http://hdl.handle.net/2374.MIA/5146 Dr. Amy Summerville - Associate Professor, Psychology Sun, 05 Apr 2026 13:26:02 GMT 2026-04-05T13:26:02Z http://hdl.handle.net/2374.MIA/6249 Motivated by us But Not by Them: Group Membership Influences the Impact of Counterfactual Thinking on Behavioral Intentions Read More: https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/soco.2016.34.4.3 Walker, Ryan J.; Summerville, Amy; Smallman, Rachel; Deska, Jason C. Counterfactual thoughts about “what might have been” allow individuals to improve future outcomes based on insights from past events. Previous research has examined how counterfactuals about the self facilitate future improvement. The current research examined how group membership influences behavioral intentions developed from counterfactuals about another's actions. Participants who read counterfactual-inducing vignettes formed stronger intentions relative to participants who read non–counterfactual-inducing vignettes; this effect was stronger for in-group targets than for out-group targets (Study 1). Furthermore, when group membership was manipulated experimentally, counterfactuals facilitated behavioral intention judgments for in-group targets but not out-group targets (Study 2). Together, the current research demonstrates that group membership can influence the counterfactual-behavioral intention relationship. http://hdl.handle.net/2374.MIA/6249 http://hdl.handle.net/2374.MIA/6233 Persuasion and Pragmatics: An Empirical Test of the Guru Effect Model Martin, Jordan S.; Summerville, Amy; Wickline, Virginia B. Decades of research have investigated the complex role of source credibility in attitude persuasion. Current theories of persuasion predict that when messages are thoughtfully scrutinized, argument strength will tend to have a greater effect on attitudes than source credibility. Source credibility can affect highly elaborated attitudes, however, when individuals evaluate material that elicits low attitude extremity. A recently proposed model called the guru effect predicts that source credibility can also cause attitudinal change by biasing the interpretation of pragmatically ambiguous material. The present studies integrate models of explanatory pragmatics and persuasion in order to empirically assess these hypotheses. Experiment 1 found that text difficulty and attitude neutrality reflect independent persuasion variables. Experiment 2 found that higher source credibility causes more favorable attitudes toward messages eliciting low attitude extremity. Text difficulty was not found to have a significant effect on attitudes. These results confirm the predictions of prior social cognition research but no do not support the guru effect model. The implications of these studies for pragmatics and persuasion research as well as the value of interdisciplinary research between these fields are discussed. http://hdl.handle.net/2374.MIA/6233 http://hdl.handle.net/2374.MIA/6157 Some unwritten rules of graduate school, written down Summerville, Amy An informal set of of advice, expectations, and “unwritten rules” slightly modified from a version for graduate students in my lab that I prepared for 2 incoming students in the fall of 2017. (The version they got included a few things like specific expectations about managing my lab or names of our department staff that seemed unlikely to be of broad applicability or interest, though I think the former is an important conversation to have. I’ve tried to note the other things that may be idiosyncratic to me but that I’m guessing are broadly true or at least worth discussing.) I am a social psychologist; some of these norms may differ as you move farther from my discipline. Many thanks for the extensive feedback I got from Twitter, including several vastly better written pieces linked here. http://hdl.handle.net/2374.MIA/6157 http://hdl.handle.net/2374.MIA/5972 The Regret Elements Scale: Distinguishing the affective and cognitive components of regret Buchanan, Joshua; Summerville, Amy; Lehmann, Jennifer; Reb, Jochen Regret is one of the most common emotions, but researchers generally measure it in an ad-hoc, unvalidated fashion. Three studies outline the construction and validation of the Regret Elements Scale (RES), which distinguishes between an affective component of regret, associated with maladaptive affective outcomes, and a cognitive component of regret, associated with functional preparatory outcomes. The present research demonstrates the RES’s relationship with distress (Study 1), appraisals of emotions (Study 2), and existing measures of regret (Study 3). We further demonstrate the RES’s ability to differentiate regret from other negative emotions (Study 2) and related traits (Study 3). The scale provides both a new theoretical perspective on regret, and a tool for researchers interested in measuring post-decisional regret. http://hdl.handle.net/2374.MIA/5972