the function of self-esteem

As you might notice, this past week’s readings were on the topic of “self-esteem.” Specifically the readings were focused on the function of self-esteem, the benefits of having high self-esteem, and whether we should focus policy on improving the self-esteem of children. A short review of the findings from the articles we read shows that self-esteem is often given a bit more credit than it may deserve. For example, high global self-esteem is not linked to improvements in performance (whether academic or not), although it is linked with persistence in the face of failure. As well, high self-esteem in the form of narcissism is linked with anti-social behavior. Those who have high self-esteem, but are also high in narcissism act more aggressive after an insult than those who are not high in both. Yet, this is not exactly an open and shut case. There are researchers on both sides of the issue that argue whether boosting people's self-esteem is good or not. Please see the Baumeister and Swann citations below for a good review on the debate.

At the moment I’m much more interested in the function of self-esteem than the effects of having high self-esteem, which brings me to the Greenberg article. Greenberg et al. (1992) proposed the “terror management” idea that self-esteem serves as an anxiety-buffer against things that threaten us, and specifically death. In three experiments, the authors showed that people with high self-esteem were less anxious than neutral others when threatened, and this effect was not due to positive or negative affect.

In their experiments, participants were essentially given false feedback on a personality or intelligence test. One group was given feedback meant to elicit feelings of high self-esteem, whereas another group was either given neutral or no feedback. Participants were then asked to watch either a graphic film clip (threat-group), or a neutral clip (no-threat) in one experiment, or, in the other two experiments, they were told that they would receive painful shocks (threat) or receive non-painful sensations from lightwaves (no-threat). The experimenters then measured how anxious the participants were, either by self-report or by physiological measures, such as sweating. They found that people who had high self-esteem were less anxious than low self-esteem individuals in the threat group. And the protection offered by self-esteem was not due to increased positive affect or decreased negative affect.

It’s pretty cool, but I’m still not totally convinced of the terror management interpretation of self-esteem. For instance, as mentioned earlier, the authors primed their participants in the threat condition by making them watch a graphic movie clip (depicting real deaths) or by telling them to expect painful shocks. The painful shock condition was employed as a way of testing the generality of the anxiety-buffer effect. But pain does not seem that far removed from feelings of mortality. Pain and death are often associated with each other, and both are strongly attached to our primal need for survival and safety. I’d like to know, instead, whether self-esteem can buffer against anxiety from weaker threats (e.g., a poor evaluation, a break-up). Additionally, this interpretation of self-esteem needs to be tested against other theories of self-esteem, such as Leary’s sociometer theory. As mentioned in an earlier post, sociometer theory posits that self-esteem acts as a gauge of social acceptance/rejection. When we are threatened with social rejection, our self-esteem should lower. This could then tell us that we need to adjust our behavior, so that we are accepted back into the group. Sociometer theory seems to work better within the evolutionary perspective of the Social Cognitive Interface (SCI).

If you remember, the SCI is a set of cognitive mechanisms that evolved with the purpose of helping us function socially. In essence, evolution has given us a sense of self so that we are better equipped for a social world. One in which staying connected with others is crucial for survival. Now, I am not saying that terror management theory (TMT) is resistant to evolutionary explanations for self-esteem. On the contrary, I think TMT works well within that approach. If self-esteem buffers against anxiety, then I think that would prove to be a very beneficial/adaptive function. But I do think that the sociometer interpretation works better within the SCI approach, than does terror management. Of course, this is assuming that self-esteem, and the self in general, only has one adaptive function and/or is not a by-product of some other cognitive mechanism. All in all, I think that terror management and sociometer theory can be reconciled with each other with-in an evolutionary framework. After all, isn’t death the ultimate form of social exclusion?

Citations:

Crocker, J., & Park, L. E. (2004). The costly pursuit of self-esteem. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 392-414.

Baumeister, R. F., Campbell, J. D., Krueger, J. I., & Vohs, K. D. (2003). Does high self-esteem cause better performance, interpersonal success, happiness, or healthier lifestyles? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4, 1-44.

Bushman, B. J., Baumeister, R. F., Thomaes, S., Ryu, E., Begeer, S., & West, S. G. (in press). Looking again, and harder, for a link between low self-esteem and aggression. Journal of Personality.

Swann, W. B., Chang-Schneider, C., & McClarty, K. L. (2007). Do our self-views matter? Self-concept and self-esteem in everyday life. American Psychologist, 62, 84-94.

Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., Rosenblatt, A., et al. (1992). Why do people need self-esteem? Converging evidence that self-esteem serves an anxiety-buffering function. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 913-922.

more blogging friends . . .

Well, I have some more blogging buddies out there.

I figured that I could link them here and add them to my blogroll, so that everyone who reads like a lake will have a chance to visit these new and exciting venues of the blogosphere.

First we have the blog, Ready, Set . . ., by some old buddies of mine, Joel and Nathan. It's mostly about their daily going-ons, comic inspiration, and progress on a cartoon/comic they are developing.

Next we have Intellectual Capital, by friend and fellow UK grad student Ryan. This blog concerns topics in social psychology and political/social commentary.

Lastly, we have Ridiculous Claims, by another grad student buddy, Tim. This one is for all you football nuts out there. And I mean American Football . . . not soccer . . . er, um, rest of the world football, haha.

Well that's it for today, so go check them out and enjoy!

Daniel Gilbert on TED

Harvard Social psychologist, Daniel Gilbert, recently had a talk posted on TED, though it looks like the talk was originally given in 2005.

It's good though. Gilbert is widely known for his research on happiness. What makes us happy? Can we predict future happiness? How do traumatic events effect our long-term happiness? And such.

Though related to his happiness research, this talk centered on general decision making (and specifically, erroneous economic decisions that we make). Basically, the gist of the talk is that people are notoriously bad in money matters because of two cognitive biases. The first causes us to make erroneous judgments in estimating the odds of a potential gain. The second causes us to make erroneous estimates in the positive value of the potential gain.

His reasoning for why we have these cognitive biases goes back to us being evolved creatures. Firstly, we evolved in environments that rarely changed. We lived in small groups, had short lives and had to make relatively few choices. Instead our ancestors focused on the here and now. In his words: "the highest priority was to eat and mate today."

Well, anyways, check out the video. It's good, and there's a Q&A section at the end.

Check it out:

Self-enhancement

This week’s readings were on the topic of “using the self.” Particularly, how do we evaluate ourselves, in what contexts, and the readings even examined self-fulfilling prophecies. When we make self-evaluations, do we search for accurate information? Or do we focus on what makes us feel better about ourselves?

Much of what I read pitted the self-enhancement perspective against the self-verification perspective. Self-enhancement is when a person focuses on positive central traits over negative ones. Self-verification, on the other hand, refers to preferring accurate information about the self, whether positive or negative. Essentially, it seems that people self-enhance more than they self-verify. For instance, we prefer accurate information about positive traits of ours over negative ones. We are also more likely to disconfirm negative traits that are central to our identity as opposed to those that are more peripheral. As well, we think our faces are more attractive than they actually are. And we would be quicker to pick out our face when morphed with an attractive face than when viewing our original face, or our face morphed with an unattractive face.

These self-enhancements that we make seem to be more related to implicit, unconscious processes (e.g., gut feelings) than more explicit, direct processes. As well, these self-enhancements are related to social comparison and self-perception processes. When people view us as more positive for a certain trait, we view ourselves as positive on the trait. And when we view others that are positive on a trait, we again self-enhance. Connecting themes, this idea goes back to the previous literature that we have read throughout the past couple weeks. Specifically, our self-concept is a story that our unconscious makes up about ourselves, and it may not be a true story. It’s hard to access accurate information about ourselves. Not much of our self can come from introspection and deliberation. Instead, it’s a story and we use that story to feel better about ourselves and to get along better with group members.

Here are some citations for further reading:

Epley, N., & Whitchurch, E. (2008). Mirror, mirror on the wall: Enhancement in self-recognition. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1159-1170.

Kwan, V. S. Y., John, O. P., Kenny, D. A., Bond, M. H., & Robins, R. W. (2004). Reconceptualizing individual differences in self-enhancement bias: An interpersonal approach. Psychological Review, 111, 94-111.

Sedikides, C. (1993). Assessment, enhancement, and verification determinants of the self-evaluation process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 317-338.

Swann, W. B., Jr. (1987). Identity negotiation: Where two roads meet. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 1038-1051.

Madon, S., Guyll, M., Buller, A. A., Scherr, Williard, J., & Spoth, R. (2008). The mediation of mothers' self-fulfilling effects on their children's alcohol use: Self-verification, informational conformity, and modeling processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 369-384.

Steven Pinker and the Personal Genome Project

As many of you might already know, Steven Pinker (famous Havard psychologist) had his genome sequenced and posted on the internet for the Personal Genome Project.

Pinker wrote an essay about it for the New York Times, but I originally found out about it through edge. It's a pretty good essay. He covers genetic determinism, evolutionary theories for personality differences, and twin research. Genes do play out a large part in our behavior:

"Behavioral genetics has repeatedly found that the 'shared environment' — everything that siblings growing up in the same home have in common, including their parents, their neighborhood, their home, their peer group and their school — has less of an influence on the way they turn out than their genes. In many studies, the shared environment has no measurable influence on the adult at all. Siblings reared together end up no more similar than siblings reared apart, and adoptive siblings reared in the same family end up not similar at all. A large chunk of the variation among people in intelligence and personality is not predictable from any obvious feature of the world of their childhood."

But that doesn't mean that genes decide everything. You can make predictions based off genes that are flat out wrong (for instance, Pinker appears to have a gene that gives him an 80% chance of baldness). Much of it is probability, not only do you have to account for genes and the enivironment (i.e., nature vs. nuture), but you also have to account for how your genes interact with each other. Pretty cool stuff though.

Pinker went on the Colbert Report to talk about his genome sequencing experience as well. It's pretty funny, as can be expected. Check it out:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Steven Pinker

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Funny Political News

Christian Bale Parody
Joke of the Day

Self-Concept

This week’s “self” readings dealt with the idea of “self-concept.” Particularly, these readings covered the issues of how we discover/obtain our self-concept, and whether it is malleable to change. Before starting the readings, I was already suspicious of self-concept. This suspicion arose from the 2nd week readings on self-knowledge. As we learned last time, we aren’t very good at knowing ourselves (e.g., what motivates us, what predictions can we make about our future behavior, etc.). To me, before the readings, the idea of self-concept seemed to come from our self-knowledge. If we aren’t good at knowing ourselves, then how would we be good at discovering a stable self-concept? To tell the truth, I’m still not confident in the idea of self-concept after reading this week’s articles.

That’s not to say that self-concept is a bad thing though. Firstly, the mechanism behind self-concept seems to be a powerful encoding device. Our ability to recall information is greatly enhanced if that information is related to us (i.e., encoded through the self-concept). For instance, if I were presented with a list of words, I would likely remember those words that I felt described myself (e.g., Caucasian, music, happy, knowledge, etc.) than others (e.g., blonde, chair, suit, etc.). As mentioned last week, there is a lot of information out there in the “real world,” and much of it is processed by an adaptive unconscious. Perhaps this encoding ability of the self developed as a way for us to remember and act on important information.

Additionally, parts of the “self” are good at protecting us from the stresses of daily life. When we encounter stressful events, our self-concepts change, and this change has less to do with mood and more to do with the objective experience of the stress. We seem to describe ourselves with more negative attributes under stress than not. Yet components of the self help us cope with these events. Under stress, we rate our negative attributes as less important, we compartmentalize more so that we can focus on the positive, and we view ourselves as more complex. If we view ourselves as more complex, then we might have more positive attributes to focus on and activation of negative attributes won’t be needed.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the self-concept to me is what Goldstein and Cialdini call the “spy-glass self.” According to self-perception theory, we infer our self-attributes by observing the actions we carry out. Well, they go a step further. They posit, and found evidence, that when we identify with another person, we are likely to incorporate his/her attributes into our self-concept after observing this person’s behavior. So after participants are told that they have similar brain wave patterns as another person, and this other person is observed being helpful, then those participants will also be more helpful. I think this is particularly interesting for two reasons. Firstly, it goes back to the idea that self-knowledge is really just a story that we make up for ourselves, of the person that we think we are. But secondly, it reminds me of the Social Cognitive Interface view of self from Kurzban and Aktipis. According to this view, the self is a set of mechanisms that helps us negotiate the social world (e.g., helps us attain cooperation, acceptance, mates, etc.). It would then make sense that we would gain aspects of our self-knowledge by observing other people. It’s a widely known effect that we like things that are similar to us. If I incorporated attributes of another person into my self-concept, then perhaps I’ll increase my chances of acceptance, because I am now more similar to this person. I don’t know, it’s pretty cool though.

Citations:

Goldstein, N. J., & Cialdini, R. B. (2007). The spyglass self: A model of vicarious self-perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 402-417.

Hur, Y-M., McGue, M., & Iacono, W. G. (1998). The structure of self-concept in female pre-adolescent twins: A behavioral genetic approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1069-1077.

Rogers, T. B., Kuipers, N. A., & Kirker, W. S. (1977). Self-reference and the encoding of personal information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 677-688.

Showers, C. J., Abramson, L. Y., & Hogan, M. E. (1998). The dynamic self: How the content and structure of the self-concept change with mood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 478-493.

Turner, R. H. (1976). The real self: From institution to impulse. American Journal of Sociology, 81, 989-1016.

Happy Darwin Day!

Happy Darwin Day to everyone! The big 200th! Happy birthday Charlie!

Self-Knowledge . . . ?

This past week’s readings on the self dealt with the topic of “self-knowledge.” Do we have self-knowledge? Are we aware of what motivates or influences us? More specifically, the papers were investigations into how well we can recognize, predict, and explain our own behaviors. And, apparently, the general conclusion is that we are not very good at it at all.

Firstly, we often overestimate our performances in most domains. In general, we think we are better than average, while everyone else is at or lower than average. As well, we overestimate how much group successes are due to our individual effort, whereas we underestimate how much we contribute to group failures. We even overestimate predictions of our own future behaviors, compared to our predictions of the future behavior of random people. For instance, we might think that we are more likely to vote in future elections than a random person that we haven’t met before. Such errors in estimation are often due to cognitive biases that make us rely on self-assessments, while ignoring population base rates. As per the voting example, perhaps we know that we’ve voted before, and through that self-assessment we think that we’ll be more likely to vote again compared to a random person. Yet we ignore the fact that there’s always a significant proportion of the population that doesn’t vote in a given election. So, in other words, we’re very ego-centric! We aren’t very good about thinking of ourselves in statistical terms. Yet, we seem to be more accurate in making judgments of others. Why is this? Is it because we are unconsciously self-enhancing? Are we trying to heighten our self-esteem?

Anthony Greenwald calls these biases, the “totalitarian ego.” The totalitarian ego is comprised of three major cognitive biases that serve to preserve order in “intrapsychic” organization. Beneffectance is the tendency to take credit for success while denying responsibility for failure. Cognitive conservatism is the tendency to preserve existing knowledge structures (e.g., memories, schemata, etc.). And egocentricity is the over-perception of the self as influencer of events beyond realistic control, as well as the over-perception of the self as the targets of other’s actions (e.g., paranoia). With these biases, we can rewrite memories to fit the existing cognitive structure. The totalitarian ego makes us unable to accurately report on stimuli that influences our behavior. We even fail to realize a change in our past attitudes to those of our present attitudes when a change does occur. Take the very simplistic example: Suppose that you used to hate chocolate. And then, I started making you eat chocolate, but only after you took a pill that activated some “pleasure center” of the brain. And perhaps I told you that this pill was just a placebo that would have no perceivable effect on your body. Well, you would probably start liking chocolate. Now if I asked you, “why do you like chocolate?,” you’d probably answer that it tasted good. You wouldn’t realize that you were influenced by the pill. So, then I blatantly tell you what the pill did as you ate chocolate. You would likely still fail to acknowledge that the pill had any effect on your chocolate preference. Even more interestingly, you may not even realize that you used to hate eating chocolate in the first place. Weird.

Part of this may be due to those cognitive biases of the totalitarian ego, and then there’s the concept called the “adaptive unconscious.” As Wilson and Dunn explain, much of the processing that goes on in our minds is unconscious and we are simply unable to access this information into conscious processing. So much goes on around us. There is an infinite amount of information out there, and it would be completely exhausting to take it all in and analyze it. So we perceive the stimuli around us through our adaptive unconscious, to help us get around and make quick split decisions. Yet, just because we perceive it, doesn’t mean we can remember it. Only things that enter conscious awareness can enter into our short-term, and eventually long-term, memory.

So that’s essentially the gist of our readings. We have self-knowledge, but only to the point that we might realize the behaviors we are currently doing. But when we’re asked why we are doing them, how good are we at doing them, if we did them before, and will we do them again, we seem to answer with a story that we make up for ourselves, unconsciously, to fit this idea of who we think we are. Fun stuff.

Here are citations of the articles we read, in case you’re interested:

Epley, N., & Dunning, D. (2006). The mixed blessings of self-knowledge in behavioral prediction: Enhanced discrimination but exacerbated bias. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 641-655.

Greenwald, A. G. (1980). The totalitarian ego: Fabrication and revision of personal history. American Psychologist, 35, 603-618.

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1121-1134.

Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, 231-259.

Wilson, T.D., & Dunn, E. (2004). Self-knowledge: Its limits, value, and potential for improvement. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 493-518.

New Psychology Blogs! (well, new to me anyways)

For those interested in psychological science, and perhaps some pop psychology too, you might be interested in knowing that Psychology Today (a popular psychology magazine) is now hosting a myriad of psychology blogs!

I just found out about this recently, from my advisor. There are really a lot of different psych blogs listed in their index, each devoted to a specific topic. It's pretty cool and you should be able to find various blogs that appeal to your interests, whether it be behaviroal economics, autism, self-help, or even sleep. Plus, the blogs are opened to commenting, so you can always put your own 5 cents in.

What's also cool is that there are some really famous (well, in my eyes!) psychologists who find their blogging home there.

So far my favorites are:

The Attractionologists - by social psychologists Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick

Cultural Animal - by social psychologist Roy Baumiester

Lonliness - by social psychologist/neuroscientist John Cacioppo

The Scientific Fundamentalist - by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa

Twofold - by twin researcher/evolutinary psychologist Nancy Segal

and lastly,

Connections - by social psychologist (and my current mentor) C. Nathan DeWall

But really, there's a plethora more of psych blogs to go through over at Psychology Today, so there's a lot of really good ones that I haven't read yet. So, if you're interested, go check them out!

The Social Self

For our “Self” proseminar this semester, we have to write a “thought paper” each week based off of the assigned readings. Since it’s just a short little paper, it should make for a good source of blogging material. On that note, let’s get started!

For our first week, the readings were more general and focused on defining the self. What is the self? Is it one higher-level construct? Or is it a small set of mechanisms with one function? These were questions that the readings were trying to answer.

Well, after finishing the material I was struck most by discovering just how social the self really is. At first glance, the concept of self seems almost contrary to sociality. The self appears to be opposite of others. But as William James pointed out in his Principles of Psychology, a man’s “me” is partly shaped by the recognition he gets from others, as well as those representations they create. He explains that a person has as many “social selves” as people he or she knows. Predicting the “need to belong” (a topic that I’m very interested in), James presumes that humans have an “innate propensity” to get noticed. He even states that no punishment could be worse for a person, than to live in a society where one goes completely unnoticed. It’s astounding how current research supports ideas like this one, which was predicted back in the late 1800’s. The “need to belong” has been supported by years of research, and interest in the phenomenon continues to fuel new studies (see Baumeister & Leary, 1995). A crucial component of the self seems to come from the different conceptions of ourselves that we take from others, whether these representations are accurate or not.

In a related vain, Leary and Tangney explained that the self has the ability to mediate motives in order to relieve certain underlying pressures. I immediately thought of the sociometer hypothesis. In sociometer theory, self-esteem is really a gauge of our own social standing (i.e., how likely we are to be accepted or rejected). If our interactions with others play a significant role in our own self-concept, then the function of the self-esteem motive as protecting social standing is very plausible. It is even likely that the self initially emerged in humans for this very purpose. As Kurzban and Aktipis explained in their article, the self is much less a high-level construct and, instead, is much more of a set of cognitive mechanisms that evolved with the purpose of helping us function socially. The benefits of social groups are countless for the human species. We don’t have sharp claws or teeth, neither do we have thick coats of fur, etc. Additionally, we take longer to mature than many other species and are completely defenseless as small children. Anything that would have helped us cooperate with each other for food, shelter, defense, etc., would have tremendous selection value. The social cognitive interface, as Kurzban and Aktipis call the self, was designed to help us persuade others in our social world. With the help of the SCI, we are better able to compete for social benefits, such as mates and cooperation from others. It’s even plausible that we would not have developed a sense of self without our complex social lifestyle.

Well, it’s something to think about anyways. Below is the list of assigned readings, in case you are interested. As well, I also have some supplemental citations of interest.

Readings:

Baumeister, R. F. (1987). How the self became a problem: A psychological review of historical research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 163-176.

James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology (Chapter on "The Self"). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

Kurzban, R., & Aktipis, C. A. (2007). Modularity and the social mind: Are psychologists too self-ish? Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 131-149.

Leary, M.R. & Tangney, J.P. (2003). The self as an organizing construct in the behavioral and social sciences. In M.R. Leary and J.P. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of self and identity, (pp. 3-14). New York: Guilford.

Sedikides, C., & Skowronski, J. J. (1997). The symbolic self in evolutionary context. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 80-102.

Supplemental Material:

Baumeister, R. F. & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529.

Leary, M. R. (2002). The self as a source of relational difficulties. Self and Identity, 1, 137-142.

New Homepage!

Photo by Sam Brown

For anyone interested, I have a new web page up on University of Kentucky's student web server. I'm mostly using this for professional/academic purposes, but anyone can access it. It's a place where people can find out information about my research interests and such. I also have my Curriculum Vitae available on that page. But if you want to check it out, there's a link to it on the left sidebar under the "My Schools & Departments" tab. Let me know what you think!

more on Zajonc . . .

Just in case you don't already know, the New York Times did release a nice piece on the life and death of Robert Zajonc. In it you'll see a more extensive coverage of his research, than just the mere exposure effect and social facilitation. It's pretty good, plus there's a lot of interesting facts about Zajonc that I did not know. For instance, here's a little snippet on his life during WWII:

"Robert Boleslaw Zajonc, an only child, was born in Lodz, Poland, on Nov. 23, 1923. In 1939, after the Nazis invaded Poland and headed toward Lodz, he and his parents fled to Warsaw. There, the building in which they were staying was bombed, and Robert’s parents were killed. Robert woke up in a hospital, seriously injured.

He attended an underground university in Warsaw before being dispatched to a labor camp in Germany. He escaped and, recaptured, was sent to a political prison in France. Escaping again, he joined the French Resistance and studied at the University of Paris. Reaching England in 1944, he worked as a translator for American forces in the European campaign."

Wow. If you have time, you should really read the full article. It's good. Zajonc was a remarkable man.

Robert Zajonc (1923 - 2008)

This is unfortunate news for social psychologists. I just found out that Robert Zajonc, an early contributor to social psychology and simply a superstar of the field, died Wednesday (Dec. 3rd).

Amazingly, I still haven't found an obituary for him. Actually, I was searching for a paper of his and went to the Social Psychology Network profile previously linked, and that's how I found out. Not something that I was expecting.

Robert Zajonc was (and still is) an important figure in the field of social psychology. He held positions at the University of Michigan as the director to both, the Institute for Social Research and the Research Center for Group Dynamics. He later joined Stanford University, eventually becoming Professor Emeritus of Psychology.

He is known for his research in a myriad of areas, but what I perhaps know best is his work on the mere exposure effect (the tendency to like something more after being repeatedly exposed to it). In 1968, Zajonc conducted 3 studies showing that the more people were exposed to stimuli, such as Turkish words, Chinese characters and yearbook photographs, the more they liked them. This effect even occurs in animals, like chickens (Zajonc et al., 1973).

Another area that Zajonc was an early contributor to was social facilitation theory. At the time (1960's), research was showing that people performed better on certain tasks if they were in the presence of others. Yet, at the same time, research also showed that people performed worse on tasks if in the presence of others (known as social loafing). Zajonc offered an explanation for these seemingly contradictory findings, proposing a "dominant response" theory of social facilitation. He explained that being in the presence of others causes physiological arousal. For instance, imagine giving a lecture in front of 100 people. You'll probably breathe faster, have a faster heart beat, sweat, etc. Zajonc believed that this arousal causes people to react in situations with their most dominant response. In other words, when we are in the presence of others, we'll feel heightened arousal, and this arousal will provoke behaviors that we most commonly elicit or display in the given situation. Take the following example, say you usually choose to drink coke over sweet tea, even though sometimes you do in fact enjoy a glass of tea. Then choosing coke is your dominant response. So when others are present, you will be even more likely to choose coke over sweet tea.

Zajonc's theory helps explain why the presence of others can help or hinder your performance on certain tasks. With tasks that seem simple or familiar, your dominant response is to perform well. On the other hand, with unfamiliar or difficult tasks your dominant response is to perform more poorly. So when you are around people while carrying out familiar tasks, you'll perform even better. And when you are performing on more complex tasks, you'll make more mistakes when others are watching you. The dominant response effect is so robust that it even occurs in cockroaches! Zajonc and his colleagues (1969) found that cockroaches completed simple mazes quicker when they performed with four other cockroaches present than when alone. Yet they were slower on difficult mazes when other cockroaches were present, rather than alone. Pretty cool eh?

Well, to sum up, this is just a sampling of the great ideas that Robert Zajonc contributed to the field. Social psychology definitely suffered a loss this week.

If you are interested, below are some citations that cover the mere exposure effect and social facilitation . . . enjoy!

Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Monograph Supplement, 9, 1 - 27.

Zajonc, R. B., Reimer, D. J., & Hausser, D. (1973). Imprinting and the development of object preference in chicks by mere exposure. Journal of Comparative Physiological Psychology, 83, 434 - 440.

Zajonc, R.B., Heingartner, A., & Herman, E.M. (1969). Social enhancement and impairment of performance in the cockroach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13, 83-92.

New Journal in Evolutionary Neuroscience

Hello there ladies and gents. It appears that there is a new online journal out there. It's called, Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience. It's a sub-genre of the more general Frontiers of Neuroscience.

There's yet to be an article published in the new journal, but it looks like some really cool stuff will be represented. Here's the mission statement of FEN:

"Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience is a first-tier electronic journal devoted to understanding the evolution of neural processes, neuroanatomical structure, neural structure - function relationships, and cognition and behavior. Brains regulate behavior and as such have been designed by evolution to solve specific adaptive problems faced by organisms during evolutionary history. Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience is dedicated to publishing papers that lead the field in discovering mechanisms that have undergone selection pressures resulting in evolution (divergent or convergent) of structure or function that leads to a greater understanding of 1) the neural processes of animals and humans; 2) neuropsychiatric disease states and the paths in which normal neural processes have gone off course; 3) the genetics underlying variations across species in neurocomputational hardware and behavior; and 4) evolutionary underpinnings that gave rise to advanced social and cognitive capacities. Evolutionary neuroscience is the discipline poised to answer fundamental questions about the nature of the nervous system such as the degree to which behavioral, cognitive, and neural modularity exists (e.g., domain specificity versus domain general processing); heritability and variations (species, regional, cultural, ethnic, and individual) in intellectual, social, and personality characteristics; make predictions about ancestral neural states (paleoneurology); and inform behavior and clinical modification programs from an evolutionary perspective. The journal welcomes submissions that tackle questions from a broad spectrum of disciplines and use myriad methodologies including, but not limited to: comparative genetics and genomics; investigations of allelic variations of behavior, cognition, and neural structure and function; comparative investigations of animal and human behavior that address the underlying cognitive and neural architecture; and functional neuroimaging studies that have been guided by an evolutionary framework."

I'm excited to see how this journal will turn out.

shame on me . . .

Wow, so I have not kept up with my blog lately. I really can't believe that it's November already though. It's just going by too fast!

Well, my wife and I are adjusting to life here in Kentucky very nicely. We really like it here, so that's always good. Yet I feel about 10 times more busy here than I was at William & Mary. I suppose that is to be expected for a doctoral program.

On another note, I added some new links to my blog. You should check them out. One leads to the new blog of my office mate, called "medicine for melancholy." Another is the awesome flickr stream of my friend Chris. And then I even put my uncle's new accounting website on here (not necessarily psychology related, but what the hey, you might find something useful on there).

Anyways, I shall not let this slothful blogging behavior occur again. Though I know my time for extra-curricular activities has diminished. I will make sure that I keep a minimum of 2 posts a month, but my goal will be 2 posts a week . . . err, um, starting after Thanksgiving, haha. Well, enjoy those links and have a great Thanksgiving!