@article{PfisterPohlKieseletal.2012, author = {Pfister, Roland and Pohl, Carsten and Kiesel, Andrea and Kunde, Wilfried}, title = {Your Unconscious Knows Your Name}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-75304}, year = {2012}, abstract = {One's own name constitutes a unique part of conscious awareness - but does this also hold true for unconscious processing? The present study shows that the own name has the power to bias a person's actions unconsciously even in conditions that render any other name ineffective. Participants judged whether a letter string on the screen was a name or a non-word while this target stimulus was preceded by a masked prime stimulus. Crucially, the participant's own name was among these prime stimuli and facilitated reactions to following name targets whereas the name of another, yoked participant did not. Signal detection results confirmed that participants were not aware of any of the prime stimuli, including their own name. These results extend traditional findings on ''breakthrough'' phenomena of personally relevant stimuli to the domain of unconscious processing. Thus, the brain seems to possess adroit mechanisms to identify and process such stimuli even in the absence of conscious awareness.}, subject = {Psychologie}, language = {en} } @article{Pfister2011, author = {Pfister, Roland}, title = {Wardrobe Malfunctions and the Measurement of Internet Behaviour}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-69067}, year = {2011}, abstract = {The wardrobe malfunction—an unanticipated exposure of bodily parts in the public—has become a prevailing issue in concerts, shows and other celebrity events that is reliably reported by the media. The internet as the fastest source for celebrity gossip allows measuring the impact of such wardrobe malfunctions on the public in-terest in a celebrity. This measurement in turn allows conclusions about intention, motivation, and internet be-haviour of a wide variety of internet users. The present study exemplifies the use of an innovative non-reactive measure of active interest—the Search Volume Index—to assess the impact of a variety of internet-related phe-nomena, including wardrobe malfunctions. Results indicate that interest in a celebrity increases immediately af-ter such an event and stays at a high level for about three weeks (the wardrobe plateau). This special form of ce-lebrity gossip thus meets a constant interest of a substantial proportion of internet users.}, subject = {Psychologie}, language = {en} } @article{JanczykHeinemannPfister2012, author = {Janczyk, Markus and Heinemann, Alexander and Pfister, Roland}, title = {Instant attraction: Immediate action-effect bindings occur for both, stimulus- and goal-driven actions}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-76203}, year = {2012}, abstract = {Flexible behavior is only possible if contingencies between own actions and following environmental effects are acquired as quickly as possible; and recent findings indeed point toward an immediate formation of action-effect bindings already after a single coupling of an action and its effect. The present study explored whether these short-term bindings occur for both, stimulus- and goal-driven actions ("forced-choice actions" vs. "free-choice actions"). Two experiments confirmed that immediate action-effect bindings are formed for both types of actions and affect upcoming behavior. These findings support the view that action-effect binding is a ubiquitous phenomenon which occurs for any type of action.}, subject = {Psychologie}, language = {en} }