002, we proceeded to test the indirect effect of condition on relationship-maintenance goal value via affective feelings. To do this, we used the MEDIATE macro for SPSS (Hayes & Preacher, 2014) with experimental condition as a multicategorical predictor. Because our analysis involved a 3-level independent variable (condition: positive; negative; neutral), the program created two dummy variables: D1 represented the comparison between positive and negative affect; D2 represented positive versus neutral affect. Of central interest, bootstrapping confidence intervals based on 5,000 samples yielded a 95\% confidence interval for the indirect effect of D1 (positive vs. negative) on close-relationship-maintenance value (via affective feelings). This confidence interval contained zero as a value [-0.57, 0.03], which indicates that it was not significant at α = .05. The 90\% confidence interval, however, did not contain zero [-0.52, -0.02], which suggests that the indirect effect was significant at α = .1. Further, the direct effect of experimental condition on close-relationship-maintenance value was not significant in this model, F(2, 155) = 0.50, p = .61, which suggests full mediation. Alternative Explanation. Perhaps the present effects are simply the result of a general-mood mechanism. For example, some prior research (Fishbach & Labroo, THE INFLUENCE OF ATTAINMENT MEANS ON GOALS 139 2007) indicates that feeling good increases the value of all goals that are under focus. If this general-mood mechanism were guiding our results, we would anticipate that the effect of means attainment would be present for all goals (not just the close-relationships goal). However, a one-way ANOVA with condition as the independent variable and unrelated-goal value (average importance of diet, health, and money) as the dependent variable was nonsignificant, F(2, 158) = 0.08, p = .93. Hence, the present effects were specific to the goal of the letter-writing task (i.e., relationship maintenance) as we would expect and do not seem driven by a general-mood mechanism. Nevertheless, a 3 (means pleasantness) × 2 (goal type: close relationship goal value vs. unrelated goal value) mixed-model ANOVA with goal-type as the repeated factor yielded a nonsignificant interaction effect (p = .34). Hence, we may not claim that the effects of attainment means pleasantness on the two types of goals are reliably different from one another, but this null interaction could be due to a lack of power to dete ... Purchase answer to see full attachment