Building on recent work exploring metacognitive factors in minority/majority influence, three studies tested the hypothesis that when people receive persuasive messages from sources in the minority or majority, their attitude certainty can be determined by the extent to which source status and perceived argument quality match or mismatch. In Study 1, participants were presented with strong or weak arguments from a minority or majority source. Minority condition participants reported greater attitude certainty when arguments were weak rather than strong. Majority condition participants showed the opposite effect. Study 2 replicated this interaction using a manipulation of perceived rather than actual argument quality. In Study 3, these effects only emerged when message recipients' processing motivation was high. Taken together, the results suggest that attitude certainty can be high or low following minority or majority messages, depending on processing motivation and message recipients' assessments of other persuasive evidence.

 

Bodenhausen, G. V., Gabriel, S., & Lineberger, M. (2000). Sadness and susceptibility to judgmental bias: The case of anchoring. Psychological Science, 11, 320-323.  

 

In a wide range of empirical paradigms, sadness has been associated with more extensive and detail-oriented thinking than happiness, resulting in reductions in judgmental bias that arise from reliance on stereotypes and other simple decision heuristics. It was hypothesized that anchoring would constitute a significant exception to this general pattern. Recent research on anchoring indicates that an active thought process underlies the emergence of this bias. If sad people are likely to think more actively about the judgmental anchor than their neutral-mood counterparts, their subsequent judgments should be more likely to be assimilated toward this reference point. This prediction was confirmed in two experiments demonstrating that sad people are indeed more susceptible to anchoring bias than are people in a neutral mood. Moreover, this effect generalized over judgments in positive, neutral, and negative content domains.

 

 

Experimental studies show that violent video games cause people to behave more aggressively, but how long does the effect last? In most experiments, aggression is measured immediately after gameplay. The present experiment is the first to test the long-term causal effects of violent video games on aggression. By the flip of a coin, participants played a violent or nonviolent game for 20 min. Within each group, half ruminated about the game. The next day, participants competed with an ostensible opponent on a competitive task in which the winner could punish the loser with painful noise blasts through headphones. Results showed that violent video games increased aggression 24 hr later, but only among men who ruminated about the game. Rumination keeps aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavioral tendencies active. If players ruminate about the violence in a game, the aggression-stimulating effects of the game persist long after it has been turned off.

 

Reeves, C., & O’Leary-Kelly, A. M. (2007). The effects and costs of intimate partner violence for organizations. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 22, 327-344.  

 

This study examines the productivity-related effects and costs of intimate partner violence (IPV) on the workplace. Specifically, it explores whether IPV victims and nonvictims differ in the number of work hours missed due to absenteeism, tardiness, and work distraction and the costs for employers from these missed work hours. The research involved a Web-based survey of 823 male and 1,550 female employees in three midsized organizations. Employees who reported lifetime IPV victimization, but not current victimization, missed more hours of work because of absenteeism than did nonvictims. Current victims, but not lifetime victims, were more likely to be distracted at work than nonvictims. Organization costs due to absenteeism and tardiness were greater for lifetime victims than nonvictims; however, no difference in costs was found for current victims. Overall, we found that IPV has negative effects on organizations, but that the nature and cost of these effects vary by type of victimization.