The prevalence of despair in intractable conflicts: Direct messages of hope and despair affect leftists,but not rightists

In contexts of long-term conflict, it often seems easier to spread despair than to instill hope. The prevalence of despair, an emotion that promotes apathy, in contexts that so desperately need hope, an emotion that promotes conciliation, calls for further investigation. One possibility is that messages of hope and despair have different effects on people based on their political ideology. In the present research we examined the effect of direct despair- and hope-inducing messages (compared to a control condition involving a neutral message) on participants' experience of hope for peace, their sense of urgency to resolve the conflict, and subsequently their support for concession-making as a function of political orientation. Two samples of Jewish-Israelis were collected. Study 1 was collected using snowball methods, while Study 2 replicated and enhanced findings with a more representative sample of Jewish-Israeli society collected using an online survey platform. In both studies, messages of hope or despair yielded no influence on Rightists, whose baseline of hope is inherently low. However, for Leftists (experiencing higher levels of hope for peace) the despair manipulation significantly decreased support for concession-making through decreased hope for peace and sense of urgency to resolve the conflict, providing an explanation to the prevalence of despair over hope in conflict.     

"I" Value Freedom, But "We" Value Relationships: Self-Construal Priming Mirrors Cultural Differences in Judgment

The distinction between relatively independent versus interdependent self-construals has been strongly associated with several important cultural differences in social behavior. The current studies examined the causal role of self-construal by investigating whether priming independent or interdependent self-construals within a culture could result in differences in psychological worldview that mirror those traditionally found between cultures. In Experiment 1, European-American participants primed with interdependence displayed shifts toward more collectivist social values and judgments that were mediated by corresponding shifts in self-construal. In Experiment 2, this effect was extended by priming students from the United States and Hong Kong with primes that were consistent and inconsistent with their predominant cultural worldview. Students who received the inconsistent primes were more strongly affected than those who received the consistent primes, and thus shifted self-construal, and corresponding values, to a greater degree.     

The effects of problem content and scientific background on information search and the assessment and valuation of correlations

The effects of problem contents and one's scientific background on the detection of correlations and the assessment of their strength were studied using a task that required active data search, assessment of the strength of a correlation, and monetary valuation of the correlation's predictive utility. Participants (N = 72) who were trained either in the natural sciences or in the social sciences and humanities explored data sets differing in contents and actual strength of correlation. Data search was consistent across all variables: Participants drew relatively small samples whose relative sizes would favor the detection of a correlation, if one existed. In contrast, the assessment of the correlation strength and the valuation of its predictive utility were strongly related not only to its objective strength, but also to the correspondence between problem contents and one's scientific background: When the two matched, correlations were judged to be stronger and more valuable than when they did not.     

A Path to Teacher Happiness? A Sense of Meaning Affects Teacher–Student Relationships,Which Affect Job Satisfaction

Meaningful work and meaningful relationships at work have been highlighted for their potential desirable consequences for employees and organizations. The present research focuses on teaching, as a potentially meaningful occupation, and suggests that teachers’ sense of meaning at work affects teacher–student relationships, which in turn affect teachers’ job satisfaction. This hypothesized path is examined in two complementary studies. In Study 1, 312 teachers completed self-report measures of their sense of meaning at work, perceived relationships with students, and job satisfaction. Results, based on structural equation modeling analysis, showed a good fit of the data to the theoretical model. In Study 2, 120 teachers completed daily measures of their sense of meaning at work, relationships with students, and job satisfaction. Results, based on HLM analyses, confirmed daily effects of teachers’ sense of meaning on teacher–student relationships, and daily effects of perceived teacher–student relationships on teachers’ job satisfaction. These findings point to a potential path through which teachers’ sense of meaning at work may affect work outcomes and attitudes. The theoretical and practical implications for the effects of meaningfulness and relationships at work for researchers, educators, and organizations are discussed.     

Learning General Phonological Rules From Distributional Information: A Computational Model

Phonological rules create alternations in the phonetic realizations of related words. These rules must be learned by infants in order to identify the phonological inventory, the morphological structure, and the lexicon of a language. Recent work proposes a computational model for the learning of one kind of phonological alternation, allophony (Peperkamp, Le Calvez, Nadal, & Dupoux, 2006). This paper extends the model to account for learning of a broader set of phonological alternations and the formalization of these alternations as general rules. In Experiment 1, we apply the original model to new data in Dutch and demonstrate its limitations in learning nonallophonic rules. In Experiment 2, we extend the model to allow it to learn general rules for alternations that apply to a class of segments. In Experiment 3, the model is further extended to allow for generalization by context; we argue that this generalization must be constrained by linguistic principles.     

Recollections of Being in Child Expressive Arts Group Therapy: A Qualitative Study of Adult Former Clients’ Conceptions of Their Therapy as Children

The current study aims to explore, through the eyes of adult former clients, the experience of being in expressive arts group therapy (EAGT) as a child. By focusing on the memories of adults, the study allowed the exploration of former clients’ understanding of what the therapy was about and its effects on their lives. Semi-structured open-ended interviews were conducted with 20 adult former clients who, as children, had participated for at least one year in EAGT. Findings point toward the background of the empathic, attuned, safety, together with the fostering of the capacity to enter into spontaneous creative states, as central themes in participant’ recollections of the therapeutic process. Further findings relate to the implicit and long-term quality of the therapeutic effect.     

Psychosocial mediators of a theory-based resistance training maintenance intervention for prediabetic adults

Objective: Examine psychosocial mediators of the effects of high vs. low-dose resistance training (RT) maintenance interventions among older (ages 50–69), overweight and pre-diabetic adults.

Design: Participants (N = 123) completed a three-month supervised RT initiation phase and were subsequently randomised (time 1) to high or low-dose six-month unsupervised RT maintenance interventions (time 2), followed by a six-month no-contact phase (time 3).

Main Outcome Measures: Online measures of putative mediators and RT behaviour.

Results: RT intervention condition (high vs. low dose) had significant effects on change from time 1 to time 2 in behavioural expectation, self-regulation and perceived satisfaction (f² = .04–.08), but not outcome expectancies, RT strategies or behavioural intentions (f² ≤ .02). Change in each of the putative mediators, except for outcome expectancies (f² ≤ .02), had significant effects on RT behaviour at times 2 (f² = .12–.27) and 3 (f² = .23–.40). In a multiple mediation model, behavioural expectation (f² = .11) and self-regulation (f² = .06) mediated the effects of RT intervention condition on time 2 RT behaviour, whereas perceived satisfaction did not (f² = .01). Self-regulation was a significant mediator of intervention effects on time 3 RT behaviour (f² = .11), but behavioural expectation and perceived satisfaction were not (f² = .04).

Conclusions: Findings suggest that behavioural expectation and self-regulation are appropriate targets for RT maintenance interventions among at-risk older adults.     

Becoming a vampire without being bitten: the narrative collective-assimilation hypothesis

We propose the narrative collective-assimilation hypothesis--that experiencing a narrative leads one to psychologically become a part of the collective described within the narrative. In a test of this hypothesis, participants read passages from either a book about wizards (from the Harry Potter series) or a book about vampires (from the Twilight series). Both implicit and explicit measures revealed that participants who read about wizards psychologically became wizards, whereas those who read about vampires psychologically became vampires. The results also suggested that narrative collective assimilation is psychologically meaningful and relates to the basic human need for connection. Specifically, the tendency to fulfill belongingness needs through group affiliation moderated the extent to which narrative collective assimilation occurred, and narrative collective assimilation led to increases in life satisfaction and positive mood, two primary outcomes of belonging. The implications for the importance of narratives, the need to belong to groups, and social surrogacy are discussed.