Social situations are informationally complex. In offices, classrooms, and malls, each person encounters many others with different characteristics doing different things, and therefore must selectively allocate cognitive processing to a smaller subset of individuals and characteristics. This selection, often automatic, can have important consequences. Dangerous sexual decisions can result from selectively attending to romantic goals and inhibiting attention to potential costs. Prejudicial behavior toward members of racial and ethnic out-groups can stem from selective cognitive processes following self-protective goal activation. We propose that fundamental social goals govern the selective and automatic allocation of cognitive resources, concentrating here on two such goals --- self-protection and mating. Activating each goal is proposed to have both excitatory and inhibitory effects, selectively facilitating attention to others with goal-relevant characteristics (e.g., ethnicity, gender, attractiveness) and inhibiting attention to those with goal-irrelevant characteristics. Twelve experiments are designed to: (1) identify effects of self-protection goals on attention to, memory for, and evaluation of specific categories of individuals in complex social situations; (2) identify effects of mating goals on attention, memory, and evaluation; (3) examine how activation of one goal (e.g., self-protection) may suppress cognitive processes associated with a different goal (e.g., mating); and (4) examine asymmetries in this cross-modal suppression. Stimuli consist of arrays of faces varying in sex, attractiveness, and race. Goals will be activated via either semantic primes or movie/music manipulations. Dependent variables include attention measured via eye-tracker or """"""""change blindness"""""""" (Studies 1-6), encoding/categorization measured by attributions of emotion to neutral faces (7-8), implicit evaluation (9-10), and behavioral decisions to enter or leave social situations (11-12). The program of research will contribute new information concerning the role of social goals in directing selective perception and cognition; supplement ecologically-inspired theories of motivation and cognition with empirical tests of earlier speculations; and supplement practical knowledge about risks and consequences of social decision-making with evidence on foundational attentional and cognitive bases on which those decisions are made

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01MH064734-03
Application #
6778339
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-RPHB-4 (01))
Program Officer
Riley, William T
Project Start
2002-07-01
Project End
2006-06-30
Budget Start
2004-07-01
Budget End
2006-06-30
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
2004
Total Cost
$213,643
Indirect Cost
Name
Arizona State University-Tempe Campus
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
943360412
City
Tempe
State
AZ
Country
United States
Zip Code
85287
Timpano, Kiara R; Schmidt, Norman B (2013) The relationship between self-control deficits and hoarding: a multimethod investigation across three samples. J Abnorm Psychol 122:13-25
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Neuberg, Steven L; Kenrick, Douglas T; Schaller, Mark (2011) Human threat management systems: self-protection and disease avoidance. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 35:1042-51
Kenrick, Douglas T; Griskevicius, Vladas; Neuberg, Steven L et al. (2010) Renovating the Pyramid of Needs: Contemporary Extensions Built Upon Ancient Foundations. Perspect Psychol Sci 5:292-314
Mortensen, Chad R; Becker, D Vaughn; Ackerman, Joshua M et al. (2010) Infection breeds reticence: the effects of disease salience on self-perceptions of personality and behavioral avoidance tendencies. Psychol Sci 21:440-7
Becker, D Vaughn; Anderson, Uriah S; Neuberg, Steven L et al. (2010) More Memory Bang for the Attentional Buck: Self-Protection Goals Enhance Encoding Efficiency for Potentially Threatening Males. Soc Psychol Personal Sci 1:182-189
Maner, Jon K; Kenrick, Douglas T (2010) When Adaptations Go Awry: Functional and Dysfunctional Aspects of Social Anxiety. Soc Issues Policy Rev 4:111-142
Anderson, Uriah S; Perea, Elaine F; Becker, D Vaughn et al. (2010) I only have eyes for you: Ovulation redirects attention (but not memory) to attractive men. J Exp Soc Psychol 46:804-808

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