Thesis Statements In Psychology

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 Contents Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing By: Jennifer L. Eberhardt Phillip Atiba Goff Valerie J. By: Jennifer L. Eberhardt Purdie Paul G. Davies Department of Psychology, Stanford University Overview of Studies Phillip Atiba Goff Study 1 Method Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University Participants Design Valerie J. Purdie Stimulus Materials Department of Psychology, Yale University Face stimuli Object stimuli Paul G. Davies Procedure Results Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles Data Reduction This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant BCS- Effects of 9986128 and a grant from the Research Institute of Comparative Studies in Priming on Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University awarded to Jennifer L. Eberhardt. Object We thank Nalini Ambady, R. Richard Banks, Anders Ericsson, Hazel Markus, Detection Benoit Monin, Jennifer Richeson, Lee Ross, Claude Steele, and Robert Zajonc The Role of for their helpful comments on versions of this article. Explicit Prejudice Correspondence may be addressed to: Jennifer L. Eberhardt, Department of Discussion Psychology, Stanford University, Jordan Hall, Building 420, Stanford, CA Study 2 94305. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected]. Method The stereotype of Black Americans as violent and criminal has been Participants documented by social psychologists for almost 60 years (Allport & Postman, Stimulus 1947; Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002; Devine, 1989; Duncan, 1976; Materials Greenwald, Oakes, & Hoffman, 2003; Payne, 2001; Sagar & Schofield, 1980). Crime images Researchers have highlighted the robustness and frequency of this stereotypic Face stimuli association by demonstrating its effects on numerous outcome variables, including people's memory for who was holding a deadly razor in a subway Vigilance task scene (Allport & Postman, 1947), people's evaluation of ambiguously Dot-probe task aggressive behavior (Devine, 1989; Duncan, 1976; Sagar & Schofield, 1980), Design and people's decision to categorize nonweapons as weapons (Payne, 2001), the Procedure speed at which people decide to shoot someone holding a weapon (Correll et Results 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 Data strong (i. e. , consistent and frequent), it also appears to be automatic (i. e. , Transformation not subject to intentional control; Payne, 2001; Payne, Lambert, & Jacoby, Effects of 2002). Priming on Visual Attention The paradigmatic understanding of the automatic stereotyping process— Participant indeed, the one pursued in all of the research highlighted above—is that the Awareness of Attentional Biases Discussion Study 3 Method Participants 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 Contents Counterfactual Thinking and the First Instinct Fallacy By: Justin Kruger Derrick Wirtz Dale T. Miller Study 1: The By: Justin Kruger Eraser Study Method Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Participants Procedure Derrick Wirtz Results Discussion Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Psychology, Northern Arizona University Study 2: Should I Stay or Should I Go? Dale T. Miller Method Graduate School of Business, Stanford University Participants Procedure This research was supported by Research Grant 1-2-69853 from the Results and University of Illinois Board of Trustees. We thank Heather Bauer, Erin Kelly, Discussion Maryn Comin, Effie Crambes, Desler Javier, Karen Koca, Jeff Lane, John Study 3: The Luburic, Steve Lowe, Nacera Mekki, Amy Nelson, Erica Portnoy, Sarah Standardized Quinlan, Sheruni Ratnabalasuriar, and Jennifer Siegel for their help in Test collecting and coding the data, particularly for their role in the arduous task of Method 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 Participants Lucas for her help obtaining the PSYCH 100 exams. Procedure Results Correspondence may be addressed to: Justin Kruger, Department of Consequences Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 603 East Daniel of switching Street, Champaign, IL 61820. Electronic mail may be sent to versus sticking [email protected]. Memory for consequences Exercise great caution if you decide to change an answer. Experience of switching indicates that many students who change answers change to the wrong versus sticking answer. Discussion —Barron's How to Prepare for the GRE: Graduate Record Examination, Study 4: Who 2000Brownstein, Wolf, and Green, , p. 6 Wants to Be a Millionaire? When taking multiple-choice tests, it is often the case that one answer seems Method correct initially, but on further reflection another answer seems correct. In such Participants situations, is it better to switch your answer—or to stick with your first instinct? Stimuli Procedure Most people endorse the strategy advocated in the test-preparation guide Results and quoted above: As a general rule it is best to stick with one's first instinct when Discussion taking multiple-choice tests. Surveys of college students have shown, for instance, that approximately three out of four students believe that answer General changing usually lowers test scores (Ballance, 1977; Foote & Belinky, 1972; Discussion Mathews, 1929; Lynch & Smith, 1975; Smith, White, & Coop, 1979). Many Footnotes college instructors hold a similar view. In one survey of faculty at Texas A&M References: 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).

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 Cooper- Hakim, Chockalingam Viswesvaran, Psychological Bulletin, 0033-2909, March 1, 2005, Vol. 131, Issue 2 Database: PsycARTICLES Contents The Construct of Work Commitment: Testing an Integrative By: Amy Framework Cooper-Hakim Chockalingam Viswesvaran Theoretical Overview of Commitment in By: Amy Cooper-Hakim the Workplace Department of Human Resources Planning, Budgeting, and Analysis, Office Depot, Commitment Delray Beach, Florida Construct Overlap and Interaction Chockalingam Viswesvaran Measurement of Global Department of Psychology, Florida International University Commitment and Its We thank Ana Arteaga for her help in pursuit of much-needed articles. We also Dimensions thank Elad Hakim for his assistance with data collection. External Correlates of Correspondence may be addressed to: Amy Cooper-Hakim, Department of Commitment Human Resources Planning, Budgeting, and Analysis, Office Depot, 2200 Old Forms Germantown Road, Delray Beach, FL 33445. Electronic mail may be sent to Conceptual [email protected]. Definitions of the Different Forms of Commitment Method Database 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.

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 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.

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, 0033-2909, January 1, 2005, Vol. 131, Issue 1 Database: PsycARTICLES Contents Is Self Special? A Critical Review of Evidence From By: Seth J. Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience Gillihan Martha J. Farah Criteria for Being "Special" The Many By: Seth J. Gillihan Meanings of Self and the Scope of Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of This Review Pennsylvania The Physical Self Face Martha J. Farah Recognition Body Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of Recognition Pennsylvania Agency Psychological Self Traits Autobiographical Memory 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 [email protected].

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 components are posited and how specialized their functions are. In the case of some kinds of human information processing, claims of extreme specialization have been made. Language, for example, is often said to be a product of systems that are physically and functionally distinct from those 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.

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.