Stereotypes of singles: are singles what we think?

Four studies examined the accuracy of the single stereotype by comparing perceptions of single and partnered targets with self‐ratings and ratings by others of single and partnered participants. Results revealed that single targets were evaluated more negatively than partnered targets in terms of a wide range of personality characteristics, overall well‐being, and satisfaction with relationships status. These findings were very robust and not qualified by target sex, participant sex, and participant relationship status. In contrast, self‐ratings of single and partnered participants were remarkably similar for all personality characteristics as well as overall well‐being, which was corroborated by ratings of participants by others. However, partnered participants were indeed more satisfied with their relationship status than single participants. When all is considered, the single stereotype is largely inaccurate. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self-report, situation-specific coping questionnaires: what are they measuring?

Self-report, situation-specific assessments of coping, such as the Ways of Coping Scale (WOC), have been used frequently in recent years. Several potential issues in the development and use of these questionnaires have been identified, including the applicability of coping items to different kinds of stressful events, the definition of the period for which Ss report coping efforts, and the meaning of the "extent" response key that is used for reporting coping items. In this study, 91 college students completed the WOC and were then interviewed about their responses; interview questions were focused on the 3 issues stated above. The hypothesized concerns about the WOC were supported. Many of the coping items were not applicable to certain kinds of stressful events. Also, how the coping report period was defined varied across Ss and the way in which the extent response key was interpreted differed across both Ss and WOC items.     

The paradox of happiness: Why are we not doing what we know makes us happy?

Achieving and maintaining happiness can be difficult, especially when people are not engaging in the activities they know facilitate it. ‘Flow’ activities require clear rules, challenge, a high investment of energy, and have been shown to promote long-term happiness better than low investment, passive activities. Do people know this? In two studies, we found that, despite recognizing that flow activities are more likely to facilitate happiness, people nevertheless participated in passive leisure significantly more often in a typical week. Participants rated passive activities as being significantly more enjoyable, requiring less effort, and being less daunting to get started than flow activities. Participants’ engagement in flow activities was significantly predicted by how enjoyable the activities were perceived to be, whereas how daunting those activities were rated predicted non-engagement. Passive activity engagement was only significantly predicted by enjoyment. Suggestions for enabling people to rise above the barriers to flow activities are offered.     

Neuromotor profiles: what are they and what can we learn from them?

Eye movements, alternating movements, rapid pointing movements, and various tremors were measured on patients with Parkinson's disease (n = 21), on Cree subjects exposed to methylmercury (n = 36), and on healthy control subjects (n = 30). Neuromotor profiles were created according to thirty characteristics extracted from test results of four subgroups matched for age and composed of six subjects each. Z scores were calculated with respect to the mean and standard deviation of the control group for each of the 30 characteristics. The subgroup with the lower methylmercury blood level had larger z scores than the control subgroup and with a few positive values above one standard deviation. The subgroup with the higher methylmercury blood level had several z scores above two standard deviations. Interestingly, the abnormal values for the subgroup with Parkinson's disease were mostly limited to static tremor recorded with no visual feedback and reached up to 5 standard deviations. These results indicate that neuromotor profiles can be used to summarize information extracted from different neuromotor tests and to differentiate neurological conditions.     

Three measures of locus of control: what do they measure?

The Rotter, Adult Nowicki-Strickland, and Levenson IE scales were completed by 175 undergraduate students. Factor analyses reconfirmed the factor structure of the Levenson IE scale. Partial correlation analyses showed that the portion of common variance shared by the Rotter IE and the Adult Nowicki-Strickland IE scales associated closely with Levenson's Chance factor. These findings support a multi-dimensional view of locus of control attribution.     

Existential choices: to what degree is who we are a matter of choice?

On the one hand, it is commonly agreed that we make choices in which we are guided by a core of personal commitments, wishes, feelings, etc. that we take to express who we are. On the other, it is commonly agreed that some of these ‘existential’ choices constitute who we are. When confronting these two matters, the question of agency inevitably arises: Whether and in what sense can we choose ourselves? The paper will argue for a new perspective on existential choice.     

(Why) do I think what you think? Epistemic social tuning and implicit prejudice

This research examines whether people who experience epistemic motivation (i.e., a desire to acquire knowledge) came to have implicit attitudes consistent with the apparent beliefs of another person. People had lower implicit prejudice when they experienced epistemic motivation and interacted with a person who ostensibly held egalitarian beliefs (Experiments 1 and 2). Implicit prejudice was not affected when people did not experience epistemic motivation. Further evidence shows that this tuning of implicit attitudes occurs when beliefs are endorsed by another person, but not when they are brought to mind via means that do not imply that person's endorsement (Experiment 3). Results suggest that implicit attitudes of epistemically motivated people tune to the apparent beliefs of others to achieve shared reality.     

Psychological universals: what are they and how can we know?

Psychological universals, or core mental attributes shared by humans everywhere, are a foundational postulate of psychology, yet explicit analysis of how to identify such universals is lacking. This article offers a conceptual and methodological framework to guide the investigation of genuine universals through empirical analysis of psychological patterns across cultures. Issues of cross-cultural generalizability of psychological processes and 3 cross-cultural research strategies to probe universals are considered. Four distinct levels of hierarchically organized universals are possible: From strongest to weakest claims for universality, they are accessibility universals, functional universals, existential universals, and nonuniversals. Finally, universals are examined in relation to the questions of levels of analysis, evolutionary explanations of psychological processes, and management of cross-cultural relations.     

What are we frightened of?

I am concerned to understand that relation to a situation which we call fearing it. Some say this cannot be done: it is a brute fact about us that we fear certain things and we understand another's fear when we see that he confronts a situation of this sort (a basic fear object) or one which he understandably associates with this sort. In Section I, I argue that being associated with a basic fear object will not usefully explain a current fear. In Section II, I argue that the obvious candidates for being basic fears will not do the required work. The notion should be rejected. I then argue that to fear an object is to take it as exhibiting one's lack of control and I proceed to describe the nature and content of this notion.     

How do we know what we are doing? Time, intention and awareness of action

Time is a fundamental dimension of consciousness. Many studies of the "sense of agency" have investigated whether we attribute actions to ourselves based on a conscious experience of intention occurring prior to action, or based on a reconstruction after the action itself has occurred. Here, we ask the same question about a lower level aspect of action experience, namely awareness of the detailed spatial form of a simple movement. Subjects reached for a target, which unpredictably jumped to the side on some trials. Participants (1) expressed their expectancy of a target shift during the upcoming movement, (2) pointed at the target as quickly and accurately as possible before returning to the start posiment to the target shift if required and (3) reproduced the spatial path of the movement they had just made, as accurately as possible, to give an indication of their awareness of the pointing movement. We analysed the spatial disparity between the initial and the reproduced movements on those with a target shift. A negative disparity value, or undershoot, suggests that motor awareness merely reflects a sluggish record of coordinated motor performance, while a positive value, or overshoot, suggests that participants' intention to point to the shifting target contributes more to their awareness of action than their actual pointing movement. Undershoot and overshoot thus measure the reconstructive (motoric) and the preconstuctive (intentional) aspects of action awareness, respectively. We found that trials on which subjects strongly expected a target shift showed greater overshoot and less undershoot than trials with lower expectancy. Conscious expectancy therefore strongly influences the experience of the detailed motor parameters of our actions. Further, a delay inserted either between the expectancy judgement and the pointing movement, or between the pointing movement and the reproduction of the movement, had no effect on visuomotor adjustment but strongly influenced action awareness. Delays during either interval boosted undershoots, suggesting increased reliance on a time-limited sensory memory for action. The experience of action is thus strongly influenced by prior thoughts and expectations, but only over a short time period. Thus, awareness of our actions is a dynamic and relatively flexible mixture of what we intend to do, and what our motor system actually does.     

Does the name-race implicit association test measure racial prejudice?

Research using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) has shown that names labeled as Caucasian elicit more positive associations than names labeled as non-Caucasian. One interpretation of this result is that the IAT measures latent racial prejudice. An alternative explanation is that the result is due to differences in in-group/out-group membership. In this study, we conducted three different IATs: one with same-race Dutch names versus racially charged Moroccan names; one with same-race Dutch names versus racially neutral Finnish names; and one with Moroccan names versus Finnish names. Results showed equivalent effects for the Dutch-Moroccan and Dutch-Finnish IATs, but no effect for the Finnish-Moroccan IAT. This suggests that the name-race IAT-effect is not due to racial prejudice. A diffusion model decomposition indicated that the IAT-effects were caused by changes in speed of information accumulation, response conservativeness, and non-decision time.     

Familiarity and attention: Does what we know affect what we notice?

Previous work on the object and word superiority effects has demonstrated that activation from stored representations can facilitate identification of items in a visual display. We predicted that activation of this sort might exogenously attract visual attention toward items that have stored representations. To test this prediction, we presented a familiar (word) and an unfamiliar (nonword) item simultaneously at unpredictable locations, and after varying delays, moved one of the stimuli. In accord with our prediction, at the shortest intervals subjects were more efficient at discriminating motion of the familiar item. Control data demonstrated that this advantage was due to a competitive interaction and not to the familiarity of the items per se.     

How "implicit" are implicit color effects in memory?

Processing colored pictures of objects results in a preference to choose the former color for a specific object in a subsequent color choice test (Wippich & Mecklenbr?uker, 1998). We tested whether this implicit memory effect is independent of performances in episodic color recollection (recognition). In the study phase of Experiment 1, the color of line drawings was either named or its appropriateness was judged. We found only weak implicit memory effects for categorical color information. In Experiment 2, silhouettes were colored by subjects during the study phase. Performances in both the implicit and the explicit test were good. Selections of "old" colors in the implicit test, though, were almost completely confined to items for which the color was also remembered explicitly. In Experiment 3, we applied the opposition technique in order to check whether we could find any implicit effects regarding items for which no explicit color recollection was possible. This was not the case. We therefore draw the conclusion that implicit color preference effects are not independent of explicit recollection, and that they are probably based on the same episodic memory traces that are used in explicit tests.     

Do self‐presentation concerns moderate the relationship between implicit and explicit homonegativity measures?

This study investigated whether the relation between implicit and explicit homonegativity measures is affected by self-presentation concerns, since previous research in this area has been inconclusive. In Experiment 1, 70 high-school students made evaluative ratings of pictures of homosexual and heterosexual couples. Self-presentation was manipulated by either instructing participants that the study concerned attitudes regarding sexual orientation (socially sensitive) or attitudes regarding age (less sensitive). The age-instruction led to increased homonegativity but not to a stronger correlation with an Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee & Schwartz, 1998) with homo/heterosexual couples. Concerns regarding the construct validity of the present implementation of the IAT were alleviated in Experiment 2, where heterosexual (n= 30) but not homosexual (n= 30) participants showed implicit homonegativity. The current findings are problematic for the interpretation of low correspondence between implicit and explicit attitude measures as being primarily an effect of self-presentation concerns.     

What are we doing to the earth's climate and what are we going to do about it?

Climatic considerations are critical if our planet is to survive. The environment, and in particular the atmosphere, is particularly sensitive to man. The time has come to act in favor of that which gives us life. This is why, in a field which knows no boundaries, only an international strategy can be effective.