The case of the transmogrifying experimenter: affirmation of a moral schema following implicit change detection.
The meaning-maintenance model posits that threats to schemas lead people to affirm unrelated schemas. In two studies testing this hypothesis, participants who were presented with a perceptual anomaly (viz., the experimenter was switched without participants consciously noticing) demonstrated greater affirmation of moral beliefs compared with participants in a control condition. Another study investigated whether the schema affirmation was prompted by unconscious arousal. Participants witnessed the changing experimenter and then consumed a placebo. Those who were informed that the placebo caused side effects of arousal did not show the moral-belief affirmation observed in the previous studies, as they misattributed their arousal to the placebo. In contrast, those who were not informed of such side effects demonstrated moral-belief affirmation. The results demonstrate the functional interchangeability of different meaning frameworks, and highlight the role of unconscious arousal in prompting people to seek alternative schemas in the face of a meaning threat.
Proulx
Travis
T
Department of Psychology, 2136 West Mall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada. tproulx@interchange.ubc.ca
Heine
Steven J
SJ
D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology*; D001290:Attitude; D002170:Canada; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009014:Morals; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D014473:Unconscious, Psychology; D055815:Young Adult