Alfred Binet and experimental psychology at the Sorbonne laboratory.

Between 1892 and 1904, Alfred Binet (1857-1911) produced, in the psychology laboratory of the Sorbonne, a whole set of original works that still remains little known today. He integrated the laboratory, directed by the psychophysiologist Henry Beaunis (1830-1921), in 1891. We describe the circumstances that led Binet to take the direction of this laboratory in 1895 and present scientific investigations that were conducted there by Binet and his collaborators.

Ingroup ambivalence and experienced discomfort: the moderating roles of affective versus cognitive attitudinal basis, group identification, as mediated by negative beliefs about the ingroup.

Prior research has found individuals' reactions to vary depending on whether such associations are activated by emotions (an affective basis) or by beliefs (a cognitive basis) about the object's properties. Accordingly, this conceptual distinction should be relevant also for the discomfortive responses to one's ambivalent attitudes regarding fellow group members (or the ingroup). Findings from two studies support the argument that ambivalence-associated discomfort a) is a general tendency when it regards affect-based ambivalence towards fellow group members, while b) only holds for the more identified group members when ambivalence concerns beliefs about the ingroup, and for this latter group members c) this tendency is driven by the strength of their negative beliefs about the ingroup or fellow group members.

Power of the desired self: Influence of induced perceptions of the self on reasoning.

This research shows that the motivation to posses a desired characteristic (or to avoid an undesired one) results in self-perceptions that guide people's use of base rate in the Lawyer-Engineer problem (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973). In four studies, participants induced to believe (or recall, Exp. 2) that a rational cognitive style is success-conducive (or an intuitive cognitive style failure-conducive) subsequently viewed themselves as more rational and relied more on base rate in their probability estimates than those induced to believe that a rational cognitive style is failure-conducive (or an intuitive cognitive style success-conducive).

In search of information that confirms a desired self-perception: motivated processing of social feedback and choice of social interactions.

The present studies examined how the motivation to see oneself as characterized by desirable attributes may influence feedback seeking and social preferences. In Study 1, participants were first led to believe that extraversion or introversion is conducive of success. Next, they received false feedback about themselves, related to extraversion and to introversion.