Table 1

Helping Students Understand the Article

Section

Tips, Comments, and Problem Areas

Abstract

Rationalization postulate

Congruent: match

Perceived likelihood: how likely a person believes  an event is to occur

Nonpartisans: people not interested in politics

Subjective desirability:  how much a person likes an outcome

Introduction

Paragraph 1

Pundits: media experts

Acute: noticeable, painful

Paragraph 2

“align ….” (first sentence): match up their views of how much they like something with the likelihood of that thing occurring.

Constrain their hopes: keep their hopes from being too high

Cope defensively: change how  people view things; use defense mechanisms

Paragraph 3

The general idea of this paragraph is that we know people rationalize what has already happened so people may rationalize what is going to happen.

Cognitive dissonance: see bottom of page 47, cartoon on page 48, and table on page 49 of Research design explained.

Post-decisional justification: right after making a choice, people tend to value what  they chose more and value what  they did not choose less. 

Derogate: put down; criticize

Attributions: judgments

Attributes: characteristics

System justification:  the idea that people accept that their country’s system is good and should continue.

Status quo: the way things are

Paragraph 4

The general idea  of this paragraph is that changing one thought or attitude may  change other thoughts and attitudes. In this article, the focus will be on changing beliefs about how likely an event is will change  attitudes about how desirable that event is.

Paragraph 5

The rationalization postulate says that people will engage in both “sweet lemon” and “sour grape” rationalizations. So, if people  learn their candidate is likely to lose, they will experience “sweet lemons” by deciding that  the opposing  candidate’s weaknesses  are not as serious  as they previously thought  and  by deciding that the candidate has more strengths  than they previously thought.  In addition, people will experience sour grapes by deciding that their candidate  was not  as good as they originally thought  and by deciding that their candidate had more serious weaknesses than they originally thought.

Paragraph 6

Correlational research finds a relationship between liking events and believing that they are likely. However, correlational evidence  cannot tell us whether people  are liking what they expect to get (rationalization) or hoping that they will get whether they want (wish fulfillment). To see whether people rationalize what they expect to get, we need to do experiments.

Paragraph 7

Do experiments in which we  make  an event seem more likely make that event seem more desirable? One experiment that made certain events seem more likely  suggested that the answer is “yes,” but a related experimentuggested the answer was “no.” Perhaps the study that did not find evidence for rationalization did not use events that were emotional enough to motivate rationalization.

Paragraph 8

The argument is that the 1982 study  may have found an effect for sour grapes but not for sour lemons because the study provided “sweet grapes” (the big reward) but did not provide a “sour lemon.”.

Paragraph 9

    People are more likely to rationalize when   things that matter to them. Politics probably matters more to people who identify themselves with a party than for those who do not. Thus, people who belong to a party are most likely to rationalize.

Paragraphs 10 and 11

The authors’ rationalization hypothesis predicts that all those who are personally involved in the election will shift their feelings toward the candidate who is favored to win, whereas undecided voters will not be affected by who is expected to win. Their “rationalization” prediction is different from

1.    the underdog effect prediction: that people will like the candidate who is behind.

2.    The bandwagon prediction (that undecideds will be most influenced by hearing that one candidate is expected to win)

3.    The intergroup conflict prediction that  competition would lead to disliking the other party’s candidate even more (losing a war or even an athletic contest does not usually lead to the loser liking the winner more).

4.    Cognitive dissonance prediction that  tknowing that one’s candidate will lose may cause one to be even more committed to that candidate (“I liked him because he was right, not because I thought he would win”).

Last paragraph (paragraph 12)

Positive linear relationship … : the more people believe  a candidate will win, the more  they will like that candidate. For more about positive linear relationships, see Figure 10-2, p. 297. To see that not all relationships are linear, see Figure 10-3, p. 298.

Method

Pretty straightforward.

Results

Second paragraph

 Do not be concerned that the authors used regression to analyze their results. The results would look essentially the same had they used analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Third paragraph

The significant interaction between manipulation and group (Democrat, Republican, Nonpartisan) suggests that the manipulation’s effect is not the same for each group. Therefore,  rather than looking only  at the manipulation’s a effect  by looking at its effect averaged over  all three groups, we should examine the manipulation’s effect on each group. The authors explore the manipulation’s effect on each group by doing separate regression analyses for each group.

Beta: In this case, betas are the same as  correlation coefficients.

Discussion

Fairly straightforward—if you understand the introduction.

Transpire: happen