L6 - Meaning Maintenance

Question 1

What is the meaning maintenance model?

Answer 1

• Arousal=common syndrome of physiological arousal neurocognitive activation
• Ambivalence
• Identity disruption
• Cognitive conflict

Question 2

What is meaning maintenance?

Answer 2

• Mental representation of expected associations
• Violated by unexpected experiences
• Evokes a syndrome of activation and arousal
• Engage in palliative efforts
• Content-general fluid compensation

Question 3

What are the 5 A’s of Meaning Maintenance?

Answer 3

• Assimilate the unexpected experiences
• Accommodate the violated framework
• Affirm alternative meaning frameworks

Question 4

How do we affirm the same values after different threats?

Answer 4

• Role of expectation in evoking affirmation
• Role of arousal in evoking affirmation
• Assessment of arousal in evoking affirmation
• People will equivalently affirm certain beliefs
  New expectation = new arousal = assessment of arousal = affirmation

Question 5

Study on paradigm violations and distress:

Answer 5

• Study with deck of cards: 52 cards - 4 suits and two colours
• Mental representation of expected relations between features
• Asking if people see the anomalous things
• Will they assimilate and reconstruct their ideas to fit your playing cards
• Most people do not see the anomalous cards and some experienced acute personal distressed

Question 6

What were implications of the card study?

Answer 6

• Anxiety over trivial paradigm inconsistencies
• Threat compensation theories
• Threat to self - affirmation of values
• Palliative - preventing or reducing aversive arousal can this evoke affirmation

Question 7

Why do people feel this way in the card study?

Answer 7

• It activates social justice values
• Play blackjack with a standard deck or where all face cards are reversed, or some playing cards are reverse colour
• Affirm values you just talked about
• Asked to support or opposition to affirmative action using a 1-9 scale
• Liberals increased their support in affirmative action
• Just need to expose them for cognitive conflict

Question 8

What is a meaning violation?

Answer 8

Any experience that is inconsistent with committed mental representation of expected association = creates feelings of unease

Question 9

How does meaning maintenance seen in paradigm violation? (Anxiety)

Answer 9

• Paradigm violation: you assimilate and accommodate to the cards and then you realise what the issue is and you are better at identifying it
• Experience vs worldview: anxiety where your worldview breaks, you can assimilate it (blame - they deserve it) or you accommodate it (accept the absurd - stuff happens)
• Double dose of anxiety: once for the event and once for the worldview breaking

Question 10

What did Piaget say about experience and schema?

Answer 10

• 5yo study with water volume in sep glasses
• Assimilate: make it make sense somehow, when we accommodate = more cognitive power to explain

Question 11

What are studies looking at meaning maintenance?

Answer 11

• Posting bail for someone who has solicited (prozzie) but changed experiments to induce cognitive conflict and rates of bail fluctuated massively

Question 12

What was the study looking at misattribution of arousal? (Medicine)

Answer 12

• Looking to extinguish violation-compensatory efforts
• No misattribution condition: ppts told that medicine had no side effect and should not notice the changing experimenter
• Misattribution condition: ppts told that medicine may have mild anxiety or arousal as side effect & changing of experimenter
• Ppts do not know where this arousal is coming from so they post higher bail, ppts who have misattributed = lower bail

Question 13

What is The Uncanny?

Answer 13

• Not all unusual experiences arouse a sense of the uncanny
• Only unfamiliar experiences in familiar situations: putting something normal and abnormal together

Question 14

What is absurdist humour?

Answer 14

• Monty python parody
• Gets weirder and weirder

Question 15

What is a study about un/expected absurdity?

Answer 15

• E: Ppts are told that they will read comedic parody of a WW1 adventure (familiar/unfamiliar)
• Un: Ppts told that they will read an established adventure story about WW1 for young boys (actually a well known other book - unfamiliar/familiar) (something familiar with but weirds you out)

Question 16

What is resolved absurdity?

Answer 16

• Jokes are safe anomaly but it is resolved quickly = positive affect but is still unfamiliar/familiar or vice versa
• Raises and resolves incongruity
• Mime hired to wear Gorilla costume at zoo joke
• People feel giddy and uneasy about the stories

Question 17

What was the study on expectation and affirmation?

Answer 17

• Control Condition 1 = Expected biggies (story)
• Meaning Violation Condition= Unexpected Biggies
• Control condition 2 = resolved absurdity
• Then affirm moral values - set bail for prozzie
• Higher bail in unexpected Biggies condition compared to expected and punchline joke

Question 18

What was the study looking at dissonance, expectation and affirmation?

Answer 18

• Uncanny = meaning violation, Dissonance = meaning violation with positive discrimination attitudes tested with 4 item questionnaire
• 3 conditions: Control = watch scene from Wizard of Oz (weird but no meaning violation), Control dissonance: watch wizard of Oz and forced choice dissonance = read boring description and asked if this was boring or interesting, and asked if there was any interesting parts
• Dissonance condition: Wizard of Oz and free-choice dissonance - say the passage was interesting
• Uncertainty condition: no dissonance but uncanny
• 1-6 scale support for positive dissonance asked but should change according to condition
• When uncanny/dissonance, Positive Discrimination increased

Question 19

How to measure arousal and affirmation?

Answer 19

• Pupils dilate as a measure of arousal
• Reflects neural activity and found cortical noradrenaline = hormone that animal brains produce when expectations are violated
• Greater pupilary dilation following task error

Question 20

What was the study looking at arousal and affirmation?

Answer 20

• Gave reverse and normal colour playing cards and asked ppts to say if card 2 cards back was odd/even
• Prime social justice values in a 100 point scale
• Meaning Control = all standard cards, meaning violation = reverse coloured
• Heightened pupilary dilation with reverse coloured cards and spike in cortical noradrenaline
• Diminishes cognitive conflict, and those who are relatively moderate/extreme have the greatest effects

Question 21

What is the standard model of violation-compensation?

Answer 21

• Reverse colour playing card = reflex to activate behavioural inhibition system = cognitive things suppress (unconscious) and respond to it with arousal (cortical noradrenaline kicks in)
• Behavioural Approach System kicks in = physiological arousal = palliative reactions (now safe, deal with arousal = affirm) OR pragmatic = attempt to resolve/reduce violation
• Think of video of mum sneezing and baby being scared and then laughing