Yaacov Schul

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Yaacov Schul (born 1951) is an Israeli professor of cognitive and social psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Biography[edit]

Prof. Schul received his B.A. in Psychology and Mathematics in 1976 from the Hebrew University, and his Ph.D. in Social Psychology in 1981 from the University of Michigan. He has been professor of social psychology at the Hebrew University since 1981, and held various positions at the Hebrew University, including vice rector. He is married, a father of two and a grandfather of four.

Research contributions[edit]

Schul's theoretical orientation within Psychology is Social Cognition. His early research explored the process of impression formation in an attempt to characterize the operations involved according to their sensitivity to different features of the information, to investigate how each of these operations influence the representation in memory of the original information, and to explore how these representations influence different kinds of judgments.[1][2][3][4] The early work evolved into two lines of research. The first explored the process by which people evaluate their own activity and the activity of others.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] The second line of studies examined the conditions under which people can successfully ignore invalid information.[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] The research on discounting developed into the study of distrust, negation processing, and research on reliance on weak internal cues such as metacognitive experiences.

Processing of negations[edit]

In collaboration with Mayo, Schul studies the negation processes and their consequences,[22][23][24] suggesting the existence of two basic negation models: One ("The Schema-Plus-Tag model") explains the possible failure of the negation process, while the other ("The Fusion model") proposes a successful negation. The work with Yaniv highlighted the implications of acceptance versus rejection to decision-making outcomes.[25][26] Schul's recent studies concern the similarities and differences between negation processes that are triggered by communicated negations (e.g., “Honey is not made by butterflies”) and by false information (e.g., “Honey is made by butterflies”) in an attempt to understand people's sensitivity to misinformation.[27]

Trust and Distrust and reliance on gut feelings[edit]

Past research highlighted many biases that stem from reliance on gut feelings. Schul's research suggests that such reliance is not ubiquitous. Schul, Mayo and Burnstein distinguished a mindset of trust from a mindset of distrust.[28] In a series of studies they demonstrated that whereas a mindset of trust is associated with reliance on gut feelings and activation of congruent associations; a mindset of distrust, triggers thinking about incongruent associations and more willingness to consider alternative positions.[29][30][31] The research with Yahalom further shows that suspicion in people's motivation weakens reliance on the metacognitive cues associated with ease of retrieval.[32] The research with Shidlovski and Mayo explored a particularly important type of gut feeling: the sense of truth. This feeling can be triggered by mental representations that have flow characteristics similar to experienced events. It is found that even after acknowledging an experience as false, people still can associate such experience with markers of implicit truth.[33]

Processing of weak cues[edit]

The research with Eitam and Hassin indicates that sensitivity to weak cues depends on the usefulness of these cues to one's goals.[34][35][36] The research by Milyavsky, Hassin, and Schul extended these findings to information presented subliminally.[37] The research with Yahalom shows the importance of contextual fit.[38]

In a mainly theoretical article, Keren & Schul critically examined the viability of two-system frameworks that have recently surged in the psychological literature. The article offers a critical evaluation of the conceptual underpinnings of two-system models and scrutinizes the assumptions underlying these models. In their conclusion, Keren & Schul encouraged researchers to adopt more rigorous conceptual approach and more stringent criteria for testing the empirical evidence in support of psychological theories.[39]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Burnstein, E., & Schul, Y. (1982). The informational basis of social judgments: Operations in forming an impression of another person. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 18, 217-234.
  2. ^ Burnstein, E., & Schul, Y. (1983). The informational basis of social judgments: Memory for integrated and non-integrated trait descriptions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 49-57.
  3. ^ Schul, Y. (1983). Integration and abstraction in impression formation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(1), 45.
  4. ^ Schul, Y. (1986). The effect of the amount of information and its relevance on memory-based and stimulus-based judgments. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 22, 355-373.
  5. ^ Schul, Y., & Benbenishty, R. (1985). Preferences, expectations, and behaviors in interpersonal interaction. European Journal of Social Psychology, 15, 345-352.
  6. ^ Benbenishty, R., & Schul, Y. (1987). Client-therapist congruence of expectations over the course of therapy. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 26, 17-24.
  7. ^ Vinokur, A., Schul, Y., & Caplan, R.D. (1987). Determinants of perceived social support: Interpersonal transactions, personal outlook, and transient affective states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 1137-1145
  8. ^ Vinokur, A.D., Price, R.H., & Schul, Y. (1995). Impact of the JOBS intervention on unemployed workers varying in risk for depression. American Journal of Community Psychology, 23, 39-74
  9. ^ Schul, Y., & Vinokur, A.D. (2000) Projection in person perception among spouses as a function of the similarity in their shared experiences. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 987-1001
  10. ^ Izhaki-Costi, O., & Schul, Y. (2011) I don’t know you and I am keeping it that way: Attachment avoidance and empathic accuracy in the perception of strangers. Personal Relationships, 18, 321-340.
  11. ^ Schul, Y., & Schiff, M. (1993). Measuring satisfaction with organizations: Predictions from information accessibility. Public Opinion Quarterly, 57, 536-551.
  12. ^ Schul, Y., & Schiff, M. (1995). On the cost and benefits of ignorance: How performance satisfaction is affected by knowing the standard prior to performance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 491-501
  13. ^ Schul, Y & Ganzach, Y. (1995). The effects of accessibility of standards and decision framing on product evaluations. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 4, 61-83.
  14. ^ Schul, Y., & Burnstein, E. (1985). When discounting fails: Conditions under which individuals use discredited information in making a judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 894-903
  15. ^ Mazursky, D., & Schul, Y. (1988). The effects of advertisement encoding on the failure to discount information: Implications for the sleeper effect. Journal of Consumer Research, 15, 24-36.
  16. ^ Schul, Y., & Mazursky, D. (1990). Conditions facilitating successful discounting in consumer decision making: Type of discounting cue, message encoding, and kind of judgment. Journal of Consumer Research, 16, 442-451.
  17. ^ Schul, Y. & Manzury F. (1990). The effect of type of encoding and strength of discounting appeal on the success of ignoring an invalid testimony. European Journal of Social Psychology, 20, 337-349.
  18. ^ Schul, Y. (1993). When warning succeeds: The effect of warning on success of ignoring invalid information. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 29, 42-62.
  19. ^ Schul, Y., Burnstein, E., & Bardi, A. (1996). Dealing with deceptions that are difficult to detect: Encoding and judgment as a function of preparing to receive invalid information. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 32, 228-253.
  20. ^ Schul, Y., & Goren, H. (1997). When strong evidence has less impact than weak evidence: Bias, adjustment, and instructions to ignore. Social Cognition, 15, 133-155.
  21. ^ Schul, Y., & Mayo, R. (1999) Two sources are better than one: The effects of ignoring one message on using a different message from the same source. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35, 327-345
  22. ^ Mayo, R., Schul, Y. & Burnstein, E. (2004). "I am not guilty" versus "I am innocent": Successful negation may depend on the schema used for its encoding. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 433-449.
  23. ^ Mayo, R., Schul, Y. & Rosenthal, M. (2014). If You Negate, You May Forget: Negated Repetitions Impair Memory Compared With Affirmative Repetitions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 1541-1552.
  24. ^ Fraenkel, T., & Schul, Y. (2008) The meaning of negated adjectives. Intercultural Pragmatics, 5, 517-540
  25. ^ Schul, Y., & Yaniv, I. (1997). Inferring accuracy for judges and items: Choice of unit of analysis reverses the conclusions. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 10, 343-354.
  26. ^ Yaniv, I., Schul, Y., Raphaelli-Hirsch, R., & Maoz, I. (2002) Inclusive and exclusive modes of thinking: Studies of prediction, preference, and social perception during parliamentary elections. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 352-367
  27. ^ Schul, Y. & Mayo, R (2014). Discounting information: When false information is preserved and when it is not. Rapp, D. N., & Braasch, J. K. (Eds.) Processing Inaccurate Information: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives from Cognitive Science and the Educational Sciences. pp. 203 – 221. MIT Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  28. ^ Schul, Y., Mayo, R., & Burnstein, E. (2004) Encoding under trust and distrust: The spontaneous activation of incongruent cognitions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86, 668–679
  29. ^ Schul, Y., Mayo, R., Burnstein, E., & Yahalom, N. (2007) How people cope with uncertainty due to chance or deception. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 91-103.
  30. ^ Schul, Y., Mayo, R., & Burnstein, E. (2008) The value of distrust. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1293-1302.
  31. ^ Schul, Y., & Peri, N. (2015) Influences of distrust (and trust) on decision making. Social Cognition, 33, 414-435
  32. ^ Yahalom, N., & Schul, Y (2013) How thinking about the other affects our reliance on cognitive feelings of ease and effort: Immediate discounting and delayed utilization. Social Cognition, 31, 31-56.
  33. ^ Shidlovski, D., Schul, Y., & Mayo, R. (2014) If I imagine it, then it happened: The implicit truth value of imaginary representations. Cognition, 133, 517-529.
  34. ^ Eitam, B., Hassin, R.R., & Schul, Y. (2008) Non-conscious goal pursuit in novel environments: The case of implicit learning. Psychological Science 19, 261-267.
  35. ^ Eitam, B., Schul, Y., & Hassin, R.R. (2009) Goal-relevance and artificial grammar learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62, 228-238.
  36. ^ Eitam, B., Glicksohn, A., Shoval, R., Cohen, A., Schul, Y., & Hassin, R.R. (2013). Relevance-Based Selectivity: The Case of Implicit Learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 39, 1508-1515.
  37. ^ Milyavsky, M.,Hassin, R.R., & Schul, Y. (2012) Guess what? Implicit motivation boosts the influence of subliminal information on choice. Consciousness and Cognition, 21, 1232–1241
  38. ^ Yahalom, N. & Schul, Y. (2016) Applying ease of retrieval in judgments: The role of contextual background. Social Cognition, 34, 217–237
  39. ^ Keren, G., & Schul, Y. (2009). Two is not always better than one a critical evaluation of two-system theories. Perspectives on psychological science,4(6), 533-550.

External links[edit]