On being happy and mistaken on a good day: revisiting Forgas's (1998) mood-bias result.

Forgas (1998) reported "on being happy and mistaken," finding that a happy mood increased the fundamental attribution error (FAE) compared to a sad mood. However, the standard attitude-attribution paradigm used by Forgas might contain demand characteristics, to which happy people might be especially susceptible. In addition, Goldenberg and Forgas (2012) showed that a happy mood decreased a form of the FAE.

Effects of a Mere-Presence Conspecific on Extinction of an Operant.

In a 2 × 2 factorial design, 32 hunger-motivated albino rats were trained to press a bar for food in a Skinner box. Animals practiced this operant, with or without a mere-presence conspecific, on a VR reinforcement schedule for 10 days and were extinguished with or without a conspecific in a nearby compartment. The results showed that the presence of a conspecific did not enhance this operant during practice sessions nor its resistance to extinction.

Observational Learning of a Bar-Press by Rats.

In two experiments, the effects of presenting a conspecific on the simultaneous and subsequent acquisition of an operant were investigated. Experiment 1 indicated that albino rats which had a conspecific merely present in a nearby chamber did not learn as quickly as did those which were alone or those which observed a trained model displaying the operant. Experiment 2 indicated that subsequent to observing a model displaying the operant, Long-Evans rats learned more quickly than either the alone or mere-presence control.

The Primacy and Recency Effects in Successive Single-Trial Immediate Free Recall.

The present study of 82 male and female college students re-examined the primacy and recency effects in successive single-trial immediate free recall of lists of unrelated English words. With a trial-by-trial analysis of the serial position curve (SPC), it showed the shape of SPC was not invariant. The primacy effect was greater than the recency effect on the very first recall, and the relationship of these two effects immediately reversed and remained so thereafter.