Are we all exploiters?*

This paper argues that two single-factor accounts of exploitation are inadequate and instead defends a two-factor account. Purely distributive accounts of exploitation, which equate exploitation with unfair transaction, make exploitation pervasive and cannot deliver the intuition that exploiters are blameworthy. Recent, non-distributive alternatives, which make unfairness unnecessary for exploitation, largely avoid these problems, but their arguments for the non-necessity of unfairness are unconvincing. This paper defends a two factor account according to which A exploits B iff A gains unfairly from B and either A believes that the gains he receives in the transaction wrong B, or A is culpably unaware that the gains he receives in the transaction wrong B. This account avoids the problems of non-distributive approaches and also delivers the intuition that exploiters are blameworthy.     

Are all psychopathic individuals low-anxious?

Theorists commonly assume that true or primary psychopathic individuals experience little anxiety or neurotic conflict. This study examined the relationship between psychopathy and anxiety in 104 Caucasian and 113 African American incarcerated men using the Psychopathy Checklist--Revised (PCL-R; R. D. Hare, 1991) and multiple self-report measures to tap diverse interpretations of the anxiety construct (i.e., neuroticism, traditional definitions of anxiety, and fear). Analyses involving zero-order, semipartial, and point-biserial correlations indicate that PCL-R psychopathy and the anxiety construct are essentially independent. These findings suggest that either (a) the traditional belief that all psychopathic individuals are low-anxious is incorrect or (b) the PCL-R is not an adequate measure of primary psychopathy.     

Are written and spoken recall of text equivalent?

Writing is less practiced than speaking, graphemic codes are activated only in writing, and the retrieved representations of the text must be maintained in working memory longer because handwritten output is slower than speech. These extra demands on working memory could result in less effort being given to retrieval during written compared with spoken text recall. To test this hypothesis, college students read or heard Bartlett's "War of the Ghosts" and then recalled the text in writing or speech. Spoken recall produced more accurately recalled propositions and more major distortions (e.g., inferences) than written recall. The results suggest that writing reduces the retrieval effort given to reconstructing the propositions of a text.     

A "voice inversion effect?"

Voice is the carrier of speech but is also an "auditory face" rich in information on the speaker's identity and affective state. Three experiments explored the possibility of a "voice inversion effect," by analogy to the classical "face inversion effect," which could support the hypothesis of a voice-specific module. Experiment 1 consisted of a gender identification task on two syllables pronounced by 90 speakers (boys, girls, men, and women). Experiment 2 consisted of a speaker discrimination task on pairs of syllables (8 men and 8 women). Experiment 3 consisted of an instrument discrimination task on pairs of melodies (8 string and 8 wind instruments). In all three experiments, stimuli were presented in 4 conditions: (1) no inversion; (2) temporal inversion (e.g., backwards speech); (3) frequency inversion centered around 4000 Hz; and (4) around 2500 Hz. Results indicated a significant decrease in performance caused by sound inversion, with a much stronger effect for frequency than for temporal inversion. Interestingly, although frequency inversion markedly affected timbre for both voices and instruments, subjects' performance was still above chance. However, performance at instrument discrimination was much higher than for voices, preventing comparison of inversion effects for voices vs. non-vocal stimuli. Additional experiments will be necessary to conclude on the existence of a possible "voice inversion effect."     

Are complex psychotherapies more effective than biofeedback, progressive muscle relaxation, or both? A meta-analysis

A meta-analysis of 26 studies was conducted to assess whether more complex forms of psychotherapy would be superior to control treatments of either biofeedback, progressive muscle relaxation, or both. Consistent with hypotheses, more complex treatments provided a small, significant improvement over biofeedback and progressive muscle relaxation (r = .09). A subset of the more complex behavioral treatments accounted for most of this small incremental effectiveness of more complex treatments (r = .15). Possible sources of this incremental effectiveness are discussed.     

Are visual cue masking and removal techniques equivalent for studying perceptual skills in sport?

The spatial-occlusion paradigm makes use of two techniques (masking and removing visual cues) to provide information about the anticipatory cues used by viewers. The visual scene resulting from the removal technique appears to be incongruous, but the assumed equivalence of these two techniques is spreading. The present study was designed to address this issue by combining eye-movement recording with the two types of occlusion (removal versus masking) in a tennis serve-return task. Response accuracy and decision onsets were analysed. The results indicated that subjects had longer reaction times under the removal condition, with an identical proportion of correct responses. Also, the removal technique caused the subjects to rely on atypical search patterns. Our findings suggest that, when the removal technique was used, viewers were unable to systematically count on stored memories to help them accomplish the interception task. The persistent failure to question some of the assumptions about the removal technique in applied visual research is highlighted, and suggestions for continued use of the masking technique are advanced.     

"How long will I suffer?" versus "How long will you suffer?" A self-other effect in affective forecasting

This research presents evidence that people predict longer durations of negative affect for others than for themselves. It is argued that this self-other effect is based on the asymmetric availability of knowledge about psychological strategies that reduce negative affective experiences. Specifically, because people have available knowledge about their own coping strategies, they use this information when making predictions about their affect. The lack of information about others' coping strategies leads to longer predictions of affect duration for others, creating the self-other effect. A series of studies demonstrated this self-other effect, its source, and its boundary conditions. Specifically, the self-other effect occurred for negative but not for positive events, it was stronger when participants predicted affect duration for unfamiliar others than when participants predicted affect duration for familiar others, and the impact of the self versus other focus on affective forecasts was mediated by the availability of knowledge about coping strategies. In addition, alternative explanations for the self-other effect were ruled out. The implications for biases in affective forecasting are discussed.     

A Response to Steve Bruce's "Praying Alone?"

This article argues that neither Steve Bruce's theory of secularisation nor Grace Davie's theory of voluntary organisations are needed to explain British attitudes to religious belief and practice.     

Spanish adaptation of the "Why worry?" questionnaire

This study presents the validation of Spanish version of Why worry? Questionnaire which assesses a variable of process related to the overestimation of the positive and negative consequences of the excessive and uncontrollable worry that is characteristic of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. 833 participants from Tenerife (Canary Island) completed this questionnaire among other psychological measures. The exploratory factor analysis yielded a two-factors structure that explained 41.34% of the total variance; both of them showed adecuate internal consistency (alpha 1 = 0.86 and alpha 2 = 0.85) and test-retest (r 1 = 0.70 and r 2 = 0.75) reliability coefficients. A confirmatory factor analysis confirmed two-factor structure. As expected, concurrent validation uncovered substantial correlation with anxiety and mood disorders. The results support a good discriminate validity. The Spanish version of why worry questionnaire provides a reliable and valid instrument, which we can use in cross-cultural studies on worry as a GAD characteristic.     

The dimensionality of counterproductivity: Are all counterproductive behaviors created equal?

Most studies of counterproductive work behavior (CWB) assess it as one or two overall dimensions that might obscure relationships of potential antecedents with more specific forms of behavior. A finer-grained analysis of the relationship between counterproductive work behavior and antecedents was conducted with the five-subscales (abuse toward others, production deviance, sabotage, theft, and withdrawal) taken from the 45-item Counterproductive Work Behavior Checklist, a measure that has been used in a number of prior studies. Described is the rationale for each of the five dimensions, which have been discussed individually in the literature. Data from three combined studies provide evidence for differential relationships with potential antecedents that suggest the use of more specific subscales to assess CWB. Most notably, abuse and sabotage were most strongly related to anger and stress, theft was unrelated to emotion, and withdrawal was associated with boredom and being upset. Finally, the distinct forms of CWB may suggest distinct underlying dynamics, that vary in their balance of hostile and instrumental motivational systems.     

Are all experiences of fit created equal? Two paths to persuasion

Regulatory fit influences the effectiveness of persuasion through two paths: 1) a “feeling right” as “feeling good about the target” effect where feeling right is a positive feeling that transfers positivity directly to the target, similar to “feelings as information” or fluency effects, and 2) a “feeling right” as “feeling confident about the evaluation” effect where feeling right is feeling confident about one's evaluative judgments of the target that increases reliance on those evaluations. We propose that the involvement with an attitude-related issue in a persuasion message is one key factor that determines when each effect will occur. Five studies demonstrate that under high involvement, fit increased reliance on evaluative reactions to the target, making a target of a positive advocacy message evaluated as more positive and a target of a negative advocacy message evaluated as more negative; and under low involvement, fit increased the positivity of feelings toward the target regardless of the valence of the message advocacy, making the evaluation of the target more positive for either a positive or negative advocacy message.     

Are all Semitic languages immune to letter transpositions? The case of Maltese

Recent research using the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm with English sentences that included words with letter transpositions (e.g., jugde) has shown that participants can readily reproduce the correctly spelled sentences with little cost; in contrast, there is a dramatic reading cost with root-derived Hebrew words (Velan & Frost, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 14:913-918, 2007, Cognition 118:141-156, 2011). This divergence could be due to (1) the processing of root-derived words in Semitic languages or (2) the peculiarities of the transitional probabilities in root-derived Hebrew words. Unlike Hebrew, Maltese is a Semitic language that does not omit vowel information in print and whose morphology also has a significant non-Semitic (mostly Romance) morphology. Here, we employed the same RSVP technique used by Velan and Frost (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 14:913-918, 2007, Cognition 118:141-156, 2011), this time with Maltese (and English) sentences. The results showed that Maltese-English bilinguals were able to reproduce the Maltese words-regardless of whether they were misspelled (involving the transposition of two letters from the consonantal root) or not, with no reading cost-just as in English. The apparent divergences between the RSVP data with Hebrew versus Maltese sentences are likely due to the combination of the characteristics of the Hebrew orthographic system with the Semitic morphology.