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The terms left and right can refer to spatial or political orientations. We hypothesized that a match (vs. mismatch) of spatial position and political orientation would lead to more positive political judgments. In three experiments, German participants (total N = 517) evaluated statements from the political left-wing and right-wing spectrums as well as German political parties presented either on the left or on the right side of their screens. When statements were presented on the left, politically left statements as well as left-wing parties were evaluated more favorably than when these statements were presented on the right. Conversely, politically right statements and right-wing parties were evaluated more favorably when the statements were presented on the right versus left side of the screen. Cultural conservatism, need for cognitive closure, and openness to experience were assessed but did not mediate these effects. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of the results.

Field experiments on descriptive norms as a means to increase hotel guests' towel reuse [1] were replicated and extended. In two hotels in Germany (Study 1: N = 724; Study 2: N = 204), descriptive norm messages suggesting that 75% of guests had reused their towels, or a standard message appealing to environmental concerns, were placed in guests' bathrooms. Descriptive norm messages varied in terms of proximity of the reference group ("hotel guests" vs. "guests in this room") and temporal proximity (currently vs. two years previous). Reuse of towels was unobtrusively recorded. Results showed that reuse rates were high overall and that both standard and descriptive norm messages increased reuse rates compared to a no-message baseline. However, descriptive norm messages were not more effective than the standard message, and effects of proximity were inconsistent across studies. Discussion addresses cultural and conceptual issues in comparing the present findings with previous ones.

The hypothesis that the passive voice is used to put the actor in the background and the acted-upon person in the focus of discourse is tested in the realm of sexual violence. German university students (N = 67) watched a silent video segment depicting a rape whose circumstances, depending on condition, could or could not be easily interpreted in terms of rape myths. Then they wrote down what they had seen, judged the responsibility of assailant and victim, and completed a rape-myth acceptance scale. Participants used the passive voice more frequently to describe the rape itself vs. other actions they had watched. When circumstances of the rape were easily interpretable in terms of rape myths, use of the passive voice correlated positively with rape-myth acceptance and perceived responsibility of the victim, and negatively with perceived responsibility of the assailant. The language of headlines that participants generated for their reports also reflected judgments of assailant and victim responsibility. Implications for the non-reactive assessment of responsibility attributions and directions for future research are discussed.

When people estimate a numeric value after judging whether it is larger or smaller than a high or low anchor value (comparative question), estimates are biased in the direction of the anchor. One explanation for this anchoring effect is that people selectively access knowledge consistent with the anchor value as part of a positive test strategy. Two studies (total N = 184) supported the alternative explanation that people access knowledge consistent with their own answer to the comparative question. Specifically, anchoring effects emerged when the answer to the comparative question was unexpected (lower than the low anchor or higher than the high anchor). For expected answers (lower than the high anchor or higher than the low anchor), however, anchoring effects were attenuated or reversed. The anchor value itself was almost never reported as an absolute estimate.

In a complex world a quick evaluation of objects and situations is very helpful. It can guide our attention and behavior toward the things that matter to us. Attitudes are such evaluations. They can refer to anything one can conceive of: individuals and groups, products, music, or even smells, as well as suggestions and ideas. For example, when we meet someone new, we form an attitude toward our new acquaintance within seconds. Often, we do not know where this affective reaction comes from.

Two experiments ( N = 330) examined conditions that facilitate biasing effects of rape myth acceptance (RMA) on judgments of blame in rape cases. In both experiments, participants read a short vignette depicting a rape case. In Experiment 1, the amount of case-irrelevant information about defendant and plaintiff was varied. As predicted, high-RMA (vs. low-RMA) participants were less likely to blame the defendant the more irrelevant information they had read. In Experiment 2, participants in a social judgeability condition were made to believe that they had been subliminally exposed to additional case information although in fact no additional information had been presented. As predicted, compared to a control condition, participants’ blame judgments were more biased by their RMA under social judgeability. Our findings reveal that the mechanism underlying the biasing effects of RMA may be the subjective feeling of entitlement to judge.

A year ago, my co-editors and I welcomed readers to the newly established journal, Social Psychology. Drawing on the 38-year experience of the preceding German-language version of the journal, the Zeitschrift fur Sozialpsychologie, our aim was to continue publishing innovative, first-rate psychological science that would now be accessible to a wider, international audience. We invited authors to submit papers from all areas of social psychology, and we promised to aim for a fast turn-around time of generally no more than 8 weeks. Now that our first year has been successfully completed, it is time to evaluate our goals and take stock of how the journal has developed. At the time of my writing this editorial (October 2008), the Social Psychology team has handled 92 regular submissions – in addition to the several dozen contributions to special issues handled by guest editors. We have observed a clear increase in the submission rate: During the 1-year period from October 2007 to September 2008, the journal received more than twice as many submissions as in the final years of the Zeitschrift fur Sozialpsychologie. If the submission rate continues to develop at a steady pace, we expect to receive more than 100 manuscripts in the year 2009. We are proud to note that – despite this increase in the amount of work – we have been able to keep our promise of a quick turnaround time. On average, authors did receive a first decision within 8 weeks. We are indebted to all colleagues who served as reviewers and helped us to maintain our high standard by providing very valuable and timely comments. That we have truly made the transition to an international journal can be gleaned from the countries of origin of first authors, as summarized in Table 1. Although a substantial proportion of submissions still come from German-speaking countries, the highest number of first authors now come from the United States, and colleagues from many other countries have also sent us their contributions. In accordance with our initial goals as well in the tradition of the Zeitschrift fur Sozialpsychologie, the topics of published articles covered a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches. In a theoretical essay, Wicklund and Rise (2008) discussed the concept of symbolic contributions to society, outlining a theory that draws on Lewinian thought and work on symbolic self-completion. Other articles in last year’s two regular issues reported empirical work on research areas including the self-concept (van Horen, Pohlmann, Koeppen, & Hannover, 2008), the perception of groups (van den Bos & Stapel, 2008) and individuals (Siebler, 2008), linguistic influences on social judgment (Gabriel, 2008), social influence and persuasion (Bohner, Dykema-Engblade, Tindale, & Meisenhelder, 2008), as well as the interplay of situational and individual difference variables – relationship contingency; belief in a just world; shyness – as predictors of self-related affect (Sanchez, Good, Kwang, & Saltzman, 2008), coping with threat (Ijzerman & van Prooijen, 2008), and media preferences (Hertel, Schroer, Batinic, & Naumann, 2008). Moreover, the 2008 volume contained two special issues. The journal was launched with a special issue on “Social Psychology and Peace,” co-edited by Christopher Cohrs and Klaus Boehnke (2008). This issue featured review articles on the contribution of social psychology to peace research (Vollhardt & Bilali, 2008) and on the role of mortality salience in the peace process (Niesta, Fritsche, & Jonas, 2008). It also contained several empirical reports, including work on the justification of war and terrorism (Halverscheid & Witte, 2008) and on the effectiveness of human rights education (Stellmacher & Sommer, 2008), to highlight just two contributions. We are confident that this issue stimulated social psychologists’ interest in this important area. With the other special issue we commemorated a historic date: the 50th anniversary of attribution research, which started with Fritz Heider’s seminal work The Psychology of Interper

Social Psychology continues on its successful course, as witnessed by a number of indicators. The submission rate has increased to more than 20 manuscripts per quarter, so we are likely to just about reach the mark of 100 for 2009, as I had predicted in the Editorial to issue 1 of the current volume. There is wide variability in first authors’ countries of origin, with submissions received in 2009 to date originating from 16 different countries, which attests to the journal’s international character. Given this positive trend in regular submissions, we will reduce the number of special issues to approximately one per year in the long run. This should ensure that the time between acceptance and publication of an article will usually be less than 8 months. Impact factor and other citation statistics for 2008 have now been published by Journal Citation Reports®. The data show that articles that appeared in Social Psychology in 2008 were cited by other journals six times within the same year. Among the citing journals are leading outlets such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2 citations) and Psychological Review. Because of the recent change in the journal’s title, there is no impact factor for Social Psychology as such yet, as its computation would involve citations of articles that appeared in 2006 and 2007 (when the journal did not yet exist under that name). However, the impact factor for the journal’s German-language predecessor, Zeitschrift fur Sozialpsychologie, is reported as 0.432. After 0.400 in 2007, the current figure is again higher than the impact factors of previous years. Readers visiting the journal’s Internet site will have noticed that Social Psychology now offers its authors the option of publishing articles as open access papers, under an initiative named Hogrefe OpenMind. This option involves a fee to be paid by the author (or the author’s institution or funding agency), which ensures that an electronic version of the article is accessible to everyone free of charge. Details on Hogrefe OpenMind can be found on the Internet (www.hogrefe.com/openmind) and in a publisher’s message in the final pages of this issue. For the editorial team, it is important to note that authors’ decisions about which publishing option they choose – open access or traditional, subscription-based access – will be made only after a manuscript has been accepted for publication. So all articles will continue to be treated the same, will be peer-reviewed, professionally produced, and published in both print and electronic form.

Publisher Summary This chapter outlines different mediating processes that are consistent with the current theory on the interplay of emotion and cognition, and evaluates these assumptions in the light of the available evidence. According to the “Cognitive response” approach, recipients of a persuasive communication may arrive at an attitude judgment by one of the two ways, and may consider the content of the message, paying close attention to the implications of the presented arguments. The recipients may not engage in a thorough consideration of message content, but may rely on simple cues, such as the communicator's prestige or likableness. For the content-oriented, processing strategy is “systematic processing” or the “central route to persuasion”. Current theorizing on the interplay of affect and cognition suggests at least five ways in which the recipients' mood may influence persuasion processes within this general framework. Each of these possibilities has different implications for recipients' attitude change, their cognitive responses to the message, and their evaluation of the presented arguments.

'Ein Fragebogen zur Erfassung individueller Differenzen im Engagement und der Freude bei Denkaufgaben wird vorgestellt. Die Skala stellt eine Übersetzung der 'Need for Cognition' (NFC)-Skala dar, die von Cacioppo & Petty (1982) für den anglo-amerikanischen Sprachbereich entwickelt wurde. Die deutsche Version der NFC-Skala erlaubt eine ökonomische Durchführung und weist gute Skalenkennwerte auf. Im Zuge des verstärkten Interesses an kognitiven Prozessen bietet sie die Möglichkeit, neben situativ bedingten auch dispositional bedingte Variationen in der Intensität der kognitiven Verarbeitung und deren Auswirkungen auf soziales Urteilen und Verhalten zu untersuchen.' (Autorenreferat)

Welcome to Social Psychology! My co-editors and I are delighted to present the first issue of a new international journal dedicated to research in social psychology, providing a forum for scientific discussion and debate. Up to volume 38 (2007), Social Psychology was published as the Zeitschrift fur Sozialpsychologie. The journal thus builds on a tradition of almost 40 years of publishing high-quality, innovative psychological science. Like its predecessor, the new journal welcomes empirical and theoretical contributions to basic research in social psychology, to methodology and philosophy of science related to social psychology, as well as contributions covering research in any area of applied social psychology. Because many topics in social psychology are intricately linked to other scientific disciplines, the journal is also open to contributions with an interdisciplinary focus. There will be four issues per year. Authors are invited to submit papers (in English) either as full-length articles (with a maximum length of 6,000 words) or as brief research reports (with a maximum length of 2,500 words). All contributions will be submitted to a rigorous, rapid, and transparent peer-review process. Within the journal’s broad thematic range, scientific excellence will be the main criterion for publication. Working with an international team of editors and consulting editors from all areas of basic and applied social psychology, we ensure that the highest standards are maintained. Social Psychology aims for a fast turn-around time. The time between manuscript submission and a first editorial decision will typically be less than 8 weeks. We also strive for a short time-lag between the acceptance of a paper and its publication. Social Psychology will continue to publish special issues that are guest-edited by experts in a given thematic field. We are thus glad to launch the journal with a special issue on “Social Psychology and Peace” edited by J. Christopher Cohrs and Klaus Boehnke.

Dieser technische Bericht beschäftigt sich mit Fortschritten in der experimentellen Sozialpsychologie. Es werden die verschiedenen Stimmungen und Emotionen von Informationsprozessen angesprochen. Dabei werden Überredungs- bzw. Überzeugungsstrategien bei Berücksichtigung vom Aspekt der Stimmung besonders untersucht. So zum Beispiel auch die Stimmung, wenn ein Urteil, eine Entscheidung gefällt wird. (US)

Die Studie erforscht die Wirkung unterschiedlicher Bewußtseinszustände, d. h. von guter und schlechter Laune, auf die Verarbeitung gegenargumentativer Kommunikationssituationen. Im speziellen wird die kognitive Reaktion auf Versuche der Einstellungsänderung und argumentativen Überzeugung getestet. Ergebnisse eines mit 87 weiblichen nichtdepressiven Studentinnen der Universität Heidelberg durchgeführten Experiments im Zusammenhang mit einer Analyse der kognitiven Reaktionen verdeutlichen, daß die Beziehung zwischen Gefühlslage und Qualität des Arguments bestimmt ist durch die von der Gefühlslage beeinflußte kognitive Verarbeitung des Kommunikationsinhaltes. Zusätzliche Analysen ergaben, daß diese kognitive Verarbeitung bei depressiven Personen in gleicher Weise verläuft wie bei Personen, bei denen negative Gefühlslage induziert wurde. Abschließend kann festgestellt werden, daß eine Einstellungsänderung über starke Argumentation erfolgreicher bei Personen in neutraler oder negativer Gefühlslage zu erzielen ist, eine schwache Argumentation bei einem 'gutgelaunten Publikum' besser ankommt. (ML)

'In einer Reihe von Feldstudien und Simulationsexperimenten wurde gezeigt, daß sowohl erwartungsdiskrepante als auch negative Ereignisse das Ausmaß kausalen Nachdenkens erhöhen. Da im Alltag allerdings unangenehme Ereignisse für unwahrscheinlicher gehalten werden als angenehme, war somit die subjektive Wahrscheinlichkeit eines Ereignisses mit der durch die Valenz des Ereignisses ausgelösten Stimmung konfundiert. Um diese Konfundierung aufzulösen, wurden in einem Laborexperiment subjektive Erwartung und Valenz unabhängig voneinander variiert. Versuchspersonen bearbeiteten einen angeblichen Berufseignungstest und erhielten anschließend eine Erfolgs- und Mißerfolgsrückmeldung, bezogen auf ein vom Versuchsleiter vorgegebenes Kriterium. Die subjektive Erfolgswahrscheinlichkeit wurde variiert, indem den Versuchspersonen die Verteilung von Erfolg und Mißerfolg in der Population mitgeteilt wurde ('23 Prozent vs. 77 Prozent der Teilnehmer erreichen das Kriterium'). Die Ergebnisse zeigen einen ausgeprägten Effekt der Valenz: Sowohl die Intensität des kausalen Nachdenkens als auch die Anzahl der Ursachen für das Ergebnis, über die die Versuchspersonen nachdenken, ist nach negativer Rückmeldung größer als nach positiver. Die vorliegende Untersuchung bietet keine Evidenz für eine Zunahme kausalen Nachdenkens nach unerwarteten Ereignissen. Verschiedene vermittelnde Prozesse werden diskutiert.' (Autorenreferat)