Thomas I Vaughan-Johnston
Biographic Data
| ID | 99855 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas I Vaughan-Johnston |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas I |
| FAMILY NAME | Vaughan-Johnston |
| SIGNATURE | VAUGHAN-JOHNSTON T I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4682-481X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 19 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Recruitment Strategies Bias Sampling and Shape Replicability
Replicating psychological research has become a central concern for psychologists. Although attention has been paid to the possibility of heterogeneous populations driving replication success/failure, the heterogeneous recruitment strategies researchers use to draw samples from those populations are often overlooked. Yet recruitment strategies may bias the participants who show up and shape replication results. We examine this idea through severa…
Falling Vocal Intonation Signals Speaker Confidence and Conditionally Boosts Persuasion
People are often advised to project confidence with their bodies and voices to convince others. Prior research has focused on the high and low thinking processes through which vocal confidence signals (e.g., fast speed, falling intonation, low pitch) can influence attitude change. In contrast, this research examines how the vocal confidence of speakers operates under more moderate elaboration levels, revealing that falling intonation only benefit…
Vocal Speed and Processing of Persuasive Messages
Most work on indicators of vocal confidence (and social influence work more broadly) examines linear relationships between variables. However, in some domains curvilinear (i.e., accelerating or decelerating) relationships may provide greater clarity in understanding human speech patterns. We review mixed past work on vocal speed as a case study, wherein faster vocal speed has been shown both to bolster and inhibit persuasion (e.g., by impairing p…
Pitch as a Recipient, Channel, and Context Factor Affecting Thought Reliance and Persuasion
Three experiments tested how low versus high pitch generated from sources beyond a message communicator can affect reliance on thoughts and influence recipients’ attitudes. First, participants wrote positive or negative thoughts about an exam proposal (Experiments 1, 2) or their academic abilities (Experiment 3). Then, pitch from the message recipient (Experiment 1), channel (Experiment 2), or context (Experiment 3) was manipulated to be high or …
Comparing self‐esteem discrepancies in Pakistan and Canada
The cross‐cultural universality of people's pursuit of positive self‐esteem is frequently disputed. Most research in this area has contrasted cultures of dignity (Western) and face cultures (East Asian), but less attention has been given to other cultures' views of self‐esteem. In the present work, we examined Pakistan as uniquely influenced by honour culture and South Asian argumentation culture principles, and we contrasted it with Canada (a We…
Hypocrisy judgements are affected by target attitude strength and attitude moralization
Researchers and philosophers have debated what leads people to judge others as being hypocritical. Some research has shown that perceivers consider targets to be more hypocritical when those targets contradict attitudes that are strongly (e.g., moralized and/or certain) rather than weakly held by the target. In the present work, I attempt to advance this research in several respects. First, I integrate these findings with research on the dimensio…
Exploring preferences for present- and future-focused job opportunities across seniors and young adults
Connecting Attitude Position and Function
Attitude position and function often are discussed as though they are distinct aspects of attitudes, but scholars have become increasingly interested in how they may interface. We extend existing work showing that people view their positive attitudes as more self-defining than their negative attitudes (i.e., the positivity effect). All datasets support that the positivity effect emerged most strongly among high self-esteem individuals and was att…
Facilitating Scientific Communication Between Strangers
Communication scholars are increasingly concerned about biases that shape people's interactions with science. Past study has focused on echo chambers (cultivating social networks that reinforce existing worldviews). People's facilitation of scientific discourse between strangers also may be shaped by their attitudes. To study the latter, we employed a recent adaptation of Milgram's lost letter technique called the lost e-mail technique (LET). We …
Desired attitudes guide actual attitude change
Whereas actual attitudes represent people's evaluations of specific objects as being good or bad, desired attitudes represent the attitude positions that people wish they held. Previous work has established that desired attitudes can have psychological consequences, but has not yet tested the extent to which desired attitudes can predict actual attitude change. In five datasets involving a variety of populations and procedural variations, we expl…
Naïve beliefs shape emotional reactions to evaluative feedback
). We proposed that participants' naïve theories characterising self-esteem as important may moderate their self-enhancement motivations. Across three samples, we demonstrated that increasing self-esteem importance causes prevention-based emotional reactions to become increasingly dependent on the favorability of feedback. We thus infer that self-enhancement motivation increases when people hold favourable beliefs about the importance of maximisi…
Paralinguistic Features Communicated through Voice can Affect Appraisals of Confidence and Evaluative Judgments
This article unpacks the basic mechanisms by which paralinguistic features communicated through the voice can affect evaluative judgments and persuasion. Special emphasis is placed on exploring the rapidly emerging literature on vocal features linked to appraisals of confidence (e.g., vocal pitch, intonation, speech rate, loudness, etc.), and their subsequent impact on information processing and meta-cognitive processes of attitude change. The ma…
The Role of Vocal Affect in Persuasion
Past research has largely focused on how emotional expressions provide information about the speaker’s emotional state, but has generally neglected vocal affect’s influence over communication effectiveness. This is surprising given that other nonverbal behaviors often influence communication between individuals. In the present theory paper, we develop a novel perspective called the Contextual Influences of Vocal Affect (CIVA) model to predict and…
Extraversion as a Moderator of the Efficacy of Self-Esteem Maintenance Strategies
Four experiments explored how extraversion’s connection with self-esteem may depend on specific self-enhancement strategies. Participants’ self-esteem threatening feedback indicating that they had performed poorly on a vocabulary or emotional intelligence test. In Experiment 1, participants ( N = 80) were randomly assigned to either a control condition (no self-enhancement) or a downward social comparison condition. The procedures for Experiments…
Contextual and Cultural Differences in Positive Thinking
Past research suggests that East Asians engage in less positive thinking than Westerners, but cultural differences in positive thinking may depend on context. The present research investigates how culture and context may interactively influence positive thinking. In Studies 1 ( N = 287) and 2 ( N = 245), participants read hypothetical positive or negative events, and indicated their endorsement of responses to each event that reflected positive v…
Self-esteem importance beliefs
We propose that self-esteem importance has utility in research involving adolescents. Canadian adolescents ages 11–14 years (N =334) were compared to a large sample (N= 1792) and a validation subsample (n= 437) of young adults. Supplementary analyses established that our scale of self-esteem importance showed good psychometric performance among adolescents and adults. Structural equation modeling revealed that self-esteem and self-esteem importan…
The role of individual differences in emotion regulation efficacy
Exploring the influence of a low-dose mindfulness induction on performance and persistence in a challenging cognitive task
Emerging research is beginning to highlight the influence of mindfulness on cognitive performance. However, researchers have yet to examine how mindfulness impacts cognition after people experience adversity or challenge within a task. The present study aims to build upon the existing theoretical knowledge base by investigating how a low-dose mindfulness induction influences engagement, mood, performance, and persistence on a challenging cognitiv…
The counterintuitive influence of vocal affect on the efficacy of affectively-based persuasive messages
Desired attitudes guide actual attitude change
Whereas actual attitudes represent people's evaluations of specific objects as being good or bad, desired attitudes represent the attitude positions that people wish they held. Previous work has established that desired attitudes can have psychological consequences, but has not yet tested the extent to which desired attitudes can predict actual attitude change. In five datasets involving a variety of populations and procedural variations, we expl…
The role of individual differences in emotion regulation efficacy
The counterintuitive influence of vocal affect on the efficacy of affectively-based persuasive messages
Exploring the influence of a low-dose mindfulness induction on performance and persistence in a challenging cognitive task
Emerging research is beginning to highlight the influence of mindfulness on cognitive performance. However, researchers have yet to examine how mindfulness impacts cognition after people experience adversity or challenge within a task. The present study aims to build upon the existing theoretical knowledge base by investigating how a low-dose mindfulness induction influences engagement, mood, performance, and persistence on a challenging cognitiv…
Self-esteem importance beliefs
We propose that self-esteem importance has utility in research involving adolescents. Canadian adolescents ages 11–14 years (N =334) were compared to a large sample (N= 1792) and a validation subsample (n= 437) of young adults. Supplementary analyses established that our scale of self-esteem importance showed good psychometric performance among adolescents and adults. Structural equation modeling revealed that self-esteem and self-esteem importan…
The role of individual differences in emotion regulation efficacy
Naïve beliefs shape emotional reactions to evaluative feedback
). We proposed that participants' naïve theories characterising self-esteem as important may moderate their self-enhancement motivations. Across three samples, we demonstrated that increasing self-esteem importance causes prevention-based emotional reactions to become increasingly dependent on the favorability of feedback. We thus infer that self-enhancement motivation increases when people hold favourable beliefs about the importance of maximisi…
Paralinguistic Features Communicated through Voice can Affect Appraisals of Confidence and Evaluative Judgments
This article unpacks the basic mechanisms by which paralinguistic features communicated through the voice can affect evaluative judgments and persuasion. Special emphasis is placed on exploring the rapidly emerging literature on vocal features linked to appraisals of confidence (e.g., vocal pitch, intonation, speech rate, loudness, etc.), and their subsequent impact on information processing and meta-cognitive processes of attitude change. The ma…
The Role of Vocal Affect in Persuasion
Past research has largely focused on how emotional expressions provide information about the speaker’s emotional state, but has generally neglected vocal affect’s influence over communication effectiveness. This is surprising given that other nonverbal behaviors often influence communication between individuals. In the present theory paper, we develop a novel perspective called the Contextual Influences of Vocal Affect (CIVA) model to predict and…
Extraversion as a Moderator of the Efficacy of Self-Esteem Maintenance Strategies
Four experiments explored how extraversion’s connection with self-esteem may depend on specific self-enhancement strategies. Participants’ self-esteem threatening feedback indicating that they had performed poorly on a vocabulary or emotional intelligence test. In Experiment 1, participants ( N = 80) were randomly assigned to either a control condition (no self-enhancement) or a downward social comparison condition. The procedures for Experiments…
Contextual and Cultural Differences in Positive Thinking
Past research suggests that East Asians engage in less positive thinking than Westerners, but cultural differences in positive thinking may depend on context. The present research investigates how culture and context may interactively influence positive thinking. In Studies 1 ( N = 287) and 2 ( N = 245), participants read hypothetical positive or negative events, and indicated their endorsement of responses to each event that reflected positive v…
Facilitating Scientific Communication Between Strangers
Communication scholars are increasingly concerned about biases that shape people's interactions with science. Past study has focused on echo chambers (cultivating social networks that reinforce existing worldviews). People's facilitation of scientific discourse between strangers also may be shaped by their attitudes. To study the latter, we employed a recent adaptation of Milgram's lost letter technique called the lost e-mail technique (LET). We …
Desired attitudes guide actual attitude change
Whereas actual attitudes represent people's evaluations of specific objects as being good or bad, desired attitudes represent the attitude positions that people wish they held. Previous work has established that desired attitudes can have psychological consequences, but has not yet tested the extent to which desired attitudes can predict actual attitude change. In five datasets involving a variety of populations and procedural variations, we expl…
Exploring preferences for present- and future-focused job opportunities across seniors and young adults
Connecting Attitude Position and Function
Attitude position and function often are discussed as though they are distinct aspects of attitudes, but scholars have become increasingly interested in how they may interface. We extend existing work showing that people view their positive attitudes as more self-defining than their negative attitudes (i.e., the positivity effect). All datasets support that the positivity effect emerged most strongly among high self-esteem individuals and was att…
Comparing self‐esteem discrepancies in Pakistan and Canada
The cross‐cultural universality of people's pursuit of positive self‐esteem is frequently disputed. Most research in this area has contrasted cultures of dignity (Western) and face cultures (East Asian), but less attention has been given to other cultures' views of self‐esteem. In the present work, we examined Pakistan as uniquely influenced by honour culture and South Asian argumentation culture principles, and we contrasted it with Canada (a We…
Hypocrisy judgements are affected by target attitude strength and attitude moralization
Researchers and philosophers have debated what leads people to judge others as being hypocritical. Some research has shown that perceivers consider targets to be more hypocritical when those targets contradict attitudes that are strongly (e.g., moralized and/or certain) rather than weakly held by the target. In the present work, I attempt to advance this research in several respects. First, I integrate these findings with research on the dimensio…
Vocal Speed and Processing of Persuasive Messages
Most work on indicators of vocal confidence (and social influence work more broadly) examines linear relationships between variables. However, in some domains curvilinear (i.e., accelerating or decelerating) relationships may provide greater clarity in understanding human speech patterns. We review mixed past work on vocal speed as a case study, wherein faster vocal speed has been shown both to bolster and inhibit persuasion (e.g., by impairing p…
Pitch as a Recipient, Channel, and Context Factor Affecting Thought Reliance and Persuasion
Three experiments tested how low versus high pitch generated from sources beyond a message communicator can affect reliance on thoughts and influence recipients’ attitudes. First, participants wrote positive or negative thoughts about an exam proposal (Experiments 1, 2) or their academic abilities (Experiment 3). Then, pitch from the message recipient (Experiment 1), channel (Experiment 2), or context (Experiment 3) was manipulated to be high or …
Recruitment Strategies Bias Sampling and Shape Replicability
Replicating psychological research has become a central concern for psychologists. Although attention has been paid to the possibility of heterogeneous populations driving replication success/failure, the heterogeneous recruitment strategies researchers use to draw samples from those populations are often overlooked. Yet recruitment strategies may bias the participants who show up and shape replication results. We examine this idea through severa…
Falling Vocal Intonation Signals Speaker Confidence and Conditionally Boosts Persuasion
People are often advised to project confidence with their bodies and voices to convince others. Prior research has focused on the high and low thinking processes through which vocal confidence signals (e.g., fast speed, falling intonation, low pitch) can influence attitude change. In contrast, this research examines how the vocal confidence of speakers operates under more moderate elaboration levels, revealing that falling intonation only benefit…
Psychology (19 works) · Social Psychology (19 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (12 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (8 works) · Cognition (7 works) · Cognitive psychology (6 works) · Communication (6 works) · Persuasion (6 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (5 works) · Developmental psychology (5 works)