Jens Förster
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 3884837 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Jens Förster |
| NOMBRES | Jens |
| APELLIDO | Förster |
| FIRMA | FORSTER J |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Amsterdam |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 48 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 686 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 48 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1996 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2013 |
| ÍNDICE H | 15 |
Reversible decisions
Stepping Back While Staying Engaged
When do people respond to obstacles by mentally “stepping back” and taking a more distanced perspective? Manipulating obstacles to social goals, to personal goals, and in a computer game, three studies tested the hypothesis that people should increase psychological distance upon facing an obstacle primarily when distancing is relevant, that is, when the obstacle appears on their own path to a goal or when they are engaged and motivated to follow …
Retracted
Förster, J., & Denzler, M. (2012). Sense Creative! The Impact of Global and Local Vision, Hearing, Touching, Tasting and Smelling on Creative and Analytic Thought. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3(1), 108-117. (DOI: 10.1177/1948550611410890) The editor of Social Psychological and Personality Science, along with the journal’s consortium of proprietor societies and its publisher, SAGE Publications, have retracted this article at the …
A goal model of catharsis
Although research in social psychology has repeatedly refuted the idea that aggression reduces subsequent aggression (e.g., Bushman, 2002), we suggest a more fine-grained analysis of catharsis. We will present and discuss a social-cognitive goal model of cathartic effects in aggression that predicts under which conditions aggression increases or reduces subsequent aggression. The model assumes that the accessibility of aggression-related construc…
Seeing women as objects
Objectification theory suggests that the bodies of women are sometimes reduced to their sexual body parts. As well, an extensive literature in cognitive psychology suggests that global processing underlies person recognition, whereas local processing underlies object recognition. Integrating these literatures, we introduced and tested the sexual body part recognition bias hypothesis that women's (versus men's) bodies would be reduced to their sex…
When curiosity kills no cat—but mediates the relation between distant future thoughts and global processing across sensory modalities
Four studies examined the effect of primed temporal distance on global versus local perception, using auditory, haptic, gustatory, and olfactory stimuli. The studies show that thinking of the more distant (versus proximal) future facilitated Gestalt perception and impaired perception of details across all four modalities: Participants thinking about the distant future listened more to the Gestalt than to the details of an artificial poem, they gr…
“If only…”
Limitations of the motivational intensity model of attentional tuning
In an integrative review, we concluded that implicit affective cues—rudimentary stimuli associated with the onset of arousing positive or negative emotional states and/or with appraisals that the environment is benign or threatening—automatically moderate the scope of attention (Friedman & Förster, 2010). In their comment, Harmon-Jones, Gable, and Price (2011) contended that their own recent research, aimed at demonstrating that motivational inte…
Keeping one's options open
People generally prefer to have the opportunity to revise their decisions. Surprisingly however, research has shown that keeping one's options open yields lower satisfaction with the decision outcome (Gilbert & Ebert, 2002). Two studies aimed to gain more insight into the detrimental consequences of decision reversibility and the cognitive processes underlying decision reversibility. Building upon literature on goal fulfillment we hypothesized an…
Seeing love, or seeing lust
When any Worx looks typical to you
Stepping back to see the big picture
Can obstacles prompt people to look at the "big picture" and open up their minds? Do the cognitive effects of obstacles extend beyond the tasks with which they interfere? These questions were addressed in 6 studies involving both physical and nonphysical obstacles and different measures of global versus local processing styles. Perceptual scope increased after participants solved anagrams in the presence, rather than the absence, of an auditory o…
GLOMO sys
Within GLOMOsys (the GLObal versus LOcal processing MOdel, a systems account) we examine the functionalities of two processing systems that process information either globally or locally (looking at the forest vs. the trees). GLOMOsys suggests that (a) global versus local perceptual processing carries over to other tasks; (b) perceptual processing is related to conceptual processing (e.g., creative/analytic tasks; face/verbal recognition; similar…
Going Beyond Information Given
Three experiments examine the hypothesis that subtle cues of approach orientation facilitate access to higher order information, whereas subtle cues of avoidance orientation impede it. To test these predictions, in two studies, a backward-masking paradigm thought to measure access to higher order information at early perceptual stages was used, and arm positions of arm flexion versus arm extension were unobtrusively manipulated to induce interoce…
Implicit affective cues and attentional tuning
A large and growing number of studies support the notion that arousing positive emotional states expand, and that arousing negative states constrict, the scope of attention on both the perceptual and conceptual levels. However, these studies have predominantly involved the manipulation or measurement of conscious emotional experiences (e.g., subjective feelings of happiness or anxiety). This raises the question: Do cues that are merely associated…
How love and sex can influence recognition of faces and words
A link between romantic love and face recognition and sexual desire and verbal recognition is suggested. When in love, people typically focus on a long‐term perspective which enhances global perception, whereas when experiencing sexual encounters they focus on the present which enhances a perception of details. Because people automatically activate these processing styles when in love or sex, subtle reminders of love versus sex should suffice to …
Narrowing down to open up for other people's concerns
Opening doors for new research questions
Distancing from experienced self
In 4 studies, the authors examined the prediction derived from construal level theory (CLT) that higher level of perceptual construal would enhance estimated egocentric psychological distance. The authors primed participants with global perception, local perception, or both (the control condition). Relative to the control condition, global processing made participants estimate larger psychological distances in time (Study 1), space (Study 2), soc…
How love and lust change people’s perception of relationship partners
David against Goliath? Group size and bystander effects in virtual knowledge sharing
Knowledge management has been identified as a key factor for sustaining a competitive advantage in today's corporate world. A fundamental aspect of knowledge management in a global economy is the sharing of information in online groups. Most researchers and practitioners have so far assumed that a large knowledge sharing group increases response rates, velocity of receiving a response and quality. However, psychological research under the umbrell…
Cognitive consequences of novelty and familiarity
Two experiments examine whether frequency of exposure influences level of construal. Using subliminal presentation, participants were exposed to neutral, unknown letters 0, 5, 15, or 40 times, and a typical mere exposure effect was found on evaluation. However, we hypothesized and showed in Experiment 1 that novelty enhances Gestalt-like, global perception, whereas familiarity bolsters detail-oriented, local perception. Furthermore, in Experiment…
How goal-fulfillment decreases aggression
We suggest that the goal to aggress increases accessibility of aggressive thoughts, and that after goal-fulfillment, accessibility of aggressive content is reduced. Experiment 1 showed an increase in accessibility of aggression after imagining an aggression-eliciting situation compared to non-aggressive content. After goal-fulfillment the accessibility of aggression was reduced, regardless of whether fulfillment was achieved by imagining physical…
The effect of global versus local processing styles on assimilation versus contrast in social judgment
The authors propose a global/local processing style model (GLOMO) for assimilation and contrast effects in social judgment. GLOMO is based on Schwarz and Bless' (1992, 2007) inclusion-exclusion model, which suggests that when information is included into a category, assimilation occurs, whereas when information is excluded from a category, contrast occurs. According to GLOMO, inclusion versus exclusion should be influenced by whether people proce…
Seven Principles of Goal Activation
Countless studies have recently purported to demonstrate effects of goal priming; however, it is difficult to muster unambiguous support for the claims of these studies because of the lack of clear criteria for determining whether goals, as opposed to alternative varieties of mental representations, have indeed been activated. Therefore, the authors offer theoretical guidelines that may help distinguish between semantic, procedural, and goal prim…
Accessibility from active and fulfilled goals
The effects of promotion and prevention cues on creativity
This study tested whether cues associated with promotion and prevention regulatory foci influence creativity. The authors predicted that the "risky," explorative processing style elicited by promotion cues, relative to the risk-averse, perseverant processing style elicited by prevention cues, would facilitate creative thought. These predictions were supported by two experiments in which promotion cues bolstered both creative insight (Experiment 1…
Approach and avoidance strength during goal attainment
Three studies tested the hypothesis that regulatory focus, both as a chronic person variable and as a manipulated situational variable, differentially affects the strength of participants' approach and avoidance strategic motivations as they get closer to the goal. In 2 studies, flexion and extension arm pressure were used as on-line measures of approach and avoidance intensity, respectively. As predicted, the approach gradient was steeper for pa…
Temporal Construal Effects on Abstract and Concrete Thinking
Six studies investigate whether and how distant future time perspective facilitates abstract thinking and impedes concrete thinking by altering the level at which mental representations are construed. In Experiments 1-3, participants who envisioned their lives and imagined themselves engaging in a task 1 year later as opposed to the next day subsequently performed better on a series of insight tasks. In Experiments 4 and 5 a distal perspective wa…
Success/Failure Feedback, Expectancies, and Approach/Avoidance Motivation
The Influence of Approach and Avoidance Motor Actions on Creative Cognition
Stereotype Threat and Performance
The authors hypothesized that activated self-stereotypes can influence the strategies of task solution by inducing regulatory foci. More specifically, positive self-stereotypes should induce a promotion focus state of eagerness, whereas negative stereotypes should induce a prevention focus state of vigilance. Study 1 showed that a negative ascribed stereotype with regard to task performance leads to better recall for avoidance-related statements …
Distancing from experienced self
In 4 studies, the authors examined the prediction derived from construal level theory (CLT) that higher level of perceptual construal would enhance estimated egocentric psychological distance. The authors primed participants with global perception, local perception, or both (the control condition). Relative to the control condition, global processing made participants estimate larger psychological distances in time (Study 1), space (Study 2), soc…
The effects of approach and avoidance motor actions on the elements of creative insight
The authors propose that the nonaffective bodily feedback produced by arm flexion and extension informs individuals about the processing requirements of the situation, leading to the adoption of differential processing styles and thereby influencing creativity. Specifically, the authors predicted that arm flexion would elicit a heuristic processing strategy and bolster insight processes, whereas arm extension would elicit a systematic processing …
Effects of Motivational Cues on Perceptual Asymmetry
In 4 experiments, participants were led to focus on either the prospect of positive outcomes (approach anticipation) or the prospect of negative outcomes (avoidance anticipation) and were subsequently administered behavioral measures of relative hemispheric activation. It was found that approach, relative to avoidance-related anticipatory states, produced greater relative right (diminished relative left) hemispheric activation. Experiment 3 addit…
The effect of global versus local processing styles on assimilation versus contrast in social judgment
The authors propose a global/local processing style model (GLOMO) for assimilation and contrast effects in social judgment. GLOMO is based on Schwarz and Bless' (1992, 2007) inclusion-exclusion model, which suggests that when information is included into a category, assimilation occurs, whereas when information is excluded from a category, contrast occurs. According to GLOMO, inclusion versus exclusion should be influenced by whether people proce…
Enactment of approach and avoidance behavior influences the scope of perceptual and conceptual attention
The sex → aggression link
Four studies suggest that priming may yield directionally different effects on social perception and behavior if perceptual and behavioral experiences with the stimulus diverge. This seems true for sex and aggression: Men are more likely to behave aggressively than women, whereas women are more likely to perceive aggressive behavior than men. Using a sequential priming paradigm, Study 1 demonstrates that a basic semantic link between sex and aggr…
Expression after suppression
Five studies examined the effect of expressing a construct after suppressing it on subsequent accessibility. Suppression of color terms (Studies 1, 2, and 5) and of stereotypes (Studies 3 and 4) were examined. Both expression alone and suppression alone enhanced the construct's accessibility relative to the no-suppression/no-expression condition, demonstrating activation by recent construct use and postsuppressional rebound, respectively. However…
Influence of overt head movements on memory for valenced words
The present article reports 3 studies that demonstrate the influence of overt behavior on recognition and elucidates the theoretical basis for such an influence. In 2 experiments it was found that participants who were induced to nod while incidentally encoding positive and negative adjectives were more likely to recognize positive adjectives, whereas participants who were induced to shake their heads were more likely to recognize negative words.…
How goal-fulfillment decreases aggression
We suggest that the goal to aggress increases accessibility of aggressive thoughts, and that after goal-fulfillment, accessibility of aggressive content is reduced. Experiment 1 showed an increase in accessibility of aggression after imagining an aggression-eliciting situation compared to non-aggressive content. After goal-fulfillment the accessibility of aggression was reduced, regardless of whether fulfillment was achieved by imagining physical…
How love and lust change people’s perception of relationship partners
Seeing women as objects
Objectification theory suggests that the bodies of women are sometimes reduced to their sexual body parts. As well, an extensive literature in cognitive psychology suggests that global processing underlies person recognition, whereas local processing underlies object recognition. Integrating these literatures, we introduced and tested the sexual body part recognition bias hypothesis that women's (versus men's) bodies would be reduced to their sex…
Cognitive consequences of novelty and familiarity
Two experiments examine whether frequency of exposure influences level of construal. Using subliminal presentation, participants were exposed to neutral, unknown letters 0, 5, 15, or 40 times, and a typical mere exposure effect was found on evaluation. However, we hypothesized and showed in Experiment 1 that novelty enhances Gestalt-like, global perception, whereas familiarity bolsters detail-oriented, local perception. Furthermore, in Experiment…
Inferences from decision difficulty
David against Goliath? Group size and bystander effects in virtual knowledge sharing
Knowledge management has been identified as a key factor for sustaining a competitive advantage in today's corporate world. A fundamental aspect of knowledge management in a global economy is the sharing of information in online groups. Most researchers and practitioners have so far assumed that a large knowledge sharing group increases response rates, velocity of receiving a response and quality. However, psychological research under the umbrell…
Completed vs. interrupted priming
Narrowing down to open up for other people's concerns
Automatic effects of deviancy cues on creative cognition
Three experiments test the existence of an automatic deviancy-creativity link. Using a lexical decision task, in Experiment 1 we found a semantic link between deviancy and creativity words in that decision times for creativity-related words were enhanced after subliminal deviancy priming. In Experiment 2, participants were led to think about either a punk or an engineer and afterwards were administered creative insight and analytical reasoning pr…
Stepping back to see the big picture
Can obstacles prompt people to look at the "big picture" and open up their minds? Do the cognitive effects of obstacles extend beyond the tasks with which they interfere? These questions were addressed in 6 studies involving both physical and nonphysical obstacles and different measures of global versus local processing styles. Perceptual scope increased after participants solved anagrams in the presence, rather than the absence, of an auditory o…
Influence of overt head movements on memory for valenced words
The present article reports 3 studies that demonstrate the influence of overt behavior on recognition and elucidates the theoretical basis for such an influence. In 2 experiments it was found that participants who were induced to nod while incidentally encoding positive and negative adjectives were more likely to recognize positive adjectives, whereas participants who were induced to shake their heads were more likely to recognize negative words.…
Approach and avoidance strength during goal attainment
Three studies tested the hypothesis that regulatory focus, both as a chronic person variable and as a manipulated situational variable, differentially affects the strength of participants' approach and avoidance strategic motivations as they get closer to the goal. In 2 studies, flexion and extension arm pressure were used as on-line measures of approach and avoidance intensity, respectively. As predicted, the approach gradient was steeper for pa…
Compatibility between approach/avoidance stimulation and valenced information determines residual attention during the process of encoding
We tested the hypothesis that the activation of the motivational systems of approach or avoidance by body postures and taste influences residual attention during the process of encoding dierentially valenced words. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to stand upright or kneel while learning either positive or negative adjectives. To measure participants’ differential cognitive capacities, a dual task paradigm was used, including a finger-dex…
The effects of approach and avoidance motor actions on the elements of creative insight
The authors propose that the nonaffective bodily feedback produced by arm flexion and extension informs individuals about the processing requirements of the situation, leading to the adoption of differential processing styles and thereby influencing creativity. Specifically, the authors predicted that arm flexion would elicit a heuristic processing strategy and bolster insight processes, whereas arm extension would elicit a systematic processing …
The sex → aggression link
Four studies suggest that priming may yield directionally different effects on social perception and behavior if perceptual and behavioral experiences with the stimulus diverge. This seems true for sex and aggression: Men are more likely to behave aggressively than women, whereas women are more likely to perceive aggressive behavior than men. Using a sequential priming paradigm, Study 1 demonstrates that a basic semantic link between sex and aggr…
Expression after suppression
Five studies examined the effect of expressing a construct after suppressing it on subsequent accessibility. Suppression of color terms (Studies 1, 2, and 5) and of stereotypes (Studies 3 and 4) were examined. Both expression alone and suppression alone enhanced the construct's accessibility relative to the no-suppression/no-expression condition, demonstrating activation by recent construct use and postsuppressional rebound, respectively. However…
The role of attribution of motivation in producing postsuppressional rebound
Three studies demonstrated that postsuppressional rebound (PSR) may be both reduced and enhanced by manipulating people's attributions about why they experience difficulty during suppression. Telling participants that suppression failures indicate a high motivation to use the suppressed construct produced more PSR than telling them that suppression failures indicate a low motivation to use the construct (Study 1). Telling participants that an ext…
Success/Failure Feedback, Expectancies, and Approach/Avoidance Motivation
The effects of promotion and prevention cues on creativity
This study tested whether cues associated with promotion and prevention regulatory foci influence creativity. The authors predicted that the "risky," explorative processing style elicited by promotion cues, relative to the risk-averse, perseverant processing style elicited by prevention cues, would facilitate creative thought. These predictions were supported by two experiments in which promotion cues bolstered both creative insight (Experiment 1…
Implicit person theories influence memory judgments
This work focuses on the influence of implicit theories on recognition judgments. We argue that to understand how a recognition task is solved, it is necessary to study inferential processes because individuals might use their metamnestic knowledge (‘I would have known that!’) as a basis for replacing missing recollective experiences with inferential processes (Strack & Bless, 1994 ). In the present study, individuals' preexisting implicit person…
The Influence of Approach and Avoidance Motor Actions on Creative Cognition
Speed/accuracy decisions in task performance
The influence of approach and avoidance motor actions on food intake
Two experiments explored the effect of arm positions of approach and avoidance on food intake. In Experiment 1, arm extension, an expression of avoidance behavior, led to smaller food intake than arm flexion, an expression of approach behavior. In Experiment 2, this effect was found only for a delicious drink (i.e. orange juice), but not for a neutral drink (lukewarm water). Different theoretical accounts for explaining the findings are discussed…
A motivational model of post-suppressional rebound
A motivational inference model (MIMO) of post-suppressional rebound (PSR) is proposed, according to which the difficulty experienced during suppression and suppression failures is attributed to motivation to perform the suppressed activity and thereby enhances this motivation. Along with existing theories of motivation, we argue that as long as the motivation is active, related constructs remain accessible, and fulfilling this motivation inhibits…
Stereotype Threat and Performance
The authors hypothesized that activated self-stereotypes can influence the strategies of task solution by inducing regulatory foci. More specifically, positive self-stereotypes should induce a promotion focus state of eagerness, whereas negative stereotypes should induce a prevention focus state of vigilance. Study 1 showed that a negative ascribed stereotype with regard to task performance leads to better recall for avoidance-related statements …
Temporal Construal Effects on Abstract and Concrete Thinking
Six studies investigate whether and how distant future time perspective facilitates abstract thinking and impedes concrete thinking by altering the level at which mental representations are construed. In Experiments 1-3, participants who envisioned their lives and imagined themselves engaging in a task 1 year later as opposed to the next day subsequently performed better on a series of insight tasks. In Experiments 4 and 5 a distal perspective wa…
How Global Versus Local Perception Fits Regulatory Focus
We propose a reciprocal relation between regulatory-focus systems and global versus local processing styles—specifically, that global processing fits a promotion focus on advancement, whereas local processing fits a prevention focus on security. In Study 1, participants were shown large letters made of small letters and decided if either of two specific letters appeared on the screen. Strength of promotion focus was positively correlated with spe…
Automatic effects of deviancy cues on creative cognition
Three experiments test the existence of an automatic deviancy-creativity link. Using a lexical decision task, in Experiment 1 we found a semantic link between deviancy and creativity words in that decision times for creativity-related words were enhanced after subliminal deviancy priming. In Experiment 2, participants were led to think about either a punk or an engineer and afterwards were administered creative insight and analytical reasoning pr…
Effects of Motivational Cues on Perceptual Asymmetry
In 4 experiments, participants were led to focus on either the prospect of positive outcomes (approach anticipation) or the prospect of negative outcomes (avoidance anticipation) and were subsequently administered behavioral measures of relative hemispheric activation. It was found that approach, relative to avoidance-related anticipatory states, produced greater relative right (diminished relative left) hemispheric activation. Experiment 3 addit…
Accessibility from active and fulfilled goals
Enactment of approach and avoidance behavior influences the scope of perceptual and conceptual attention
Inferences from decision difficulty
Completed vs. interrupted priming
Seven Principles of Goal Activation
Countless studies have recently purported to demonstrate effects of goal priming; however, it is difficult to muster unambiguous support for the claims of these studies because of the lack of clear criteria for determining whether goals, as opposed to alternative varieties of mental representations, have indeed been activated. Therefore, the authors offer theoretical guidelines that may help distinguish between semantic, procedural, and goal prim…
David against Goliath? Group size and bystander effects in virtual knowledge sharing
Knowledge management has been identified as a key factor for sustaining a competitive advantage in today's corporate world. A fundamental aspect of knowledge management in a global economy is the sharing of information in online groups. Most researchers and practitioners have so far assumed that a large knowledge sharing group increases response rates, velocity of receiving a response and quality. However, psychological research under the umbrell…
Psychology (48 obras) · Social Psychology (45 obras) · Cognitive psychology (38 obras) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (26 obras) · Social Psychology (22 obras) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (19 obras) · Cognition (16 obras) · Computer Science (16 obras) · Perception (16 obras) · Neuroscience (12 obras)