-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Abstract Aspects of Latino culture (e.g., machismo, marianism) can act as barriers to enrollment in HIV-prevention programs. To lift these barriers, a culturally appropriate meta-intervention was designed to increase intentions to enroll in HIV-prevention counseling by Latinos. Latino participants (N=41) were recruited from the community and randomly assigned to either an experimental or control meta-intervention condition that varied the introduction to a HIV-prevention counseling program. Following the meta-intervention, participants were issued an invitation to take part in HIV-prevention counseling. The outcome measure was the intention to enroll in a HIV-prevention counseling session. Findings indicated that enrollment intentions were higher in the experimental meta-intervention condition (96%) than in the control meta-intervention condition (53%). In addition, the effects of the meta-intervention were comparable across genders and participant ages. Findings suggest that the use of a culturally appropriate meta-intervention may be an effective strategy for increasing Latino enrollment in HIV-prevention programs. These promising findings warrant further investigation into the efficacy and effectiveness of this meta-intervention.
AIDS Care 02/2013; · 1.60 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Implicit in many informal and formal principles of psychological change is the understudied assumption that change requires either an active approach or an inactive approach. This issue was systematically investigated by comparing the effects of general action goals and general inaction goals on attitude change. As prior attitudes facilitate preparation for an upcoming persuasive message, general action goals were hypothesized to facilitate conscious retrieval of prior attitudes and therefore hinder attitude change to a greater extent than general inaction goals. Experiment 1 demonstrated that action primes (e.g., "go," "energy") yielded faster attitude report than inaction primes (e.g., "rest," "still") among participants who were forewarned of an upcoming persuasive message. Experiment 2 showed that the faster attitude report identified in Experiment 1 was localized on attitudes toward a message topic participants were prepared to receive. Experiments 3, 4, and 5 showed that, compared with inaction primes, action primes produced less attitude change and less argument scrutiny in response to a counterattitudinal message on a previously forewarned topic. Experiment 6 confirmed that the effects of the primes on attitude change were due to differential attitude retrieval. That is, when attitude expression was induced immediately after the primes, action and inaction goals produced similar amounts of attitude change. In contrast, when no attitude expression was induced after the prime, action goals produced less attitude change than inaction goals. Finally, Experiment 7 validated the assumption that these goal effects can be reduced or reversed when the goals have already been satisfied by an intervening task.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 06/2011; 100(6):983-98. · 5.08 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: A signature feature of self-regulation is that once a goal is satiated, it becomes deactivated, thereby allowing people to engage in new pursuits. The present experiments provide evidence for vicarious goal satiation, a novel phenomenon in which individuals experience "post-completion goal satiation" as a result of unwittingly taking on another person's goal pursuit and witnessing its completion. In Experiments 1 and 2, the observation of a goal being completed (vs. not completed) led to less striving by the observer on the same task. Given that an actor's strength of commitment affects goal contagion, we hypothesized that such commitment would be an important boundary condition for vicarious goal satiation. The results of Experiment 2 showed that observing stronger (vs. weaker) goal commitment lowered accessibility of goal-related words, but only when the goal being observed was completed. Implications of vicarious goal satiation for goal pursuit in everyday environments are discussed.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 05/2011; 47(3):685-688. · 2.31 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: A series of studies examined whether political participation can emerge from general patterns of indiscriminate activity. In the first two studies, general action tendencies were measured by combining national and state-level indicators of high activity (e.g., impulsiveness, pace of life, and physical activity) from international and U.S. data. This action-tendency index positively correlated with a measure of political participation that consisted of voting behaviors and participation in political demonstrations. The following two experimental studies indicated that participants exposed to action words (e.g., go, move) had stronger intentions to vote in an upcoming election and volunteered more time to make phone calls on behalf of a university policy than participants exposed to inaction words did (e.g., relax, stop). These studies suggest that political participation can be predicted from general tendencies toward activity present at the national and state levels, as well as from verbal prompts suggestive of activity.
Psychological Science 02/2011; 22(2):235-42. · 4.43 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Scientists have long been interested in understanding how language shapes the way people relate to others, yet it remains unclear how formal aspects of language influence person perception. We tested whether the attribution of intentionality to a person is influenced by whether the person's behaviors are described as what the person was doing or as what the person did (imperfective vs. perfective aspect). In three experiments, participants who read what a person was doing showed enhanced accessibility of intention-related concepts and attributed more intentionality to the person, compared with participants who read what the person did. This effect of the imperfective aspect was mediated by a more detailed set of imagined actions from which to infer the person's intentions and was found for both mundane and criminal behaviors. Understanding the possible intentions of others is fundamental to social interaction, and our findings show that verb aspect can profoundly influence this process.
Psychological Science 02/2011; 22(2):261-6. · 4.43 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Most theories of persuasion predict that limited ability and motivation to think about communications should increase the impact of source credibility on persuasion. Furthermore, this effect is assumed to occur, regardless of whether or not the recipients have prior attitudes. In this study, the effects of source credibility, ability, and motivation (knowledge, message repetition, relevance) on persuasion were examined meta-analytically across both attitude formation and change conditions. Findings revealed that the Source Credibility × Ability/Motivation interaction emerged only when participants lacked prior attitudes and were unable to form a new attitude based on the message content. In such settings, the effects of source credibility decayed rapidly. The implications of these findings for applied communication campaigns are discussed.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 06/2010; 40(6):1325-1356. · 0.63 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Although essential for psychology, introspective self-talk has rarely been studied with respect to its effects on behavior. Nevertheless, the interrogative compared with the declarative form of introspective talk may elicit more intrinsically motivated reasons for action, resulting in goal-directed behavior. In Experiment 1, participants were more likely to solve anagrams if they prepared for the task by asking themselves whether they would work on anagrams as opposed to declaring that they would. In the next three experiments, merely writing Will I as opposed to I will as part of an ostensibly unrelated handwriting task produced better anagram-solving performance and stronger intentions to exercise, which suggests that priming the interrogative structure of self-talk is enough to motivate goal-directed behavior. This effect was found to be mediated by the intrinsic motivation for action and moderated by the salience of the word order of the primes.
Psychological Science 04/2010; 21(4):499-504. · 4.43 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: This research examined the hypothesis that situational achievement cues can elicit achievement or fun goals depending on chronic differences in achievement motivation. In 4 studies, chronic differences in achievement motivation were measured, and achievement-denoting words were used to influence behavior. The effects of these variables were assessed on self-report inventories, task performance, task resumption following an interruption, and the pursuit of means relevant to achieving or having fun. Findings indicated that achievement priming (vs. control priming) activated a goal to achieve and inhibited a goal to have fun in individuals with chronically high-achievement motivation but activated a goal to have fun and inhibited a goal to achieve in individuals with chronically low-achievement motivation.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 12/2009; 97(6):1129-41. · 5.08 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: HIV-prevention intervention effectiveness depends on understanding whether clients with highest need for HIV-prevention counseling accept it. With this objective, a field study with a high-risk community sample from the southeastern United States (N = 350) investigated whether initial knowledge about HIV, motivation to use condoms, condom-use-relevant behavioral skills, and prior condom use correlate with subsequent acceptance of an HIV-prevention counseling session. Ironically, participants with high (vs. low) motivation to use condoms, high (vs. low) condom-use-relevant behavioral skills, and high (vs. low) prior condom use were more likely to accept the HIV-prevention counseling. Moreover, the influence of motivation to use condoms, condom-use-relevant behavioral skills, and prior condom use on acceptance of the counseling was mediated by expectations that the counseling session would be useful. Methods to reduce barriers to recruitment of clients for counseling programs are discussed.
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 09/2009; 77(4):668-79. · 4.85 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: A meta-analysis was conducted to test theoretical hypotheses about the predictors of enrollment and completion of condom-use-promotion interventions among men and women.
A meta-analysis summarized research reports of the efficacy of experimental interventions on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention.
The outcome measure consisted of (a) a measure of participation, obtained by subtracting the actual number of participants from the number of the invited people, and (b) a measure of retention was obtained by subtracting the number of participants who completed the intervention from the number of commencers.
Experimental interventions providing instrumental and financial resources (e.g., payments) increased initiation and retention more among predominantly male samples, whereas experimental interventions using group formats increased initiation and retention more among predominantly female samples. These patterns remained while controlling for past condom use, other HIV-risk behaviors, and demographics associated with gender composition.
People seek out HIV-prevention interventions to fulfill gender-specific needs, and these differences must be taken into account in the design of HIV-prevention interventions.
Health Psychology 09/2009; 28(5):631-40. · 3.87 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: A meta-analysis assessed whether exposure to information is guided by defense or accuracy motives. The studies examined information preferences in relation to attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors in situations that provided choices between congenial information, which supported participants' pre-existing attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors, and uncongenial information, which challenged these tendencies. Analyses indicated a moderate preference for congenial over uncongenial information (d=0.36). As predicted, this congeniality bias was moderated by variables that affect the strength of participants' defense motivation and accuracy motivation. In support of the importance of defense motivation, the congeniality bias was weaker when participants' attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors were supported prior to information selection; when participants' attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors were not relevant to their values or not held with conviction; when the available information was low in quality; when participants' closed-mindedness was low; and when their confidence in the attitude, belief, or behavior was high. In support of the importance of accuracy motivation, an uncongeniality bias emerged when uncongenial information was relevant to accomplishing a current goal.
Psychological Bulletin 08/2009; 135(4):555-88. · 14.46 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: This research examined whether describing past actions as ongoing using the imperfective aspect (rather than describing them as completed using the perfective aspect) promotes memory for action-relevant knowledge and reenactment of these actions in a future context. In Experiment 1, participants who used the imperfective aspect to describe their strategy on a prior interpersonal task were more likely to use this strategy on a later task than were participants who used the perfective aspect to describe their prior strategy. Experiment 2 demonstrated that describing behaviors on a task using the imperfective rather than the perfective aspect increased willingness to resume that task by improving memory for task contents. The last two experiments showed that the effects of the imperfective aspect on memory decayed over time and that the imperfective aspect facilitated performance of a future behavior only when the described past behavior was relevant to the future behavior. Thus, the effects of aspect are moderated by memory decay and are behavior-specific.
Psychological Science 02/2009; 20(2):238-44. · 4.43 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: General action and inaction goals can influence the amount of motor or cognitive output irrespective of the type of behavior in question, with the same stimuli producing trivial and important motor and cognitive manifestations normally viewed as parts of different systems. A series of experiments examined the effects of instilling general action and inaction goals using word primes, such as "action" and "rest." The first 5 experiments showed that the same stimuli influenced motor output, such as doodling on a piece of paper and eating, as well as cognitive output, such as recall and problem solving. The last 2 experiments supported the prediction that these diverse effects can result from the instigation of general action and inaction goals. Specifically, these last 2 studies confirmed that participants were motivated to achieve active or inactive states and that attaining them decreased the effects of the primes on behavior.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 10/2008; 95(3):510-23. · 5.08 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Enrollment in HIV-prevention interventions is more likely when the audience has safer rather than riskier HIV-relevant behavior. Thus, a meta-intervention was designed to increase participation by an audience of infrequent condom users in Florida.
Participants (N = 400) were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions varying the introduction to a counseling program. In the experimental condition, participants were told that the intervention gave participants options but might not change their behavior. In a standard-introduction condition, participants were told that the program was highly effective at changing participants' behaviors. There was also an information-control group containing a description of the program, and a no-information-control group solely containing an invitation.
The outcome measure was actual participation in the offered counseling.
Findings indicated that the experimental introduction was the most successful at yielding participation in the counseling program when the audience had low intentions to use condoms in the future.
Intervention introductions countering participants' resistance to change increase participation in HIV-prevention counseling among reluctant clients. Other meta-interventions may be explored to systematically augment the effectiveness of evidence-based health-promotion interventions.
Health Psychology 10/2008; 27(5):638-44. · 3.87 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: This research tested the prediction that reading a preventive brochure leads people to watch a preventive video, and that watching this video in turn leads to an increase in the likelihood of participating in a preventive counseling session. A sample of men and women from a southeastern community in the United States was recruited for a general health survey with the objective of examining participation in HIV-prevention interventions. Unobtrusive measures of exposure to HIV-prevention brochures, an HIV-prevention video, and an HIV-prevention counseling session were obtained. Findings indicated that reading the brochures increased watching the video and that watching the video increased participation in the counseling session. The association between exposure to the video and exposure to the counseling was mediated by expectations that the counseling would be useful. Findings are discussed in terms of the need to ensure exposure to interventions to achieve intervention effectiveness.
AIDS and Behavior 06/2008; 12(3):354-62. · 3.49 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: The aim of this study was to examine the influence of gender on exposure to gender-tailored HIV-prevention brochures. During an unobtrusive observation of participants' reading of brochures, both men and women were likely to avoid gender-mismatched brochures. However, women were more likely to selectively approach gender-matched brochures over gender-neutral brochures than were men. Furthermore, exposure to the female-targeted brochure predicted accepting an HIV-prevention video. This pattern was only the case for females and not for males or for the male-targeted brochure. This finding implies that the gender-tailored brochures are more useful for women than for men, and may open the door to other materials designed with preventive objectives.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 04/2008; 38(5):1211 - 1229. · 0.63 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: This meta-analysis examines whether exposure to HIV-prevention interventions follows self-validation or risk-reduction motives. The dependent measures used in the study were enrolling in an HIV-prevention program and completing the program. Results indicated that first samples with low prior condom use were less likely to enroll than samples with high prior condom use. Second, samples with high knowledge were less likely to stay in an intervention than were those with low knowledge. Third, samples with medium levels of motivation to use condoms and condom use were more likely to complete an intervention than were those with low or high levels. Importantly, those patterns were sensitive to the interventions' inclusions of information-, motivation-, and behavioral-skills strategies. The influence of characteristics of participants, the intervention, and the recruit procedure are reported.
Psychological Bulletin 12/2007; 133(6):955-75. · 14.46 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: To examine the long-term efficacy of both fear-inducing arguments and HIV counseling and testing at encouraging and maintaining knowledge about HIV transmission and prevention, as well as condom use.
Analyses were conducted with a sample of 150 treatment groups and 34 controls and included measures of change at an immediate follow-up and a delayed follow-up.
The main outcome measures were perceived risk of HIV infection, knowledge about HIV, and condom use.
Results indicated that receiving fear-inducing arguments increased perceptions of risk at the immediate follow-up but decreased knowledge and condom use, whereas resolving fear via HIV counseling and testing decreased perceptions of risk and increased knowledge and condom use at both the immediate and delayed follow-ups. The effects on perceived risk [corrected] decreased over time, but the effects on knowledge [corrected] condom use became more pronounced.
Inducing fear is not an effective way to promote HIV-relevant learning or condom use either immediately following the intervention or later on. However, HIV counseling and testing can provide an outlet for HIV-related anxiety and, subsequently, gains in both knowledge and behavior change immediately and longitudinally.
Health Psychology 08/2007; 26(4):496-506. · 3.87 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: A meta-analysis (k of conditions = 128; N = 4,598) examined the influence of factors present at the time an attitude is formed on the degree to which this attitude guides future behavior. The findings indicated that attitudes correlated with a future behavior more strongly when they were easy to recall (accessible) and stable over time. Because of increased accessibility, attitudes more strongly predicted future behavior when participants had direct experience with the attitude object and reported their attitudes frequently. Because of the resulting attitude stability, the attitude-behavior association was strongest when attitudes were confident, when participants formed their attitude on the basis of behavior-relevant information, and when they received or were induced to think about one- rather than two-sided information about the attitude object.
Psychological Bulletin 10/2006; 132(5):778-822. · 14.46 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: This commentary highlights the strengths of the associative-propositional evaluation model. It then describes problems in proposing a qualitative separation between propositional and associative processes. Propositional processes are instead described as associative. Propositions are ordered associations, whereas many other associations do not depend on the order of the involved elements. Implications of this alternative definition for the phenomenology of thought and for social psychology are discussed.
Psychological Bulletin 10/2006; 132(5):732-5; discussion 745-50. · 14.46 Impact Factor
