What can be measured in dating data: comment on Vaillant (2006)

Vaillant's 2006 paper presents data from a marriage bureau to give evidence on partner-seeking behavior. Three questions may be asked about the nature and usefulness of such work, whether it can (i) measure the efficiency of such bureaux, (ii) indicate the volume of resources devoted to partner search from commercially sourced dating data, and (iii) be used to test hypotheses about preference formation.     

Hemiregional facial asymmetry in expression of emotion: a concept needs to be verified.

In most of the neuropsychological studies the left-right hemifacial asymmetry during expression of emotion has been reported, although the present author proposed a concept of hemiregional asymmetry and reported that greater left hemifacial involvement was specific to the lower region of the face and greater right hemifacial was specific to the upper region of the face. It is speculated that this differential hemifacial involvement is a function of the right hemisphere, and it is explained in terms of neural innervation to facial muscles. This speculation needs to be verified further to arrive at a general conclusion.     

Spontaneous prejudice in context: variability in automatically activated attitudes.

The goal of the research reported in this article was to examine whether automatic group attitudes and stereotypes, commonly thought to be fixed responses to a social category cue, are sensitive to changes in the situational context. Two experiments demonstrated such variability of automatic responses due to changes in the stimulus context. In Study 1 White participants' implicit attitudes toward Blacks varied as a result of exposure to either a positive (a family barbecue) or a negative (a gang incident) stereotypic situation. Study 2 demonstrated similar context effects under clearly automatic processing conditions. Here, the use of different background pictures (church interior vs. street corner) for Black and White face primes affected participants' racial attitudes as measured by a sequential priming task. Implications for the concept of automaticity in social cognition are discussed.     

Infant-mother attachment can be improved through group intervention: a preliminary evaluation in Spain in a non-randomized controlled trial

The quality of infant-mother attachment has been linked to competence in different domains of child development. Research indicates that early intervention can enhance the quality of infant-mother attachment, though its efficacy in a group format has yet to be evaluated. The current study is aimed at examining the usefulness of a group intervention in enhancing infant-mother attachment. An intervention aimed at addressing aspects such as maternal responsivity, sensitivity and childrearing behaviour was developed by the researchers and experienced psychologists. The intervention spanned a period of 14 months starting from the third quarter of pregnancy. The intervention was evaluated among 24 mothers from the Basque region of Spain. The sample consisted of children of both genders in a similar proportion: 45.8% were boys and 54.2% were girls. The children in this sample were full-term born and did not present symptoms of any serious pre- or postnatal complications. The intervention had a statistically non-significant medium effect. Infants whose mothers had received the intervention showed higher rates of secure attachment compared to children from the control group, as assessed by the Strange Situation observation procedure. A potentially significant confounding variable, maternal attachment, was balanced across the intervention and comparison groups. We can tentatively point out that a group intervention may enhance the quality of infant-mother attachment. Nevertheless, because the study design was not randomized, the results of this study remain preliminary and need replication in a full randomized controlled trial designed study.     

The demonstration group: a tool for observing group process and leadership style

Demonstration groups, a major modality for observing group process, have not been addressed in the group psychotherapy literature. This article defines the demonstration group and describes and discusses its various components: the volunteers (group members) and their recruitment, the demonstration group itself, group member debriefing, and the didactic component. Discussion of the physical setting, group agreements, and boundary considerations, as well as leadership tasks, challenges, and pitfalls are illustrated with examples. Leadership tasks in demonstration groups are compared with those in therapy groups. Guidelines that are likely to promote successful demonstration group experiences are provided. The leader's facility with the unconscious defense mechanism of projective identification is stressed.     

The face of fluency: Semantic coherence automatically elicits a specific pattern of facial muscle reactions

This study shows that high conceptual fluency induced by hidden semantic coherence automatically triggers a specific pattern of facial expressions. In the present study, word triads that either had or had not a common remote associate were read by individuals while automatic facial responses were recorded. Although participants were ignorant about the underlying semantic structure, participants’ faces showed an activation of the smiling muscle zygomaticus major (indicating increased positive affect), a relaxation of the frowning muscle corrugator supercilii (indicating decreased negative affect and mental effort), and a relaxation of the forehead muscle frontalis (indicating increased familiarity) after reading coherent compared to incoherent word triads. Implications for intuitive judgements of semantic coherence are discussed.     

Perceptual and affective mechanisms in facial expression recognition: An integrative review

Facial expressions of emotion involve a physical component of morphological changes in a face and an affective component conveying information about the expresser’s internal feelings. It remains unresolved how much recognition and discrimination of expressions rely on the perception of morphological patterns or the processing of affective content. This review of research on the role of visual and emotional factors in expression recognition reached three major conclusions. First, behavioral, neurophysiological, and computational measures indicate that basic expressions are reliably recognized and discriminated from one another, albeit the effect may be inflated by the use of prototypical expression stimuli and forced-choice responses. Second, affective content along the dimensions of valence and arousal is extracted early from facial expressions, although this coarse affective representation contributes minimally to categorical recognition of specific expressions. Third, the physical configuration and visual saliency of facial features contribute significantly to expression recognition, with “emotionless” computational models being able to reproduce some of the basic phenomena demonstrated in human observers. We conclude that facial expression recognition, as it has been investigated in conventional laboratory tasks, depends to a greater extent on perceptual than affective information and mechanisms.     

Brief crisis group psychotherapy versus the initial sessions of long-term group psychotherapy: An exploratory comparison

An attempt was made to specify the therapist behaviors characteristic of the brief crisis group (BCG) approach, to assess how patients experience BCG on dimensions of session impact and group climat, and to describe the changes possible from BCG on measures of outcome by contrasting this modality with the initial sessions of traditional long-term therapy groups in a preexperimental design. Data obtained from four eight-session BCGs and three beginning long-term groups (LTG) were used for analyses. Patients were administered the Session Evaluation (SEQ) and Group Climate (GCQ) Questionnaires at the end of each group session. Two judges sat in on each session and coded the types of therapist interventions using the Therapist Behavior Categories (TBC) system. Aspects of self-esteem and symptomatology were assessed as indices of change over the 8-week period in a pre-post fashion. Therapists in BCG evidenced a distinct pattern of interventions during midpoint group sessions (sessions 3–6), placing a greater emphasis on challenging patient perceptions and providing information than their LTG counterparts. The therapists' use of self as an issue in BCG increased as termination approached and apparently served a more limited function than in LTG. Patients in BCG reported a more rapid development of a working group and experienced greater session benefit. Patients in BCG also reported lower levels of conflict and avoidance and a greater decrease in these resistance behaviors. As expected, BCG patients reported substantially greater improvement on most outcome dimensions at the end of the 8-week period. Results are considered as clarifying the approach to and impact of BCG psychotherapy.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 15th Annual Meeting of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, Lake Louise, Alberta, June 19–23, 1984.     

Why more can be less: An inference-based explanation for hyper-subadditivity in bundle valuation

We conceptualize, develop, and test a multiple-item bundle valuation model through which decision makers are able to make inferences about the value of uncertain items based on the value of certain items. Results of four experiments indicate that bundling a low-value certain item with a high-value uncertain item, which are not substitutes, results in a bundle valuation lower than the value of the uncertain item alone. We refer to this highly unexpected and previously unexplained phenomenon as “hyper-subadditivity.” In addition we find that bundling a high-value certain item with a low-value uncertain item leads to superadditivity, even though the items are not complements. Hence, we find that when two objects are bundled together, and one has a more certain value, decision makers use the value of the certain item to infer the value of the less certain item. They might infer that the other (less certain) object must be worth an amount similar to the item with which they are paired. We further demonstrate that reducing uncertainty eliminates these effects, and that direct value inferencing (not simple numeric priming, nor inferences about quality) is the most likely mechanism driving these effects.     

Face in profile view reduces perceived facial expression intensity: An eye-tracking study

Recent studies measuring the facial expressions of emotion have focused primarily on the perception of frontal face images. As we frequently encounter expressive faces from different viewing angles, having a mechanism which allows invariant expression perception would be advantageous to our social interactions. Although a couple of studies have indicated comparable expression categorization accuracy across viewpoints, it is unknown how perceived expression intensity and associated gaze behaviour change across viewing angles. Differences could arise because diagnostic cues from local facial features for decoding expressions could vary with viewpoints. Here we manipulated orientation of faces (frontal, mid-profile, and profile view) displaying six common facial expressions of emotion, and measured participants' expression categorization accuracy, perceived expression intensity and associated gaze patterns. In comparison with frontal faces, profile faces slightly reduced identification rates for disgust and sad expressions, but significantly decreased perceived intensity for all tested expressions. Although quantitatively viewpoint had expression-specific influence on the proportion of fixations directed at local facial features, the qualitative gaze distribution within facial features (e.g., the eyes tended to attract the highest proportion of fixations, followed by the nose and then the mouth region) was independent of viewpoint and expression type. Our results suggest that the viewpoint-invariant facial expression processing is categorical perception, which could be linked to a viewpoint-invariant holistic gaze strategy for extracting expressive facial cues.     

Work engagement interventions can be effective: a systematic review

Work engagement is associated with important individual and organisational outcomes (e.g. employee health and well-being, performance). This narrative systematic review aims to synthesise the increasing number of work engagement interventions and inform future research by exploring: (1) the specific intervention foci, delivery methods and content of engagement interventions; (2) intervention effectiveness; and (3) underlying mediators and moderators. A systematic search for interventions employing a validated engagement measure revealed 40 studies. Five were personal resource building, twelve job resource building, three leadership training, eighteen health promotion, and two job and personal resource building. Twenty (50%) studies observed significant positive effects on work engagement, two (5%) had a negative effect, and eighteen (45%) had no effect. Job and personal resources, job demands and well-being were important mediators. Moderators included the specific intervention focus and delivery method, employee participation, manager support, and intervention level (top-down vs bottom-up). Bottom-up interventions, and job crafting and mindfulness interventions particularly, were most successful. Implementation difficulties were common, including poor response and attrition rates, and adverse factors (e.g. organisational restructuring, redundancy, economic downturn). We highlight implications for research and practice and stress the need to test underlying theories to build knowledge around how, why, and when interventions work.     

An investigation of basic facial expression recognition in autism spectrum disorders

This study was designed to test three competing hypotheses (impaired configural processing; impaired Theory of Mind; atypical amygdala functioning) to explain the basic facial expression recognition profile of adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). In Experiment 1 the Ekman and Friesen (1976) series were presented upright and inverted. Individuals with ASD were significantly less accurate than controls at recognising upright facial expressions of fear, sadness and disgust and their pattern of errors suggested some configural processing difficulties. Impaired recognition of inverted facial expressions suggested some additional difficulties processing the facial features. Unexpectedly, the clinical group misidentified fear as anger. In Experiment 2 feature processing of facial expressions was investigated by presenting stimuli in a piecemeal fashion, starting with either just the eyes or the mouth. Individuals with ASD were impaired at recognising fear from the eyes and disgust from the mouth; they also confused fearful eyes as being angry. The findings are discussed in terms of the three competing hypotheses tested.     

In‐group bias in children's intention to help can be overpowered by inducing empathy

An experimental vignette study was conducted among children (8–13 years) to examine whether inducing empathic understanding is an effective intervention to overpower peer group boundaries in children's helping. Children were induced or not induced to empathize with the recipient of help, who was or was not part of their (imagined) group of friends. Results showed that children intended to help in‐group peers more compared to outgroup peers when empathic understanding was not induced. However, when empathy was induced, they intended to help friends and non‐friends equally. Inducing empathic understanding was effective independent of the recipient's level of need, and children's advanced social perspective‐taking ability. Encouraging children to imagine how a recipient of help feels might thus be a useful strategy to prevent peer group‐based biases in children's helping behaviour.     

The reinforcement of disagreement in a small group

The present studies were conducted to determine whether differentially reinforcing decisions of a three-person group can modify how often individuals will disagree in making a decision. The results indicate that disagreement is likely to occur more often in groups where reinforcement in achieving a decision is made contingent on disagreement as compared with groups where reinforcement is not contingent on this interaction. Some methodological, theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Doing the best you can: a study of values in a group of nun educators

A group of experienced and well‐qualified nun educators were interviewed regarding their experiences and values. A recurrent phrase occurring in the interviews was ‘Doing the best you can’. This phrase served to both justify and anticipate statements. A questionnaire was constructed to encourage elaboration of the phrase and to detect differentiated responses regarding self and pupil. The questionnaire was administered to a larger group including the original participants. Their responses to the questionnaire yielded eight underlying values. The values were employed somewhat differently with regard to self and pupils. The values were consistent with the core values of the order. The values did not relate particularly to putative female organizational values. The mixed method employed facilitates an in‐depth analysis of discourse to elicit values and other underlying constructs.