Although the oblique effect has been conceptualized as a purely visual phenomenon, recent studies report its occurrence in a haptic matching task and present the hypothesis that differences in haptic orientational sensitivity might be responsible for the results. The possibility that procedural variables could be responsible was investigated. Specifically, the effect of prior knowledge of the stimulus orientation standards and of use of bilateral haptic exploration of standard and comparison orientations was examined. The results indicate that the reported oblique effect is reduced either when subjects are not informed which orientations will be tested, or when a unilateral matching procedure instead of a bilateral one is used. When both conditions are combined, the haptic oblique effect is eliminated. It is concluded that this particular manifestation of the oblique effect is not related to haptic sensitivity, but stems from the use of well-established imagery as referent for a match (imagery for oblique stimulus orientations is inferior) and the inherently different scanning patterns required in bilateral exploration of obliques (percepts of standard and comparison obliques will be necessarily different).

Entrapping conflicts are those in which decision makers continue investing their resources in a costly or losing course of action in order to justify the appropriateness of already sunken costs. Given the great costs often associated with becoming entrapped, it would seem worthwhile to learn how this decision‐making process can be avoided or reduced. The present experiments addressed this issue. In Experiment 1 subjects participated in an entrapping waiting situation in which self‐focused attention should have been phenomenologically uncomfortable. To test the notion that self‐directed attention would cause reduced entrapment, half of the participants waited in the presence of a mirror whereas half did not. As predicted, subjects became significantly less entrapped in the former than in the latter condition. Experiment 2 studied whether subjects would be less likely to enter a conflict that could later prove entrapping if they were made aware beforehand of the process of entrapment. Half of the individuals in this field experiment were given a brief general description of the process of entrapment, whereas half were not. As expected, subjects were significantly less likely to enter the situation if they had been provided the information about entrapment. The implications of these and other findings are discussed.