scholarly journals A multimethod approach to measuring mental representations of threatening others

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Michael Michalak ◽  
Joshua Ackerman
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Correlation Method ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Reverse Correlation ◽  
Threat Processing ◽  
Multimethod Approach ◽  
Threat Cues ◽  
Multi Method Approach ◽  
Method Approach

How do people mentally represent distinct interpersonal threats? Across human history, interpersonal threats such as infectious disease and violence have posed powerful selection pressures. Such pressures selected for psychological systems that help identify and reduce threats posed by other people. In the case of infectious disease, psychology researchers have found that such systems respond to a variety of infection cues (e.g., rashes, swelling) as well as cues that merely resemble infection cues (e.g., birthmarks, obesity). Are such cues part of people’s mental representations, and if so, are those cues unique to infection representations or are they included in representations of other threats? Using a multi-method approach, we find that when participants listed traits or drew mental representations of threat, they perceived infected and violent others to differ along threat-specific features. However, when using a data-driven, reverse correlation method that restricted participants from deliberating on and editing their representations, participants generated mental images that were similar on many of the features that both researchers and laypeople expect to distinguish infection and violence threats. These findings suggest our understanding of threat processing may suffer from a disconnect between the threat cues derived from the expectations of researchers and those revealed when expectations are constrained.

scholarly journals Blatant dehumanization in the mind's eye: Prevalent even among those who explicitly reject it?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher D Petsko ◽  
Ryan Lei ◽  
Jonas R. Kunst ◽  
Emile Bruneau ◽  
Nour Kteily
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representations ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
The Political ◽  
Perceptual Task ◽  
Reverse Correlation ◽  
General Tendency ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Political Right ◽  
Mind's Eye

Research suggests that some people, particularly those on the political right, have a tendency to blatantly dehumanize low-status groups. However, these findings have largely relied on self-report measures, which are notoriously subject to social desirability concerns. To better understand just how widely blatant forms of intergroup dehumanization might extend, the present paper leverages an unobtrusive, data-driven perceptual task to examine how U.S. respondents mentally represent ‘Americans’ vs. ‘Arabs’ (a low-status group in the U.S. that is often explicitly targeted with blatant dehumanization). Data from two reverse-correlation experiments (original N = 108; pre-registered replication N = 336) and seven rating studies (N = 2,301) suggest that U.S. respondents’ mental representations of Arabs are significantly more dehumanizing than their representations of Americans. Furthermore, analyses indicate that this phenomenon is not reducible to a general tendency for our sample to mentally represent Arabs more negatively than Americans. Finally, these findings reveal that blatantly dehumanizing representations of Arabs can be just as prevalent among individuals exhibiting low levels of explicit dehumanization (e.g., liberals) as among individuals exhibiting high levels of explicit dehumanization (e.g., conservatives)—a phenomenon into which exploratory analyses suggest liberals may have only limited awareness. Taken together, these results suggest that blatant dehumanization may be more widespread than previously recognized, and that it can persist even in the minds of those who explicitly reject it.

Combining Induction Methods with the Multimethod Approach

2011 ◽  
pp. 184-189
Author(s):  
Mitja Lenic ◽  
Peter Kokol ◽  
Petra Povalej ◽  
Milan Zorman
Keyword(s):  
Data Mining ◽  
Important Class ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
Disk Storage ◽  
Large Databases ◽  
Complex Decision Making ◽  
Multimethod Approach ◽  
Complex Decision ◽  
Multi Method Approach ◽  
Method Approach

The aggressive rate of growth of disk storage and, thus, the ability to store enormous quantities of data have far outpaced our ability to process and utilize that. This challenge has produced a phenomenon called data tombs—data is deposited to merely rest in peace, never to be accessed again. But the growing appreciation that data tombs represent missed opportunities in cases supporting scientific discovering, business exploitation, or complex decision making has awakened the growing commercial interest in knowledge discovery and data-mining techniques. That, in order, has stimulated new interest in the automatic knowledge induction from cases stored in large databases—a very important class of techniques in the data-mining field. With the variety of environments, it is almost impossible to develop a single-induction method that would fit all possible requirements. Thereafter, we constructed a new so-called multi-method approach, trying out some original solutions.

scholarly journals Simply Insane? Attributing Terrorism to Mental Illness (Versus Ideology) Affects Mental Representations of Race

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (12) ◽  
pp. 1888-1902 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas R. Kunst ◽  
Lisa S. Myhren ◽  
Ivuoma N. Onyeador
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Reverse Correlation ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Socio Economic Status ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
Extreme Violence

Mainstream media and public figures are often criticized for readily attributing terrorism committed by White perpetrators to mental illness, while attributing the same behavior committed by non-Whites to ideological motivation. Using a data-driven reverse-correlation approach, we show that attributing terrorism to mental illness results in a phenotypically more White mental representation of the perpetrator as compared with attributing terrorism to ideology or providing no information about its motivation. Importantly, we show that, because terrorists who are described as being motivated by mental illness are perceived as more White than those motivated by ideology, they are subsequently judged as less guilty for alleged terrorist activities. We present further evidence that this effect may be due to perceived Whiteness signaling higher socio-economic status, which reduces perceptions of culpability. In sum, our research demonstrates that extreme violence attributed to unintentional causes is perceptually associated with White perpetrators, leading to leniency in criminal judgments.

scholarly journals Simply insane? Attributing terrorism to mental illness (versus ideology) affects mental representations of race Word

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas R. Kunst
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Reverse Correlation ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Socio Economic Status ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
Extreme Violence

Mainstream media and public figures are often criticized for readily attributing terrorism committed by White perpetrators to mental illness, while attributing the same behavior committed by non-Whites to ideological motivation. Using a data-driven reverse-correlation approach, we show that attributing terrorism to mental illness results in a phenotypically more White mental representation of the perpetrator as compared to attributing terrorism to ideology or providing no information about its motivation. Importantly, we show that, because terrorists who are described as being motivated by mental illness are perceived as more White than those motivated by ideology, they are subsequently judged as less guilty for alleged terrorist activities. We present further evidence that this effect may be due to perceived Whiteness signaling higher socio-economic status, which reduces perceptions of culpability. In sum, our research demonstrates that extreme violence attributed to unintentional causes is perceptually associated with White perpetrators, leading to leniency in criminal judgements.

scholarly journals Introducing the Brief Reverse Correlation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Schmitz ◽  
Marine Rougier ◽  
Vincent Yzerbyt
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Method ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Correlation Method ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Reverse Correlation ◽  
Innovative Method ◽  
False Positivity ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Classification Images

The reverse correlation (RC) is an innovative method to capture visual mental representations (i.e., classification images, CIs) of social targets that has become increasingly popular in social psychology. Because CIs of high quality are difficult to obtain without a large number of trials, the majority of past research relied on CIs extracted from samples of participants (average CIs). This strategy, however, leads to inflated false positivity rates. Using the representation from each participant (individual CIs) offers one solution to this problem. Still, this approach requires large numbers of trials and is thus economically costly, time demanding, demotivating for the participants, or simply impractical. We introduce a new version of the reverse correlation method, namely the Brief-RC. The Brief-RC increases the quality of individual (and average) CIs and reduces the overall task length by increasing the number of stimuli (i.e., noisy faces) presented at each trial. In two experiments, assessments by external judges confirm that the new method delivers equally good (Experiment 1) or higher-quality (Experiment 2) outcomes than the traditional method for the same number of trials, time length, and number of stimuli. The Brief-RC may thus facilitate the production of higher-quality individual CIs and alleviate the risk of false positivity rate.

scholarly journals A General Multi-method Approach to Data-Driven Redesign of Tutoring Systems

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yun Huang ◽  
Nikki G. Lobczowski ◽  
J. Elizabeth Richey ◽  
Elizabeth A. McLaughlin ◽  
Michael W. Asher ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Data Driven ◽  
Tutoring Systems ◽  
Multi Method Approach ◽  
Method Approach

The Impact of Visual Stereotypes on Judgments about Rape

2016 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-140
Author(s):  
Robert Busching ◽  
Johannes Lutz
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representations ◽  
Irrelevant Information ◽  
Clear Distinction ◽  
Rape Myth ◽  
Facial Features ◽  
Reverse Correlation ◽  
Correlation Technique ◽  
Specific Effects ◽  
Legal Judgments ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Legally irrelevant information like facial features is used to form judgments about rape cases. Using a reverse-correlation technique, it is possible to visualize criminal stereotypes and test whether these representations influence judgments. In the first step, images of the stereotypical faces of a rapist, a thief, and a lifesaver were generated. These images showed a clear distinction between the lifesaver and the two criminal representations, but the criminal representations were rather similar. In the next step, the images were presented together with rape scenarios, and participants (N = 153) indicated the defendant’s level of liability. Participants with high rape myth acceptance scores attributed a lower level of liability to a defendant who resembled a stereotypical lifesaver. However, no specific effects of the image of the stereotypical rapist compared to the stereotypical thief were found. We discuss the findings with respect to the influence of visual stereotypes on legal judgments and the nature of these mental representations.

GEOPHYSICS TO CADAVER DOGS: MULTI-METHOD APPROACH TO SURVEYING HISTORICAL CEMETERIES

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul S. Martin ◽  
◽  
Blair R. Tormey ◽  
John M. Sullivan ◽  
Craig A Schultz
Keyword(s):  
Cadaver Dogs ◽  
Multi Method Approach ◽  
Method Approach

scholarly journals Emergency Manager Perceptions of the Effectiveness and Limitations of Mass Notification Systems: A Mixed Method Study

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
William V. Pelfrey
Keyword(s):  
Text Messaging ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Notification System ◽  
Emergency Managers ◽  
Emergency Manager ◽  
Wide Variability ◽  
Manager Perceptions ◽  
Critical Resource ◽  
Multi Method Approach ◽  
Method Approach

AbstractDisasters can move quickly. Effective communication is a critical resource that can significantly enhance public safety. A mass notification system (MNS) uses text messaging to inform constituents of crisis, provide recommendations, connect to resources, and has the advantage of speed. Limited research has been conducted on the variables that influence the effectiveness, utilization, and perceptions of MNS. The extant study employs a multi-method approach to advance the scholarly knowledge on MNS. All emergency managers in a state were surveyed on issues of MNS enrollment, utilization, and brand. A subgroup of emergency managers were then interviewed to provide depth to the survey findings. Key findings indicate wide variability in MNS usage, little relationship between population size and enrollment, and a high perceived importance of MNS as a communication modality. Policy implications and recommendations are offered.

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