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The Effects of Visual and Auditory Dual-task on Multiple Object Tracking Performance: Interference or Promotion? WEI Liuqing;ZHANG Xuemin;LI Yongna;MA Yu 2014, 46 (6):  727-739.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2014.00727 Abstract ( 1511 )   Multiple Object Tracking (MOT) developed by Pylyshyn and Storm (1988) has been widely used in the study of capacity-limited and object-based attention. Many researchers interested in finding out whether or not the tracking processes in MOT occupy attentional resource and what type of resource is used. The typical paradigm used in this line of research is dual-task paradigm. Participants were asked to perform a visual or auditory task and the MOT task simultaneously. MOT performance was interfered by both the visual and the auditory task. However, the interference of visual task and auditory task with MOT occurred at different levels. The previous studies demonstrated that the MOT task and visual task occupy visual attention resources. Although the MOT task and auditory task don’t occupy visual attention resources, they share more central attention resources (such as executive function). Multiple Identity Tracking (MIT) is a variant of MOT, in which each object carries a unique identity. The previous studies also included both visual or auditory task and MIT task, but those studies have not examined how the visual/auditory task affects the MIT task when the two tasks shared the same properties. The current study included 3 experiments and aimed to investigate the influence of a visual or auditory task on either MOT or MIT task. The first two experiments manipulated participants’ eye movement to compare the different effects of visual task and auditory task on MOT performance. The result of experiment 1A showed that the auditory task interfered more with MOT than did the visual task when eyes were fixated at the center of the screen. However, the auditory task yielded less interference with MOT when there was no eye movement control in experiment 1B. The results indicated that the tracking processes in MOT not only occupy visual attention resources, but also occupy central attention resources (such as executive function). The experiment 2 applied visual and auditory digit judgment task and MIT task. When the object identity (marked by a digit) was identical to the number in the digit judgment, the MIT performance was facilitated by both the visual and auditory task. It is possible that the process of digit activated the target identities (the same digits) that was stored in visual working memory during tracking. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effects of Emotional Picture Cues on Directed Forgetting Using the Item Method: An ERPs Study at Encoding WANG Yingying;LIANG Jiuqing;GUO Chunyan 2014, 46 (6):  740-753.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2013.00740 Abstract ( 691 )   The ability to intentionally forget emotional irrelevant or unwanted materials is vital for memory function. The item method, which is the one of two main variants of directed forgetting paradigm, is the typical approach to exploring the mechanisms of intentional forgetting in the laboratory. When the item method was used, the predominant explanation of directed forgetting effects emphasizes selective encoding, while evidence supporting inhibition control during encoding and retrieval is also observed. ERPs studies on directed forgetting during encoding attempt to seek inhibition evidence and separate encoding effort from encoding success. Many studies have found that the to-be-forgotten cues elicited early enhanced positive waves in frontal and prefrontal areas, indicating strong activation of inhibitory processes. Meanwhile, intentional forgetting involves different brain areas compared with unintentional forgetting and intentional remember. Most of the researches on directed forgetting of emotional materials showed that emotional stimuli are exempt from forgetting or have a diminished directed forgetting effect when compared with neutral stimuli. Unlike previous studies on directed forgetting of emotional events with neutral symbols as cues (eg, “RRRR” as the to-be-remembered cue and “FFFF” as the to-be-forgotten cue), the current study used emotional pictures as cues to create two experiment manipulations. The first manipulation used positive pictures as the to-be-remembered cues and negative pictures as the to-be-forgotten cues; the second used negative pictures as the to-be-remembered cues and positive pictures as the to-be-forgotten cues. The purpose of the two manipulations is to examine the electrophysiological correlates of the intentional forgetting of neutral nouns using the item-method directed forgetting paradigm. Twenty female undergraduate students participated in the experiment. During study phase, participants were instructed to remember half of a series of presented words (TBR) and to forget the other half (TBF) according the emotional picture cues. During test phase, they pressed one of the mouse buttons to indicate whether the word was presented at study phase or not. We used the behavioral recognition data to sort ERPs time-locked to the picture-cues into 4 conditions based on the combination of memory instruction and behavioral outcome: RR (TBR_hit), RF (TBR_miss), FR (TBF_hit) and FF (TBF_miss), to investigate the emotional effects on the 4 experimental conditions and the processes underlying successful implementations of intentions to forget (i.e., RF vs. FF ) and intentions to remember (i.e., RR vs. FR). Directed forgetting, that is reduced recognition of to-be-forgotten words, occurred for both positive picture as cues and negative conditions. At 350~600ms, it was found that positive picture as to-be-remembered cues elicited a more positive wave than negative ones (under the ‘RR’ and the ‘RF’ condition) in the middle frontal and central areas which are involved in the evaluation of the emotional valence of stimuli, and this result could reflect a preference toward pleasant pictures. But ERP amplitudes were larger for negative pictures compared to positive ones under the ‘FF’ condition in the left parietal region, which suggests weaker inhibition for the item under the condition of negative pictures as ‘FF’ cues. There were no significant differences between the positive and negative pictures under the ‘FR’ condition. Moreover, when the positive pictures are as cues, there were significant differences between the intentional and unintentional remember conditions (‘RR’ vs. ‘FR’) and between the intentional and unintentional forget conditions (‘RF’ vs. ‘FF), whereas when the negative pictures are as cues, no such comparisons were observed to be significant. Our results show that flexible control of memory may be effective even in conditions in which negative pictures were used as cues, although it requires more effort than that in conditions using positive pictures as cues. Moreover, positive emotion is more effective as to-be-forgotten cues. Related Articles | Metrics

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Dominant Units of Idioms Processing: Evidence from Word Segmentation MA Lijun;ZHANG Jijia 2014, 46 (6):  754-764.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2014.00754 Abstract ( 610 )   Idiomatic language is special in the way of understanding its meaning. The entire meaning of an idiomatic phrase is commonly different from a simple combination of the meaning of its constituents, because the entire meaning of an idiomatic phrase arises from but means more than the literal meaning. Idioms were traditionally viewed as separate lexical units; later on, however, Gibbs and Nayak (1989) proved that individual word also actively contributed to the processing of the whole idioms. Models of idioms comprehension differ in their predictions concerning compositionality: some claimed that idiomatic meaning was the result of compositional analysis initiated at the earliest stage of comprehension, whereas others claimed that compositional analysis occurred only at late stage of comprehension process, subsequent to direct retrieval. Since there is space between words in written English, could there be the possibility that the morpheme segmentation affects the processing of idioms? Existed evidence showed that morpheme segmentation played a role in reading Chinese sentences and passages; we are interested in investigating what role does morpheme segmentation play in understanding Chinese idioms. The morpheme segmentation research paradigm was used in the present research to explore the dominant units within idioms comprehension processing. The results showed that: morpheme segmentation produced various influences on idioms with different semantic decomposabilities. Within the space segmentation format, morpheme segmentation as well as non-morpheme segmentation inhibited the access to adverb-verb structure idioms with high semantic decomposability, but the inhibition was not found in those idioms with low semantic decomposability. We also observed the decrease of reaction accuracy on idioms with high semantic decomposability, which was possibly reduced from segmentation. Within the shadow segmentation format, non-morpheme segmentation inhibited the access to adverb-verb structure idioms with high semantic decomposability, but not to adverb-verb structure idioms with low semantic decomposability. The present research showed that morpheme and whole idiom co-existed in understanding Chinese adverb-verb idioms, but whole idiom manifested large priority in this process. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Masked Translation Effect with Homograph and Non-homograph in Non-proficient Chinese-Japanese Bilinguals WANG Yue;ZHANG Jijia 2014, 46 (6):  765-776.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2014.00765 Abstract ( 843 )   More and more researchers have involved in how bilinguals represent two languages. They use cross-language priming paradigm and reach an agreement that the lexical of two languages stored separately but the semantic stored together. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of priming paradigm in previous research was so long that the subjects could response in conscious. It is difficult to avoid the strategy in process.In addition,the relation of bilinguals’ two languages modulates the priming effect.For example, if the prime and target in translation pairs share some phone or morphology,then the subjects will response more quickly. In order to shed light on these questions, masked priming paradigm was involved in the present study to investigate the effects of cross-language masked translation with Chinese-Japanese homographs and non-homographs. In experiment 1 and 2, participants were instructed to fulfill the lexical decision task and the results showed significant cross-language masked translation effects with both Chinese-Japanese homographs (Exp 1) and non-homographs (Exp 2). In Experiment 1, priming words always facilitated the lexical decision task no matter whether priming items were Chinese words or Japanese words, whereas in Experiment 2, Chinese priming items caused much facilitation. In Experiment 3 and 4, semantic classification task was chosen to check whether task type affected the results. Effects of cross–language masked translation were again found with both Chinese-Japanese homographs and non-homographs. Moreover, such effects were not influenced by the type of priming items (i.e. Chinese or Japanese). Since Chinese and Japanese are both non-alphabetic language, recent results firstly indicates that the script-dependent effect may be involved in the masked translation priming effect in this study. In general, priming effects are found when Chinese and Japanese are homographs, no matter whether the priming items are Chinese or Japanese; by contrast, when Chinese and Japanese are non-homographs, an asymmetrical priming effect occurs. Such an asymmetrical priming effect is influenced by the tasks. The consequence illustrates that, priming effect is more significant when Japanese are primed by Chinese than reverse with lexical decision task. However, in semantic classification task, there is symmetrical priming effect in both directions. The Sense modal prefers a representational symmetry between L1and L 2 at the semantic level when the task requirement is involved the shared meaning. Based on RHM and the Sense modal, a Chinese-Japanese bilingual mix model is proposed according to the morphology and task. That is, there is a strong connection between Chinese and Japanese when they are homographs, and the strengths of their connections to the concepts are similar, either. By contrast, Japanese and the concepts are more complicated when Chinese and Japanese are non-homographs: Strong connection occurs only between Chinese and the concepts, meanwhile week connection occurs between Japanese and Chinese, as well as between Japanese and the concepts. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Priming Effects of Red and Blue on the Emotion of Chinese WANG Tingting;WANG Ruiming;WANG Jing;WU Xiaowen;MO Lei;YANG Li 2014, 46 (6):  777-790.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2014.00777 Abstract ( 2841 )   Color plays a key role in influencing the minds and behaviours of both animals and humans. A large amount of research has been done to investigate the effects of color on emotion, and most has focused on red and blue. Previous studies showed that, on the arousal dimension, red was more arousing than blue; while on the dominance dimension, red could enhance more dominance than blue. However, on the pleasure dimension, the results were very conflicting. According to the color theorists and the study of Mehta and Zhu (2009), the conflicting in early studies might due to the cultural difference, which is an important environment factor for people to form color-emotion learned associations during experiences. To further investigate this question, current study mainly focused on two questions: 1) whether red and blue has different influence on Chinese’s emotion? 2) Whether the effects of color perception and color concept on emotion were consistent? Three experiments were performed to examine the effects of red and blue on the emotion of Chinese. About thirty undergraduates were selected to participate in each experiment. Experiment 1 explored the emotional meaning of red and blue with an explicit color association test. Participants were asked to write down five emotion words when they saw the colored square or color words (‘red’ or ‘blue’). Experiment 2 and 3 explored the priming effect of red and blue with an implicit priming paradigm. Experiment 2 examined the different effects of red and blue on emotion at the perception level. Experiment 3 examined the different effects of red and blue on emotion at the concept level. Experiment 1 showed that in the four conditions, participants could induce both positive and negative emotional associations. However, the negative emotional associations were induced much less in the conditions of blue perception and red concept than in the conditions of red perception and blue concept. Experiment 2 showed that red perception induced high arousal, high dominance, high pleasure and low pleasure emotion; while blue perception induced low arousal, low dominance, and high pleasure emotion. Experiment 3 showed that red concept induced high arousal, high dominance, and high pleasure emotion; while blue concept induced low arousal, low dominance, high pleasure and low pleasure emotion. The effects of red and blue concept were consistent with the effects of perception on arousal and dominance, but inconsistent with the effects of perception on pleasure. The present findings revealed that for Chinese, red perception could induce high arousal, high dominance, high pleasure and low pleasure emotion, whereas blue perception induced low arousal, low dominance, and high pleasure emotion; red concept could induce high arousal, high dominance, and high pleasure emotion, whereas blue concept could induce low arousal, low dominance, high pleasure and low pleasure emotion. The effects of color perception and color concept were consistent in arousal and dominance, but inconsistent in valence. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Developmental and Interventional Research on Lower Graders' Concept of Equivalent Fraction XIN Ziqiang;HAN Yulei 2014, 46 (6):  791-806.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2014.00791 Abstract ( 953 )   Equivalent fractions are fractions with the same numerical value, and the concept of which is built on the development of the relative-amount concept and multiplicative thinking. Previous studies have found that young children can solve non-symbolic equivalent fraction problems in an intuitive, global way, yet they often incorrectly make absolute-value judgments on problems involving discrete quantities. Boyer et al’s (2008) study suggested that it was due to an overextension of numerical equivalence concepts to proportional equivalence problems, but they did not make further analysis on the qualitative differences of concepts on equivalent fractions at lower grades of elementary school, nor did they explore the development process of the concept, while it is of great significance for guiding the early mathematical instruction. Our study examined first- through third-grade students’ operative thinking levels, and summarized the developmental pattern of the concept. Moreover, based on the principle of the zone of proximal development, two interventional experiments were carried out to improve first- and second-graders’ conceptual levels of equivalent fraction. Study 1 examined the operative thinking levels of first- through third-graders by employing the orange juice concentration matching task and analyzing their accurate rates and strategies in continuous, discrete and blended conditions, and on these grounds, we proposed a three-stage model for the development of equivalent fraction concept: the first stage is named the global-quantity concept, the second stage is the quantitative relative-amount concept, and the third stage is the formal concept of equivalent fraction. First-grade children, in the transitional period between the first to the second stage, have not yet formed the stable relative-amount concept; Second-grade children, in the transitional period between the second to the third stage, have developed a more mature relative-amount concept, but their multiplicative thinking has not yet developed. Study 2 verified the effectiveness of using children’s success on proportional problems involving continuous amounts to scaffold their performance on proportional problems involving discrete sets, which promoted the development of first-graders’ quantitative relative-amount concept. Study 3 brought the corresponding multiple-relationship between two dimensions in a certain situation to children’s attention, which improved second-graders’ levels of multiplicative thinking. In conclusion, this study proposed a three-stage model of the development of equivalent fraction concept, and further verified the model by two interventional experiments. The results proved the effectiveness of promoting first-graders’ quantitative relative-amount concept by using the intuitive global-quantity concept, as well as the significance of improving second-graders’ levels of multiplicative thinking by bringing the corresponding multiple-relationship between two dimensions to children’s attention. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Relationships between University Student’s Employability with Subjective and Objective Job-search Performance：Liner and Invert-U Relationships YU Haibo;ZHENG Xiaoming;XU Chunyan;YAN Changli 2014, 46 (6):  807-822.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2013.00807 Abstract ( 1611 )   The employment issue of university students is one of the most critical questions in China. Employability of university students is a decisive factor in their employment. The focus of studies on employability has changed from individuals with disabilities to common people. However, most prior studies on Chinese university students have focused on the effect of the ability factors on employability, but neglected other important factors. The research has two studies. The first one is to explore the construct of university student’s employability model. The research methods adopted in the first study include a literature review, interview, pilot study, and survey. Based on the literature review and a pilot study, the items of university student’s employability were explored. The survey data were from 1190 university students in 10 universities of different kinds from different districts in China. The survey data were used to conduct the exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The results showed that employability of Chinese university students was a multi-dimensional construct, which is comprised of 8 factors: interpersonal relationship, team cooperation, learning, resolving problems, social support, network difference, optimistic and open, and career identification. USEQ (University Student’s Employability Questionnaire) had high validity and reliability. The second study is to examine the effectiveness of university student’s employability on their subjective and objective (quantity of job offers) job-search performance. The survey data were 530 questionnaires from university students and their classmates/teachers of 12 Chinese universities. Hierarchical aggression analysis (HAR) was done between university student’s employability (Time 1) and objective job-search performance (Time 2: two weeks after the Time 1) and classmate/teacher-rated job-search performance. The results of the second study showed that university student’s employability was significantly and positively correlated with subjective job-research performance, however there was a invert-U relationship between university student’s employability and offers (objective). And the results also showed that career exploration is moderating the relationship between university student’s employability and offers. This means that the invert-U relationship between employability and offers was significant for high level of career exploration, but not significant for low level of career exploration. But career exploration was not found to moderate the relationship between employability and subjective job-search performance. At last, native place was found to moderate the relationship between employability and subjective job-search performance; that is to say, the relationship between employability and subjective job-search performance was significant for university students from the countryside, but not for the university students from city area. And native place was a moderator in the invert-U relationship between university student’s employability and offers. This means that the invert-U relationship between employability and offers was significant for the city university students, but not for the countryside university students. In the future, the construct model of Chinese university’s employability could be tested in the universities of different style, and by such research methods as a longitudinal research design or case study. And the dynamic relationship model between university student’s employability and employment success could be constructed and tested according to the attribute theory or personal capital theory. And the different moderating and mediating influence mechanisms need to be explored in the relationships between university students’ employability and objective and subjective employment performance according to the career information process theory and resource conservation theory to better cast light on the complex mechanisms of university student’s employability by organizations and labor. Related Articles | Metrics

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Work Values of Chinese Millennial Generation: Structure, Measurement and Effects on Employee Performance HOU Xuanfang;LI Yanping;TU Yidong 2014, 46 (6):  823-840.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2014.00823 Abstract ( 1951 )   The management of Chinese millennial generation has been a huge challenge for organization, how to manage them base on their work values has great significance. However, there were no studies explored the work values of Chinese millennial generation with scientific method. To improve the management effectiveness, the present study explores the structure and measurement of work values of Chinese millennial generation and examines effects work values on employee performance. Study one explored the content of work values of Chinese millennial generation with 183 open questionnaires, after the scientific process for item collection, 26 items in five specific categories were collected. Base on 502 employee questionnaires, study two examined the structure of work values of Chinese millennial generation with exploration factor analysis (EFA), confirmation factor analysis (CFA) and reliability analysis, and the results showed that the measurement of work values of Chinese millennial generation contain twenty items in five dimensions. Using 208 matched questionnaires, study three explored the content validity, structure validity, discrimination validity and predictive validity of the measurement, moreover, with the multi-source and longitudinal data, study three examined the effects work values of Chinese millennial generation on employee in-role and extra-role performance. The results indicated that the work values of millennial generation are a second-order structure, which include utilitarian orientation, intrinsic preference, interpersonal harmony, innovative orientation, and long-term development. The five-dimension measurement had good reliability and validity in scientific research. Furthermore, the work values of millennial generation had positive effects on the employee in-role and extra-role performance. This study is the first research to explore the structure and measurement of work values of millennial generation as well as their effects on employee performance in the Chinese context with scientific and rigorous method. It is valuable for managers to understand the work values of new generation and improve their management base on their work values. The implication, limitation and further research direction of the study were highlighted as well. Related Articles | Metrics

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Can Good People Commit Evil Acts? Evidence of Ego-depletion on Individuals’ Altruistic Behavior REN Jun;LI Ruixue;ZHAN Jun;LIU Di;LIN Man;PENG Nianqiang 2014, 46 (6):  841-851.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2014.00841 Abstract ( 2481 )   Why do good people commit evil acts？The present study tests the evidence of ego-deletion on individuals’ altruistic behavior. Self-regulation is particularly useful for overcoming socially undesirable impulses so as to behave in ways (such as sharing to others) that are consistent with social and personal ideals. In this article, we suggest that people may overcome a natural impulse toward selfishness and self-interest when sharing with others, and, to overcome this impulse may require advanced psychological processes, such as self-control. According to the Theory of Limited Self-control Resource, the resource for self-control is limited. When self-control resource is over consumed, ego-depletion will be initiated, which can adversely affect the individuals’ performance in the self-regulation. Our hypothesis, therefore, is that sharing can depend on self-regulation, which refers to the capacity to alter the self and its responses to bring them in line with various standards, such as goals and ideals. Two experiments were used to examine the impact of ego-depletion on individuals’ decision making in a dictator game, and to observe what would happen to ego-depleted people if they were induced by fairness or selfishness induction. In Experiment 1, subjects were manipulated into ego-depletion or non-ego-depletion and were tested how abundant or deficient self-control resources would influence their altruistic behavior. Experiment 2 was conducted to evaluate the subjects’ reaction to fairness or selfishness cognition priming when they were exhausted. In addition, all the participants had the power to allocate scarce resources between themselves and others in the dictator game, which measured the altruistic level of allocators. Participants showed less altruistic behavior when they were ego-depleted than when they were not ego-depleted. This confirmed the explanatory power of Self-control Theory where controlled processes impact the subjects’ altruistic tendency. On the other hand, priming the cognition of social norms such as fairness might remit the after-effect of ego-depletion on subjects’ altruistic behavior, while the subjects who were induced by selfishness did not display difference contrast to subjects of non-cognitive priming. The implications of the findings for everyday interpersonal decisions were considered. The results from these two experiments: 1) suggested that ego-depletion made individuals more likely to act selfishly if the individuals did not have the executive resources to identify moral issues in the situation and 2) tested that priming the cognition of social norms such as fairness might remit the after-effect of ego-depletion on subjects’ altruistic behavior. Moreover, the fairness induction might not only save the self-control resources of individuals to balance gain and loss but also propel individuals to be concerned with external social fairness norms. It is worth noting that the remission of fairness priming about ego-depletion effect on altruistic behavior was limited. Remission maintained the individuals’ decision-making as a fair type of altruistic behavior. Future research on altruistic behavior using the dictator task should evaluate the effects of personal variables. Related Articles | Metrics

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A Longitudinal Study on the Impact Mechanism of Employees’ Boundary Spanning Behavior: Roles of Centrality and Collectivism LIU Songbo;LI Yuhui 2014, 46 (6):  852-863.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2014.00852 Abstract ( 782 )   Currently boundary spanning behavior is a hot topic in team research field, which involves phenomena at two levels (team level and individual level). Compared to team level, employee’s boundary spanning has not been well discussed yet. In addition, few studies have systematically explored its outcomes and impact mechanism in Chinese context. This study aimed to address the above gaps by examining whether, when and how employee’s boundary spanning behavior impacted his or her task performance. Specifically, integrating culture and social network theory into boundary spanning field, this study theorized that boundary spanning behavior led to centrality of the employee’s social network, and in turn enhance his or her task behavior. At the same time, team’s collectivism climate moderated the above path. The participants were recruited from 17 companies in two high-tech parks located in Beijing and Tianjin, China. We invited 135 team leaders and their subordinates to participate the survey, after collecting 2 wave longitudinal data sets and dropping out invalid questionnaires, responses from 61 team leaders and 292 team members were valid finally. To get enough whole network data, we purposely chose teams with small size. All measurements were (or adapted from) well-established scales. Employee’s boundary spanning behavior, centrality, and collectivism were collected at time 1, and after 8 weeks, employees’ task performance was collected at time 2. Confirmatory factor analyses showed satisfactory model fit indices. Inter-rated agreement (Rwg) and intra-class correlation (ICC) value justified the aggregation of team collectivism climate. HLM were applied to test our hypotheses since this is a cross-level research. Variables like age, education, gender, tenure and collectivism orientation at individual level, and team size at group level were controlled for. The results showed that centrality of the social network positively mediated the relation between employees’ boundary spanning behavior and his or her task performance. The climate of team collectivism positively moderated the relation between employees’ boundary spanning behavior and network centrality. In addition, network centrality mediated the interaction between boundary spanning behavior and team collectivism climate on employee’s task performance such that the relation between boundary spanning behavior and task performance via network centrality will be stronger for teams higher on collectivism climate than for those lower on collectivism. This study revealed that employee’s boundary spanning behavior had positive influence on task performance and confirmed the mechanism between the two constructs. Interestingly, we found collectivism at individual level and at team level had different effects for the effect of boundary spanning behavior, which revealed that in transformational Chinese context, cultural elements at micro levels were worthy of discussing. The finding of mediating mechanism of centrality established a logic chain of “external relationship – internal embeddedness - performance”, helping in explaining the formation of performance and social network in teams. Managerial implications, limitations and future directions were discussed at the end. Related Articles | Metrics

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Can Brand Commitment Resist Negative Publicity? —— the Moderate Effect of Regulatory Focus TIAN Yang;WANG Haizhong;LIU Wumei;HE Liu;HUANG Yunhui 2014, 46 (6):  864-875.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2014.00864 Abstract ( 1044 )   In previous research, brand commitment is regarded as the key factor for consumers to resist negative publicity, scholars generally agree that consumers who have high brand commitment are less likely to change their brand attitudes when they are exposed to the brand’s negative publicity. But this is not always the case, evidence shows that some of the high commitment consumers also lower their brand attitudes and even drop their purchasing behavior when facing the brand’s negative publicity. Thus, It is reasonable to infer that the effect of brand commitment on consumers’ responses to negative publicity could be dependent on certain conditions instead of linear. Based on the regulatory focus theory, this study examines whether regulatory focus can moderate the high commitment consumers’ resistance to the negative publicity. Two studies were conducted to test the hypotheses that when consumers in prevention focus, no matter how high their brand commitment was, their brand attitudes would be lowered by the negative publicity; While when consumers in promotion focus, the low commitment consumers’ attitudes would be lowered and the high commitment consumers’ attitudes would remain the same. In study 1, a 2 (regulatory focus: prevention vs. promotion) × 2 (brand scandal: yes vs. no) between-subjects experiment was adopted. Firstly, Participants were required to see the target brand CANON’s LOGO and introduction, reported their brand commitment and familiarity. Then, there regulatory focus were manipulated by using Lee, Keller and Sternthal (2010)’s method; Thirdly, participants in the scandal group were exposed to Canon’s negative publicity regarding its poor quality, and then reported their brand attitudes, involvements, etc, While participants in the control group reported their brand attitudes and involvements without being exposed to the negative publicity. Two–way ANOVA analysis on brand attitudes found a significant interaction between the brand commitment and regulatory focus, and simple effect analysis indicated that when consumers’ prevention focus salient, the brand attitudes of participants with both high commitment and low commitment were lowered by the negative publicity; However, when the promotion focus salient, the low commitment consumers’ attitude was lowered but the high commitment consumers’ attitude did not change. In study 2, we re-tested the hypothesis by using a 2 (brand commitment: high vs. low) × 2 (regulatory focus: prevention vs. promotion) × 2 (brand scandal: yes vs. no) between-subjects experiment. We used KFC as the high commitment brand and DICOS as the low commitment brand, adopted the “Dream and Duty” method to manipulate the regulatory focus. To explore the underlying mechanisms of the phenomenon reported by study 1, we tested the participants’ accuracy motivation and defense motivation. The results supported our hypothesis, and what’ more, we found that when consumers in prevention focus, the accuracy motivation was dominated no matter the brand commitment was; when consumers in promotion focus, the high commitment people was dominated by defense motivation and the low commitment people was dominated by accuracy motivation. This study investigated the regulatory focus’ moderate effect to the brand commitment’s resistance mechanism to the negative publicity, which is a breakthrough of the classical conclusion. It provides a better understanding about people’s reaction to brands’ negative publicity, which may benefit future research on consumers’ commitment and regulatory focus. Furthermore, it also provides practical implications on companies’ brand crisis management. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Optimal Size of Material in Psychological Experiment: The Applications of Multivariate Generalizability Theory LUO Zhaosheng;GUO Xiaojun 2014, 46 (6):  876-884.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2014.00876 Abstract ( 789 )   The validity and reliability must be guaranteed to any psychological experiment. The size of experiment material is a critical factor that will significantly affect the results of experiment. This paper aims to study the selection of optimal size of the psychological experiment material under the frame of multivariate generalizability theory. The results show that, with the IAT experiment, 50 will be the optimal size of each combined tasks, and the reliability will be 0.905; with the Picture-word Interference Paradigm, when the material size is about 48, the reliability will be 0.954; with the Cue Paradigm, when the number of valid cue is 50%, the optimum size of valid cue and invalid cue is about 35, and the reliability will be 0.973. This study shows that MGT can help us to select an optimal size of the psychological experiment material. Related Articles | Metrics