How Motivational States Affect Judgments
Bowman, Bronson; Neuberg, Steven; and Kenrick, Douglas
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University
In this study we looked at how activation of certain goals might speed up time-constrained judgments, Motivational states like fear may cause people to respond rapidly to protect themselves or their resources. With a limited amount of time to respond, mistakes can be made in recognizing threatening and non-threatening targets. Using a Shoot, Don’t Shoot paradigm to test our hypothesis, we predict activation of a self-protective goal will increase the amount of mistakes that a person makes when identifying threatening targets. ASU Students from an introduction to psychology course were randomly assigned to ten different conditions; a control, revenge, self-protection, and in-group and out-group condition either in audio or video format. Participants then engaged in the Shoot Don’t Shoot task, wherein photos were presented of Arab and European males and females holding either a gun or a non-threatening object. Time restraints were used so participants responded with their first reaction. Results show that reaction time in the control and goal manipulation participants responded correctly and faster to unarmed Europeans and armed Arabs. When responding to Arabs with angry expressions participants made fewer misses to angry faces then to neutral faces, meaning that there were more incorrect responses to not shoot an Arab target when seeing neutral faces. These finding suggest that ethnicity, emotion and motivational states play a role in deciphering between enemy and friend.