How to tell a happy person: Accuracy of subjective well-being perception from texts

Motivation and Emotion - Although perceptions of subjective well-being (SWB) in unacquainted others have been shown to play a major role in impression formation, little is known about how accurate...     

Reactions to Patients' Self-or Chance-Blaming Attributions for Illnesses Having Varying Life-style Involvement

The effects of the perceived accuracy of attributions of self blame and chance blame were examined in the context of health care. Health practitioners ( N = 147) rated interviews in which patients made self-or chance-blaming attributions for diseases with high (heart attack, stroke), or low (cancer, arthritis) life-style involvement, or acidental injuries. Three discriminant analyses yielded p < .001. Self-blaming heart and stroke patients were rated as coping better and acting more appropriately and typically than chance blamers. Other self blamers were rated as more depressed, poorly adjusted, coping poorly, not accepting disability, needing counselling and information. Additionally, self-blaming accident victims were judged as more dependent, less likeable, and having poorer prognoses than chance blamers. Realistic self blame for life-style diseases did not lead to victimization, but other self-blaming patients were stigmatized and the adaptiveness of self blame as a coping strategy was unrecognized.     

Political Ideology Outdoes Personal Experience in Predicting Support for Gender Equality

Indices of gender equality provide an inconsistent picture of current gender inequality in countries with relatively high equality. We examined women's and men's subjectively perceived gender inequality and their support for gender equality in the general population and in politicians, respectively, in three countries with relatively high gender equality: the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany (total N = 1,612). In both women's and men's perceptions, women were treated more unequally than men. However, the inequality that women perceived was larger than the inequality men perceived. Additionally, women reported they personally experience less inequality than women as a group (person-group discrepancy). Finally, women's and men's left/liberal (vs. right/conservative) political ideology turned out to be a relatively more powerful predictor of support for gender equality than perceived personal and societal inequality. We discuss reasons for why political ideology emerged as the strongest predictor of equality support and sketch out implications for policy efforts toward promoting gender equality.     

INTERMITTENT REGRESSIONS IN A SERIAL AFTERIMAGE EXPERIMENT AS SIGNS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA

S mith G. J. W., R uuth E., F ranzén G. & S jöholm L. Intermittent regressions in a serial afterimage experiment as signs of schizophrenia. Scand. J. Psychol ., 1972 , 13 , 27 33.—A group of 35 young patients suspected of schizophrenia were tested in a serial afterimage (AI) experiment and were also rated on the Rockland-Pollin scale. Subjects with high psychotic scores showed one or more regressions to immature (size-constant, positive, physiognomic) images in their Al serials, images typical of children who cannot clearly distinguish their Ails as subjective phenomena distinct from the outside world. The Al test thus indicates schizophrenics to be characterized by intermittent withdrawal into a world of experiencing the self and non-self as not clearly distinguished. Regressions were rare in two control groups.     

Projected afterimages after manipulation of cognitive schemes in children.

Telling one group of subjects that afterimages are a physical reality largely independent of the observer and another group that afterimages are projected by the subject himself, it was predicted that the afterimages in these groups would differ. In all 10 pairs of nine-year-old children, matched with respect to cognitive maturity, the subject getting the former instruction reported more size-constant and/or positive afterimages than the subject getting the latter instruction.     

A model for the study of research and education in a transdisciplinary context

In an evaluation project at the Goteborg University, we have looked at the relationship between individual and collective production of knowledge within the Health sciences in order to facilitate a common ground for a Academy of Health Sciences. We found obstacles for developing an environment which could stimulate multilateral co-operation and creativity. Some of these obstacles have their root in the different cultural backgrounds indicated in the analysis and makes it difficult to find common aims and strategies. The Model used makes the organizations’ activities visible and encouraging transdisciplinary contacts and improve organizational, structural and ideological decision making emanating from overall policies of the boards concerned.     

Personal Contact with Refugees is Key to Welcoming Them: An Analysis of Politicians' and Citizens' Attitudes Towards Refugee Integration

Politicians are influential both in directing policies about refugees and in framing public discourse about them. However, unlike other host country residents, politicians' attitudes towards refugees and integration are remarkably understudied. We therefore examine similarities and differences between politicians' attitudes towards refugee integration and those held by citizens. Based on the stereotype content model, we expect that political ideology informs stereotypes about refugees, which subsequently shape attitudes towards refugee integration. Based on the Contact Hypothesis, we further argue that personal contact with refugees reduces negative stereotypes about them—in particular for those endorsing a right-wing ideology. We draw on data collected via two surveys with 905 politicians and 8013 citizens in the Netherlands to show that (1) unlike those with a left-wing orientation, residents (i.e., both politicians and citizens) with a right-wing orientation hold more negative stereotypes about refugees, which in turn relate to more negative attitudes towards refugee integration; (2) personal contact with refugees is associated with less negative stereotypes among residents; and (3) politicians, compared to citizens, report less negative stereotypes and more positive attitudes towards refugee integration. The practical implication of fostering residents' contact with refugees as well as the implications for future research are discussed.     

Veridical and false memory for scenic material in posttraumatic stress disorder

The question whether memory aberrations in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) also manifest as an increased production of false memories is important for both theoretical and practical reasons, but is yet unsolved. Therefore, for the present study we investigated veridical and false recognition in PTSD with a new scenic variant of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, which was administered to traumatized individuals with PTSD (n=32), traumatized individuals without PTSD (n=30), and non-traumatized controls (n=30). The PTSD group neither produced higher rates of false memories nor expressed more confidence in errors, but did show inferior memory sensitivity. Whereas depressive symptoms did not correlate with veridical nor false recognition, state dissociation was positively associated with false memories.     

Preface

The contributions in this part of the present issue mainly originate from the Carnap Lectures 2011 in Bochum where Prof. Tim Crane (Cambridge, UK) and Prof. Katalin Farkas (Budapest) presented keynote lectures under the heading ??The Boundaries of the Mental??. The full workshop program is available on our website: http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/philosophy/carnap2011/index.html     

Exploring the Hierarchical Structure of the MMPI–2–RF Personality Psychopathology Five in Psychiatric Patient and University Student Samples

In this study our goal was to examine the hierarchical structure of personality pathology as conceptualized by Harkness and McNulty's (1994) Personality Psychopathology Five (PSY–5) model, as recently operationalized by the MMPI–2–RF (Ben-Porath & Tellegen, 2011) PSY–5r scales. We used Goldberg's (2006) “bass-ackwards” method to obtain factor structure using PSY–5r item data, successively extracting from 1 to 5 factors in a sample of psychiatric patients (n = 1,000) and a sample of university undergraduate students (n = 1,331). Participants from these samples had completed either the MMPI–2 or the MMPI–2–RF. The results were mostly consistent across the 2 samples, with some differences at the 3-factor level. In the patient sample a factor structure representing 3 broad psychopathology domains (internalizing, externalizing, and psychoticism) emerged; in the student sample the 3-factor level represented what is more commonly observed in “normal-range” personality models (negative emotionality, introversion, and disconstraint). At the 5-factor level the basic structure was similar across the 2 samples and represented well the PSY–5r domains.