Can Anchor Models Explain Inverted-U Effects in Facial Judgments?

Abstract

Researchers in a variety of disciplines have found that participants take less time and generate less diversity of responses when judging stimuli towards the ends of a scale than when judging those near the center. Three types of models, connectionist, exemplar, and anchor models, can account for these inverted-U effects. Anchor models assume that stimuli near the ends of the scale are used as anchors to compare with the other stimuli, implying that anchor representations are activated for each judgment. Therefore, participants should learn the anchors better than the other stimuli. Participants were 40 students from the Department of Psychology at McGill University (5 men; M age = 20.5 yr.; SD = 1.7). The experiment involved two tasks: first participants judged facial gender and then performed a recognition task. The results showed no correlation between the position on the gender scale and recognition accuracy. Several hypotheses were offered to explain these results.

Reaction times and reflection in social dilemmas: Extreme responses are fast, but not intuitive

“…The idea that conflictedness is associated with longer reaction times is similar to results from perceptual (Mignault et al, 2009) and moral judgment tasks (Baron et al, 2012), but our…”

“…In perceptual tasks, difficult items are associated with greater conflict and longer reaction REACTION TIMES AND REFLECTION 21 times (Mignault, Bhaumik, & Chaudhuri, 2009;Mignault et al, 2008;Palmer, Nasman, & Wilson, 1994). Translating this idea to the domain of social dilemmas, we define the difficulty of a decision as corresponding to the absolute difference in preferences for self-interest and helping others.…”

Fast but not intuitive, slow but not reflective: Decision conflict drives reaction times in social dilemmas.

“…Rather, there may be a linear relationship between RT and decision extremity, with extreme decisions (both selfish and cooperative) occurring more quickly than intermediate ones. This would produce an inverted- pattern of RTs that has been observed in social–cognitive (Akrami, Hedlund, & Ekehammar, 2007; Austin, 2009; Kuiper, 1981; Markus, 1977) and psychophysical tasks (Brown, Marley, Donkin, & Heathcote, 2008; Mignault, Bhaumik, & Chaudhuri, 2009; Mignault, Marley, & Chaudhuri, 2008; Monahan & Lockhead, 1977).…”

The effects of observed decision time on expectations of extremity and cooperation

“…DECISION TIME AND EXPECTATIONS 6 Kuiper, 1981;Markus, 1977) and psychophysical tasks (Brown, Marley, Donkin, & Heathcote, 2008;Mignault, Bhaumik, & Chaudhuri, 2009;Mignault, Marley, & Chaudhuri, 2008;Monahan & Lockhead, 1977). Fast decisions and judgments are often more extreme than slow ones.…”