Thesis Statements in Psychological Research &
Review Articles
William Ashton, Ph.D.
York College, CUNY
Your Eng 125 professor taught you to include a thesis statement in college level
essays. For both you and your reader the thesis statement is important. For you,
the thesis statement will help you (significantly, I might add) organize your
thoughts which will make writing your essay easier. For your reader, the thesis
statement will inform them what you are writing about. This makes an essay
much more understandable. These rules about thesis statements also apply to
writing in Psychology. All research and review articles in Psychology should have
a thesis statement.
What is a thesis statement?
Well, you’re a lot closer to taking Basic English than I am; you tell me!
Please read these webpages concerning thesis statements and then answer the
follow questions.
IU http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/thesis_statement.shtml
Leo http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/thesistatement.html
UW – Madison http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/thesis_refine.html
Dr Ashton
Behavioral Sciences, York College
Name: _______________________________
Thesis Statement Quiz
For each of the following, state why it is not a thesis statement. Cite the rule and
the webpage the rule is from.
1) “Evidence both supports and contradicts the Theory of Planned Action.”
2) “Boundaryless organizational structure, while holding on in some sectors, is no
longer seen as a profitable and ethical way to run a business.”
3) “Terror Management Theory and a Candidates’ Charisma.”
4) “The Implicit Association Test is revolutionizing Social Psychology.”
Research Articles in Psychology have thesis statements also.
Read the follow excerpt from an article’s introduction.
Title: Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing , By: Jennifer L. Eberhardt, Phillip Atiba
Goff, Valerie J. Purdie, Paul G. Davies, Journal of Personality And Social Psychology, 0022-3514,
December 1, 2004, Vol. 87, Issue 6
Database: PsycARTICLES
Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing
Contents
By: Jennifer L.
Eberhardt
Phillip Atiba
Goff
Valerie J.
Purdie
Paul G. Davies
Overview of
Studies
Study 1
Method
Participants
Design
Stimulus
Materials
Face stimuli
Object stimuli
Procedure
Results
Data Reduction
Effects of
Priming on
Object
Detection
The Role of
Explicit
Prejudice
Discussion
Study 2
Method
Participants
Stimulus
Materials
Crime images
Face stimuli
Vigilance task
Dot-probe task
Design and
Procedure
Results
Data
Transformation
Effects of
Priming on
Visual
Attention
Participant
Awareness of
Attentional
Biases
Discussion
Study 3
Method
Participants
Materials
Procedure and
Design
Results
Data
Transformation
Effects of
Priming on
Visual
Attention
The Role of
Explicit
Prejudice
Discussion
Study 4
Method
Participants
Materials
Crime primes
Face stimuli
Procedure and
Design
Results
Data
Transformation
Effects of Face
Presentation
Duration
Effects of
Priming on
Visual
Attention
Error Rates
During the
Memory Task
Stereotypicality
Ratings of
Faces
Identified in the
Memory Task
Discussion
Study 5
Method
Participants
By: Jennifer L. Eberhardt
Department of Psychology, Stanford University
Phillip Atiba Goff
Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University
Valerie J. Purdie
Department of Psychology, Yale University
Paul G. Davies
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles
This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant BCS9986128 and a grant from the Research Institute of Comparative Studies in
Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University awarded to Jennifer L. Eberhardt.
We thank Nalini Ambady, R. Richard Banks, Anders Ericsson, Hazel Markus,
Benoit Monin, Jennifer Richeson, Lee Ross, Claude Steele, and Robert
Zajonc for their helpful comments on versions of this article.
Correspondence may be addressed to: Jennifer L. Eberhardt, Department of
Psychology, Stanford University, Jordan Hall, Building 420, Stanford, CA
94305. Electronic mail may be sent to jle@psych.stanford.edu.
Stimulus
Materials
The stereotype of Black Americans as violent and criminal has been
documented by social psychologists for almost 60 years (Allport & Postman,
1947; Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002; Devine, 1989; Duncan, 1976;
Procedure
Greenwald, Oakes, & Hoffman, 2003; Payne, 2001; Sagar & Schofield,
Results
1980). Researchers have highlighted the robustness and frequency of this
Discussion
stereotypic association by demonstrating its effects on numerous outcome
variables, including people's memory for who was holding a deadly razor in a
General
subway scene (Allport & Postman, 1947), people's evaluation of ambiguously
Discussion
aggressive behavior (Devine, 1989; Duncan, 1976; Sagar & Schofield, 1980),
Footnotes
people's decision to categorize nonweapons as weapons (Payne, 2001), the
speed at which people decide to shoot someone holding a weapon (Correll et
References:
al. , 2002), and the probability that they will shoot at all (Correll et al. , 2002;
Greenwald et al. , 2003). Not only is the association between Blacks and crime strong (i. e. ,
consistent and frequent), it also appears to be automatic (i. e. , not subject to intentional control;
Payne, 2001; Payne, Lambert, & Jacoby, 2002).
The paradigmatic understanding of the automatic stereotyping process—indeed, the one pursued in
all of the research highlighted above—is that the mere presence of a person can lead one to think
about the concepts with which that person's social group has become associated. The mere
presence of a Black man, for instance, can trigger thoughts that he is violent and criminal. Simply
thinking about a Black person renders these concepts more accessible and can lead people to
misremember the Black person as the one holding the razor. Merely thinking about Blacks can lead
people to evaluate ambiguous behavior as aggressive, to miscategorize harmless objects as
weapons, or to shoot quickly, and, at times, inappropriately. In the current article we argue that just
as Black faces and Black bodies can trigger thoughts of crime, thinking of crime can trigger thoughts
of Black people—that is, some associations between social groups and concepts are bidirectional.
Although contemporary social psychological research has exhaustively documented the fact that
social groups can activate concepts (e. g. , Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996; Brewer, Dull, & Lui,
1981; Chen & Bargh, 1997; Dovidio, Evans, & Tyler, 1986; Dovidio, Kawakami, Johnson, Johnson,
& Howard, 1997; Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995; Gaertner & McLaughlin, 1983; Gilbert &
Hixon, 1991; Kawakami, Dion, & Dovidio, 1998; Lepore & Brown, 1997; Macrae, Bodenhausen, &
Milne, 1995; Macrae, Bodenhausen, Milne, Thorn, & Castelli, 1997; Macrae, Stangor, & Milne, 1994;
Moskowitz, Gollwitzer, Wasel, & Schaal, 1999; Perdue & Gurtman, 1990; Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park,
1997), only a small number of studies have probed the converse: the possibility that concepts (by
themselves) can activate social groups (Blair & Banaji, 1996; Kawakami & Dovidio, 2001;
Kawakami, Dovidio, Moll, Hermsen, & Russin, 2000). In one such study, Blair and Banaji (1996)
found that participants exposed to feminine or masculine primes were able to more quickly
categorize as female or male those targets consistent with the primes. For instance, after
participants were exposed to such words as flowers or diet, they categorized female targets faster
than male targets. Using the same technique, Kawakami and colleagues (Kawakami & Dovidio,
2001; Kawakami et al. , 2000) later demonstrated that Black stereotypic primes could facilitate the
racial categorization of Black faces as well. In their studies, stereotypic traits appeared to
automatically prime the Black racial category just as the Black racial category automatically primed
stereotypic traits.
These results seem perplexing when considered in the context of standard associative network
models of stereotyping (Anderson & Klatzky, 1987; Fazio et al. , 1995; Lepore & Brown, 1997). The
associative network approach suggests that social category nodes will more readily activate concept
nodes than the reverse. According to such models, the likelihood that one node will activate the
other depends on the strength of the associative link (Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986;
Fazio, Williams, & Powell, 2000; Neely, 1977). Social categories (e. g. , Black Americans) tend to be
strongly associated with a limited, richly connected set of concepts (e. g. , aggressive, musical,
athletic, poor). Concepts, in contrast, tend to have broad, sparse associations (Anderson & Klatzky,
1987). For example, the concept "aggressive" is associated with a diverse assortment of social
categories, including Black Americans, politicians, panhandlers, stockbrokers, Israelis, athletes, New
Yorkers, Italians, men, and so forth. Theoretically, the multiplicity of categories associated with the
concept should weaken or dampen the activation of any specific category.
Notwithstanding the large number of social categories that might be associated with a particular
concept, bidirectional effects may be especially likely when a specific social category functions as a
prototype for a concept. We propose that the Black racial category functions as the prototypical
associate for a number of ostensibly race-neutral concepts, such as crime, jazz, basketball, and
ghetto. These concepts may trigger clear, visual images of Black Americans. Moreover, not only
might the prototypicality of the social category influence the likelihood that the category will be
activated by the concept, the activation of the concept may bring to mind prototypical category
members. Crime, for example, may trigger images of those Black Americans who seem most
physically representative of the Black racial category (i. e. , those who look highly stereotypical).
Likewise, highly stereotypical Blacks should be the most likely to trigger thoughts of crime.
Explicit consideration of bidirectionality could lead to theoretical refinements of contemporary
stereotyping models. Rather than focusing on the capacity of social categories to strongly activate a
limited number of concepts, these models might also focus on the capacity of some concepts to
strongly activate a limited number of social categories—that is, two routes to maintaining automatic
associations could be considered rather than one. 1 Bidirectionality might also help to explain the
durability of certain stereotypic associations. Given the existence of two associative routes,
automatic associations may be activated and practiced substantially more than previously
recognized—even in the absence of initial exposure to a social group member. In a crime-obsessed
culture, for example, simply thinking of crime can lead perceivers to conjure up images of Black
Americans that "ready" these perceivers to register and selectively attend to Black people who may
be present in the actual physical environment.
We argue that visual perception and attention represent core visual practices by which bidirectional
associations are reflected and maintained. Bidirectional associations function as visual tuning
devices—directing people's eyes, their focus, and their interpretations of the stimuli with which they
are confronted. To a large extent, these associations cause people to see (and not to see) in similar
ways, despite individual differences in explicit racial attitudes.
We propose that bidirectional associations operate as visual tuning devices by determining the
perceptual relevance of stimuli in the physical environment. That is, given the processing capacity
limitations that all perceivers face, these associations determine which information is important and
worthy of attention and which is not. So, for example, the association of Blacks with crime renders
crime objects relevant in the context of Black faces and Black faces relevant in the context of crime.
The determination of relevance should have substantial consequences for visual perception and
attention in particular. According to our predictions, stimuli deemed relevant should be detected at
lower thresholds than stimuli deemed irrelevant. Likewise, attention should be directed toward
relevant stimuli and away from irrelevant stimuli.
Of course, the possibility that top-down knowledge influences visual processing has been
recognized for quite a long time in the vision sciences (e. g. , Goldstein, 1999). Moreover, in
contemporary studies, perception researchers are finding evidence for experience-dependent
changes in visual processing, even at points in the processing stream that were traditionally thought
to be unaffected by top-down information (Dolan et al. , 1997; Grill-Spector, Kushnir, Hendler, &
Malach, 2000; Kastner, Pinsk, De Weerd, Desimone, & Ungerleider, 1999; Ress, Backus, & Heeger,
2000). Simple manipulations such as instructing participants on where to expect a particular
stimulus to appear or allowing participants to practice identifying stimuli at extremely short exposure
times can have dramatic effects on visual awareness as well as on neural activation in visual
regions of the brain (Grill-Spector et al. , 2000; Kastner et al. , 1999). The finding that short-term
experimental manipulations of this type can tune visual processing may have startling implications
for broadly held stereotypic associations between social categories and concepts. Is it possible that
these stereotypic associations function as visual tuning devices as well?
Despite recognitions that top-down knowledge modulates a variety of visual processing mechanisms
(e. g. , shape assignment, figure-ground segregation, object recognition, visual awareness, visual
search, attentional selection), empirical demonstrations of social influences on vision are rare (e. g. ,
see von Hippel, Sekaquaptewa, & Vargas, 1995). In particular, researchers have not examined how
automatic, stereotypic associations can influence object perception when those objects are partially
occluded or otherwise degraded. Nor have they examined the influence of such associations on
visual attention to faces. Perceiving objects and attending to faces are considered fundamental
aspects of vision, and understanding the role of automatic associations could be critical.
Furthermore, we argue that these associations are important not only because they can lead
perceivers to make mistakes occasionally but also because they can guide, generally, how
perceivers come to organize and structure the visual stimuli to which they are exposed.
Documenting the effects of stereotypic associations on specific visual processing mechanisms could
be of great practical significance. For instance, to what extent does seeing Black faces facilitate
police officers' detection of guns or knives when they do not have clear images of these objects (e.
g. , owing to inadequate lighting)? The answer to such a question could significantly improve our
understanding of the use-of-force decisions made by police officers. A focus on the bidirectional
nature of the Black-crime association places researchers in a position to answer additional
questions as well. When ordinary civilians seek to prevent violent crime in their neighborhoods, how
likely is it that a Black face will draw their attention? Police officers are routinely faced with the task
of solving crime and detecting criminal activity. When police officers are thinking about violent crime,
to what extent might they too focus their attention on Black Americans as compared with White
Americans? Might Blacks who are most physically representative of the Black racial category be
most likely to become the objects of focus? The answers to these questions could have
considerable implications for understanding the extent to which both ordinary civilians and police
officers engage in racial profiling and why they do so. In fact, these important, practical
considerations led us to include both police officers and civilians as study participants in the present
research.
Overview of Studies
In the studies that follow, we use a diverse assortment of methods
The thesis statement is a few paragraphs up, “We propose that bidirectional
associations operate as visual tuning devices by determining the perceptual
relevance of stimuli in the physical environment.”
If you go to the three webpages and apply their rules to this sentence, you will
see that it fits the definitions of a thesis statement.
Read this article excerpt. Where is the thesis statement?
Title: Counterfactual Thinking and the First Instinct Fallacy , By: Justin Kruger, Derrick Wirtz,
Dale T. Miller, Journal of Personality And Social Psychology, 0022-3514, May 1, 2005, Vol. 88,
Issue 5
Database: PsycARTICLES
Counterfactual Thinking and the First Instinct Fallacy
Contents
By: Justin
Kruger
Derrick Wirtz
Dale T. Miller
Study 1: The
Eraser Study
Method
Participants
Procedure
Results
Discussion
Study 2:
Should I Stay
or Should I
Go?
By: Justin Kruger
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Method
Participants
Derrick Wirtz
Procedure
Results and
Discussion
Study 3: The
Standardized
Test
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of
Psychology, Northern Arizona University
Dale T. Miller
Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
Method
Participants
Procedure
Results
Consequences
of switching
versus sticking
Memory for
consequences
of switching
versus sticking
Discussion
Study 4: Who
Wants to Be a
Millionaire?
Method
Participants
Stimuli
Procedure
Results and
Discussion
General
Discussion
This research was supported by Research Grant 1-2-69853 from the
University of Illinois Board of Trustees. We thank Heather Bauer, Erin Kelly,
Maryn Comin, Effie Crambes, Desler Javier, Karen Koca, Jeff Lane, John
Luburic, Steve Lowe, Nacera Mekki, Amy Nelson, Erica Portnoy, Sarah
Quinlan, Sheruni Ratnabalasuriar, and Jennifer Siegel for their help in
collecting and coding the data, particularly for their role in the arduous task of
coding the PSYCH 100 exams (Study 1). We also thank Neal Roese and Ken
Savitsky for commenting on an earlier version of this article and Sandra Goss
Lucas for her help obtaining the PSYCH 100 exams.
Correspondence may be addressed to: Justin Kruger, Department of
Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 603 East Daniel
Street, Champaign, IL 61820. Electronic mail may be sent to
jkruger@uiuc.edu.
Exercise great caution if you decide to change an answer. Experience
indicates that many students who change answers change to the wrong
answer.
—Barron's How to Prepare for the GRE: Graduate Record Examination,
2000Brownstein, Wolf, and Green, , p. 6
When taking multiple-choice tests, it is often the case that one answer seems
correct initially, but on further reflection another answer seems correct. In
such situations, is it better to switch your answer—or to stick with your first
instinct?
Footnotes
Most people endorse the strategy advocated in the test-preparation guide
quoted above: As a general rule it is best to stick with one's first instinct when
taking multiple-choice tests. Surveys of college students have shown, for instance, that
approximately three out of four students believe that answer changing usually lowers test scores
(Ballance, 1977; Foote & Belinky, 1972; Mathews, 1929; Lynch & Smith, 1975; Smith, White, &
Coop, 1979). Many college instructors hold a similar view. In one survey of faculty at Texas A&M
University (including 23 from the College of Education), the majority (55%) believed that changing
one's initial answer probably would lower test scores, whereas only 16% believed that answer
changing would improve a student's score (Benjamin, Cavell, & Shallenberger, 1984).
References:
The vast majority of over 70 years of research on answer changing, however, has questioned
seriously the validity of this belief and the utility of the "always stick with your first instinct" test-taking
strategy. The majority of answer changes are from incorrect to correct, and most people who
change their answers usually improve their test scores (Archer & Pippert, 1962; Bath, 1967; Clark,
1962; Copeland, 1972; Crocker & Benson, 1980; Davis, 1975; Foote & Belinky, 1972; Jarrett, 1948;
Johnston, 1975; Lamson, 1935; Lehman, 1928; Lowe & Crawford, 1929; Lynch & Smith, 1975;
Mathews, 1929; Pascale, 1974; Range, Anderson, & Wesley, 1982; Reile & Briggs, 1952; Reiling &
Taylor, 1972; Schwarz, McMorris, & DeMers, 1991; Sitton, Adams, & Anderson, 1980; Smith et al.,
1979; Vidler, 1980; Vispoel, 1998). This is true regardless of whether the test is multiple choice or
true-false, achievement or aptitude, timed or untimed, computer or pencil and paper. In fact, the
evidence so strongly counters the belief and strategy that one comprehensive review found that in
not one of 33 studies were test takers hurt, on average, by changing their answers (Benjamin et al.,
1984).
Why do people believe in the strategy of always sticking with their first instinct if the data so strongly
refute it? We propose that the belief can be traced (in part) to a memory bias produced by
counterfactual thinking (Miller & Taylor, 1995). The frustrating self-recriminations that follow the
change of a right answer to a wrong answer make these instances more memorable and hence
seemingly more common than either those (actually more common) instances where people
changed a wrong answer to the right answer or those instances where people failed to change a
wrong answer to the right answer. This prediction follows from the more general finding that events
preceded by actions are more easily imagined otherwise and, as a consequence, generate stronger
affect than events preceded by inactions (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982; Miller & Taylor, 1995; Miller,
Turnbull, & McFarland, 1990; Roese, Hur, & Pennington, 1999; Zeelenberg, van den Bos, van Dijk,
& Pieters, 2002; but see also Gilovich & Medvec, 1994)—an effect that may be particularly
pronounced in academic as opposed to interpersonal contexts (Mandel, 2003).
In summary, we propose that an error that results from the change of the correct answer to a wrong
answer seems like an error that almost did not happen and, as such, seems like an error that should
not have happened. The frustration associated with this conclusion serves to make this type of error
more available in memory (Gilovich, Medvec, & Chen, 1995; Miller & Taylor, 1995) and hence
seemingly more frequent than it is (Schwarz & Vaughn, 2002; Tversky & Kahneman, 1973, 1974). In
short, the advice provided by Brownstein et al. (2000) in the quote that begins this article is half
right: Experience does indicate that answer changing is a poor strategy, but experience, in this case
at least, is misleading.
As an analogy, consider the observation that one should avoid changing lines in the grocery store
(or lanes on the highway), because to do so is inevitably followed by one's original line speeding up
and one's new line slowing down. Are the gods punishing us for our impulsiveness? Perhaps, but
another explanation is that changing lines when one should not have is more frustrating and
memorable than is failing to change lines when one should have. In much the same way, we
argue—and for much the same reason—changing the correct answer to an incorrect answer is likely
to be more frustrating and memorable than is failing to change an incorrect answer to the correct
answer.
We conducted four studies to test these hypotheses. First, we compared the anticipated and actual
outcome of sticking versus switching among a group of 1,561 test takers to see whether people do
indeed overestimate the effectiveness of sticking with their first instinct (Study 1). Studies 2-4 were
designed to test the counterfactual thinking interpretation of this fallacy. Study 2 was designed to
examine whether switching from the correct answer to an incorrect answer is more irksome than is
failing to switch an incorrect answer to the correct answer. Study 3 was designed to see whether this
hedonic asymmetry translates into a memory asymmetry, such that sticking with one's first instinct is
remembered as being a better strategy than it in fact is. Finally, Study 4 was designed to link the
effects demonstrated in the first three studies by testing whether the belief in the veracity of first
instincts is mediated by the heightened frustration and accessibility of changing from the correct
answer to an incorrect answer versus failing to change from an incorrect answer to the correct
answer.
Study 1: The Eraser Study
Our first study was designed to see whether test takers overestimate the effectiveness of sticking
with their first instincts. To find out whether this was the case, we obtained the exams of 1,561
students enrolled in the Fall 2000 introductory psychology course (PSYCH 100
And the winner is: “Why do people believe in the strategy of always sticking with
their first instinct if the data so strongly refute it? We propose that the belief can
be traced (in part) to a memory bias produced by counterfactual thinking.”
Review articles also have thesis statements. Read the introduction of this review
article:
Title: The Construct of Work Commitment: Testing an Integrative Framework , By: Amy CooperHakim, Chockalingam Viswesvaran, Psychological Bulletin, 0033-2909, March 1, 2005, Vol. 131,
Issue 2
Database: PsycARTICLES
The Construct of Work Commitment: Testing an Integrative Framework
Contents
By: Amy
Cooper-Hakim
Chockalingam
Viswesvaran
Theoretical
Overview of
Commitment in
the Workplace
Commitment
Construct
Overlap and
Interaction
Measurement
of Global
Commitment
and Its
Dimensions
External
Correlates of
Commitment
Forms
Conceptual
Definitions of
the Different
Forms of
Commitment
By: Amy Cooper-Hakim
Department of Human Resources Planning, Budgeting, and Analysis, Office Depot,
Delray Beach, Florida
Chockalingam Viswesvaran
Method
Database
Procedure
General
Coding
Decisions
Participants
Outcome
variables
Problem
articles
Extraneous
commitment
terms
Coding
Decisions:
Specific
Dimensions
Analysis
Results
Department of Psychology, Florida International University
We thank Ana Arteaga for her help in pursuit of much-needed articles. We
also thank Elad Hakim for his assistance with data collection.
Correspondence may be addressed to: Amy Cooper-Hakim, Department of
Human Resources Planning, Budgeting, and Analysis, Office Depot, 2200
Old Germantown Road, Delray Beach, FL 33445. Electronic mail may be
sent to amyhakim@bellsouth.net.
Commitment is a central concept in psychology (Morrow, 1993); it can be
generally defined as a willingness to persist in a course of action.
Psychologists have been interested in the commitment construct for many
years and within many contexts. Examples of commitment areas that have
been studied include commitment to individual goals (Donovan &
Radosevich, 1998), to one's friends and relatives (Sprecher, Metts, Burleson,
Hatfield, & Thompson, 1995), to one's religion (C. B. Anderson, 1998), and to
one's community (Greer & Stephens, 2001). Commitment in the workplace is
also an important topic to consider. Given that the major portion of an
individual's life revolves around organizations and work, investigations of
commitment forms in the workplace are vital for understanding the
psychology of human behavior.
Discussion
It is not surprising that psychologists have devoted voluminous efforts to
studying commitment in the workplace (A. Cohen, 2003; Morrow, 1993).
Several forms of commitment have been proposed, measured, and tested for
References:
correlations with other important outcomes (e.g., job performance, job
satisfaction, turnover). Organizational commitment, occupational commitment, and career saliency
are some of the constructs that have been investigated in the literature. These different commitment
forms have been found to have modest correlations with outcome variables such as performance
and satisfaction.
Footnotes
The objective of this article is to investigate the overlap among the different work-related
commitment forms proposed in the literature. Given the modest correlations found with single
measures of commitment, suggestions have been made that constellations of different commitment
forms are more predictive of behavior in organizations than are individual commitment forms (cf. A.
Cohen, 2003). However, to realize the potential of better prediction with multiple commitment forms,
it is important to consider the intercorrelations among the different commitment forms. Specifically,
the intercorrelations should not be so high as to result in concept redundancy (Morrow, 1993).
The concept of multiple commitment forms (A. Cohen, 2003) is also timely given changes in the
workplace. The work life of individuals is no longer tied to an individual organization. In fact,
individuals can anticipate changing jobs at least five times in their career (Kransdorrf, 1997). The
rapid globalization of business (N. Anderson, Ones, Sinangil, & Viswesvaran, 2001) also suggests
that individuals have multiple forms and bases for commitment.
Increased globalization has accentuated the need to investigate multiple commitment forms. On the
one hand, organizational success depends more on employees. Employees have become perhaps
the only source of sustainable competitive advantage to organizations. Predicting employee
satisfaction, performance, and turnover is important. Commitment, by definition, is the choice to
persist with a course of action and is thus an important antecedent. On the other hand, the advent of
telecommuting and technological advancement has also brought greater overlap across different
forms of commitment (e.g., occupation, organization). It is no longer feasible to consider one's job in
isolation of one's organization or occupation.
Theoretical Overview of Commitment in the Workplace
Two general theoretical approaches have been proposed in investigations of overlap across multiple
forms of commitment. The first approach focuses on the conflicts that occur among different sources
of commitment in an organization. One major area of empirical investigation along this line is the
relation between organizational and occupational commitment. For example, Gouldner (1957)
argued that whereas some individuals are more committed to an organization, others may stress
commitment to their occupation. However, meta-analytic reviews of the literature suggest that the
correlation between organizational and occupational commitment is positive (Wallace, 1993). In the
conflict approach, this positive correlation is explained as reflecting compatibility between
organizational and occupational values.
This idea of compatibility across different forms of commitment has been extended in the second
theoretical approach to studying multiple commitments. Here, the central thesis is that the work life
of an individual is a unit in its entirety (Stagner, 1954). The individual may be part of an organization,
but he or she is also part of an occupation, a work group, and, perhaps, a union. The compatibility of
goals across the different units is a question of an efficient organization. The extent to which this
efficiency is achieved depends on the overlap across the multiple commitment forms. In this
argument, the overlap is not only across forms of the commitment but also across units of
commitment. Researchers in this tradition have relied on the social exchange process to explain the
overlap across commitment forms and, in particular, the idea of psychological contracts (Rousseau,
1995). The social exchange process stresses that individuals reciprocate benefits and costs incurred
from others with whom they interact. Attitudes are shaped by these interactions. To the extent that
different commitment forms include interrelated exchanges, there is a positive manifold of
correlations across the different forms. Psychological contracts are those implicit agreements made
among the different stakeholders (employees, organizations, occupations, etc.).
Commitment Construct Overlap and Interaction
The need to consider several commitment forms becomes apparent when one reviews the empirical
attempts to predict behavior in the workplace with single commitment forms. Mathieu and Zajac
(1990) reported meta-analytic correlations among measures of organizational commitment and
several workplace outcomes (e.g., job performance, turnover, and job satisfaction). Although the
correlations
The thesis statement is, in my opinion: “…suggestions have been made that
constellations of different commitment forms are more predictive of behavior in
organizations than are individual commitment forms.”
Title: Is Self Special? A Critical Review of Evidence From Experimental Psychology and
Cognitive Neuroscience , By: Seth J. Gillihan, Martha J. Farah, Psychological Bulletin, 00332909, January 1, 2005, Vol. 131, Issue 1
Database: PsycARTICLES
Is Self Special? A Critical Review of Evidence From Experimental
Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
Contents
By: Seth J.
Gillihan
Martha J. Farah
Criteria for
Being "Special"
The Many
Meanings of Self
and the Scope
of This Review
The Physical
Self
Face
Recognition
Body
Recognition
Agency
Psychological
Self
By: Seth J. Gillihan
Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of
Pennsylvania
Martha J. Farah
Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of
Pennsylvania
We thank the following individuals for helpful comments on drafts of this
article: Todd Feinberg, Andrea Heberlein, Julian Keenan, Tilo Kircher, and
John Sabini. Thanks to Lesley Fellows and Cyrena Gawuga for help with
figures. The writing of this article was supported by National Institutes of
Health Grants R01 AG-14082-04, K02 AG-00756-04, and R01 DA14129
and National Science Foundation Grant 0226060.
Correspondence may be addressed to: Seth J. Gillihan, Center for Cognitive
Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 3720
Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104. Electronic mail may be sent to
gillihan@psych.upenn.edu.
Traits
A basic goal of information-processing psychology is to characterize the
computational architecture of the mind, that is, to delineate the components
of the information-processing system and describe their functions. Within
this common framework, theories differ according to how many distinct
First-Person
components are posited and how specialized their functions are. In the case
Perspective
of some kinds of human information processing, claims of extreme
Discussion
specialization have been made. Language, for example, is often said to be a
product of systems that are physically and functionally distinct from those
References:
used for more general-purpose cognitive processing—in other words,
language has been claimed to be special. Evidence for the claim that language is special includes
its reliance on a network of perisylvian brain areas that are not needed for nonlinguistic sound
recognition or vocalization and its species specificity. Face recognition is also considered special by
many because it relies on parts of ventral visual cortex that are not needed for visual recognition of
nonface objects and because face representation is more holistic than the representation of other
objects.
Autobiographical
Memory
In recent years another cognitive capacity has been accorded "special" status by some researchers,
namely, the representation of the self. In the words of Kircher and colleagues (2000), "Processing of
self-relevant information and self knowledge is regarded as distinct from processing ‘objective’
information" (p. 133). It is regarded by some as distinct even from the processing of information
about other people and their mental states, often termed theory of mind; as concluded by Vogeley
and colleagues (2001), "Theory of mind and self involve at least in part separate neural
mechanisms" (p. 180). Other researchers have proposed specific neural localizations of self-related
processing in general, although their localizations have varied. For example, the left hemisphere has
been hypothesized to be critical for recognition of our own face as well as "autobiographical
knowledge, personal beliefs, currently active goal states and conceptions of self" (Turk et al., 2002,
p. 842; see also Kircher et al., 2000). A similar role has also been claimed for the right hemisphere
in the context of right prefrontal activation: "There is growing evidence that processing of self-related
information (e.g., autobiographical memory, self-face identification, theory of mind) is related to
activity in the right frontal cortex" (Platek, Myers, Critton, & Gallup, 2003, p. 147; see also Devinksy,
2000; Miller et al., 2001). It has also been noted that right lateral parietal cortex is implicated in the
representation of the physical and mental self and hence plays a role in "self-representation in
general" (Lou et al., 2004, p. 6831). Finally, medial prefrontal cortex in both hemispheres has been
proposed as a site of the "self model ... a theoretical construct comprising essential features such as
feelings of continuity and unity, experience of agency, and body-centered perspective" (Fossati et
al., 2003, p. 1943; see also Frith & Frith, 1999; Gusnard, Akbudak, Shulman, & Raichle, 2001; S. C.
Johnson et al., 2002; Kelley et al., 2002; Wicker, Ruby, Royet, & Fonlupt, 2003).
A wide variety of research has been undertaken to test the claim that our representation of the self is
special. The research encompasses behavioral studies with normal humans as well as with
neurological and psychiatric patient populations and functional neuroimaging studies with normal
humans and patients. The information-processing domains in which self processing has been
examined are likewise varied, including vision, somathesis, semantic and episodic memory, and
attention. The strength of support for a special "self" system comes partly from the wide array of
methods used as well as the diversity of domains in which self-specific processing has been
observed. Indeed, authors often cite converging evidence from different kinds of studies—for
example, explicitly relating first-person perspective in spatial navigation to first-person narrative
comprehension (Vogeley & Fink, 2003), self-face recognition to self memory (e.g., Keenan, Freund,
Hamilton, Ganis, & Pascual-Leone, 2000), or awareness of the boundaries of one's own body to
awareness of relation of self to social environment (Devinsky, 2000). Wicker et al. (2003) attempted
to localize brain areas recruited for self-related processing by integrating neuroimaging results from
studies covering emotion, autobiographical memory, face recognition, and other processes related
to the self.
Although others have presented reviews of studies that bear on the topic of self-related processing,
to our knowledge none have yet addressed the specific issue of whether the self is special across a
range of processing domains. Existing reviews have either addressed the question of whether the
self is special in relation to a particular aspect of self-related processing (e.g., the self-reference
effect in memory, described later) or summarized a broader range of findings about self-related
processing without addressing the question of whether, or in what sense, it is special. Throughout
this review we cite previous reviews that provide more thorough summaries of published research in
various domains of self processing, and we focus our review on those studies that directly address
the question of whether self-related processing is in some sense special.
We attempt to answer the question, Is self-related processing special? in the context of four related
questions. The first concerns the meaning of special: By what criteria might we consider a system
special, and which of these is relevant for each given study? The second concerns the meaning of
self: Exactly what is meant by self, and how is self operationalized in each given study? The third
concerns the relation between the findings and conclusions of each study: Relative to the senses of
special and self being addressed in each study, how do the study's findings relate to the conclusions
drawn? Finally, in the Discussion section we address the fourth question: To what degree are the
many self-related research programs investigating a common system?
Criteria for Being "Special"
Systems are considered special on the basis of different
The thesis is: “Is self-related processing special?” Not a textbook thesis
statement, but it does what a thesis statement should do: it provides a theme to
help the reader and to help the writer.