Can Messages Make a Difference? The Association Between E‐Mail Messages and Health Outcomes in Diabetes Patients

This investigation examined the impact of social support messages on patient health outcomes. Forty‐one American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian patients received a total of 618 e‐mail messages from their healthcare provider (HCP). The e‐mail messages were divided into 3,565 message units and coded for instances of emotional social support. Patient glycosulated hemoglobin scores (HbA1c) showed significantly improved glycemic control and emotional social support messages were associated with significant decreases in HbA1c values. Patient involvement with the system, measured by system login frequency and the frequency of uploaded blood glucose scores to the HCP, did not predict change in HbA1c.     

Similarity in Religiousness of the Solicitor,the Potential Helper,and the Recipient as Determinants of Donating Behavior1

In a 2 × 2 × 2 field experiment, 107 religious and secular subjects were requested by a religious/secular solicitor to donate money for a religious/secular needy family. Religious subjects donated significantly more than secular ones. The pattern of the cell means suggested that whereas the behavior of the religious subjects was guided by the need for positive self-presentation, the secular subjects were influenced by their similarity in religiousness to the solicitor and the recipient.     

Overconfidence at the Keyboard: Confidence and Accuracy in Interpreting Affect in E‐Mail Exchanges

Gesture, voice, expression, and context add richness to communications that increase chances of accurate interpretation. E‐mails lack much of this richness, leading readers to impose their own richness. Three experiments tested the effect of communicator relationship and availability of context on e‐mail writer and reader confidence levels and accuracy. Effects of nonverbal and verbal behavior were also investigated. Results showed that confidence levels for both writers and readers were high, yet somewhat unwarranted based on accuracy rates. Further, writers had more confidence that friends would correctly interpret e‐mails than strangers, although friends showed no more accuracy. Findings suggest that reliance upon friendship and context, as well as verbal and nonverbal cues, to interpret emotion in e‐mail is ineffective, sometimes detrimental.     

Experimenter—Subject Interaction: The Influence of a Request for Assistance on Subjects' Attitudes

Based on role-theory and social comparison theory, it is hypothesized that assistance deception techniques, which are sometimes used in social psychological research, can alter subjects' self-positioning on relevant dimensions of comparison and, consequently, affect connected dependent variables such as the attitude towards a task. Two experiments are reported in which subjects carried out the same task in two different status positions (ordinary subject or co-experimenter). For exploratory reasons autonomy (experiment 1) and power (experiment 2) were also manipulated. The dependent measure was the evaluation (attitude) of the task. In both experiments significant differences between high and low status were found that were generally in line with the predictions. With respect to autonomy, no support for the hypothesized relationship was found; as to the power variable, the results indicate that, contrary to predictions, both high power and high status need to be combined in order to make the subjects evaluate the task more positively. Possible explanations for the obtained results are discussed, and possible consequences for one of the types of experiments in which assistance-deception is sometimes used (i.e., dissonance experiments) are described.     

Communications About Environmental Risks and Risk‐Reducing Behavior: The Impact of Fear on Information Processing1

The present experiment examined the impact of fear on attitudes and the mediating role of information processing. Fear and argument strength were manipulated according to a 3 × 2 (Fear: Control vs. Moderate Fear vs. High Fear × Arguments: Weak vs. Strong) between‐subjects design. Fear was aroused with regard to the risks associated with global warming, and the information to be processed was a persuasive message about energy‐conserving light bulbs. The results indicate that both moderate and high levels of fear had an impact on attitudes. Moderate fear resulted in more positive attitudes toward energy‐saving bulbs, but only when strong arguments in favor of these bulbs were provided. High fear had a positive effect on attitudes, regardless of argument strength. It is concluded that fear may influence attitudes both in a direct and an indirect way, mediated by information processing. Whether the direct or the indirect effect dominates appears to depend on fear intensity.     

Government E‐Recruiting Web Sites: The influence of e‐recruitment content and usability on recruiting and hiring outcomes in US state governments

This research examines both the content and usability of e‐recruiting web sites on a government's ability to attract individuals to apply for government positions and on government's ability to retain new hires. Building on previous studies evaluating corporate recruiting web pages, this study evaluates the e‐recruiting efforts of state governments in the United States. Our study shows that governments with more usable hiring web site receive significantly more applications per job opening; whereas states with higher quality content on their recruiting web pages have significantly less voluntary turnover of new hires.     

The Relationship Between the Private Self and Helping Victims of AIDS1

Social psychological theory is not often extended into real-world social contexts. In contrast, the current work applies the concept of increasing the accessibility of the private self (Trafimow, Triandis, & Goto, 1991) to a real-world situation; namely, helping people with AIDS. The current results show that priming the private self increases actual helping behaviors directed toward victims of AIDS as compared to a no-prime condition. Furthermore, path analyses show that empathy mediates the prime-helping relationship. No significant gender differences were observed in self-reports of empathy toward victims of AIDS, but women generally volunteered to help more than men.     

The Reciprocity-Arousing Potential of the Requester's Occupation, its Status and the Cost and Urgency of the Request as Determinants of Helping Behavior

In a 2×2×2×2 field experiment, 240 subjects were contacted by phone and asked by an experimenter to make a phone call for him notifying his wife that he would be late. The experimenter presented himself as a (1) physician vs. accountant (high social status occupations) or (2) fireman vs. gas-station attendant (low social status occupations), and made it clear that the request was urgent vs. non-urgent. The cost of helping was also manipulated (low vs. high). It was found that subjects more frequently helped requesters in occupations of high potential for reciprocity-arousing behavior (e.g., a physician) than in occupations of low potential for reciprocity-arousing behavior (e.g., an accountant), regardless of the social status of the occupations. Urgent and/or low-cost requests were met more frequently than non-urgent and/or high-cost requests. No interactions between or among any combination of the independent variables were obtained.     

The Effects of Sex,Status, and Ability on Helping Behavior1

Protests against affirmative action articulate the concern that qualified white males will be subordinated to less qualified women and minorities. To examine the possibility that the reversal of traditional status relationships rather than competence inequity underlies resistance to affiimative action, a study was conducted in which subjects interacted with a male or female who was introduced as their supervisor or subordinate and as either higher or lower in ability than themselves. The results indicate that status, not ability, influences the frequency of helping women, whereas ability, not status, primarily influences helping behavior toward men. Specifically. female subordinates were helped more than females supervisors, regardless of ability, while high-ability males elicited more help than low-ability males, independent of status. Subsequent ratings revealed that although subjects acknowledged the greater competence of high-ability males, they did not evaluate high-ability females as more competent than themselves.     

Dishonest Behavior: The Impact of Prior Self‐Regulatory Exertion and Personality

The current study examined how prior self‐regulatory exertion and the personality characteristics of self‐control, integrity, and conscientiousness contribute to dishonest behavior. Participants completed measures of these 3 personality characteristics, followed by either a self‐control typing task or a non‐self‐control version of the task. They were then told to complete a clerical task, for which they were compensated, until the end of the experiment session. Participants were left alone during this task, and had the opportunity to leave before the designated end time. Results indicated that participants who initially completed the self‐control task were more likely to leave the experiment early than were participants who initially completed the non‐self‐control task. In addition, self‐control and integrity were negatively associated with dishonest behavior.     

How Many Times and How Many Ways: The Impact of Number of Nonsuicidal Self‐Injury Methods on the Relationship Between Nonsuicidal Self‐Injury Frequency and Suicidal Behavior

Several variables have been proposed as heavily influencing or explaining the association between nonsuicidal self‐injury (NSSI) and suicidal behavior. We propose that increased comfort with bodily harm may serve as an incrementally valuable variable to consider. We sought to indirectly test this possibility by examining the moderating role of number of NSSI methods utilized on the relationship between NSSI frequency and lifetime number of suicide attempts, positing that increased variability in methods would be indicative with a greater general comfort with inflicting harm upon one's own body. In both a large sample of emerging adults (n = 1,317) and a subsample with at least one prior suicide attempt (n = 143), results were consistent with our hypothesis. In both samples, the interaction term was significant, with the relationship between NSSI frequency and suicidal behavior increasing in magnitude from low to mean to high levels of NSSI methods. Although frequency of NSSI is robustly associated with suicidal behavior, the magnitude of that relationship increases as an individual engages in a wider variety of NSSI methods. We propose that this may be due to an increased comfort with the general concept of damaging one's own body resulting from a broader selection of methods for self‐harm.     

Lending a Helping Hand: The Effects of Gender Stereotypes and Gender on Likelihood of Helping1

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of gender and gender-role stereotypes on judgments of help-giving. As part of a 2 × 2 within-subjects design, 40 undergraduates read 4 different scenarios that described either a man or a woman needing help in either a stereotypically masculine or a stereotypically feminine situation. Although male participants felt more sympathy for men in stereotypically feminine situations and for women in stereotypically masculine situations, they were no more likely to help these individuals than they were to help those in gender-consistent situations. By contrast, women were more likely to help people in gender-inconsistent situations, despite feeling the most sympathy for people needing help in masculine situations. Implications for Weiner's (1980) attribution model of help-giving and Nadler & Fisher's (1986) threat-to-self-esteem model are discussed.     

The Impact of Alcohol on Negotiator Behavior: Experimental Evidence1

Business‐related drinking is an important organizational and managerial activity with particular relevance to the negotiation process. This paper investigates the influence of a moderate amount of alcohol on negotiator behavior and negotiated outcomes. We conducted 2 negotiation studies involving inebriated and sober participants, and found that inebriated negotiators used more aggressive tactics, made more mistakes, and reached less integrative agreements than did sober negotiators. Across both studies, we found that inebriated negotiators were unaware that alcohol had affected their negotiations.     

The Motivational and Instantaneous Behavior Effects of Contexts: Steps Toward a Theory of Goal‐Directed Behavior1

Contextual conditions affect behavior in 2 ways: (a) They confront people with opportunities and obstacles that affect their motivation to take action; or (b) they instantaneously shape performance, regardless of a person's motivation and even without subjective acknowledgment of the conditions. Traditionally in psychology, the immediate behavioral consequences of a context are disregarded. Based on our theory of goal‐directed behavior, we are able to disentangle the instant and the motivational behavioral consequences of contexts. In an example study, 40% of the variation in performance among 660 Swiss and Spanish pupils was explained by motivational differences. Instantaneous constraints and facilitations imposed on people's acts, in turn, revealed a set of Switzerland‐ and Spain‐specific limitations and affordances (hit rate = 97.5%).     

The Effectiveness of Adaptation of the Protagonist in Narrative Impact: Similarity Influences Health Beliefs Through Self‐Referencing

This study tests whether the adaptation of a narrative's protagonist to be similar to readers increases narrative effects in the health domain. A between‐subjects (N = 220) experiment was conducted that varied the similarity of the protagonist to the participants. Results showed that participants who read the version with a similar protagonist perceived themselves to be more at risk of the disease with which the protagonist was diagnosed and felt more efficacy to deal with the symptoms of this disease, than participants who read the version with a dissimilar protagonist. These effects were mediated by self‐referencing, indicating that adaptation of a protagonist to be similar to readers makes readers relate the story to themselves, which in turn increases narrative impact.     

The Effect of Similarity Between Donor and Recipient on Recipient's Reactions to Aid1

This study explored the effect of similarity-dissimilarity between the donor and the recipient on the recipient's self-perception and his perception of the donor. A 2 x 2 between-subjects design was employed in which aid versus no aid and similarity versus dissimilarity were the experimental factors. The results indicate that receiving aid from a similar other had a negative effect on the recipient's situational self-esteem and self-confidence, while aid from a dissimilar other had a positive effect on situational self-esteem and self-confidence. Social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954) was suggested as a means of explaining this finding. In addition, it was found that a donor of aid was more favorably rated than a nondonor.     

Helping on the Highway: The Effects of Dependency and Sex1

A series of three naturalistic field experiments are reported which investigated the norm of social responsibility by examining the effects of dependency and sex on helping. Experiment I examined the effect of physical disability on the likelihood of passing motorists helping with a flat tire. Females were helped significantly more than males, but the dependency manipulation was only minimally effective. In Experiment II the same disability cues were used in a hitchhiking context. Again females were helped significantly more than males, but surprisingly the dependency cues significantly reduced the number of ride offers. Experiment III used hitchhiking as the behavior of interest, but this time the dependency cues involved a disabled vehicle. This dependency manipulation significantly increased help offers. In addition, females were again helped significantly more than males. In all three experiments, almost all help offers were made by males. Other variables that appeared to influence helping rates were the perceived cost of helping, the attractiveness of the solicitors, and whether they were seen as responsible for their state of dependency. The present field results complemented previous laboratory work on the Same variables.     

Psychoanalytic process and thought: Convergence of Bion and Matte‐Blanco1

Using the convergence between Bion and Matte‐Blanco, in this article the author attempts to stress the view of the psychoanalytical method as promoter of expansion of the ability of the patient to think his emotional experiences. After a brief résumé of the ideas of both Bion and Matte‐Blanco, certain points of congruence between the two are emphasised: the way of perceiving the range of phenomena observed by psychoanalysis, intuition as a method for observing this field, the feelings as the raw material for thinking, and the importance of the concept of infinity in psychoanalysis. The way in which the ideas of Matte‐Blanco assist in the understanding of Bion's propositions is highlighted. Following these correlations, the author discusses certain questions pertinent to the psychoanalytical method and proposes a model in which the analyst acts as a mediator/catalyst in the process of revision of the ways in which the patient has organised his emotional experiences and the theories constructed to support these hypotheses. Samples of clinical material are presented.