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Wishful thinking (WT) of Israeli voters was measured in the unprecedented event of three failing national elections repeated within one year. WT is considered as Type 1 fast/intuitive thinking leading to bias. A novel method for measuring WT – including relevant campaign information and distinguishing between "WT for self" and "WT for others" – was introduced. WT components of voters in leading and trailing camps were compared across the three elections to examine whether patterns would be consistent or haphazard. Despite the presumed uncontrolled nature of WT, the patterns were not haphazard but rather consistent. We also tried to debias WT by applying a novel variation of incentive intervention to shift respondents from fast thinking to slow, rational Type 2 thinking. Unlike past studies, the method was extremely effective in debiasing WT and leading to realistic predictions. However, this was true only for self-WT and not for WT for others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implicit and explicit norms in broadcasting require that interviewees be treated in a fair and objective manner and given an equal chance to express themselves, regardless of interviewers' personal liking or preference. Nonverbal behavior of seven Israeli televison interviewers was investigated to discover whether they treated politicians from opposing camps and other interviewees in a differential or fair manner. Very brief clips (averaging 7 seconds) showing the interviewer alone were judged by American students who had no comprehension of speech content. In Study 1, all six interviewers were found to demonstrate differential nonverbal behavior toward interviewees, and four of them treated Labor versus Likud camp politicians in a differential manner. A range of individual differences in effect magnitudes of the differential behavior effects was found. Study 2 focused on two lengthy parallel interviews conducted by a prominent interviewer during the 1996 election campaign with the two candidates for prime minister. The interviewer's nonverbal behavior was found to be blatantly preferential in favor of one candidate. Study 3 examined micro behaviors contributing to the formation of global negative/positive impressions. Correlational analyses yielded several global (presumably universal) mediators: smiling, rhythmical beating hand movements, leaning forward, sarcasm, and attempts to regulate the interviewee. Each interviewer was found to demonstrate a unique personal style in which different nonverbal behaviors mediated the overall impression. The tentative conclusion is that more dominant and aggressive interviewers show more differential/preferential behavior. Social and ethical implications, as well as implications for nonverbal research, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the detection of teacher expectancy effects from extremely brief samples of their nonverbal behavior. Four groups of judges, ranging from 10-year-old students to experienced teachers, rated 10-s samples of teacher behavior when the teachers were talking about and talking to a high-expectancy student and a low-expectancy student. Three types of clips were used for each condition: audio only, video only, and audio plus video. The study was focused exclusively on nonverbal communication: all comprehension of verbal content was eliminated, because the video-taped teachers spoke Hebrew, and the New Zealand judges spoke English. All groups of judges showed considerable detection from the “talking to student” clips, rating the (unseen) high-expectancy student as a better learner and as better liked by the teacher than the (also unseen) low-expectancy student. The judges based their guesses on teachers' facial expressions and body language. As hypothesized, no detection was made by the New Zealand judges in the “talking about student” condition, in which previous research with Israeli judges demonstrated students' sensitivity to subtle nuances of teachers' expectancy-related nonverbal behavior, supplementing earlier findings showing leakage of teachers' negative affect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wishful thinking (WT) is the link between preference (wish) and expectation (prediction). New Zealand voters (N = 605) were asked to predict election outcomes 8 to 10 weeks prior to the 1990 general election and to state their preference for one of the two major parties (Labour or National). Strong and consistent WT effects were found, with more favorable outcomes being predicted for the preferred party. Level of confidence in their prediction also contributed to anticipated election outcomes. A minority of respondents who displayed accurate information about the outcome of the previous election showed no WT effect in their predictions. An instruction to be objective, designed to increase rationality, was ineffective in reducing WT. Independent of preference and WT, predictions of nationwide election outcomes also varied as a function of electorate of residence. Mechanisms contributing to WT, adaptive and maladaptive aspects of WT, and the human capacity for rational control are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies Israeli voters' projection on the outcomes of the 1992 general election and their political preferences. Methodology; Findings.

The nonverbal reasoning performance of Israeli advantaged and disadvantaged (N = 952) children was measured in grades 2, 4, and 6. Measurement followed the "Learning Potential" (LP) paradigm, with its three stages: pretesting, coaching in relevant problem-solving strategies, and posttesting. All results were presented in raw scores, in an attempt to assess absolute performance levels, and to present differences in terms of time gaps. The results show that all groups benefitted substantially from training, but the improvement following training tended to decrease in the higher grades. In all grade levels, the disadvantaged children benefitted from the coaching more than the advantaged children. The performance time gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children was about two years, with a tendency to grow with increasing age. The contribution of the coaching session in terms of absolute performance was equivalent to about two years. Posttest distributions of raw scores revealed a growing tendency toward unimodality and decreased proportions of false negatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt was made to create the social satiation effect via vicarious learning. Second-grade boys and girls from middle class homes in a Jerusalem school observed other children being administered a short treatment in which the stimulus word Yafeh ("Good") was presented by E twice (low-satiation) or 20 times (high-satiation). Immediately thereafter, E administered to the observers a 75-trial binary discrimination task, to test the efficacy of the word Yafeh as a reinforcer. The control groups consisted of Ss treated and tested by the same E. A typical satiation effect (i.e., decreased performance of the group presented with 20 stimuli) was observed for the control groups, but no difference was found between groups of Ss observing the high- and low-satiation treatments. It was thus concluded that social satiation had not been learned vicariously. The posttreatment inquiry on the Ss who were observed by the experimental Ss revealed that these children were aware of the frequency of stimuli presented in the treatment. However, the cognitive mechanism hypothesized to mediate the social satiation effect—perceived lack of contingency—was not confirmed by their verbal reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social deprivation-satiation effect is interpreted in terms of the perceived contingencies of the S-E interaction and the attributions made by S on that basis. According to this interpretation, the children are satiated with E and not with the stimuli. It was predicted that satiation with social stimuli would affect to the same degree performance for social and nonsocial reinforcers. Middle-class second-grade boys and girls (N = 40) were subjected to a 10-minute satiation treatment, in which the stimulus word Yafeh (“Good” in Hebrew) was emitted by E two or 20 times. The treatment was followed by a 75-item binary discrimination task, in which correct responses were reinforced either with Yafeh or with a plastic token. A significant satiation effect was found for both social and nonsocial reinforcement. These results are in conflict with other studies reporting no social satiation effect for nonsocial reinforcement. In these studies the nonsocial reinforcement was not administered by E, but dispensed by a machine, while in the present study the nonsocial reinforcement was directly given by E. Thus, both sets of results confirm the suggested theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]