Construal level theory proposes that temporal distance changes people’s responses to future events by changing the way people mentally represent those events. The greater the temporal distance, the more likely are events to be represented in terms of a few abstract features that convey the perceived essence of the events (high-level construals) rather than in terms of more concrete and incidental details of the events (low-level construals). The informational and evaluative implications of high-level construals, compared with those of low-level construals, should therefore have more impact on responses to distant-future events than near-future events. This article explores the implications of construal level theory for temporal changes in evaluation, prediction, and choice. The authors suggest that construal level underlies a broad range of evaluative and behavioral consequences of psychological distance from events.

Because observing the same actions can warrant different conclusions depending on who executed the actions, a goal recognizer that works well on one person might not work well on another. Two problems that arise in providing user-specific recognition are how to consider the vast number of possible adaptations that might be made to the goal recognizer and how to evaluate a particular set of adaptations. For the first problem, we evaluate the use of hillclimbing to search the space of all combinations of an input set of adaptations. For the second problem, we present an algorithm that estimates the accuracy and coverage of a recognizer on a set of action sequences the individual has recently executed. We use these techniques to construct Adapt, a recognizer-independent unsupervised-learning algorithm for adapting a recognizer to a person's idiosyncratic behaviors. Our experiments in two domains show that applying Adapt to the BOCE recognizer can improve its performance ...

The affect system has been shaped by the hammer and chisel of adaptation and natural selection such that form follows function. The characteristics of the system thus differ across the nervous system as a function of the unique constraints existent at each level. For instance, although physical limitations constrain behavioral expressions and incline behavioral predispositions toward a bipolar (good—bad, approach—withdraw) organization, these limiting conditions lose their power at the level of underlying mechanisms. According to the authors ' model of evaluative space ( J. T. Cacioppo & G. G. Berntson, 1994; J. T. Cacioppo, W. L. Gardner, & G. G. Berntson, 1997), the common metric governing approach—withdrawal is generally a single dimension at response stages that itself is the consequence of multiple operations, such as the activation function for positivity (appetition) and the activation function for negativity (aversion), at earlier affective processing stages.

The experience of willing an act arises from interpreting one's thought as the cause of the act. Conscious will is thus experienced as a function of the priority, consistency, and exclusivity of the thought about the action. The thought must occur before the action, be consistent with the action, and not be accompanied by other causes. An experiment illustrating the role of priority found that people can arrive at the mistaken belief that they have intentionally caused an action that in fact they were forced to perform when they are simply led to think about the action just before its occurrence. Conscious will is a pervasive human experience. We all have the sense that we do things, that we cause our acts, that we are agents. As William James (1890) observed, "the whole sting and excitement of our voluntary life... depends on our sense that in it things are really being decided from one moment to another, and that it is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was forged innumerable ages ago " (p. 453). And yet, the very notion of the will seems to contradict the core assumption of psychological science. After all, psychology examines how behavior is caused by mechanisms—the rattling off of genetic, unconscious, neural, cognitive, emotional, social, and yet other chains that lead, dully or not, to the things people do. If the things we do are caused by such mechanisms, how is it that we nonetheless experience willfully doing them? Our approach to this problem is to look for yet another chain—to examine the mechanisms that produce the experience of conscious will itself. In this article, we do this by exploring the possibility that the experience of will is a result of the same mental processes that people use in the perception of causality more generally. Quite simply, it may be that people experience conscious will when they interpret their own thought as the cause of their action. This idea means that people can experience conscious will quite independent of any actual causal connection between

The O.J. Simpson “trial of the century ” in the mid-1990s captured the attention of the American populace more than any other public spectacle since the kidnaping of the Lindberg baby in the 1920s. A prominent football player and popular sportscaster was charged with a gruesome double homicide. The attorneys for the prosecution and defense were of various races and genders. The evidence presented on each side was at times amazingly simple, visual, and emotional, and at times was verbal, abstract, and probably incomprehensible to jurors. The witnesses included individuals of diverse styles, demeanors, and credibility. The jurors, the recipients of the messages from these various sources, were themselves a mixed group of people of diverse backgrounds, beliefs, and personal experiences who had to sift through the trial material and arrive at a decision as to whether the defendant had been proven guilty or not. The context in which all of this took place was at times tense and sad, and at times filled with humor and positive feelings. Not surprisingly, no experiment has ever captured the extraordinary complexity inherent in this situation, yet almost all of the variables present in this trial (and many not present) have been examined in the social psychological literature on attitude formation and change. This chapter provides an overview of research on these diverse variables and addresses the processes by which these variables are thought to result in influence. Although it has become a cliché to say that the attitude construct is the most indispensable concept in

accuracy issues more directly. Moreover, this research attracts a great deal of attention because of what many take to be its dismal implications for the accuracy of human social reasoning. These implications are illusory, however, because an error is not the same thing as a "mistake. " An error is a judgment of an experimental stimulus that departs from a model of the judgment process. If this model is normative, then the error can be said to represent an incorrect judgment. A mistake, by contrast, is an incorrect judgment of a real-world stimulus and therefore more difficult to determine. Although errors can be highly informative about the process of judgment in general, they are not necessarily relevant to the content or accuracy of particular judgments, because errors in a laboratory may not be mistakes with respect to a broader, more realistic frame of reference and the processes that produce such errors might lead to correct decisions and adaptive outcomes in real life. Several examples are described in this article. Accuracy issues cannot be addressed by research that concentrates on demonstrating error in relation to artificial stimuli, but only by research that uses external, realistic criteria for accuracy. These criteria might include the degree to which judgments agree with each other and yield valid predictions of behavior. The accuracy of human social judgment is a topic of obvious

We explore the role of negative relationships in the context of social networks in work organizations. Though network researchers have emphasized the benefits and opportunities derived from positive interpersonal relationships, we examine the social liabilities that can result from negative relationships in order to flesh out the entire “social ledger. ” We define a negative relationship as an enduring, recurring set of negative judgments, feelings, and behavioral intentions towards another person – one person dislikes another. We identify the factors that lead to negative relationships in the workplace as well as factors that may moderate the relationship between negative relationships and individuals ’ task and socioemotional outcomes. We argue that these negative relationships may have greater power than positive relationships to explain workplace outcomes. We derive our argument from theory and research on negative asymmetry. Negative Relationships in Networks 3 “A man’s stature is determined by his enemies, not his friends. ”-- Al Pacino, City Hall Employees in organizations are embedded in social networks that can provide opportunities and benefits such as job attainment, job satisfaction, performance, salary, power, and promotions

The authors argue against a purely behavioral definition of praise as verbal reinforcement in favor of the view that praise may serve to undermine, enhance, or have no effect on children’s intrinsic motivation, depending on a set of conceptual variables. Provided that praise is perceived as sincere, it is particularly beneficial to motivation when it encourages performance attributions to controllable causes, promotes autonomy, enhances competence without an overreliance on social comparisons, and conveys attainable standards and expectations. The motivational consequences of praise also can be moderated by characteristics of the recipient, such as age, gender, and culture. Methodological considerations, such as including appropriate control groups and measuring postfailure outcomes, are stressed, and directions for future research are highlighted. Praise, like penicillin, must not be administered haphazardly. There are rules and cautions that govern the handling of potent medicines— rules about timing and dosage, cautions about possible allergic reactions. There are similar regulations about the administration of emotional medicine. (H. Ginott, 1965, p. 39) On the whole, we as a society seem to believe that praise has

The successful timing of organizational activities depends not only on effective planning and coordination, but also temporal responsiveness – the ability of organizational actors to adapt the timing of their activities to unanticipated events. In this paper, we examine the individuallevel dynamics underlying temporal responsiveness: we examine how organizational actors evaluate timing changes; e.g., changes from existing organizational schedules, routines, expectations, and plans. We review a broad body of psychological, economic, sociological, anthropological and organizational research on time to introduce a reference point model of how people perceive and evaluate time in organizations. We extend these findings to examine the psychology of how changes in timing are valued. Several propositions are presented about personal schedule changes and how individual actors evaluate them. When Plans Change 3

The author outlines a radically dfferent decision-making model form the one widely used in Economics and in Psychology. Accordingly, most choices are made on the basis of emotional involvements and value commitments. Information processing is often excluded. In other areas of choices, emotions and values allow for some subsets of options to be rationally considered but ‘color ’ them and/or short cut the deliberations. In a still other subset emotion/values require rational decision-malung. Emotions and values are not necessarily disruptive; they have positive functions. Cognitivists ’ objections to the concept of emotions are responded to. Problems of operationalization are raised. The question, if the concepts of emotions and values can be incorporated into the neoclassical paradigm, is explored. 1. Normative-affective persons Intellectual circles in Europe were preoccupied for more than a century shadow boxing with the ghost of Karl Marx, trying again and again to show that history is not dominated by economic or materialistic factors, that ideas matter. Similarly, social scientists and attending intellectuals, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, have been preoccupied- and still are- with extolling, questioning, and attempting to shore up the notion of Rational Man (or homoeconomicus). Indeed, even those who challenge this notion, often define their position in * For a more extensive treatment of this subject, see Etzioni (1988).