Empathizing and systemizing: What are they,and what do they contribute to our understanding of psychological sex differences?

Empathizing and systemizing have recently been put forward as two important individual‐difference dimensions, whose different mean levels in men and women are argued to account for many psychological sex differences. This paper presents a series of studies designed to investigate the reliability and validity of the empathizing and systemizing quotients (EQ & SQ), to relate them to existing personality constructs, and to replicate reported sex and sexual orientation‐related differences. Correlations with interests and social behaviour suggest the two measures are valid. However, empathizing appears essentially equivalent to agreeableness in the five‐factor model of personality. Systemizing cannot be reduced to established personality dimensions, though it is moderately correlated with conscientiousness and openness. Men have higher levels of systemizing than women, and non‐heterosexual women higher than heterosexuals. However, no differences were found between heterosexual and non‐heterosexual men. Although systemizing and empathizing account for a number of observed sex differences, there are others they do not explain.     

Emergencies: what are they and do they influence bystanders to intervene?

Social psychological research on helping has, in part, been concerned with the intervention of bystanders into emergencies. Pertinent empirical literature does not seem to be available on what factors bystanders use to define an emergency nor the effect of such a decision on the rate of helping. A series of four studies was conducted to answer these questions. We found that (a) Emergencies are a subclass of problem situation that usually result from accidents; (b) there is a high degree of agreement concerning what problem situations are definitely an emergency; (c) emergency situations are differentiated from other problem situations by threat of harm or actual harm worsening with time, unavailability of an easy solution to the problem, and necessity of obtaining outside help to solve the problem; (d) disagreement on whether a problem situation is an emergency or not results from differing perceptions of the degree to which threat of harm or actual harm worsens with time; (e) bystanders are more likely to help in emergency than in nonemergency problem situations. The results were interpreted as indicating that the need of the victim is a salient feature used by bystanders in determining whether or not to help.     

Number and language: how are they related?

Does the ability to develop numerical concepts depend on our ability to use language? We consider the role of the vocabulary of counting words in developing numerical concepts. We challenge the 'bootstrapping' theory which claims that children move from using something like an object-file - an attentional process for responding to small numerosities - to a truly arithmetic one as a result of their learning the counting words. We also question the interpretation of recent findings from Amazonian cultures that have very restricted number vocabularies. Our review of data and theory, along with neuroscientific evidence, imply that numerical concepts have an ontogenetic origin and a neural basis that are independent of language.     

Workaholism and work engagement: how are they similar? How are they different? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Workaholism and work engagement can be depicted, respectively, as the pathological and the healthy form of heavy work investment. In spite of their different definitions and outcomes on individual and organizational life, workaholism and work engagement are not clearly and adequately distinguished by scholars and researchers as they appear to show some overlapping features. The aim of this investigation was to meta-analyze available studies, selected by systematic review, on the relations between subdimensions of workaholism and work engagement. Thirty-five studies were eligible for analysis. Associations emerged between Working Excessively and Absorption (g = .34), Working Compulsively and Absorption (g = .28), and Working Excessively and Dedication (g = .14). Moreover, the results were not influenced by publication bias and showed nationality to be a significant moderator. Overall, these findings suggest that further research is necessary to extend our knowledge of workaholism, work engagement, and the relationship between the two, in order to disentangle commonalities and differences between them.     

Scientific societies and research integrity: What are they doing and how well are they doing it?

Scientific societies can play an important role in promoting ethical research practices among their members, and over the past two decades several studies have addressed how societies perform this role. This survey continues this research by examining current efforts by scientific societies to promote research integrity among their members. The data indicate that although many of the societies are working to promote research integrity through ethics codes and activities, they lack rigorous assessment methods to determine the effectiveness of their efforts. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the AAAS-Office of Research Integrity (ORI) meeting in Washington DC on the theme: “The Role and Activities of Scientific Societies in Promoting Research Integrity” held on April 10–11, 2000.     

Parental belief and parental engagement: how do they interact?

Previous literature has shown the importance of parental engagement for children’s outcomes; a largely separate body of literature has shown that there are clear effects on children’s outcomes related to parental religion. This article is a literature review of these two fields, with the aim of relating them to each other. The article suggests two possible explanations, behavioural and economic, for the differences in outcomes related to differences in parental engagement arising from differences in religion, but incorporating knowledge from the field of parental engagement. Finally, it sets out a research agenda for the future.     

Imitation by animals: how do they do it?

Imitation is of psychological interest in part because it has cognitive implications for how organisms view the behavior of others, relative to their own behavior. It implies the ability to take the perspective of another. For this reason, researchers have tried to distinguish imitation from other kinds of social learning and influence. In the two-action procedure, one of two response topographies is demonstrated, and the correlation between the topography demonstrated and the topography later used by the observer is a measure of imitation. Both pigeons and Japanese quail show response matching, despite the fact that from their perspective, their own behavior appears quite different from that demonstrated. Although imitation has been demonstrated in birds and several species of primates, researchers are still not certain what mechanisms underlie this ability.     

Worry and rumination: do they prolong physiological and affective recovery from stress?

Background: Anxiety and depression have been linked to repetitive negative self-regulation styles in the form of worry and rumination respectively. Following predictions of the metacognitive model [Wells, A., & Matthews, G. (1994). Attention and emotion: A clinical perspective. Hove: Erlbaum], the current study compared the effect on recovery from stress of three strategies: worry, rumination, and distraction using a stress exposure paradigm. It was predicted that worry and/or rumination would be associated with delayed recovery on physiological and/or self-report indices when compared to distraction.

Method: Fifty-four participants were randomly assigned to one of the self-regulation conditions and then completed a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test [TSST; Kirschbaum, C., Pirke, K. M., & Hellhammer, D. H. (1993). The “TSST” – A tool for investigating psychobiological stress responses in a laboratory setting. Neuropsychobiology, 28, 76–81. doi:10.1159/000119004]. Skin conductance and negative affect (NA) measurements were obtained at six different time points.

Results: Skin conductance indicated a prolonged recovery in the rumination condition when compared with the distraction condition. Individuals in the worry condition reported an immediate-delayed recovery from stress marked by higher NA scores in comparison to the distraction condition.

Conclusions: These findings may provide important insights into the effects of different forms of repetitive negative thinking on physiological and psychological recovery from stress. The different response patterns observed are discussed within the context of the metacognitive model.     

Performance expectations,personal resources,and job resources: How do they predict work engagement?

Research on work engagement has mainly focused on the role of job and personal resources and has ignored the possible impact of personal demands workers develop with regard to their work. The aim of our study was to test the reciprocal relationships that job resources, personal resources, and personal demands, operationalized as performance expectations, share with work engagement. Three-wave longitudinal data were collected in a Belgian public institution (N?=?473). Results confirm the causal effects of job resources, personal resources, and performance expectations on work engagement. Reciprocal relationships are not significant. Results are discussed with regard to the impact of changes in job and personal resources and performance expectations on work engagement. Practical implications including reinforcement of Human Resources practices such as appraisal interviewing and career management are also discussed.     

Implicit prejudice and stereotyping: how automatic are they? Introduction to the special section.

This special issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cogniition addresses issues of the measurement and the malleability of implicit prejudice and stereotypes. The findings raise fundamental questions about the assumptions underlying the assessment of implicit prejudice, particularly with regard to the widely used Implicit Association Test and the assumption of extant models of prejudice and stereotyping that implicit biases are automatically and invariantly activated when perceivers come in contact with members of stigmatized groups. Several of the articles show that contextual manipulations produce reductions in implicit manifestations of prejudice and stereotyping. The articles in this issue, in challenging conventional wisdom, are thought provoking and should be generative in the field's ongoing efforts to understand the role of implicit (and explicit) processes involved in prejudice and stereotyping.     

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.     

Words: what are they, and do animals have them?

Since the word is not a well-defined entity like the sentence, one looks for findings that may help to clarify it. The effect of nonsense words on the young child's sorting of taxonomic versus thematic alternatives is said to be such a finding. A young child given, say, duck as a sample, goose and nest as alternatives, picks nest (thematic alternative), whereas the older child picks goose (taxonomic). However, if told the duck is called "ZLT" in Croatian, and asked to "find another ZLT", the young child shifts to goose. Markman and Hutchinson (1984) claim this demonstrates that young children know that words are "names of object categories" (and that this knowledge protects them against false hypotheses, facilitating their acquisition of words). In the present study, we applied the Markman et al. procedure to young "language-trained" chimpanzees. The animals were at an early stage of training, having used "words" solely in the function "X goes with Y", or "if shown X, get Y". Although these functions are notably weaker than "X is the name of a category", the animals showed a thematic-taxonomic shift, thus behaving like young children. The Markman-Hutchinson interpretation of the shift effect is unsatisfactory in two respects: (1) the shift effect can be explained without attributing any knowledge of what a word is to either creature, child or ape; more important (2), the interpretation does not address the main question: what is a "name" and what does a child think it is? We conclude with a discussion of what a word is, appealing to information retrieval on the one hand, and intention to refer on the other.     

Dementia and agitation in nursing home residents: how are they related?

The link between agitated behaviors and cognitive functioning in 408 nursing home residents was examined. Results showed that cognitively impaired residents manifested aggressive behaviors (e.g., cursing, hitting) and physically nonaggressive behaviors (e.g., pacing). The highest levels of physically nonaggressive behaviors were manifested by those residents who presented intermediate levels of impairment in their performance of activities of daily living. Cognitively intact residents exhibited verbally agitated behaviors (e.g., complaining). These findings have important implications for caregivers of agitated nursing home residents.     

Which route to recovery? Controlled retrieval and accessibility bias in retroactive interference

New learning often interferes with the production of older, previously learned responses. However, the original responses usually appear to spontaneously recover and regain their dominance after a delay. This article takes a new approach to questions of interference and recovery by examining performance on immediate and delayed tests using direct or indirect instructions. Direct instructions asked participants to deliberately retrieve the original responses, and indirect instructions allowed them to respond on a more automatic basis, using whatever response came to mind first. Results suggest that interference and recovery may have their largest effects via relatively automatic influences on memory, such as the accessibility of new versus original information. This finding adds a new perspective to classic theories of interference and recovery, and may also inform current understanding of performance in populations (e.g., older adults) that often rely predominantly on automatic memory processing.     

Anxiety and the blues after breast cancer: how common are they?

A number of myths exist concerning the psychological impact of breast cancer. Primary among these is the belief that women with breast cancer have greater emotional disability than individuals with other diseases or the population at large. While research has shown that women cope remarkably well with a diagnosis of breast cancer, an understanding of the key periods of anxiety and primary stressors is crucial to the overall psychological and medical management plan. While psychopharmacologic therapy may be indicated for women with breast cancer, it is rarely sufficient and should be combined with effective psychosocial interventions such as group therapy.     

Authors’ response: what are emotions and how are they created in the brain?

In our response, we clarify important theoretical differences between basic emotion and psychological construction approaches. We evaluate the empirical status of the basic emotion approach, addressing whether it requires brain localization, whether localization can be observed with better analytic tools, and whether evidence for basic emotions exists in other types of measures. We then revisit the issue of whether the key hypotheses of psychological construction are supported by our meta-analytic findings. We close by elaborating on commentator suggestions for future research.     

Nomic Universals and Particular Causal Relations: Which are Basic and Which are Derived?

Armstrong holds that a law of nature is a certain sort of structural universal which, in turn, fixes causal relations between particular states of affairs. His claim that these nomic structural universals explain causal relations commits him to saying that such universals are irreducible, not supervenient upon the particular causal relations they fix. However, Armstrong also wants to avoid Plato’s view that a universal can exist without being instantiated, a view which he regards as incompatible with naturalism. This construal of naturalism forces Armstrong to say that universals are abstractions from a certain class of particulars; they are abstractions from first-order states of affairs, to be more precise. It is here argued that these two tendencies in Armstrong cannot be reconciled: To say that universals are abstractions from first-order states of affairs is not compatible with saying that universals fix causal relations between particulars. Causal relations are themselves states of affairs of a sort, and Armstrong’s claim that a law is a kind of structural universal is best understood as the view that any given law logically supervenes on its corresponding causal relations. The result is an inconsistency, Armstrong having to say that laws do not supervene on particular causal relations while also being committed to the view that they do so supervene. The inconsistency is perhaps best resolved by denying that universals are abstractions from states of affairs.