Do Pro-environmental Behaviors and Awareness Contribute to Improve Subjective Well-being?

In this paper, we study the influence of both environmental awareness and behaviors on subjective well-being (SWB). By using ordered logit techniques in a sample from Granada, a city in southern Spain, we find that concern about the environment and voluntary work actions to preserve it are relevant for SWB. When both are combined, namely when a person is concerned and volunteers, the influence on SWB is greater. These results introduce the SWB dimension in the knowledge-concern-action paradox, which states that even if the individual is concerned about the environment, this concern does not always translate into personal action to preserve it. Actions such as habits related to water saving inside the household are not significant in explaining SWB, but using devices that save water increases it. In summary, our results suggest that actions and awareness have either a positive or no significant influence on SWB, but never a negative influence.     

Do Cognitive Interview Instructions Contribute to False Beliefs and Memories?

To examine whether exposing people to false events using instructions taken from the cognitive interview creates false beliefs and false memories, we conducted an experiment where participants took part in two sessions. First, they rated how confident they were that they had experienced certain childhood events and their memories of those events; they also rated how plausible they thought the events were. Second, 2 weeks later, participants were exposed to two of three false target events: one high, one moderate, and one low plausibility. For the first event, participants were instructed to either report everything or mentally reinstate the event context. For the second event, participants received both instructions. The third event was the control event about which participants received no instructions. Finally, participants rated their confidence and memories the second time. The results showed that the cognitive interview instructions had little to no effect on the development of false beliefs and false memories. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do Third-Person Perceptions of Media Influence Contribute to Pluralistic Ignorance on the Norm of Ideal Female Thinness?

This study investigated the pluralistic ignorance on the norm of ideal female thinness and also the presumed influence of thin idealized media images as the cause of the misperception. A survey of 111 female and 109 male US undergraduate students revealed that both women and men overestimated the thinness of body type preferred by others. In addition, men reported that others would be more affected by the media than self while women considered themselves to be as vulnerable as others. Subsequent regression analyses demonstrated that the difference in the perceived media influence on self and others was a significant predictor of the norm of ideal female thinness. Similar misperceptions were also found between men and women in dating relationships.     

Early Verb Learning: How Do Children Learn How to Compare Events?

An important problem verb learners must solve is how to extend verbs. Children could use cross-situational information to guide their extensions; however, comparing events is difficult. In 2 studies, researchers tested whether children benefit from initially seeing a pair of similar events (“progressive alignment”) while learning new verbs and whether this influence changes with age. In Study 1, 2.5- and 3.5-year-old children participated in an interactive task. Children who saw a pair of similar events and then varied events were able to extend verbs at test and differed from a control group; children who saw 2 pairs of varied events did not differ from the control group. In Study 2, events were presented on a monitor. Following the initial pair of events that varied by condition, a Tobii x120 eye tracker recorded 2.5-, 3.5-, and 4.5-year-olds’ fixations to specific elements of events (areas of interest) during the 2nd pair of events, which were the same across conditions. After seeing the pair of events that were highly similar, 2.5-year-olds showed significantly longer fixation durations to agents and to affected objects as compared with the all-varied condition. At test, 3.5-year-olds were able to extend the verb, but only in the progressive alignment condition. These results are important because they show children’s visual attention to relevant elements in dynamic events is influenced by their prior comparison experience, and they show that young children benefit from seeing similar events as they learn to compare events to each other.     

What Do We Do Unconsciously? And How?

In this reply, we endorse Chartrand's (2005) taxonomy of conscious awareness for different stages of consumer decisions affected by environmental cues. In addition, we attempt to broaden the scope of this taxonomy by discussing its usefulness for consumer decisions in general. We generally support Simonson's (2005) claim that research based on consumers as conscious decision makers is indeed predictive of a wide variety of behavior. However, we also argue that the importance of consciousness should not be overstated. Conscious processes observed in a research laboratory are not representative of conscious processes in real life. The alternative model to describe effects of the environment on behavior by Janiszewski and van Osselaer (2005) may be useful to explain automaticity in goal‐directed behavior, but it poorly describes other automatic behaviors.     

What is agentic about the Spatial Agency Bias? How pragmatic relevance contributes to the spatial representations of actions

The mental imagination of (social) actions has been shown to follow a left‐to‐right trajectory, with the thematic agent associated with the left position (Spatial Agency Bias, Suitner & Maass in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 53, 2016, p. 245–301). For example, individuals asked to choose a picture that visualizes the sentence “Tom kicks George” tend to choose an image where the agent, Tom, is positioned on the left‐hand side rather than on the right‐hand side. However, as an alternative to the thematic role of the agent, such findings may reflect a mental representation following pragmatic relevance. Specifically, a pragmatic perspective holds that word order and syntactic functions are strategic devices to communicate that the element is important for the sentence. Thus, positioning in the described picture‐matching task may actually reflect the agent's pragmatic relevance instead of agency per se. As a test, we vary whether sentences are written in the active versus the passive voice. Results from five studies indicate that the passive voice results in the tendency to place the agent on the right‐hand side rather than on the left‐hand side of a picture. Instead, the acted‐upon person is positioned on the left‐hand side of a picture. A sixth experiment reveals that for the passive voice, the agent is still seen as more agentic than the receiver, but is considered less relevant. The findings are congruent with the proposed pragmatic relevance account. Implications for the Spatial Agency Bias as well as for building mental representations in general are discussed.     

How Do Logics Explain?

Anti-exceptionalists about logic maintain that it is continuous with the empirical sciences. Taking anti-exceptionalism for granted, we argue that traditional approaches to explanation are inadequate in the case of logic. We argue that Andrea Woody's functional analysis of explanation is a better fit with logical practice and accounts better for the explanatory role of logical theories.     

How do the victims respond to bullying?

Reactions to harassment of victims of bullying were studied. One issue was, what kind of behavior on the part of the victim is likely to a) make the others start or continue bullying or b) diminish bullying or put an end to it. Altogether 573 pupils (286 girls, 287 boys) from 11 Finnish schools served as subjects: 67 of them (33 girls, 34 boys) were identified as victims of bullying. Both peer- and self-evaluations were used as methods of the study. Three subscales, describing counteraggressive, helpless, and nonchalant behavioral responses to bullying were established on the basis of peer-evaluations of the victims' behavior. Three different subtypes of victims (the Counteraggressive, the Helpless, and the Nonchalant) were identified. Helplessness and nonchalance were found to be typical responses of the girl victims, while boy victims tended to react to bullying with counteraggression or nonchalance. The victims' self-evaluations of their behavior supported these views. Helplessness and counteraggression in the case of girl victims and counteraggression in the case of boy victims were perceived as making the bullying start or continue. The absence of helplessness in the case of girl victims, and nonchalance as well as the absence of counteraggression in the case of boy victims were perceived as making the bullying diminish or stop. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

How does the hippocampus contribute to memory?

Recently, Wirth et al. reported that hippocampal neurons signal the acquisition of new associations by altering the selectivity of their responses to crucial stimuli. The course of these changes was gradual, with some neurons recruited before, others at the time of, and yet others shortly after learning. These observations suggest the hippocampus might contribute to memory by identifying consistencies across experiences that constitute important new associations.     

How Do Elements of a Reduced Capacity to Withstand Uncertainty Relate to the Severity of Health Anxiety?

Intolerance of uncertainty (IU)—a multidimensional cognitive vulnerability factor—is associated with a variety of anxiety disorders and health anxiety (HA). To date, few studies have assessed whether IU dimensions (prospective and inhibitory IU) are differentially associated with HA and whether their contributions are independent of anxiety sensitivity (AS). This study addressed these issues using independent community (n = 155; 81% women) and undergraduate (n = 560; 86% women) samples. Results indicated that prospective IU, but not inhibitory IU, had significant positive associations with HA in community dwellers and undergraduate students. AS somatic and cognitive concerns were also significant predictors among both samples. In addition, severity of IU dimensions among individuals reporting elevated HA were compared against individuals diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and obsessive–compulsive disorder. Results indicated minimal differences between those with elevated HA and each of the anxiety disorder diagnoses. Findings lend support to the unique transdiagnostic nature of IU and support commonalities between HA and anxiety disorders.     

How Do Arab Tweeters Perceive the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Language reflects several cognitive variables that are grounded in cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. This paper examines how Arab...     

Where to seat the applicant? How spatial distance influences the effect of self‐promotion on interviewer evaluations

In high‐stakes contexts such as job interviews, people seek to be evaluated favorably by others and they attempt to accomplish such favorable judgments particularly through self‐promotional behaviors. We sought to examine the persuasiveness of job candidates’ self‐promotion by examining job applicants’ subjective hireability from the perspective of construal‐level theory. Construal‐level theory states that perceptions occur from different levels of psychological distance (i.e., distal vs. proximal). This distance is created by other dimensions of distance (e.g., spatial or social distance) and affects how individuals construe incoming information. From a large distance, people more readily process abstract information, whereas from a close distance, people more readily process concrete information. Specifically, construal compatibility occurs when abstract versus concrete features of a stimulus match the psychological distance experienced by message‐recipients. Construal compatibility (vs. incompatibility) makes evaluations (e.g., of messages) more favorable. To apply this principle to self‐promotion, we created self‐promotional videos of a job interview, in which the applicant sat either far away from or close to the hiring manager (manipulating psychological distance); the applicant, then, used either direct or indirect self‐promotion (manipulating message construal level). The results showed participants reported stronger intention to hire the applicant when distance matched (vs. did not match) the type of self‐promotion the applicant used.     

How Might We Address the Factors that Contribute to the Scarcity of Philosophers Who Are Women and/or of Color?

Professional philosophy in the US remains relatively homogenous. I use four anecdotes to amplify some of the practices that may contribute to the dearth of underrepresented philosophers. Each anecdote highlights a different problem—lack of proper mentoring, stereotype threat, difficulties navigating sexism, and a sense of exclusion. Although I discuss each of these issues separately, it is certainly the case that these (and other issues) can and often do occur concurrently. I offer preliminary thoughts on how these problems could be addressed while keeping in mind that philosophy in the US is a microcosm of the larger US society.