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ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B
主办:中国心理学会
   中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

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    25 June 2016, Volume 48 Issue 6 Previous Issue    Next Issue

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    ERP effects of position-specific radicals in Chinese character recognition: Evidence from semantic categorization
    WU Yan; MO Deyuan; WANG Haiying; YU Yiyang; CHEN Hsuan-Chih; ZHANG Ming
    2016, 48 (6):  599-606.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00599
    Abstract ( 1723 )   PDF (2455KB) ( 3763 )   Peer Review Comments

    In written Chinese, over 80% of characters are compounds, in which independent constituents called radicals can be considered as the sub-lexical units. Some radicals can appear at different positions within a character. For instance, the radical 口 can appear on the left of 听 (listen), on the right of 知 (know), at the top of 呆 (stupid), or at the bottom of 杏 (apricot). The primary concern in prior behavioral studies on radical processing is whether radicals are represented with or without position in the Chinese lexicon (i.e., position-specific or position-general, respectively). However, ERP results confirmed that both position-specific and position-general radical representations existed in human mental lexicon. The new argument is that whether the position-specific radicals are activated at the first stage in character recognition, as reflected by the N/P150 effects. Although prior studies revealed that position-specific radical processing was related to the N/P150, the tasks used in those studies were not natural enough to reflect the situation in conventional reading. Therefore, unlike prior studies, a Go/NoGo semantic categorization task was used in the present study, which could guarantee the requirements in daily life reading. Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), two types of radical information were manipulated: the number of characters containing a specific radical irrespective of position (i.e., frequency as a position-general radical) and the number of characters containing a specific radical at a particular position (i.e., frequency as a position-specific radical). The results showed that the effects of position-specific and position-general radical frequency were both related to P200 and N400. Characters of low radical frequency evoked a larger P200 and a smaller N400 than their high frequency counterparts. Moreover, no difference was found between the peak latency of the two P200 effects. More importantly, no N/P150 effects were found to be associated with the processing of position-general and position-specific radicals. Given that both position-general and position-specific radical frequency would influence the radical position dominance (the degree of dominance was calculated by dividing the sum frequency of characters that shared the same radical in each possible position by the total frequency of all characters sharing the radical irrespective of position; dominance = position-specific radical frequency / position-general radical frequency), both results associated with effects of position-specific and position-general radicals reflected the processing of radical position. Therefore, the current results indicate that radical position plays an important role in Chinese character reading, which influences not only the sub-lexical orthographic processing, but also the character semantic activation.

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    The two-steps mental simulation process of Chinese definite unbounded negative sentences
    CUI Ruxia; GAO Zhihua; TANG Yilin; HE Haofan; LU Zhongyi
    2016, 48 (6):  607-616.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00607
    Abstract ( 928 )   PDF (357KB) ( 1985 )   Peer Review Comments

    In the previous studies, the researchers argued whether simulation was completed in one step or two steps on processes of negative sentences comprehension, due to different materials in respective studies. In the present study, we classified the negation into two categories: the bounded negation (eg. not live- not die) and the unbounded negation (eg. not a tiger). And the classified unbounded negation were further classified into the definite (eg. not wide- not narrow) and indefinite negations respectively. Some researchers have demonstrated that the mental simulation of bounded negative sentences could be completed in one step, so we assume that definite unbounded negative sentences will be different, and conform to Two-Steps Simulation Hypothesis. In this study, Chinese definite unbounded negative sentences (eg. “The door was not wide”) were taken as research materials, sentence-picture match paradigm as experimental paradigm, 2 (sentence type: the Chinese definite unbounded affirmative sentence vs. the Chinese definite unbounded negative sentence) × 2 (match type between the state depicted by pictures and the state described by sentence: match vs. mismatch) within-subject design as experimental design, response time and accuracy in picture judgments as outcome variables, to explore the mental simulation process during the early (250 ms), middle (750 ms) and late (1500 ms) stages. The result in Experiment 1 showed that responses to mismatch pictures were shorter than to match pictures in negative sentences reading condition at the early comprehension stage (250 ms), and the tendency in affirmative sentence was reversed. In Experiment 2, the response tendency was different from Experiment 1, that responses to match pictures were more rapid than to mismatch pictures in negative sentences reading condition at middle comprehension stage (750 ms), and there was no significant difference between different match types in affirmative sentences. In Experiment 3, there was no significant difference between different match types in negative sentences reading, and response time to match picture was shorter than to mismatch pictures in affirmative sentences. The results showed that there were two steps to complete the mental simulation of the definite unbounded negative sentence. At the first step, the negated state was simulated, and then the simulation of actual state of the definite unbounded negative sentence was completed in the second step. But such processes are relatively rapid, in another words, they are completed at the middle stage of comprehension. This indicated that the category of negative sentence affects the process of mental simulation.

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    Chinese native speakers’ processing of different time sentences in auditory tasks
    LI Heng; ZHANG Jijia
    2016, 48 (6):  617-624.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00617
    Abstract ( 1464 )   PDF (359KB) ( 2892 )   Peer Review Comments

    Across languages and cultures, people recruit spatial experience to construct temporal concepts. While there are various types of spatial metaphors for time, particular attention has been paid to two deictic space-time metaphors. According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980), the Moving Time metaphor conceives of time as a moving entity that walks towards or from a stationary observer and the Moving Ego metaphor conceptualizes time as a stationary landscape that the active ego moves towards the future time. In addition, there is also a non-deictic time metaphor, that is, two or more time points or events are located in time relative to one another, instead of being relative to a deictic origo or experiencer’s point-of-view (Núñez & Sweetser, 2006). To date, however, the distinction between the ego reference point (Moving Time and Moving Ego deictic metaphors) and time reference point (non-deictic time metaphors) has been largely overlooked by psychologists. To fulfill this void, the current research adopted a new paradigm that used auditory stimuli and vocal responses. Experiment 1 investigated how Chinese native speakers make temporal judgments about deictic relationships presented auditorily along the body’s sagittal axis—in front of or behind the participants. The results showed that no compatibility effects were observed for deictic judgments on the sagittal axis, indicating that there is no clear association between deictic judgments and location on this axis. In Experiment 2, Chinese native speakers listened to stimulus of sequential time sentences presented auditorily along the body’s sagittal axis and made the corresponding judgment. The results showed that there was a strong compatibility effects between past and future judgments on the sagittal axis. Chinese native speakers tended to associate earlier events with the space in front of them and later events with the space behind them. Together, these findings provide evidence that people recruit space in fundamentally different ways while processing deictic and sequential time metaphors. The pattern of associations we observed for sequential judgments on the sagittal axis in Experiment 1, suggests that motion experience is a critical component of deictic time metaphors. This is due to the fact that participants stayed static and made non-spatialized responses, which may be hard for them to form a clear sagittal deictic association While no deictic sagittal effect was observed, a space-time compatibility effect emerged for sequential judgments on the sagittal axis in Experiment 2, with participants associating earlier events with the space in front of them and later events with the space behind them. As shown in Mandarin, there are more linguistic metaphors which associate earlier events with the space in front of the speaker like qiantian (the day before yesterday) and later events with the space behind the speaker like houtian (the day after tomorrow). The results suggest that Chinese native speakers can still rely on linguistic metaphors to understand sequential time even in the stationary state. Taken together, these results validate the psychological reality of deictic and sequential time metaphors.

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    The effects of word frequency and word predictability in preview and their implications for word segmentation in Chinese reading: Evidence from eye movements
    SU Heng; LIU Zhifang; CAO Liren
    2016, 48 (6):  625-636.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00625
    Abstract ( 1181 )   PDF (384KB) ( 2277 )   Peer Review Comments

    Recent studies have revealed that Chinese words are associated with psychological realities that are important for text comprehension. However, given the lack of spaces between words in Chinese text, readers of Chinese have to segment text into words during reading. Previous studies focused on word segmentation have revealed that this ability to preview and process text develops at a very early stage. However, there was little research on what information or cues were used by readers of Chinese to segment text into words. The assumption was that if readers of Chinese parsed a string of characters into words using a character-to-word processing, preview processing would result in word frequency effects on eye movement data, and that if the readers ascertained word boundary by top-down processing, such as anticipation, preview processing would result in word predictability effects. Four experiments were conducted to check these two hypotheses. In the first three experiments, we assumed that readers of Chinese parsed a string of characters into words using a character-to-word style in preview processing. There were two treatments of Chinese sentences in these experiments; all these experiments had a control condition in which as the nth word was fixated, and no words were masked for baseline comparison. An abnormal display condition was manipulated in Experiment 1, wherein the nth word was fixated, but the words located to the right were all masked by a series of “※,” which deprived the reader of previewing processing. The abnormal display condition was manipulated in Experiment 2 by keeping the nth word fixated, and masking the words located to the right of the n+1th word by a series of “※,” which provided a cue about the boundary of the n+1th word. Given that the results from Experiment 2 cannot exclude the influence of exogenous attention, Experiment 3 was conducted. Experiment 3 adopted a similar treatment as Experiment 2, but two adjacent characters that did not belong to a word were masked together. In first three experiments, the word frequencies (high and low) of target words that were embedded in the frame sentences were also manipulated. In the last experiment (Experiment 4), there were three display manipulations: control condition, a condition in which readers were deprived of previewing processing, and a condition involving the provision of boundary information about the n+1th word; the predictability of target words that were embedded in the frame sentences were also manipulated. The results of Experiment 1 showed that although eye movement data was negatively affected by being deprived of previewing processing, this manipulation did not have any influence on word frequency effects and, therefore, there was no interaction effect between display condition and word frequency manipulations. The results of Experiment 2 showed that providing boundary information of the n+1th word led to less gaze time on the target word, but here again, there was no interaction effect between the display condition and word frequency manipulations. The results of Experiment 3 showed that mask manipulation led to more gaze time on the target word than the control that excluded the influence of exogenous attention on the results of Experiment 2. It also showed that there was no interaction effect between display condition and word frequency manipulations. However, the results of Experiment 4 were interesting; there were some significant interaction effects between the display condition and word predictability manipulations. Specifically, we found that the manipulation in which readers are deprived of previewing processing eliminates predictability effects, and providing boundary information of the n+1th word decreases the discrepancy between words of high predictability and words of low predictability. The results of the first three experiments indicate that Chinese word processing in the preview cannot reach the desired vocabulary level, and that it must undergo character processing. Therefore, it was difficult for readers of Chinese to complete the segmentation of the n+1th word through a bottom-up characters-to-word processing. The results of Experiment 4 show that deprivation of preview processing can eliminate predictability and providing boundary information of the n+1th word can lessen predictability thereby indicating that top-bottom processing, such as anticipation, is an important reference cue to readers of Chinese to segment the n+1th word.

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    The process of construction of spatial representation in the unfamiliar environment in the blind: The role of strategies and its effect
    CHEN Xiaomeng; LIU Chunling; QIAO Fuqiang; QI Kemin
    2016, 48 (6):  637-647.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00637
    Abstract ( 1073 )   PDF (5647KB) ( 2302 )   Peer Review Comments

    Spatial representation is the spatial images of object location and spatial relationships in the mind. Since the work of Tolman, numerous cognitive psychology studies have been conducted to examine the formation of spatial representation and underlying mechanisms in people having visual experiences. In relation to those have visual experiences, blind people may rely more upon precisely constructed spatial representation, which can help them with orientation and navigation in the absence of their vision. However, previous studies on spatial representation of blind people were mainly conducted in laboratories. It remains relatively unclear how blind people encode unfamiliar spatial stimuli and construct spatial representation in real-life situations. This study used field experiment to investigate the characteristics of blind persons’ spatial representation in an unfamiliar environment. It focused on exploring navigation process, namely the impact of wayfinding strategy on knowledge acquisition of spatial representation. Participants were 26 congenitally totally blind persons, 29 adventitiously totally blind ones, and 25 sighted ones. All participants were voluntarily recruited from a special education school. The results showed that the spatial representation of most congenitally blind participants was characterized by a route representation in large-scale space, while most adventitiously blind and sighted participants exhibited a survey representation. Congenitally blind participants were found to use different strategies for constructing spatial representation. Through the use of a spatial relationship strategy, congenitally blind participants performed as well as adventitiously blind and sighted ones in the construction of spatial representation. The current data found no gender effect on spatial representation in an unfamiliar environment. In parallel with findings from neurobiological studies, this study demonstrated that lack of visual experiences adversely influenced the ability of blind people’s spatial representation. However, utilization of appropriate strategies may mitigate such impairing effect of blindness. This study also found an association between spatial representation and walking efficiency. Blind persons who were better at constructing spatial representation walked faster and were less likely to take wrong paths. This study adds to the literature by adopting filed experiment to explore strategies used by blind people for constructing spatial representation in real-life environments. Our findings could inform professionals on how to more effectively provide blind people with appropriate orientation and modality trainings, which may in turn have a positive impact on their social engagement and life quality.

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    Environment dependent effect of body movement promoting spatial updating
    LIU Chuanjun; XIN Yong; ZHANG Fuhong; FENG Chun; CHEN Youping
    2016, 48 (6):  648-657.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00648
    Abstract ( 1015 )   PDF (517KB) ( 1697 )   Peer Review Comments

    Kelly et al. (2007) studied sensorimotor alignment effects in the learning environment and novel environment. It found that sensorimotor alignment effects disappeared in the novel environment. But Xiao and Liu (2014) found that sensorimotor alignment effects always appeared in the novel environment except when participants faced the opposite direction to the learning direction. These two studies’ results were both interpreted by the dual system spatial memory theories, which made a hypothesis that sensorimotor and memory alignment effects need different representations. The reason might be that the different promoting extend of memory and body movement to the spatial updating procedure. The promotion effects of memory to spatial updating were efficient both in online and offline representations. Therefore, it is possible to make a comparative study on the two promotion effects of memory and body movement to the spatial updating. The paradigm used in Kelly et al. (2007) was applied in the present study. After remembering a body-centered spatial layout, participants were asked to finish spatial judgments in imagined perspectives (for example, “imagine that you faced A, point to B.”). The imagined perspectives were memory-aligned (the imagined perspective was aligned with learning perspective), sensorimotor-aligned (the imagined perspective was aligned with the current body direction) and misaligned (the imagined perspective was neither aligned with learning perspective nor aligned with the current body direction. And it was defined as the opposite direction of sensorimotor- aligned perspective while the learned perspective was the axis of symmetry) perspectives. The promotion of memory to spatial updating was defined as the subtraction of misaligned and memory-aligned performances. The promotion of body movement to spatial updating was defined as the subtraction of misaligned and sensorimotor-aligned performances. In Experiment 1, 20 participants (10 men) learned a regular 8-object layout and then they turned 90 degrees to the left or right before they performed spatial judgments from a perspective aligned with the learning direction (memory aligned), aligned with the direction they face (sensorimotor aligned), and the novel direction misaligned with the two directions mentioned above (misaligned). In each imagined perspective, participants pointed to all the 8 objects of the layout (e.g. “Imagine that you are facing the ball, please point to the candle”). Each participant performed 48 trials (8 target objects × 3 imagined perspectives × 2 blocks). Participants in experiment 2 finished the same spatial judgment task in the novel environment. After learning the spatial layout, the participants of Experiment 2a were disoriented before standing at the testing position in the novel environment, facing 180 degrees opposite to the learning direction. And the participants of Experiment 2b walked straight forward to the testing position in the novel environment remaining in their orientation. The participants of Experiment 2c turned to face the direction opposite to learning perspective after walking straightforward to the novel environment. The dependent measures were the latency and the absolute angular error of the pointing response. In Experiment 1, the pointing latency and absolute pointing error were subjected to mixed-model analyses of variance (ANOVAs), with imagined heading (memory aligned, sensorimotor aligned, or misaligned) as the within-subject variable. Participants pointed more accurately and faster from the memory aligned perspective than from the misaligned perspective (a memory alignment effect), and faster from the sensorimotor aligned perspective than from the misaligned perspective (a sensorimotor alignment effect). The same effects appeared in Experiment 2a, 2b, but not 2c. The Pearson correlations between the promotion of memory to spatial updating and promotion of body movement to spatial updating were significantly high in all of the conditions. And these two effects were significantly different only in Experiment 2. In conclusion, results in the present study indicate that the environment dependent effect of body movement exists. The promotion effect of body movement is equally effective in the learning environment but significantly worse in the novel environment than the promotion effect of memory to spatial updating.

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    Cognitive neural mechanism of training effect on inhibition of return: Evidence from an ERP study
    XU Ju; HU Yuanyan; WANG Shuang; LI Aisu; ZHANG Ming; ZHANG Yang
    2016, 48 (6):  658-670.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00658
    Abstract ( 1772 )   PDF (772KB) ( 2255 )   Peer Review Comments

    Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to slower responses to targets presented at the previously cued location than to those at uncued locations when the cue-target onset asynchrony is more than about 250 ms. Although much has been debated about whether training could influence IOR, a recent behavioral study (Xu, Ma, Zhang, & Zhang, 2015) provided strong evidence for the existing of the IOR training effect. The study observed a reliable and significant decrease in IOR effect under a 8-day sustained training. However, as behavior reflects the combined influence of multiple processing stages, the behavioral measures are unable to determine definitely at which stage the IOR training effect takes place. Thereby, how the training shapes IOR is still an opening question. The current study is aimed to tackle this question by using the Event-Related Potentials that are superior in time-resolution and hence are sensitivity in tracking the distinct information processing stages. 24 paid participants recruited from the campus of Soochow University (6 males, 18 females, mean age of 20.6 ± 2.4, normal or corrected to normal vision) were asked to discriminate target stimuli (“@”or “&”) presented at either the previously cued (valid condition) or uncued locations (invalid condition) in 9 successive days. During the first and the last training day, the electroencephalogram (EEG) data were acquired while the participants performed the task. The results showed that: 1) Behaviorally, consistent with the results of XU et al.(2015), the IOR effect (RTvalid − RTinvalid) decreased steadily and significantly as the training days increased (19 and 6 ms for the first and last training day respectively); 2) Electro-physiologically, compatible with previous ERPs studies of IOR (e.g., Prime & Jolicoeur, 2009; Prime & Ward, 2006 ), the target stimuli occurred at valid locations elicited smaller N1 (170~200 ms) as well as the P2 than that at invalid locations; 3) And more interestingly, while N1 cueing effect (invalid - valid) and P2 cueing effect (the Nd250) decreased significantly from the first to the last training day, the P1 cueing effect kept constant across the training days. Taken together, 1) as the visual N1 cueing effect has been well demonstrated to reflect the perceptual processing (e.g., discrimination process), the current results suggested that perceptual processing is a critical stage during which the training effect of IOR occurs, providing, as far as we known, the first electrophysiological evidence for the cognitive neural mechanism of the training effect of IOR. And 2) the significant regression of the behavioral IOR effect on the N1 and the P2 cueing effect (Nd250) instead of the P1 cueing effect suggested that the N1 and Nd250 may be the more robust and reliable electrophysiological indexes of IOR.

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    Dual-task coordination and task presentation mode influence arithmetic strategy execution in adults: Evidence from computational estimation
    HUANG Bijuan; FENG Hongmin; SI Jiwei; ZHANG Jie; WANG Xiangyan
    2016, 48 (6):  671-683.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00671
    Abstract ( 865 )   PDF (451KB) ( 1802 )   Peer Review Comments

    Several models have been proposed to describe how people select and execute strategy. They found that the strategic performance was impacted by many factors, in which EFs (central executive functions) were included. Up to now, several researchers have investigated the specific roles of shifting, inhibition and updating on arithmetic strategy use. However, the role of dual-task coordination in arithmetic strategy use is still unclear. Although strategy execution can be impacted by presentation mode in conflict monitoring, the evidence is inadequate obviously. 54 adult participants were chosen randomly for Exp 1 (includes 26 participants) and Exp 2 (includes 28 participants). By controlling presentation mode and numbers of reaction, the present study combined the no-choice condition from the choice/no-choice paradigm with the revised psychological refractory period paradigm. To examine how dual-task coordination and task presentation mode influence the efficiency of strategy execution in first estimation reaction, we divided the experiments into random mode and fixed mode. Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 were conducted in random mode and fixed mode, respectively. Both of them adopted a 2 (response situation: single /double) × 2 (task presentation sequence: computational estimation rendering first / graphics rendering first) × 2 (no-choice method: rounding up / rounding down) within-subject design. Results were indexed by accuracy, reaction time and dual-task coordination cost (difference between double and single responses). Results showed that the reaction time of rounding-up strategy was significantly longer than rounding-down. Computational estimation in dual-response situation was worse than in single-response situation. The accuracy of estimation in dual–response situation was lower and reaction time was longer than single-response situation. Single or Double responses of estimation strategy affected the efficiency of reaction. Specially, estimation performance in dual-response was considerably worse than single-response, and the dual-response had greater effect on the complex rounding-up strategy. Dual-task coordination cost was influenced by the random sequence of tasks and strategy difficulty. With the task presentation mode fixed, dual task coordination cost decreased or even disappeared. Dual-task coordination influenced estimation efficiency of strategy execution by the number of responses and task presentation mode. Despite the fact that both fixed and random mode affected the estimation strategy execution, dual-task coordination cost in random mode was more. Strategy execution process is influenced by numerous factors. In addition to cognitive system (e.g., effort, accuracy and time) and environmental factors referred by cognitive niche theory, it was also affected by task presentation mode, that is, the effect of working memory itself.

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    School identity promotes sense of responsibility in college students: The mediating role of self-esteem
    HUANG Silin; HAN Mingyue; NING Caifang; LIN Chongde
    2016, 48 (6):  684-692.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00684
    Abstract ( 4582 )   PDF (462KB) ( 10123 )   Peer Review Comments

    Sense of responsibility is an effective predictor of academic achievement, perfectionism personality, way of coping with frustration, self-acceptance, and altruism of college students. The latest correlational studies show that school identity is a fundamental source where students’ sense of responsibility comes from. School identity is a socially derived psychological process reflecting awareness of one’s school membership and its associated values and emotional significances, and a sense of belonging to one’s school. However, the casual chain between school identity and sense of responsibility in college students has not been confirmed yet. Further, in the light of the social identity theory, self-esteem may be an important mediating variable between the two variables. Some researchers posit that self-esteem has two distinct aspects. One is personal self-esteem, which includes specific attributes of the individual such as capability, genius, and sociability. The other aspect is one’s collective self-esteem, defined as that individual is proud of his membership of or relationship with a social group. It remains unanswered whether personal self-esteem or collective self-esteem is the mediating variable between the two variables is clouded. The present study is designed to address the above two questions. Study 1 is aimed to confirm the c relationship between school identity and sense of responsibility. A total sample of 649 undergraduates from four universities was investigated with questionnaires. Study 2 is focused to examine the causal effect of school identity on sense of responsibility where a sample of 110 undergraduates was randomly assigned to the high identity group or the control group. They were asked to read materials related to school identity before answering the questionnaire about sense of responsibility. In Study 3, the mediating role of personal or collective self-esteem between school identity and sense of responsibility was verified by a survey of 422 undergraduates from two universities. The results suggested that: (1) School identity of college students positively correlated with their sense of responsibility after controlling for types of school, grades and gender. (2) The manipulation of school identity significantly impacted the level of sense of responsibility. That is, students primed with high level of school identity group showed significantly higher sense of responsibility than that of the control group. (3) Collective self-esteem played a role of a complete mediating variable between the school identity and responsibility, while personal self-esteem did not make any difference. In sum, the causal impact of college students’ school identity on their sense of responsibility was confirmed in the present study. Furthermore, collective self-esteem, rather than personal self-esteem, is a mediator between the two variables. The present findings were consistent with the social identity theory and also suggested that elevating students' school identity is a crucial way to promote sense of responsibility in college students. The practical implications and future direction were addressed in the discussion.

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    The effect of interactional justice on employee well-being: The mediating role of psychological empowerment and the moderating role of power distance
    ZHENG Xiaoming; LIU Xin
    2016, 48 (6):  693-709.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00693
    Abstract ( 2849 )   PDF (560KB) ( 6448 )   Peer Review Comments

    Although the construct of well-being has been widely discussed among philosophers and writers since long time ago, scholars did not start to conduct related empirical studies until 1960s. In recent years, with the development of both Positive Psychology and Positive Organizational Behavior, the construct of employee well-being has caught increasingly more attention from organizational scholars. In this line of research, organizational justice has been regarded as a key factor which influences employee well-being. However, as for the specific impact of one particular type of justice, it has been largely ignored in extant studies. Our research thus focuses on the construct of interactional justice and aims to explore how and when interactional justice influences employee well-being. Specifically, we propose that interactional justice encourages employee well-being in the workplace. Moreover, drawing upon self-determination theory, we posit that psychological empowerment is the underlying mechanism that explains the positive effect of interactional justice on employee well-being. Furthermore, considering the role of individual difference, we argue that employees’ power distance weakens the relationship between interactional justice and psychological empowerment as well as the whole mediating mechanism. We collected our three-wave data from a large manufacturing company in Northern China. At time 1, we invited all 489 frontline employees to rate interactional justice. Two months later, at time 2, we invited all 376 employees who had returned time-1 survey to rate their own power distance as well as psychological empowerment. Another two months later, at time 3, we invited all 294 employees who had returned both time-1 and time-2 surveys to rate their own well-being. Meanwhile, employees’ demographic information including gender, age, education, and tenure with their supervisors were all obtained from the HR department. The final valid sample consisted of 199 employees (for a final response rate of 40.70%). Regression analysis, RMediation procedure, and bootstrapping technique were used to test the mediation, moderation, and moderated-mediation relationships among the study variables. Consistent with our predictions, the results indicated that interactional justice was positively related to employee well-being. And this relationship was mediated by psychological empowerment. Moreover, power distance negatively moderated the relationship between interactional justice and psychological empowerment, and also buffered the whole mediating mechanism. Overall, our research has extended the extant literatures from three primary perspectives. Firstly, this study has deepened our understanding of the relationship between organizational justice and employee well-being by paying specific attention to interactional justice and examining its link with employee well-being. Secondly, drawing upon self-determination theory, this study has explained how interactional justice impacts employee well-being through psychological empowerment. Thirdly, this study has further painted a more complete picture by exploring the contingent effect of power distance.

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    Leader-subordinate extraversion fit and subordinate work engagement: Based on dominance complementarity theory
    CHEN Leni; WANG Zhen; LUO Ben Nanfeng; LUO Zhengxue
    2016, 48 (6):  710-721.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00710
    Abstract ( 1828 )   PDF (639KB) ( 3339 )   Peer Review Comments

    Work engagement has been recognized as a positive state of employees, which can lead to the increased effectiveness of individuals and organizations. In exploring the antecedents of work engagement, prior empirical studies ignored the effects of person-environment fit. The congruence and incongruence effects of subordinate- leader traits have caught researchers’ attentions recently. Extraversion is functioned in daily interactions. We tend to examine the effects of subordinate-leader extraversion fit. Base on the dominance complementarity theory, this study examined the effects of the leader-subordinate extraversion congruence and incongruence on subordinate work engagement. A structured questionnaire was employed as the research instrument for this study. It consisted of four sub-scales designed to measure the variables of interest, namely extraversion, work engagement, conscientiousness and value congruence (the last two are control variables). A field army in northwest China sample was collected in the two time points and from two different raters (soldiers and their immediate monitors) in order to lower the common method biases. 743 dyads’ information of soldiers and their immediate monitors was valid. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the above measures were from 0.75 to 0.94, showing acceptable measurement reliabilities. Results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated the discriminate validity of the measurement was also satisfactory. Polynomial regression analysis was employed to explore the effects of congruence and incongruence between leader and subordinate extraversion on subordinate work engagement. Response surface technology was applied to present the results. In line with the hypotheses, results showed that: (1) The more incongruence of subordinate and leader extraversion level, the more work engaged subordinate would be; (2) Under the condition of subordinate and leader extraversion incongruence, the higher level of subordinate extraversion and lower level of leader extraversion, the more work engaged subordinate would be; (3) Under the condition of subordinate and leader extraversion congruence, the relationship of leader-subordinate extraversions and subordinate work engagement presented a “inverted U curve”, that is, subordinate work engagement level rose to a peak and then fell down as leader-subordinate extraversions levels rose. Theoretically, this study contributed to the areas of work engagement, leadership and person-environment fit. Especially, the results expanded the studies of antecedents of work engagement from person-environment fit perspectives, underlining the significance of employee’s subjective initiatives in predicting work engagement. Meanwhile, the results broadened the research of leadership effectiveness from the leader-follower interactive perspectives. Moreover, the results supported the dominant complementarity theory in the person-environment fit domain and draw a detailed picture about the different types of fits. Practically, the studies contributed to effectiveness of recruitment and selection and domain of improvement of leadership effectiveness. Finally, the limitations and future research directions were discussed.

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    Effects of different eWOM supplementary forms on purchase intention: The moderating role of eWOM valence
    LI Xin; CHEN Yiwen
    2016, 48 (6):  722-732.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00722
    Abstract ( 2051 )   PDF (445KB) ( 4300 )   Peer Review Comments

    With the development of Internet, online shopping has become a trend and is preferred by more and more consumers. Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) plays an important role in online shopping, which helps consumer make an optimal and reasonable purchase decision. Results of previous studies are inconsistent: while the majority of prior research showed that negative eWOM had a stronger influence on purchase intention than positive eWOM, there was some evidence showing the reverse results. Further, studies have found that consumers were more likely to be persuaded by information with high credibility. We propose that supplementary eWOM may be more credible when shopping online in terms of the form. Based on the Cue Consistency Theory and the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, the present study examined how the forms of supplementary eWOM and eWOM valence affect purchase intention. Two pretests and a main laboratory experiment were conducted. First, we ran two pretests to select the specific materials to be used in the main experiment, which would be used to indicate essential attributes for Smartphones. One hundred undergraduate students (50 for each pretest) participated in the pretests. We then manipulated the eWOM of Smartphone in the main experiment to explore how different supplementary forms (no supplementary reviews vs. consistent supplementary reviews vs. inconsistent supplementary reviews) and eWOM valence (positive vs. negative) influence purchase intention. One hundred and fifty one undergraduates were randomly assigned to seven groups and read reviews with various supplementary forms and different valence. They were first asked to read instructions and imagine that they needed to buy a Smartphone. Then they were presented with some reviews about the Smartphone. Finally, they completed a series of questionnaires measuring perceive usefulness, purchase intention, recommendation intention, satisfaction, regulation focus, dispositional optimism, and demographic information. The results showed that eWOM valence moderated the effect of supplementary forms on purchase intention. Specifically, under positive eWOM, purchase intention in the inconsistent supplementary reviews condition was lower than that in the consistent supplementary reviews condition and that in the condition without supplementary reviews, while no difference was found between the latter two conditions. However, under negative eWOM, purchasing intention showed no significant differences across three conditions. The results also revealed a mediated moderation. First, a significant interaction between supplementary forms and valence on purchase intention (X→Y was moderated) was found. Second, a significant interaction between supplementary forms and valence on satisfaction was also shown, suggesting that the mediation model (X→Med) was moderated. Third, satisfaction had a significant effect on purchase intention (Med→Y), and the direct effect of interaction between supplementary forms and valence was reduced, but still significant. A bootstrapping analysis also verified this mediated moderation. Comparing with prior studies on eWOM, our results suggested the different effects of supplementary reviews on purchase intention, which had received little attention. Furthermore, we also found a mediated moderation effect, verifying the mediating role of satisfaction. The findings provide effective suggestions for practitioners in E-commerce marketing on how to manage supplementary reviews practically.

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    Risk source matters much in decision-making: Betrayal aversion and the role of need for affiliation
    ZHU Jingyuan; HE Guibing
    2016, 48 (6):  733-745.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00733
    Abstract ( 1755 )   PDF (529KB) ( 3301 )   Peer Review Comments

    Risk source plays an important role in risky decision making. Unlike “lottery risk” that arises from a stochastic process, “person-based risk” is originated from others’ decisions. Bohnet and Zeckhauser (2004) first studied the effect of risk source on risk preference using “trust game” task in which participants were asked to assign their “minimum acceptable probabilities (MAPs)” for securing the higher payoff, so as to make themselves just incline to the risky option from the sure one. It was found that the MAPs were generally higher when the occurrence of a certain outcome was determined by other person rather than a stochastic process. This phenomenon was named “betrayal aversion”. Nevertheless, Fetchenhauer and Dunning (2012) obtained quite different findings: participants were significantly more willing to choose the risky option in trust game than in lottery game when they were informed that their chance of drawing a white ball or interacting with a trustworthy person was about 50%. These inconsistent findings hint the necessity of undermining the causes of “betrayal aversion”. Hence the present study is to investigate how risk source and need for affiliation affect risky decision-making. In Study 1, participants face a binary-choice trust game with two options: a certain option in which both the participant and the anonymous partner would earn ¥10 for sure, and a risky one in which the participant may have a “good” outcome (with probability of 50%, participant and partner would earn ¥15 respectively) or a “bad” outcome (50% probability, participant earns¥8 and the partner earns ¥22). A between-subject design was used to explore the effects of risk sources. In “lottery risk” condition, whether the risky outcome would be (15, 15) or (8, 22) is depended on a lottery mechanism. In “person-based risk” condition, the outcome distribution depends on the partner’s choice. Participants in Experiment 1 were asked to calibrate their MAPs which could represent their risk preferences. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to choose between the certain option and the risky one directly. After that, their needs for affiliation were measured. The results of Experiment 1 showed that participants are more risk-averse when the outcome is determined by an anonymous partner rather than a lottery mechanism. Experiment 2 found that participants who have low-need for affiliation are betrayal averse, while people with high-need for affiliation prefer lottery risk and person-based risk the same. In Study 2, 2 (sources of risk: lottery risk / person-based risk) × 2 (emotion:no fear/ fear) between-subject experiments were designed to investigate further the effect of need for affiliation on decision-making by arousing the emotion of fear that was induced through watching a horror video in Experiment 3 or describing a frightening scenario in detail in Experiment 4. When emotion of fear aroused, individuals were found more risk-averse under lottery risk, but more risk-seeking under person-based risk. In other words, the betrayal aversion phenomenon even reversed when under fear. It was also found that the need for affiliation acts as a mediator between fear and risky decision making. The findings of “betrayal aversion” and “reversed betrayal aversion” suggested that risk sources are critical to risky decision making. Not only the probabilities but also the risk sources should be considered in evaluation of utility. Compared with the decision making under lottery risk, decision under person-based risk is more complicated. When trust is violated, people may experience betrayal costs. On the contrary, if the partner is trustworthy, people may reap extra psychological benefits such as satisfying the need for affiliation. This study deepened our understanding of trust and betrayal. To encourage trust, it is important to diminish the material costs of betrayal and to emphasize the warmth of interpersonal interaction as well.

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    Bidirectionality metaphorical effect of Chinese ritual culture: Contractive postures make people humble
    LI Xiaodan; DU Jianzheng; YE Haosheng
    2016, 48 (6):  746-756.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00746
    Abstract ( 3210 )   PDF (464KB) ( 6105 )   Peer Review Comments

    Ritual is an important social interaction tool for human in their everyday experience. Most of ritual and religions have metaphorical implications about postures, space and sociocultural status of individuals. The bodies connect with environment meaningfully when people are performing the ritual. Chinese Ritual was a system about righteousness, love, rule, power. Ritual is an important part of Chinese culture, no matter in the ancient China or modern China society. The main parts of ancient Chinese ritual contained specification of body perception, language, clothing, eating utensils which accorded with social status and kinship. From a perspective of embodiment, the ritual of Confucianism was a interpersonal communication system included body metaphors and spatial metaphors. To investigate the embodiment of some characteristic metaphors in Chinese ritual culture, we studied the bidirectionality metaphorical effect of the humble postures such as kneel, bow, look down and status’ estimate by means of three scenario–based experiments. The setting of experiment 1 was user acceptance testing of furniture. The participants were asked to keep a contractive posture or a expansively posture to watch an interview video and scored the status and acceptance of the interviewed person by a 6 point scale from 1(very low) to 6(very high). The retrorse effect of experiment 1 was examined in experiment 2 by ecological design paradigm. Participants were instructed to call a person of high status(headmaster) and a person of low status(student). The dependent variables of experiment 2 was the change in body movement of participants. The same setting with experiment 1 was used in experiment 3, except the independent variables were the posture of kneeling or sitting comfortably and looking down or looking up. The dependent variables were scoring the status and acceptance of the interviewed person by a 6 point scale as experiment 1. Experiment 1 showed that keeping a contractive posture made participants judge the object higher status than participants sitting expansively. Experiment 2 found that compared with people of low social status, the curl degree of subjects’ body is bigger when they talk with high social status characters. Experiment 3 showed that participants who kept kneeling position scored the characters' social status higher than participants who kept sitting, participants who kept looking down accepted the character’s opinion more than the participants who kept looking up. The above to prove that the bidirectionality, mulriple metaphorical effect of humble postures and vertical space of Chinese ritual, but the coupling effect of humble postures and spatial metaphors worked independently. In Confucianism, Confucius established the traditional practice of kernel. The self–cultivation of practice of kernel which was constituted of ritual studies mainly focused on the transformation of body and mind. Ritual is a cognitive and behavioral model that make the conscience rooted in the body. At the same time, ritual constructed social ethics to civilize the body and mind of people of the whole society.

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