Psych 458 - Questions to ponder, 5/5/99

Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 1997;

Kahnmen, Fredrickson, Schreiber, & Redelmeier, 1993;

Klaaren, Hodges, & Wilson, 1994;

Bechara et al., 1997

1. For normal people (not patients with prefrontal damage), what are the four progressive stages of awareness of the Agood@ and Abad@ decks that the researchers categorize?

2. Which appears to come first in normal people, affect (emotion) or overt reasons for a decision? In what ways are prefrontal damage patients hurt by this lack of affect?

Kahneman et al., 1993

(Note: These researchers make several references to the Apeaks and ends@ theory -- that the evaluation of an experience is determined by the Apeak@ (extreme point) and the Aend@ (end point). The study they discuss, however, only examines the effects of Aends.@)

1. Is a longer unpleasant experience always seen as worse than a shorter unpleasant experience? Why is this the case, according to the researchers?

2. In what way was the longer trial Abetter@ in this study? How was this manipulated? Why do the authors find the subjects= responses Awrong?@

Klaaren, Hodges, & Wilson, 1994

1. What are affective expectations?

2. What are the 3 possible ways the researchers hypothesize affective expectations may influence evaluations of an experience?

3. In the vacation study, did people=s expectations predict their evaluations of their experiences? Were their evaluations predicted by their actual reports of what occurred during their vacations?

4. Why are the researchers better able to draw causal inferences in the movie study which they can=t draw in the vacation study?

5. How did the researchers manipulate positive vs neutral expectations in Study 2? (Hint: There were 3 parts to this manipulation.) How did they manipulate positive and negative experience?

6. In Study 2, at time 1, was there a main effect of experience? Was there a main effect of expectations? If these effects were significant, describe how they affected enjoyment of the study. What was the key dependent variable at time 2? Was it affected by expectations? By experience? In what way does this variable demonstrate the costs of following our affective expectations when they are inconsistent with our experience?

7. Did people who had positive expectations remember negative things about the study? Does this support or weaken the Aselective memory@ hypothesis?