Authoritarianism,Projection, and Person Perception: What Do Authoritarians Infer From Another's Attempt to Rebut a Rumor?

In the course of a field study, subjects first filled out a short form of the California F Scale (Adorno, 1973). In addition, one group of subjects was led to reflect on an episode in which a rumor had proven to be true. Another group of subjects was led to reflect on an episode in which they themselves had been a target of an unjustified accusation. A third (control) group did not undergo a priming procedure. All subjects read a brief newspaper advertisement in which a person issued the warning to take legal proceedings if anyone continued to spread untrue rumors concerning him. Subjects were asked to give reasons why the person initiated the rebuttal. High authoritarians, as identified by their responses to the California F Scale, were more likely than low authoritarians to infer anxiety, paranoia, and guilty conscience as motives for the rebuttal. This effect was particularly pronounced in the two priming conditions. Further, authoritarians evaluated the target person more negatively than did nonauthoritarians. The interpretation of the results dwells on repressive developmental and environmental forces causing the authoritarian style and the role of projection in person perception.     

Why Do People Join Groups? Three Motivational Accounts from Social Psychology

This paper describes and contrasts three contemporary social psychological theories that focus on why people join and identify with groups: the sociometer model, terror management theory, and uncertainty–identity theory. The sociometer model argues that people have a need to be socially included, and that self‐esteem is a meter of successful inclusion and group belonging. Terror management theory argues that people are motivated to reduce fear of the inevitability of their own death, and that the consensual belief–confirmation provided by groups drives people to belong. Uncertainty–identity theory argues that people have a basic need to reduce uncertainty about themselves, their attributes, and their place in the world, and that cognitive processes associated with group identification reduce such uncertainty. We critically contrast these three accounts to conclude that all three motivational processes may play a role, but that self‐uncertainty may have the benefit of wide generality to all groups and group contexts and of detailed specification of cognitive processes.     

Do Appearance Focused Cognitive Distortions Moderate the Relationship between Social Comparisons to Peers and Media Images and Body Image Disturbance?

The research questions addressed gender differences in the subjective appraisal of teens experiencing sexual harassment, and the psychosocial maturation of male and female teens appraising such events as threatening to their well-being. Using survey methodology, U.S. undergraduate women (n?=?316; 85% White Caucasian) and men (n?=?270; 85% White Caucasian) reported on their earliest formal work experiences (participants?? average age was M?=?19.03, SD?=?1.87). Results indicated that women, more than men, were more upset by, and were more likely to label an event as, sexual harassment. Results further demonstrated that men, particularly men who appraised harassment as bothersome and relied on behavioral coping, reported detriment to maturity outcomes of autonomy and social responsibility. Implications for a ??wimpy male?? hypothesis are discussed.     

What Do People Find Incompatible With Causal Determinism?

Four studies explored people's judgments about whether particular types of behavior are compatible with determinism. Participants read a passage describing a deterministic universe, in which everything that happens is fully caused by whatever happened before it. They then assessed the degree to which different behaviors were possible in such a universe. Other participants evaluated the extent to which each of these behaviors had various features (e.g., requiring reasoning). We assessed the extent to which these features predicted judgments about whether the behaviors were possible in a deterministic universe. Experiments 1 and 2 found that people's judgments about whether a behavior was compatible with determinism were not predicted by their judgments about whether that behavior relies on physical processes in the brain and body, is uniquely human, is unpredictable, or involves reasoning. Experiment 3, however, found that a distinction between what we call “active” and “passive” behaviors can explain people's judgments. Experiment 4 extended these findings, showing that we can measure this distinction in several ways and that it is robustly predicted by two different cues. Taken together, these results suggest that people carve up mentally guided behavior into two distinct types—understanding one type to be compatible with determinism, but another type to be fundamentally incompatible with determinism.     

What Do People Want to Feel and Why?: Pleasure and Utility in Emotion Regulation

ABSTRACT— It is typically assumed that people always want to feel good. Recent evidence, however, demonstrates that people want to feel unpleasant emotions, such as anger or fear, when these emotions promote the attainment of their long-term goals. If emotions are regulated for instrumental reasons, people should want to feel pleasant emotions when immediate benefits outweigh future benefits, but when future benefits outweigh immediate benefits, people may prefer to feel useful emotions, even if they are unpleasant. In this article, I describe an instrumental account of emotion regulation, review empirical evidence relevant to it, and discuss its implications for promoting adaptive emotional experiences.     

What Makes People Happy? Some Evidence from Northern Ireland

Using data on over 3000 individuals in Northern Ireland, this paper conducts an econometric investigation into what makes people happy. It draws a distinction between “objective” (income, marital status) and “subjective” (satisfaction with one’s standard of living (SoL); money worries; experience of poverty) factors determining happiness. In so doing, it takes a broader view of “economic status” than one defined solely by income: occupational class, mortgage status, financial worries, rural/urban residence, poverty experience, and, of course, income coalesce to form this, more complex, concept of economic status. Juxtaposed against this, is the concept of “context-free” and “context-specific” well-being. A particular example of the latter is the degree of satisfaction with one’s SoL and an important point of focus of the paper is the relationship between SoL satisfaction and happiness. A complementary point of focus is an analysis of the determinants of context-free and context-specific well-being. The paper also examines the effects of non-economic factors on happiness in particular on specific aspects of the ill-health of respondents and upon the quality of the areas in which they live. Having analysed these effects, it places a money value on each of the diversity of effects that act upon a person’s level of happiness.The analysis in this paper is based on the Poverty and Social Exclusion in Northern Ireland (PSENI) Project’s data and I am grateful to the Project leaders – Paddy Hillyard, Eithne McLaughlin and Mike Tomlinson – for permission to use these data. Thanks are due to Andrew Oswald, to one of the Editors of JOHS, and to two anonymous referees for their valuable comments. Needless to say, the usual disclaimer applies.     

Through a Glass Darkly What Do People Learn in Videoconferences?

Interactive video communication, both in conference rooms and on desktop computers, is becoming an increasingly attractive technology, in large measure for economic reasons. In a longitudinal field study, the authors demonstrate, as have others, positive first-order efficiency effects of this technology. That is, people can achieve the same levels of performance in video interaction as they do in face-to-face interaction. However, the authors also demonstrate some second-order differences between face-to-face and video interaction. They show that the impressions people form of remote others are different from and less positive than the impressions they form of face-to-face others, starting from an equal baseline. The authors also show that people make use of different kinds of information informing their impressions. They frame their results within the context of growing use of interactive video to suggest implications for research and organizational practice.     

On Being Mindful: What Do People Think They're Doing?

Thoughts are typically dismissed as sources of distraction that hinder a mindful awareness of ongoing experience. Although this may be said of some thoughts, we focus on the undervalued role that regulatory thoughts play in the development and maintenance of mindful action. To do so, we explore the function of thoughts from the perspective of action identification theory. The application of action identification principles to mindfulness yields a new understanding of how the mind coordinates mindful action, with implications for mindfulness instruction, practice, and future research.     

What Does the DAP:IQ Measure?: Drawing Comparisons between Drawing Performance and Developmental Assessments

Human figure drawing tasks such as the Draw-a-Person test have long been used to assess intelligence (F. Goodenough, 1926). The authors investigate the skills tapped by drawing and the risk factors associated with poor drawing. Self-portraits of 345 preschool children were scored by raters trained in using the Draw-a-Person Intellectual Ability test (DAP:IQ) rubric (C. R. Reynolds & J. A. Hickman, 2004). Analyses of children's fine motor, gross motor, social, cognitive, and language skills revealed that only fine motor skill was an independent predictor of DAP:IQ scores. Being a boy and having a low birth weight were associated with lower DAP:IQ scores. These findings suggest that although the DAP:IQ may not be a valid measure of cognitive ability, it may be a useful screening tool for fine motor disturbances in at-risk children, such as boys who were born at low birth weights. Furthermore, researchers who use human figure drawing tasks to measure intelligence should measure fine motor skill in addition to intelligence.     

Do Our Facebook Friends Make Us Feel Worse? A Study of Social Comparison and Emotion

People often compare themselves to others to gain a better understanding of the self in a process known as social comparison. The current study discusses how people engage in a social comparison process on Facebook, and how observing content from their Facebook friends may affect their emotions. A 2 (comparison direction) × 2 (relational closeness) × 2 (self‐esteem) between‐subjects experiment was conducted with 163 adult participants. The results revealed a significant 3‐way interaction such that people with high self‐esteem would be happier receiving positive information than negative information from their close friends, but the effect would be the opposite if the information was from a distant friend. There was no such difference for people with low self‐esteem.     

How Do Income and Its Components and Perception Relate to Alienation?

This study examines the relationship between individuals' financial reality and alienation—a psychological state that negatively affects employee performance. Using hierarchical regression to analyze 311 questionnaires completed by full‐time employees, income‐related variables were found to explain a substantial part of the variance in alienation. A negative relationship between income and alienation was identified, but was moderated by the value that individuals attributed to money and was related to pay satisfaction. Pay composition had an independent effect on alienation: Higher control over amount of income and a recent increase in income were related to lower levels of alienation beyond the effect of income level. Potential practices to reduce alienation include spreading wage increases, enhancing pay transparency, and linking pay to performance.     

Compared to What? The Importance of Control Groups in Social Comparison Research

Two experiments demonstrate the importance of control groups in social comparison research. When comparing to downward targets leads to more favorable self-evaluations than comparing to upward targets, results are often interpreted as demonstrating bidirectional contrast effects. However, without a no-comparison control group, these claims cannot be supported. The present experiments provided participants with performance feedback; some participants received information about an upward target, a downward target, or a bidirectional target (one upward, one downward). Results suggest that social comparison effects are not always bidirectional: Downward and bidirectional comparisons led to contrast whereas upward comparisons were not different from the control. Experiment 2 assessed the role of lateral targets. Overall, results suggest that existing interpretations of contrast effects should be reexamined.     

Pet Peeves and Happiness: How Do Happy People Complain?

The present study was designed to investigate the relationships among mindfulness, happiness, and the expression of pet peeves. Previous research has established a positive correlation between happiness and mindfulness, but, to date, no research has examined how each of these variables is related to complaining in the form of pet peeves. Four hundred ten male and female college students listed the pet peeves they had with a current or former relationship partner. They also completed measures of happiness, positive and negative affect, depression, mindfulness, relationship satisfaction, and satisfaction with life. Pet peeves were negatively correlated with relationship satisfaction, well-being, and mindfulness. Consistent with hypotheses, support was found for the mediating role of mindfulness in the relationship between happiness and pet peeves.     

What Should a Correspondence Theory Be and Do?

Correspondence theories are frequently either too vaguely expressed – “true statements correspond to the way things are in the world,” or implausible – “true statements mirror raw, mind-independent reality.” I address this problem by developing features and roles that ought to characterize what I call ldquo;modest” correspondence theories. Of special importance is the role of correspondence in directing our responses to cases of suspected non-factuality; lack of straightforward correspondence shows the need for, and guides us in our choice of, various kinds of reconstrual projects. This, I argue, is in contrast to the approaches suggested by deflationism and coherence, and thus modest correspondence theories are appropriately distinct from rivals     

What Holds Asian Societies Together? Insights from the Social Cohesion Radar

Applied Research in Quality of Life -