Psychology
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Item The Psychology of Martyrdom(2013) Bélanger, Jocelyn; Kruglanski, Arie W; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In recent decades, social scientists' interest for the topic of self-sacrifice has been accentuated by the growing incidence of suicide attacks around the world. The present set of twelve studies aimed to investigate the psychological underpinnings of the readiness to self-sacrifice by (1) creating a new tool to quantitatively assess individuals' propensity toward self-sacrifice (Studies 1-7), (2) investigating the motivational forces potentiating self-sacrifice (Studies 8-10), and (3) finding ways of redirecting these forces in a peaceful direction (Studies 11 and 12). Beyond creating a psychometrically sound measure of self-sacrifice, present research guided by the quest for significance theory (Kruglanski, Chen, Dechesne, Fishman, & Orehek, 2009) indicated that individuals' motivation to self-sacrifice is augmented when their sense of personal worth is lowered. In addition, results indicated that when the quest for personal significance is activated in conjunction with hostile ideologies, individuals are more likely to relinquish their physical and emotional well-being to harm others.Item A UNIFIED MODEL OF MOTIVATED REASONING: THE INTERACTIVE ROLE OF MOTIVATIONAL FACTORS, SITUATIONAL AFFORDANCES, AND COGNITIVE RESOURCES IN HUMAN JUDGMENT.(2011) Bélanger, Jocelyn; Kruglanski, Arie W; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Motivated biases are considered under an integrative theoretical framework which specifies the interplay between motivation, situational affordances, and cognitive resources. According to this framework, motivation influences the cognitive strategies taken in a given situation. Then, cognitive resources are channeled to the appropriate set of cognitive processes suggested by the dominant motivation. The presence of cognitive resources allows information processing to be directed at either reaching an accurate decision, or overcoming reality constraints impeding one from reaching a desirable judgment. In the absence of cognitive resources the dominant motivation, whether it be accuracy or directional motivation, has a lesser impact when reaching the desired judgment is made difficult. In such case, salient situational cues and ambiguous information may determine judgments to a greater degree irrespective of the motivational relevance of those cues. Two studies supported the present model in two unrelated contexts using different operationalizations of the major constructs.