Factors affecting withdrawal from an escalating conflict: Quitting before it's too late

In an experimental study of “entrapping” conflicts —situations in which a decisionmaker may continue to expend resources in part to justify previous expenditures—subjects were given an initial stake of $4.00 and had the opportunity to win an additional $2.00 jackpot. Two independent variables (Process of Resource Allocation and Prior Limit-Setting) were combined in a 2 × 3 design. Once the subjects had started to invest, half of them had to make an “active” decision to continue. Unless they actively decided to continue, their investments automatically ceased and they were no longer eligible for the jackpot (Selfterminating condition). The other half only had to make a “passive” decision to continue. Unless they actively decided to dis continue, their investments for the jackpot automatically increased (Self-sustaining condition). In addition, before investments began, some subjects were asked to inform the experimenter of the nonbinding limit they had set on the amount they planned to invest (Public condition), some were asked to set a limit which they kept to themselves (Private condition), while a third group was not asked to set a limit (Control condition). Subjects invested significantly more money in the Self-sustaining condition. Also, investments were somewhat greater in the Control than the Public condition. Although the mean investments in the Public and Private conditions did not differ, those in the Public condition deviated significantly less from their earlier set limits, suggesting greater commitment to these limits. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Qualities Underlying the Definitions of Gender

Dimensions underlying the definition of items as feminine and masculine were examined in a set of three studies. Items chosen by children as belonging to males or females were used as the initial stimuli. These included traditionally stereotyped items such as a hammer and an iron, as well as more metaphorically related items such as bears and flowers. The raters in all three studies were undergraduates (70% White, 30% minorities). In Study 1, the items were rated using a set of 40 common adjectives. Three factors resulted: two related to masculine items and one to feminine items. In Study 2, a subset of the adjectives were used to rate abstract paintings that had been designated feminine or masculine by another group of adults. In Study 3, a set of stimuli were developed using the adjectives from the previous two studies. The items were rated as feminine or masculine and matched the initial coding of the adjective. The new items were also rated on the same adjectives by another set of adults. Again, the masculine adjectives were assigned to masculine items and feminine to feminine items. There was excellent agreement across three different sets of stimuli on the underlying dimensions of gender definition, even using items that were not traditionally stereotyped.     

The effects of nonconsciously priming emotion concepts on behavior

Current empirical evidence regarding nonconsciously priming emotion concepts is limited to positively versus negatively valenced affect. This article demonstrates that specific, equally valenced emotion concepts can be nonconsciously activated, remain inaccessible to conscious awareness, and still affect behavior in an emotion-specific fashion. In Experiment 1A, participants subliminally primed with guilty emotion adjectives showed lower indulgence than did participants subliminally primed with sad emotion adjectives; even after the addition of a 5-min time delay, these results were replicated in Experiment 1B. Participants in the different priming conditions showed no differences in their subjective emotion ratings and were unaware of the emotion prime or concept activation. Experiments 2A and 2B replicated these findings using a helping measure, demonstrating that individuals primed with guilt adjectives show more helping than do individuals primed with sadness adjectives. In all studies, effects were moderated by individuals' specific emotion-response habits and characteristics.     

Adaptive regression of two types

Adaptive regression is considered to be of two types: a relatively uncommunicable private type and a relatively communicable public type. Private adaptive regression was operationalized by hypnotic suggestibility and by a questionnaire. Public adaptive regression was operationalized by two measures of esthetic sensitivity. It was hypothesized that the psychodynamics of the two types are as follows: Hypothesis 1: Private adaptive regression involves engaging in primary process because of secondary process motivation. Hypothesis 2: Public adaptive regression involves engaging in primary process because of secondary process motivation. Hypothesis 3: Public adaptive regression involves secondary process shaping of primary process to a greater extent than does private adaptive regression. Measures of engaging in primary process were derived from inkblot responses. Hypotheses 1 and 3 were supported: Hypothesis 2 was not.     

Typicality and Graded Membership in Dimensional Adjectives

This paper concerns an investigation of the manner in which typicality constrains graded membership in antonymous dimensional adjectives such as short/tall and cheap/expensive using the conceptual spaces framework. In this framework, items are organized in a space comprised of one or more dimensions along which they can be compared. The items’ graded membership is established by their relative proximity in this space to the prototypical instances of contrasting concepts. Because dimensional adjectives can be applied to an indefinite variety of things and grammatically have no upper bound to serve as cognitive reference point, they have been argued to lack prototypes. We present the results of an empirical study showing that the conceptual spaces framework can nevertheless be extended successfully to dimensional adjectives by complementing them with a comparison class argument (such as short/tall for an adult man and cheap/expensive for a smartphone), allowing participants to retrieve meaningful prototypical instances, which can be used to establish membership degree. Since dimensional adjectives are subjective, we investigate how the framework can accommodate interindividual variability in membership degree judgments. We find that the predictions of the framework significantly improve if prototypical instances themselves are assumed to come with a gradient instead of being considered equally typical, thereby providing a more fine‐grained account of typicality and furthering the development of the conceptual spaces framework.     

Semantic networks of English.

Principles of lexical semantics developed in the course of building an on-line lexical database are discussed. The approach is relational rather than componential. The fundamental semantic relation is synonymy, which is required in order to define the lexicalized concepts that words can be used to express. Other semantic relations between these concepts are then described. No single set of semantic relations or organizational structure is adequate for the entire lexicon: nouns, adjectives, and verbs each have their own semantic relations and their own organization determined by the role they must play in the construction of linguistic messages.     

The language of possibility and probability: Effects of negation on meaning

Modal adjectives (e.g., “possible” and “probable”) have been the subject of much discussion by linguists and logicians. For ordinary speakers, it was found that an important aspect of the meaning of modal adjectives is that they can all be used to qualify the truth of a statement: Subjects sorted modal adjectives according to similarity of meaning and then ordered the same adjectives solely according to their degree of qualification. The sorting data yielded a one-dimensional scaling solution of low stress that correlated highly with the results from the ordering task. Using the same techniques, negation was found to translate a modal adjective down the scale of qualification (e.g., “improbable” is more qualifying than “probable”) so that the order of affirmative adjectives with respect to each other is preserved for the corresponding negated adjectives. Negation in this domain is more analogous to a subtractive, rather than multiplicative, process. Also, affixal negation, as in “improbable” was consistently found to be more qualifying than lexical negation, as in “not probable.     

青少年学生公益心内隐观研究

公益心是个体在公益行为中表现出来的比较稳定的人格特征。以435名青少年为被试，采用内隐观调查法搜集了具有公益心特征的形容词或短语，通过分类与合并找到了能代表具有公益心特征的80个形容词；然后，通过489名青少年对这些形容词或短语的评定得分，采用探索性因素分析得到了青少年公益心的四个因子，即同情友爱、环境意识、集体意识、热情自信；最后，对另外351名青少年的形容词问卷得分进行了验证性因素分析，结果表明青少年公益心四因素模型的拟合度较好，从而确认了青少年公益心的四因素结构模型。     

Immediate and delayed effects of word frequency and word length on eye movements in reading: a reversed delayed effect of word length

Three experiments examined the effects in sentence reading of varying the frequency and length of an adjective on (a) fixations on the adjective and (b) fixations on the following noun. The gaze duration on the adjective was longer for low frequency than for high frequency adjectives and longer for long adjectives than for short adjectives. This contrasted with the spillover effects: Gaze durations on the noun were longer when adjectives were low frequency but were actually shorter when the adjectives were long. The latter effect, which seems anomalous, can be explained by three mechanisms: (a) Fixations on the noun are less optimal after short adjectives because of less optimal targeting; (b) shorter adjectives are more difficult to process because they have more neighbors; and (c) prior fixations before skips are less advantageous places to extract parafoveal information. The viability of these hypotheses as explanations of this reverse length effect on the noun was examined in simulations using an updated version of the E-Z Reader model (A. Pollatsek, K. Reichle, & E. D. Rayner, 2006c; E. D. Reichle, A. Pollatsek, D. L. Fisher, & K. Rayner, 1998).     

Assessment of the Fenigstein,Scheier, and Buss Self-Consciousness Scale: A Swedish Translation

The psychometric properties of a Swedish translation of Fenigstein, Scheier, and Busses (1975) Self-Consciousness Scale are reported, The three-factor structure of the Self-Consciousness Scale was replicated in a sample of 241 undergraduate university students and in a sample of 225 female high school students. In a sample of 175 male high school students, the three-factor structure was not confirmed. items assumed to reflect Private and Public Self-consciousness, collapsed into one factor. Test-retest reliabilities and internal consistency of the subscales were consistent with prior research. Significant gender differences in Public Self-consciousness and Social Anxiety are reported. Women scored higher than men.     

Differentiation in judgements of self and others: The role of self-consciousness

This study investigated the role of individual differences in Private and Public self-consciousness (SC) on differentiation of self and others in judgements of personality. Ss judged themselves and six other familiar persons on personality constructs derived from a modified Rep Grid procedure. Results showed that the judgements of high scorers on Private SC exhibited greater within-self and self-other differentiation than those of low scorers. There was no significant influence of Private SC on differentiation of other stimulus persons. Public SC had no significant influence on any of the measures of differentiation. The findings were discussed in terms of previous research on self-awareness, the specificity of measures of self-consciousness, and Duval and Wicklund's attentional model of self-awareness.     

Understanding misunderstanding: a study of sex differences in meaning attribution

There are biologically based sex differences in verbal abilities and in neuropsychological systems of verbal processing. Measurement of observable behaviour, however, does not say much about sex differences in the internal, semantic processing of verbal material. The present study, which was conducted in Canada, China and Russia, investigated sex differences in connotative meaning attribution to the most common concepts using an object scale symmetry in the choice of the nouns and bipolar adjectives (projective semantic method). The results showed that males had a tendency to estimate reality- and work-related concepts more negatively and social- and physical attractors more positively than women. The paper hypothesizes that at the level of the most fundamental semantic processing men favour more exceptional objects than women, and women favour more predictable objects, including rules and routines.     

Hot dogs and zavy cats: preschoolers' and adults' expectations about familiar and novel adjectives

In recent years, a growing body of research has begun to examine the processes that underlie young children's acquisition of adjectival meanings. In the present studies, we examined whether preschoolers' willingness to extend adjectives was influenced by the type of property labeled by familiar adjectives (Experiment 1) and by semantic information conveyed in the sentence used to introduce novel adjectives (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, we examined preschoolers' and adults' expectations about the generalizability of familiar adjectives of three different types: emotional state terms, physiological state terms, and stable trait terms. On each trial, we labeled a target animal with one of the three different types of adjectives and asked whether these terms could apply to a subordinate-level match, a basic-level match, a superordinate-level match, or an inanimate object. Results indicated that 4-year-olds and adults extended the trait terms, but not the emotional or physiological terms, to members of the same basic-level category. In Experiment 2, we presented 4-year-olds and adults with novel adjectives in one of two verb frames: stable ("This X is very daxy") or transient ("This X feels very daxy"). Participants were more likely to extend the novel adjective to subordinate matches if they were in the Stable frame group than if they were in the Transient frame group. These findings are discussed in terms of implications for young children's expectations about familiar and novel adjectives.     

Competition in stereotyped domains: Competition,social comparison,and stereotype threat

The current work examines a novel and specific way in which competition can hurt the performance of negatively stereotyped individuals: by evoking stereotype threat. In four experiments, we demonstrate that women's underperformance in math when primed with competition was due to feeling worried about confirming negative stereotypes about women's math ability (i.e., stereotype threat), that the activation of negative performance stereotypes for women primed with competition was due to increased group‐level social comparisons (i.e., comparing the self with men and women), and that priming competition led men to perform more poorly than women in a domain where they are negatively stereotyped (i.e., verbal ability). This research suggests that priming people with competition in contexts where they are negatively stereotyped leads to greater social comparison, activation of negative stereotypes, and concern about confirming these stereotypes, thereby decreasing stereotyped individuals' performance in the stereotyped domain. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Phenomenology of Rheumatology: Disability,Merleau‐Ponty,and the Fallacy of Maximal Grip

This paper charts the concepts of grip and the bodily auxiliary in Maurice Merleau‐Ponty to consider how they find expression in disability narratives. Arguing against the notion of “maximal grip” that some commentators have used to explicate intentionality in Merleau‐Ponty, I argue that grip in his texts functions instead as a compensatory effort to stave off uncertainty, lack of mastery, and ambiguity. Nearly without exception in Phenomenology of Perception, the mobilization of “grip” is a signal of impending loss, and is offered as a strategy for managing failure rather than as an example of sure‐footed mastery. I read Merleau‐Ponty alongside Mary Felstiner's Out of Joint: A Public and Private Story of Arthritis to explore these other, attenuated dimensions of grip. Finally, the paper turns to Harriet McBryde Johnson's memoir Too Late to Die Young as an example of a way of thinking disabled embodiment otherwise.