Mindset as Characteristic Adaptations: Using Response Surface Analysis to Assess Mindset in the Personality System

This study aimed to assess the congruencies and discrepancies between mindset domains in relation to well-being and sought to demonstrate that mindset falls into the characteristic adaptation level of personality. Data (N = 618, Mage = 16.07, SDage = 0.99) from Wave 1 of a longitudinal study on primarily ethnic-minority adolescents were used in response surface analyses to examine the effects of (in)congruence on well-being. The response surface analyses suggested no overall congruence effect between moral and ability mindsets. However, two-thirds of the participants demonstrated differing levels of mindsets, highlighting the domain specificity of mindsets. Results suggest that mindsets are contextual, domain-specific constructs, suiting the characteristic adaptation level of personality. Congruence for moral and ability mindset does not affect adolescent well-being.

Reward Design for Customer Referral Programs: Reward–Product Congruence Effect and Gender Difference

Referral reward design is the core component of customer referral programs, which are often applied to recruit new customers. This research investigates the effectiveness of utilitarian vs. hedonic rewards in terms of referral generation. Through one field study and two laboratory studies, we demonstrate a reward–product congruency effect; that is, utilitarian rewards, compared with hedonic rewards, yield a higher referral likelihood for utilitarian products, while the opposite holds true for hedonic products. However, such a congruency effect would be crippled by gender segmentation. When males make referral decisions toward hedonic products, the effectiveness of utilitarian rewards is at least equal to that of hedonic rewards. When females make referral decisions toward utilitarian products, there is no difference in effectiveness between utilitarian and hedonic rewards. These findings provide novel insights into referral reward design.

Vaccine advertising: preach to the converted or to the unaware?

Encouraging people to vaccinate is a challenging endeavor, but one which has tremendous public health benefits. Doing so requires overcoming barriers of awareness, availability, and (sometimes) vaccine hesitancy. Here we focus on nudging people to vaccinate through online advertising. We conducted a pre-registered online ads campaign encouraging people to vaccinate against three diseases: influenza, human papillomavirus, and herpes zoster. Ads were shown to ~69,000 people and were compared to similar ads shown to 8.6 million people. Outcome measures were clicks on ads and future searches for relevant terms. We find that ads have two main effects: First, a congruence effect whereby ads increase the likelihood of clicks and future searches by up to 116% in people who express an interest in the disease or the vaccine. Most commercial vaccine advertising is aimed entirely at this population. Second, we observed a priming effect, where ads shown to people who were searching for terms unrelated to the vaccine could be encouraged to click on them (odds ratios of 7.5–33.0) and, more often, search for the vaccine later (hazard ratios of 6.9–157.3). We provide analysis for optimizing vaccine advertising campaign budgets to balance the two populations. These findings demonstrate that digital advertising campaigns should consider not just advertising to direct keywords or to individuals that look exactly like existing customers, but consider tangential keywords that draw a wider target population who are likely earlier in their conversion funnel, thus increasing the number of people who vaccinate and maximizing vaccines uptake.

Distractor suppression leads to reduced flanker interference

Recent studies using the additional singleton paradigm have shown that regularities in distractor locations can cause biases in the spatial priority map, such that attentional capture by salient singletons is reduced for locations that are likely to contain distractors. It has been suggested that this type of suppression is proactive (i.e., occurring before display onset). The current study replicated the original findings using an online version of the task. To further assess the suppression of high-probability locations, we employed a congruence manipulation similar to the traditional flanker effect, where distractors could be either congruent or incongruent with the response to the target. Experiment 1 shows that through statistical learning distractor suppression reduces the interference from incongruent distractors, as participants made less errors in high-probability versus low-probability conditions. In Experiment 2, participants were forced to search for a specific target feature (the so-called feature-search mode), which is assumed to allow participants to ignore distractors in a top-down manner. Yet even when this “top-down” search mode was employed, there was still a congruence effect when the distractor singleton was presented at the low-probability but not at the high-probability location. The absence, but not reversal, of a congruence effect at the high-probability location also further indicates that this distractor suppression mechanism is proactive. The results indicate that regardless of the search mode used, there is suppression of the high-probability location indicating that this location competes less for attention within the spatial priority map than all other locations.

Cubic Response Surface Analysis: Investigating Asymmetric and Level-Dependent Congruence Effects With Third-Order Polynomial Models

Congruence hypotheses play a major role in many areas of psychology. They refer to, for example, the consequences of person-environment fit, similarity, or self-other agreement. For example, are people psychologically better adjusted when their self-view is in line with their reputation? A valid statistical approach that can be applied to investigate congruence hypotheses of this kind is quadratic Response Surface Analysis (RSA) in which a second-order polynomial model is fit to the data and appropriately interpreted. However, quadratic RSA does not allow researchers to investigate more precise expectations about a congruence effect. Do the data support an asymmetric congruence effect, in the sense that congruence leads to the highest (or lowest) outcome, but incongruence in one direction (e.g., self-view exceeds reputation) affects the outcome differently than incongruence in the other direction (e.g., self-view falls behind reputation)? Is there a level-dependent congruence effect, such that the amount of congruence is more strongly related to the outcome variable for some levels of the predictors (e.g., high self-view and reputation) than for others (e.g., low self-view and reputation)? Such complex congruence hypotheses have frequently been suggested in the literature, but they could not be investigated because an appropriate statistical approach has yet to be developed. Here, we present analytical strategies, based on third-order polynomial models, that enable users to investigate asymmetric and level-dependent congruence effects, respectively. To facilitate the correct application of the suggested approaches, we provide respective step-by-step guidelines, corresponding R syntax, and illustrative analyses using simulated and real data.

The Relationship between Knowledge Characteristics’ Fit and Job Satisfaction and Job Performance: The Mediating Role of Work Engagement

Knowledge workers are highly valued by organizations, but there is a lack of evidence about the role of work engagement in the satisfaction and performance of these workers. Harmonization and Person–Job Fit theory state that workers who have similar characteristics to those present in the context (i.e., give similar importance to the characteristics present in the context) perform better. The aim of this paper is twofold: to test the congruence effect between five knowledge characteristics and their rated influence on job satisfaction and job performance; and test the mediational role of work engagement between the knowledge characteristics’ fit and job performance. Using a time-lagged design, 531 Colombian employees from 20 economic sectors answered questionnaires about work engagement (i.e., UWES-9), knowledge characteristics (i.e., WDQ), importance given to knowledge characteristics, job satisfaction, and job performance. Using polynomial regression, surface response methodology, and ordinary least squares path analyses, we found a congruence effect of the relationship between knowledge characteristics and their levels of importance on job performance in four out of five comparisons (i.e., job complexity, information processing, problem solving, and specialization). In addition, we found that knowledge characteristics’ fit indirectly influenced job satisfaction and performance through its effect on work engagement.

Visual and Auditory Information During Decision Making in Sport

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated the effects of bimodal integration in a sport-specific task. Beach volleyball players were required to make a tactical decision, responding either verbally or via a motor response, after being presented with visual, auditory, or both kinds of stimuli in a beach volleyball scenario. In Experiment 1, players made the correct decision in a game situation more often when visual and auditory information were congruent than in trials in which they experienced only one of the modalities or incongruent information. Decision-making accuracy was greater when motor, rather than verbal, responses were given. Experiment 2 replicated this congruence effect using different stimulus material and showed a decreasing effect of visual stimulation on decision making as a function of shorter visual stimulus durations. In conclusion, this study shows that bimodal integration of congruent visual and auditory information results in more accurate decision making in sport than unimodal information.