Publications by authors named "Melissa J Ferguson"

At the start of the Zika virus (ZIKV) epidemic in 2015, ZIKV spread across South and Central America, and reached parts of the southern United States placing pregnant women at risk for fetal microcephaly, fetal loss, and other adverse pregnancy outcomes associated with congenital ZIKA syndrome (CZS). For this reason, testing of a safe and efficacious ZIKV vaccine remains a global health priority. Here we report that a single immunization with Ad26.

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Robots' proliferation throughout society offers many opportunities and conveniences. However, our ability to effectively employ these machines relies heavily on our perceptions of their competence. In six studies (N = 2,660), participants played a competitive game with a robot to learn about its capabilities.

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The affect misattribution procedure (AMP) is a measure of implicit evaluations, designed to index the automatic retrieval of evaluative knowledge. The AMP effect consists in participants evaluating neutral target stimuli positively when preceded by positive primes and negatively when preceded by negative primes. After multiple prior tests of intentionality, Hughes et al.

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Across seven preregistered studies in online adult volunteer samples ( = 5,323), we measured implicit evaluations of social groups following exposure to historical narratives about their oppression. Although the valence of such information is highly negative and its interpretation was left up to participants, implicit evaluations of oppressed groups shifted toward positivity, including in designs involving fictitious, well-known, and even self-relevant targets. The sole deviation from this pattern was observed in an experiment using a vignette about slavery in the United States, in response to which neither White nor Black Americans exhibited any change in implicit race attitudes.

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Clark and Fischer (C&F) claim that trait attribution has major limitations in explaining human-robot interactions. We argue that the trait attribution approach can explain the three issues posited by C&F. We also argue that the trait attribution approach is parsimonious, as it assumes that the same mechanisms of social cognition apply to human-robot interaction.

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Did the presidency of Donald Trump affect Americans' intergroup attitudes? Converging evidence from recent experimental and longitudinal studies suggests that Trump's political rise led his supporters to increase their reported prejudice toward traditionally minoritized racial and religious groups in the USA.

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The presidency of Donald Trump represented a relatively unique event in modern American history, whereby a sitting US president made numerous controversial remarks about minoritized groups yet nonetheless maintained substantial public support. Trump's comments constituted a departure from the egalitarian norms that had long characterized American political discourse. Here, we examine the potential effects of Trump's rhetoric on Americans' attitudes, predicting that these high-profile norm violations may have reshaped the personal prejudices of the American people.

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Because no currently available vaccine can prevent HIV infection, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with antiretrovirals (ARVs) is an important tool for combating the HIV pandemic. Long-acting ARVs promise to build on the success of current PrEP strategies, which must be taken daily, by reducing the frequency of administration. GS-CA1 is a small-molecule HIV capsid inhibitor with picomolar antiviral potency against a broad array of HIV strains, including variants resistant to existing ARVs, and has shown long-acting therapeutic potential in a mouse model of HIV infection.

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Implicit impressions are often assumed to be difficult to update in light of new information. Even when an intervention appears to successfully change implicit evaluations, the effects have been found to be fleeting, reverting to baseline just hours or days later. Recent findings, however, show that two properties of new evidence-diagnosticity and believability-can result in very rapid implicit updating.

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Evaluative conditioning is one of the most widely studied procedures for establishing and changing attitudes. The surveillance task is a highly cited evaluative-conditioning paradigm and one that is claimed to generate attitudes without awareness. The potential for evaluative-conditioning effects to occur without awareness continues to fuel conceptual, theoretical, and applied developments.

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Navigating conflict is integral to decision-making, serving a central role both in the subjective experience of choice as well as contemporary theories of how we choose. However, the lack of a sensitive, accessible, and interpretable metric of conflict has led researchers to focus on choice itself rather than how individuals arrive at that choice. Using mouse-tracking-continuously sampling computer mouse location as participants decide-we demonstrate the theoretical and practical uses of dynamic assessments of choice from decision onset through conclusion.

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Mucinous carcinoma accounts for approximately 2% of all breast cancer and is a rare subtype of infiltrating ductal carcinoma. It often presents as a lobulated, well-circumscribed mass on mammography, sonography, and magnetic resonance imaging and can therefore be mistaken for a benign lesion. This case report discusses a rare case of multifocal invasive mucinous carcinoma of the breast detected on screening mammogram.

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To what extent are we beholden to the information we encounter about others? Are there aspects of cognition that are unduly influenced by gossip or outright disinformation, even when we deem it unlikely to be true? Research has shown that implicit impressions of others are often insensitive to the truth value of the evidence. We examined whether the believability of new, contradictory information about others influenced whether people corrected their implicit and explicit impressions. Contrary to previous work, we found that across seven studies, the perceived believability of new evidence predicted whether people corrected their implicit impressions.

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Recent work has shown that implicit first impressions of other people can be rapidly updated when new information about them is highly diagnostic or provides a reinterpretation of the basis of prior belief. The Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP; Payne, Cheng, Govorun, & Stewart, 2005) is one prominent implicit measure that has been widely used in this and other work. However, the status of the AMP as a measure of unintentional responding has been a matter of debate, which necessarily also raises questions about the "implicitness" of the updated responses within recent person impression research.

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Gender inequality persists in many professions, particularly in high-status fields, such as science, technology, engineering, and math. We report evidence of a form of gender bias that may contribute to this state: gender influences the way that people speak about professionals. When discussing professionals or their work, it is common to refer to them by surname alone (e.

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Mouse-tracking - measuring computer-mouse movements made by participants while they choose between response options - is an emerging tool that offers an accessible, data-rich, and real-time window into how people categorize and make decisions. In the present article we review recent research in social cognition that uses mouse-tracking to test models and advance theory. In particular, mouse-tracking allows examination of nuanced predictions about both the nature of conflict (e.

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Across four studies, we used mouse tracking to identify the dynamic, on-line cognitive processes that underlie successful self-control decisions. First, we showed that individuals display real-time conflict when choosing options consistent with their long-term goal over short-term temptations. Second, we found that individuals who are more successful at self-control-whether measured or manipulated-show significantly less real-time conflict in only self-control-relevant choices.

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People are adept at forming impressions of others, but how easily can impressions be updated? Although implicit first impressions have been characterized as difficult to overturn, recent work shows that they can be reversed through reinterpretation of earlier learning. However, such reversal has been demonstrated only in the same experimental session in which the impression formed, suggesting that implicit updating might be possible only within a brief temporal window, before impressions are consolidated and when memory about the initial information is strongest. Implicit impressions may be unable to be revised when reinterpreting details are learned later, due to memory consolidation or forgetting of the details to be reinterpreted.

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To effectively self-regulate, people must persevere on tasks that they deem important, regardless of whether those tasks are enjoyable. Building on past work that has noted the fundamental role of implicit cognition in guiding effective self-regulation, the present paper tests whether an implicit association between goal means and importance predicts self-regulatory persistence and success. Implicit importance predicted markers of effective self-regulation-better grades, more studying and exercise, and stronger standardized testing performance-over and above, and often better than, explicit beliefs about the importance of that self-regulation, as well as implicit evaluations of those means.

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This case report illustrates the presence of intracystic mural nodules within the breast, a benign proliferative disorder associated with the fibrocystic spectrum: papillary apocrine metaplasia. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the physical and histological attributes of benign intracystic mural nodules, and the ability to distinguish these from a malignant papilloma and carcinoma. Also, the technical and patient considerations, as well as the appropriate imaging and interventional methods required to ensure correct patient management pathway are discussed, extending into an analysis of the psychological effects felt by patients undergoing assessment.

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Recent findings in social psychology show how implicit affective responses can be changed, leading to strong, fast, and durable updating. This work demonstrates that new information viewed as diagnostic or which prompts reinterpretations of previous learning produces fast revision, suggesting two factors that might be leveraged in clinical settings. Reconsolidation provides a plausible route for making such reasoning possible.

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Little work has examined whether implicit evaluations can be effectively "undone" after learning new revelations. Across 7 experiments, participants fully reversed their implicit evaluation of a novel target person after reinterpreting earlier information. Revision occurred across multiple implicit evaluation measures (Experiments 1a and 1b), and only when the new information prompted a reinterpretation of prior learning versus did not (Experiment 2).

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Research suggests that implicit evaluations are relatively insensitive to single instances of new, countervailing information that contradicts prior learning. In 6 experiments, however, we identify the critical role of the perceived diagnosticity of that new information: Counterattitudinal information that is deemed highly diagnostic of the target's true nature leads to a complete reversal of the previous implicit evaluation. Experiments 1a and 1b establish this effect by showing that newly formed implicit evaluations are reversed minutes later with exposure to a single piece of highly diagnostic information.

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People possess information or identities that it sometimes behooves them to conceal, but at what cost? Participants who were instructed to conceal information during a short interview--either their sexual orientation (Studies 1-3) or specified words (Study 4)--showed evidence of self-regulatory depletion. Concealment led to deficits in intellectual acuity, interpersonal restraint, physical stamina, and executive function. We decomposed depletion into 2 component processes that, together or separately, might contribute to the observed depletion.

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We stand in agreement with Seligman et al. (2013, this issue) that prospection is an important psychological process, but we disagree that it has been neglected within the psychological literature. We further question some of the broader claims made by the authors regarding conscious decision making and free will.

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