J Richard Eiser
Biographic Data
| ID | 341004 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J Richard Eiser |
| GIVEN NAMES | J Richard |
| FAMILY NAME | Eiser |
| SIGNATURE | EISER J R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sheffield |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 61 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 246 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 60 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Attitudes and Decisions
The concept of attitude has long been a central part of social psychological theories. It is important in other disciplines too, such as economics, business studies, politics and sociology. Originally published in 1988, the authors of this text show how attitudes and motives are crucial in human decision-making, and explore the relationship between them. They look closely at the real context of people’s attitudes and behaviour, pointing out that …
Expert opinion and probabilistic volcanic risk assessment
We present data from an international survey of scientists working at volcanic observatories concerning eruption likelihoods. The scientists were asked a range of questions using different types of phrasing. The data suggest that the phrasing of questions affects the ways in which probabilities are estimated. In total, 71% of respondents ( N = 70) exhibited some form of inconsistency in their answers between and/or within different question forma…
Attitude Formation Through Exploration: The “Treasure Island” Paradigm and the Significance of Risk Predictability
Little experimental research has investigated how attitudes are formed via direct personal experience within risky environments. This report summarizes the development of Treasure Island (TI), an attitude learning paradigm based on BeanFest. Two studies are reported: The first designed to compare the outcomes of TI with BeanFest; the second to show how a manipulation of risk predictability would affect attitude learning within the paradigm. Study…
Risk interpretation and action: A conceptual framework for responses to natural hazards
Understanding how people interpret risks and choose actions based on their interpretations is vital to any strategy for disaster reduction. We review relevant literature with the aim of developing a conceptual framework to guide future research in this area. We stress that risks in the context of natural hazards always involve interactions between natural (physical) and human (behavioural) factors. Decision-making under conditions of uncertainty …
Understanding ‘local’ opposition to wind development in the UK: How big is a backyard?
A Social Judgement Analysis of Trust: People as Intuitive Detection Theorists
The social amplification and attenuation of technological risks have concerned risk regulators and policy-makers for many years (Kasperson et al, 1988). Moreover it has long been recognized that due to the complexity of many modern technologies, members of the public may have difficulty in making personal assessments of their risks and benefits. A number of commentators have therefore argued that public risk perceptions and acceptance have become…
Can you please put it out? Predicting non-smokers' assertiveness intentions at work: Table 1
Assertiveness by non-smoker employees seems to be guided mainly by normative and behavioural control beliefs, annoyance with SHS exposure at work, and past behaviour. Interventions to promote assertiveness in non-smokers might benefit from efficacy training combined with conveying the messages that the majority of other non-smokers are frequently annoyed by exposure to SHS, and that nearly half of all non-smokers are assertive towards smokers
Predicting smokers’ non-compliance with smoking restrictions in public places
Smoking was highly prevalent, and more than half of current smokers reported not complying with existing regulations in public places. Smokers' attitudes to smoking bans and tobacco control policies did not have an effect on compliance behaviour. Future policies to promote compliance with smoking restrictions in Greece should target health-related anticipated regret, and perceived social norms
Prejudiced learning: A connectionist account
Connectionist simulation was employed to investigate processes that may underlie the relationships between prior expectancies or prejudices and the acquisition of attitudes, under conditions where learners can only discover the valence of attitude objects through directly experiencing them. We compared contexts analogous to learners holding either false negative expectancies (‘prejudices’) about a subclass of objects that were actually good or fa…
Expectancy confirmation in attitude learning: A connectionist account
Connectionist computer simulation was employed to model how learners acquire attitudes towards novel objects under conditions where (a) they are given prior expectancies that the objects as a whole are mostly good or mostly bad; and (b) they can only discover the true valence of the objects by approaching them. Expectancy confirmation was operationalized through modifying connection weights more after experiencing good than bad objects (positive …
How malleable is comparative self‐positivity? The effects of manipulating judgemental focus and accessibility
The present research investigated accessibility effects on comparative self‐positivity in the environmental domain. In a pretest we established comparative self‐positivity and a focus effect for environmental awareness. In the main study we aimed at shifting these effects by manipulating the accessibility of harmful behaviours of either the self or the typical student before obtaining comparative judgements. Specifically, we used two types of acc…
Attitude learning through exploration: Advice and strategy appraisals
Processes of attitude learning were investigated through a game requiring discrimination between good and bad objects, where feedback about object valence (involving gain or loss) is contingent on approach. Previous research demonstrates a preponderance of false‐negative errors, with some good objects (‘learning asymmetry’) and most novel objects (‘generalization asymmetry’) being judged as bad, but provides no direct evidence concerning how part…
Uncertain Judgements: Eliciting Experts' Probabilities
Elicitation is the process of extracting expert knowledge about some unknown quantity or quantities, and formulating that information as a probability distribution. Elicitation is important in situations, such as modelling the safety of nuclear installations or assessing the risk of terrorist attacks, where expert knowledge is essentially the only source of good information. It also plays a major role in other contexts by augmenting scarce observ…
Attitude generalization: Similarity, valence, and extremity
The Smoking Behaviors of Adolescents and Their Friends: Do Parents Matter
Objective. This study examines relations among adolescent smoking, parental authoritativeness, parental disapproval of smoking, parental smoking, friends' self-reported smoking, and friends' reports of their parents' authoritativeness. Design. 317 adolescents (12-15 years of age) gave saliva samples and completed questionnaires concerning their own smoking behavior, aspects of their parents' parenting behaviors (used to construct a measure of aut…
Attitude formation through exploration: Valence asymmetries
The formation of attitudes toward novel objects was examined as a function of exploratory behavior. An initial experiment, in which participants played a computer game that required them to learn which stimuli, when sampled, produced favorable or unfavorable outcomes, demonstrated learning, attitude formation, and generalization to novel objects. The findings also revealed 2 interesting valence asymmetries: a learning asymmetry involving better l…
Trust, Perceived Risk, and Attitudes Toward Food Technologies 1
There is substantial empirical evidence that both trust and risk perceptions influence public acceptance of new technologies. We reanalyzed 3 studies (on food technology) to compare whether (a) both trust and perceived risk are independently and directly associated with acceptance, or (b) the relationship between trust and acceptance is mediated by perceived risk. In support of Interpretation a, the (negative) correlation between trust and percei…
Adolescents' perceptions of the costs and benefits of food additives and their presence in different foods
A questionnaire concerning the use of additives in foods was completed by 572 high school students aged 12–15 years. Participants recorded how often they ate each of 16 common foods, and rated the relative levels of colourings, flavourings, preservatives and traces of pesticides that each of these foods contained. They also rated the relative importance of eight reasons (e.g. taste, health) in their own food choices, and provided comparative eval…
Participation in Cervical Screening as a Function of Perceived Risk, Barriers and need for Cognitive Closure
Questionnaires concerning cervical screening behaviour and attitudes were completed by a convenience sample of 70 female students aged 20-25 years. Based on the Prochaska-DiClemente definitions of 'stages of change', participants were classified into precontemplation, contemplation, action and maintenance groups according to their previous and intended screening behaviour. On average, participants rated their relative risk of personally contracti…
Interpretations of Risk and Expectations of Change among Individuals with Types 1 and 2 Diabetes
Questionnaires to assess expectations of future health were administered to 382 patients with diabetes immediately before and after attending an annual check-up. When considering their future health status and interpreting feedback from clinicians, diabetic control appeared to be a more important criterion for Type 1 than Type 2 patients. Both patients and clinicians briefly recorded the topics they felt had been discussed during the consultation…
Optimism, Pessimism, and the Direction of Self–Other Comparisons
Research Note: Adolescents' perceptions of food chemical risks
A questionnaire measuring attitude towards four categories of food chemicals (colourings, flavourings, pesticides and fertilizers), level of concern for the environment, dietary habits and reasons for food choice was administered to 932 high school students aged 12–15 years during regular classroom periods. Students also indicated whether they could recall classroom teaching on 15 food and health related issues. Scores were derived representing s…
Sexual Relationships on Holiday: A Case of Situational Disinhibition
A survey of 1033 single tourists, aged 16-29 years, visiting a seaside resort in southwest England, indicated that self-reported sexual behaviour was related to various attitudes concerning the forming of new relationships and the differentiation of holiday from home environments. Whereas 43.2 percent reported having had no sexual contact since arriving on holiday, 32.6 percent reported having engaged in sexual activity but not intercourse, and 2…
Categorization and interclass assimilation in social judgement
Manis et al. (1986, 1988) have suggested that, when a classification is superimposed on a series of items, this can lead to a reduction in the judged differences between the classes (interclass assimilation), whereas most previous research points to an accentuation of interclass differences. In a modified replication of conditions used by Manis et al. , 82 subjects were presented with a series of vocabulary definitions, indicative of varying degr…
Discipline strategies and parental perceptions of preschool children with asthma
Parents of 37 children with asthma (aged between three and five years) and of 37 healthy controls were interviewed about their involvement in everyday care, discipline practices, perceptions of their child and situations which were particularly stressful. There was little correlation between mothers' and fathers' preferences for different discipline practices. There was, however, greater agreement in their perceptions. Parents of children with as…
Attitude formation through exploration: Valence asymmetries
The formation of attitudes toward novel objects was examined as a function of exploratory behavior. An initial experiment, in which participants played a computer game that required them to learn which stimuli, when sampled, produced favorable or unfavorable outcomes, demonstrated learning, attitude formation, and generalization to novel objects. The findings also revealed 2 interesting valence asymmetries: a learning asymmetry involving better l…
Sexual Relationships on Holiday: A Case of Situational Disinhibition
A survey of 1033 single tourists, aged 16-29 years, visiting a seaside resort in southwest England, indicated that self-reported sexual behaviour was related to various attitudes concerning the forming of new relationships and the differentiation of holiday from home environments. Whereas 43.2 percent reported having had no sexual contact since arriving on holiday, 32.6 percent reported having engaged in sexual activity but not intercourse, and 2…
Optimism, Pessimism, and the Direction of Self–Other Comparisons
Attitude generalization: Similarity, valence, and extremity
Enhancement of contrast in the absolute judgment of attitude statements
Evaluative consistency and social judgment
Attitudes and the Use of Evaluative Language: A Two‐Way Process
Categorization and congruity in attitudinal judgment
The effect of situational meaning on the behaviour of subjects in the Prisoner's Dilemma Game
Illusory correlation in the perception of group attitudes
126 undergraduates with pro- or anti-attitudes toward nuclear power and 15 local members of a campaign for nuclear disarmament viewed opinion statements supposedly made by residents of 2 towns. One town was larger and statements from it occurred frequently, the other was small and statements from it were infrequent. Statements expressed either pro- or anti-attitudes to the building of a nuclear power station, in which one position was in a majori…
Generalizing the illusory correlation effect
We used two experiments to examine the influence of one's own attitude on the perception of group attitudes. In the first experiment, subjects viewed opinion statements, supposedly made by residents of two towns, on the issue of building a local nuclear power station. One town was large and had frequently occurring statements and the other was small with infrequently occurring statements; there was an equal proportion of pro and anti statements i…
Effects of information about specific nutrient content on ratings of “Goodness” and “Pleasantness” of common foods
The persuasiveness of labels: Attitude change produced through definition of the attitude continuum
Accentuation and perspective in attitudinal judgment
The researchers studied school and university students' judgments of statements concerning the nonmedical use of drugs as affected by judges' attitudes toward the issue, by the range of items presented, and by value connotations. The results failed to support predictions derived from Upshaw's variable perspective model concerning the combined effects of attitude and item range on judgment. As predicted by accentuation theory, however, prodrug jud…
Negativity and descriptive extremity in impression formation
With a 2-trait impression task in which all traits denoted risk-related behavior and both evaluative and descriptive ratings were included as dependent variables, it was hypothesized that (1) negative traits receive a higher weight than positive traits in the formation of an overall judgment, (2) negative traits denote more extreme positions on the descriptive continuum than positive traits, and (3) negative traits convey more definite informatio…
Partisan language, immediacy, and attitude change
In an experiment to study the effects of attitudes and immediacy of verbal expression of requiring subjects to emply evaluatively biased language, 28 male und felmale college students wrote essays on the topic of capital punishment. They were not forced to write either for or against the issue, but were required to incorporate a list of either 15 pro‐bias words, which implied a negative evaluation of abolition, or 15 anti‐bias words which implied…
Actors' and Observers' attributions, self‐serving bias and positivity bias
An experiment was conducted to investigate the influence of evaluative factors upon preference for situational and dispositional attributions. Subjects listened to a tape recording of a group discussion on smoking, two actors presenting arguments in favour of smoking and two actors arguing against smoking. Subjects were then asked to explain in attributional terms the actors' behaviour and their own smoking behaviour, their evaluation of smoking …
Categorization, cognitive consistency and the concept of dimensional salience
Cognitive consistency theories predict changes in evaluation within an existing frame of reference. This frame of reference must be defined in terms of those dimensions or aspects of the situation that appear most salient to the individual concerned. The same siuation may appear balanced or unbalanced, depending on which dimensions are seen as salient. The tendency to maintain balance may therefore reveal itself in a tendency to see as salient th…
Participation in Cervical Screening as a Function of Perceived Risk, Barriers and need for Cognitive Closure
Questionnaires concerning cervical screening behaviour and attitudes were completed by a convenience sample of 70 female students aged 20-25 years. Based on the Prochaska-DiClemente definitions of 'stages of change', participants were classified into precontemplation, contemplation, action and maintenance groups according to their previous and intended screening behaviour. On average, participants rated their relative risk of personally contracti…
Further evidence for expectation‐based illusory correlations
Subjects were presented with 36 opinion statements ostensibly made by residents of two towns (one large, one small) confronted with the building of a new nuclear power station in the vicinity. There were an equal number of pro‐ and anti‐nuclear opinions for both towns (nine for each combination) so that there was no relationship between attitudes and town. The probabilistic belief that small towns would contain a higher proportion of antinuclear …
Attitudinal effects of the use of evaluatively biased language
In an experiment to study the effects on attitudes of requiring subjects to use evaluatively biased language, 84 schoolchildren aged 13–14 years completed a questionnaire to measure their attitudes on the issue of adult authority over teenagers, before and after writing an essay on this issue in which they were either required to incorporate words from a list all of which implied a positive evaluation of a pro‐authority position or a negative eva…
Smoking as a subjectively rational choice
Preference for accuracy and posititvity in the description of oneself by another
Expectancy confirmation in attitude learning: A connectionist account
Connectionist computer simulation was employed to model how learners acquire attitudes towards novel objects under conditions where (a) they are given prior expectancies that the objects as a whole are mostly good or mostly bad; and (b) they can only discover the true valence of the objects by approaching them. Expectancy confirmation was operationalized through modifying connection weights more after experiencing good than bad objects (positive …
How malleable is comparative self‐positivity? The effects of manipulating judgemental focus and accessibility
The present research investigated accessibility effects on comparative self‐positivity in the environmental domain. In a pretest we established comparative self‐positivity and a focus effect for environmental awareness. In the main study we aimed at shifting these effects by manipulating the accessibility of harmful behaviours of either the self or the typical student before obtaining comparative judgements. Specifically, we used two types of acc…
"Comment on Ward's "Attitude and involvement in the absolute judgment of attitude statements
Categorization, cognitive consistency and the concept of dimensional salience
Cognitive consistency theories predict changes in evaluation within an existing frame of reference. This frame of reference must be defined in terms of those dimensions or aspects of the situation that appear most salient to the individual concerned. The same siuation may appear balanced or unbalanced, depending on which dimensions are seen as salient. The tendency to maintain balance may therefore reveal itself in a tendency to see as salient th…
Enhancement of contrast in the absolute judgment of attitude statements
Preference for accuracy and posititvity in the description of oneself by another
Favouritism as a function of assumed similarity and anticipated interaction
Discussions of intergroup behavior (e.g., Rabbie and Wilkens, 1971; Tajfel, Flament, Billig and Bundy, 1971) have drawn attention to the influence of both assumed similarity and anticipated future interaction between an individual and other members of his group on his tendency to assign more favourable outcomes to members of his own group than to members of another group. This note examines whether similar processes may also affect an individual'…
Acquisition of information in dyadic interaction
Communication accuracy as a function of information about the communicator
The accuracy with which Ss could identify the national governments referred to by a set of semantic‐differential profiles was found to be significantly related to whether they were given true, false, or unspecific information concerning the source of the profiles. Contrary to hypothesis, attitude similarity between the Ss who constructed the profiles and those who interpreted them failed to enhance communication accuracy
Affirmation and Denial in Evaluative Descriptions
Children made a series of evaluative judgements of 20 nonsense words, which they were told to imagine were people's names. Each subject judged half the names in terms of two‐category rating scales containing an affirmative (A) response category which was evaluatively positive (E +) and a negative (n) category which was evaluatively negative (E ‐), e.g. ‘happy‐not happy’, the other half were judged in terms of scales where the A category was E ‐, …
The persuasiveness of labels: Attitude change produced through definition of the attitude continuum
The effect of situational meaning on the behaviour of subjects in the Prisoner's Dilemma Game
Evaluative consistency and social judgment
Prediction of environmental change: Wish‐fulfillment revisited
Two experiments are reported which examine the relationship between a person's estimate of the likelihood of a future change in his environment and his assessment of its desirability. The first experiment showed a general tendency for probability and desirability ratings to be positively correlated. This correlation was higher when the desirability of a predicted change was seen, on average, as matching its probability of occurrence, e.g., if the…
Attribution of traits to self and others: Situationality vs. uncertainty
Although there is considerable support for the hypothesis that people attribute more dispositional traits to others than to themselves, the use of trait adjectives in this kind of research results in a number of methodological problems. The present study addresses the possible confounding of preference for a “situational” description with response uncertainty. Subjects were required to attribute traits to themselves, to a “typical smoker,” and to…
Attitudes and the Use of Evaluative Language: A Two‐Way Process
Categorization and congruity in attitudinal judgment
Acquisition of information in children's bargaining
Partisan language, immediacy, and attitude change
In an experiment to study the effects of attitudes and immediacy of verbal expression of requiring subjects to emply evaluatively biased language, 28 male und felmale college students wrote essays on the topic of capital punishment. They were not forced to write either for or against the issue, but were required to incorporate a list of either 15 pro‐bias words, which implied a negative evaluation of abolition, or 15 anti‐bias words which implied…
Smoking as a subjectively rational choice
Is the recognition of attitude statements affected by one's own opinion
Linguistic social influence: Attitude change produced by feedback concerning others' use of evaluative language
Judgmental perspective and value connotations of response scale labels
Categorization, attitude and memory for the source of attitude statements
In a study of factors influencing recognition‐memory for the sources of attitude statements, a final sample of 107 subjects, aged 15–16, first rated their agreement with 24 statements concerning drug‐use, 12 of which were attributed to one, and 12 to another, fictitiously named newspaper. Later, the statements were re shown to subjects with half the names altered, and subjects had to indicate which names were correct (i.e., unaltered). Discrimina…
Attitudinal effects of the use of evaluatively biased language
In an experiment to study the effects on attitudes of requiring subjects to use evaluatively biased language, 84 schoolchildren aged 13–14 years completed a questionnaire to measure their attitudes on the issue of adult authority over teenagers, before and after writing an essay on this issue in which they were either required to incorporate words from a list all of which implied a positive evaluation of a pro‐authority position or a negative eva…
Negativity and descriptive extremity in impression formation
With a 2-trait impression task in which all traits denoted risk-related behavior and both evaluative and descriptive ratings were included as dependent variables, it was hypothesized that (1) negative traits receive a higher weight than positive traits in the formation of an overall judgment, (2) negative traits denote more extreme positions on the descriptive continuum than positive traits, and (3) negative traits convey more definite informatio…
Accentuation and perspective in attitudinal judgment
The researchers studied school and university students' judgments of statements concerning the nonmedical use of drugs as affected by judges' attitudes toward the issue, by the range of items presented, and by value connotations. The results failed to support predictions derived from Upshaw's variable perspective model concerning the combined effects of attitude and item range on judgment. As predicted by accentuation theory, however, prodrug jud…
Psychology (59 works) · Social Psychology (48 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (24 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Cognitive psychology (15 works) · Social Psychology (15 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (14 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (14 works) · Mathematics (12 works) · Medicine (12 works)