Publications by authors named "Forgas J"

Science is among humanity's greatest achievements, yet scientific censorship is rarely studied empirically. We explore the social, psychological, and institutional causes and consequences of scientific censorship (defined as actions aimed at obstructing particular scientific ideas from reaching an audience for reasons other than low scientific quality). Popular narratives suggest that scientific censorship is driven by authoritarian officials with dark motives, such as dogmatism and intolerance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries ( = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower status, but there is variation across people and countries. The association between subjective status and perceived legitimacy was never negative at any levels of eight moderator variables, although the positive association was sometimes reduced.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This paper will discuss the importance of concepts such as belief and affect to the theory and practice of health psychology, and the potential contribution of the revised conceptualisation of belief proposed in the target article will be considered. In the first half of the paper a number of important differences between the new approach and established empirical approaches to the study of beliefs will be highlighted. The second half of the paper will focus on the important relationship between affect and beliefs, one of the key issues addressed in the target paper.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

How does mood influence people's willingness to disclose intimate information about themselves? Based on recent affect-cognition theories and research on interpersonal behavior, 3 experiments predicted and found that people in a positive mood disclosed more intimate, more varied, and more abstract information about themselves. In contrast, people in a negative mood were more attentive to the behavior of others and reciprocated self-disclosure from their partners more accurately. This effect was obtained in hypothetical situations (Experiments 1 and 2) and in realistic computer-mediated interactions as well (Experiment 3).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Affect and Cognition.

Perspect Psychol Sci

March 2008

One of the greatest puzzles of human nature concerns the poorly understood interplay between affect and cognition-the rational and emotional ways of dealing with the social world around us. Affect is a ubiquitous and powerful phenomenon in our lives, yet research on human affectivity has been neglected until quite recently. This article reviews traditional and contemporary approaches to this issue, and recent theoretical and empirical work exploring the links between affect and cognition is considered.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Are happy people more likely to be cooperative and successful negotiators? On the basis of the Affect Infusion Model (AIM; Forgas, 1995a). Experiment 1 predicted and found that both good and bad moods had a significant mood-congruent effect on people's thoughts and plans, and on their negotiation strategies and outcomes in both interpersonal and intergroup bargaining. Experiment 2 replicated these results and also showed that mood effects were reduced for persons more likely to adopt motivated processing strategies (scoring high on machiavellianism and need for approval).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Does temporary mood influence the occurrence of the fundamental attribution error (FAE)? Based on recent affect-cognition theorizing and research on attributions, 3 experiments predicted and found that negative moods decrease and positive moods increase the FAE, because of the information-processing consequences of these affective states. In Experiment 1, happy mood enhanced and sad mood reduced dispositional attributions based on coerced essays advocating unpopular opinions. Experiment 2 replicated this effect using an unobtrusive mood induction in a field study.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Evidence for the role of affective states in social judgments is reviewed, and a new integrative theory, the affect infusion model (AIM), is proposed as a comprehensive explanation of these effects. The AIM, based on a multiprocess approach to social judgments, identifies 4 alternative judgmental strategies: (a) direct access, (b) motivated, (c) heuristic, and (d) substantive processing. The model predicts that the degree of affect infusion into judgments varies along a processing continuum, such that judgments requiring heuristic or substantive processing are more likely to be infused by affect than are direct access or motivated judgments.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Does mood influence our information search and decision strategies when choosing a partner? In Experiment 1 (N = 60), sad Ss preferred rewarding to competent partners and remembered information supporting that choice better. In Experiment 2 (N = 96), mood effects on information selectivity, decision speed, and processing strategy in partner choices were found. In Experiment 3 (N = 42), a computerized stimulus presentation revealed mood-induced differences in the latency, self-exposure, and eventual recall of interpersonal information.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Three experiments showed that mood influences achievement attributions and that cognitive processes underlie these effects. In Experiment 1, happy Ss made more internal and stable attributions for success than failure in typical 'life dilemmas'. In Experiment 2, attributions for real-life exam performance were more internal and stable in a happy than in a sad mood.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The influence of positive and negative moods on children's recall and recognition memory and impression-formation judgments was investigated in a two-list experimental design. A total of 161 schoolchildren, 8 to 10 years old, were presented with audiovisual information containing positive and negative details about 2 target children. Each presentation was preceded by happy or sad mood manipulations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

How does mood affect the way we learn about, judge, and remember characteristics of other people? This study looked at the effects of mood on impression formation and person memory. Realistic person descriptions containing positive and negative details were presented to subjects experiencing a manipulated happy or sad mood. Next, impression-formation judgments were obtained, and subjects' recall and recognition of details of the characters were assessed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The perception of real-life aggressive episodes was studied, in order to (a) represent the cognitive dimensions used by judges to differentiate between such episodes, (b) to evaluate the perceived differences between different categories of episodes, and (c) to assess the effects of the judges' age, sex and attitudes on their cognitive representation of aggressive episodes. Judgements of 22 aggressive episodes selected from a free-response pilot study were analysed by Carroll & Chang's (1970) INDSCAL procedure, and differences between categories of episodes and groups of judges were evaluated by multiple discriminant analyses. Results indicated that (a) four cognitive dimensions, probability of occurrence, justifiability, emotional provocation, and control, defined the psychological map for aggressive episodes; (b) domestic against public, drunken and non-drunken, criminal against non-criminal episodes were significantly differentiated in this perceptual space; (c) the judges' age, sex and Machiavellism scores were related to their perception of such episodes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF