The Effect of People’s Personal and Social Identities on Their Experiences of Vicarious Hypocrisy

The purpose of this thesis was to simultaneously test a new theoretical model, vicarious hypocrisy, which has been shown to produce changes in people’s sunblock usage attitudes and behavior, and to apply this model to another important health domain, dental hygiene. Across three online studies, I examined how exposure to a target’s hypocritical flossing behavior influenced participants’ own flossing attitudes and behavior. I hypothesized that knowledge of the target’s relationship to participants’ personal and/or social identities would influence participants’ experiences of vicarious hypocrisy. All three studies failed to confirm this hypothesis. The discussion considers whether feelings of vicarious hypocrisy can be created through online experiments and suggests future directions for research on vicarious hypocrisy. Keywords: attitudes, cognitive dissonance, flossing, health, hypocrisy, selfexpansion theory, social identity theory, vicariou

Implicit learning of stimulus regularities increases cognitive control.

In this study we aim to examine how the implicit learning of statistical regularities of successive stimuli affects the ability to exert cognitive control. In three experiments, sequences of flanker stimuli were segregated into pairs, with the second stimulus contingent on the first. Response times were reliably faster for the second stimulus if its congruence tended to match the congruence of the preceding stimulus, even though most participants were not explicitly aware of the statistical regularities (Experiment 1). In contrast, performance was not enhanced if the congruence of the second stimuli tended to mismatch the congruence of the first stimulus (Experiment 2). The lack of improvement appears to result from a failure of learning mismatch contingencies (Experiment 3). The results suggest that implicit learning of inter-stimulus relationships can facilitate cognitive control

Average accuracy (%) and RT (ms.) for the second stimulus in discordant pairs in Experiment 3 compared to the random condition in Experiment 1.

<p>(Standard deviations are in parentheses; values are corrected for multiple-comparisons using the Bonferroni method).</p

Average accuracy (%) and RT (ms.) for the second stimulus in discordant pairs from Experiment 2.

<p>(Standard deviations are in parentheses).</p

Average accuracy (%) and RT (ms.) for the second stimulus in concordant and discordant pairs.

<p>(Standard deviations are in parentheses; values are corrected for multiple-comparisons using the Bonferroni method).</p

Sample trial in Experiment 1.

<p>Sample trial in Experiment 1.</p

Implicit Learning of Stimulus Regularities Increases Cognitive Control

In this study we aim to examine how the implicit learning of statistical regularities of successive stimuli affects the ability to exert cognitive control. In three experiments, sequences of flanker stimuli were segregated into pairs, with the second stimulus contingent on the first. Response times were reliably faster for the second stimulus if its congruence tended to match the congruence of the preceding stimulus, even though most participants were not explicitly aware of the statistical regularities (Experiment 1). In contrast, performance was not enhanced if the congruence of the second stimuli tended to mismatch the congruence of the first stimulus (Experiment 2). The lack of improvement appears to result from a failure of learning mismatch contingencies (Experiment 3). The results suggest that implicit learning of inter-stimulus relationships can facilitate cognitive control