Are the Russians as Unhappy as they say they are?

Since the 1980s, several polls in Russia have included questions about happiness. The responses to these questions were quite similar. Average happiness was low in comparison to other nations and declined over time. Ten years after the fall of communism Russians are less happy than during the communist period.There are doubts about the validity of these self-reports. One source of doubt is that these data may not reflect Russians' self-appraisals adequately, due to distortions in translation and a differential response bias. A second misgiving is that true discontent could be rather superficial, and be largely due to unfavorable comparison with the West and folklore of negativism.These qualms are checked in this article. It appears that the Russians are as unhappy as they say they are, and that they have good reasons to be so. The current unhappiness is not due to the Russian national character, but has more to do with the troublesome transitions taking place in Russian society.     

Self-concealers: Do they conceal what we always assumed they do?

The present investigation empirically examined the relation between self-concealment and three secret typologies reported in the literature. For this aim a general population sample of 221 participants completed an online questionnaire that included the Self-concealment Scale (Larson & Chastain, 1990). Respondents also wrote down their most important secret. It was found that SC is positively associated with keeping secrets that concern convictions of personal inadequacy, sorrows, and worries that relate to oneself. In addition, it is concluded that self-concealed information refers in particular to secrets regarding personal inadequacy, sorrow, and worry. Implications for secrecy research are discussed and suggestions for future research are made.     

Causal attributions of married couples: when do they search for causes? What do they conclude when they do?

In this study, we examined when and whether married people engage in attributional activity or form causal attributions to explain their partners' behavior. We used an indirect probe to better approximate naturally occurring cognitive activity. We also examined the content of spouses' causal attributions, using both direct and indirect probes. Spouses were asked about frequent as well as infrequent relationship events, and about partner behaviors that had positive or negative impacts on the recipient. Husbands in unsatisfying relationships reported more attributional thoughts than did happily married husbands, whereas wives in the two groups did not differ. Behaviors having negative impacts elicited more attributional activity than did positive behaviors. Behavioral frequency and impact interacted in ways contrary to predictions. Finally, distressed couples were particularly likely to report distress-maintaining attributions and were particularly unlikely to report relationship-enhancing attributions, compared with their nondistressed counterparts.     

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.     

Masked phonological priming effects in English: are they real? Do they matter?

For over 15 years, masked phonological priming effects have been offered as evidence that phonology plays a leading role in visual word recognition. The existence of these effects-along with their theoretical implications-has, however, been disputed. The authors present three sources of evidence relevant to an assessment of the existence and implications of these effects. First, they present an exhaustive meta-analytic literature review, in which they evaluate the strength of the evidence for masked phonological priming effects on English visual word processing. Second, they present two original experiments that demonstrate a small but significant masked priming effect on English visual lexical decision, which persists in conditions that may discourage phonological recoding. Finally, they assess the theory of visual word recognition offered by the DRC model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) in the context of their empirical data. Through numerous simulations with this model, they argue that masked phonological priming effects might best be captured by a weak phonological (i.e., dual-access) theory in which lexical decisions are made on the basis of phonological information.     

Behavior-analytic repertoires: Where will they come from and how can they be maintained?

The field of behavior analysis faces a number of issues concerning its existence as a discipline and as a profession, including (a) identification of the knowledge and skills comprising the repertoire of competent behavior analysts, (b) the nature of the curricula that will produce the scientists and practitioners needed by the discipline, (c) identification of the generic professional and social skills required for any successful professional career, (d) academic employment opportunities for behavior analysts, and (e) the maintenance of behavior-analytic repertoires. Recommendations are offered as possible solutions to problems raised with respect to each of these issues.     

Sudden gains in cognitive behavioral treatment for depression: when do they occur and do they matter?

Despite the use of efficacious treatments for depression, individuals differ in both the degree to which they recover and the rate at which recovery occurs. Tang and colleagues found that depressed patients who had sudden improvements in their symptomatology not only maintained these gains, but also enjoyed more improvement and higher rates of recovery than those without sudden gains (J. Consulting Clin. Psychol. 67(6) (1999) 894; J. Consulting Clin. Psychol. 70(2) (2002) 444). Our study examined the role of sudden gains in a cognitive-behavioral group treatment for depression. Results indicated that 41.9% of patients experienced sudden gains. Furthermore, sudden gains occurring in the first third of treatment appear to have special importance. Participants enjoying early sudden gains had significantly larger changes in depressive symptom scores over the course of treatment than those without sudden gains and were marginally more likely to be treatment responders compared to those without early sudden gains. In contrast to Tang and DeRubeis (J. Consulting Clin. Psychol. 67(6) (1999) 894), however, sudden gains were not associated with cognitive changes.     

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.     

Machiavellian managers: Do they perform better?

This study investigates the relationship between Machiavellianism and job performance, as measured by sales per square foot, gross margin percentage, and inventory turnover, among 60 retail store managers. Except for a significant relationship between male store managers' gross margin percentage no other relationships were observed between Machiavellianism and job performance. Several explanations for the absence of significant relationships were discussed.     

Pre-driving adolescent attitudes: Can they change?

The problem of reducing young drivers’ high accident rates has been approached from many different angles but a primary focus has been to try and find ways of changing the attitudes and behaviours of young people who are already drivers. It is hypothesised that there is a link between pre-driver attitudes, intentions and their future driving behaviour. By changing pre-driver attitudes and/or intentions, individuals may mature into safer drivers. This study approaches this young driver problem by looking at pre-drivers’ attitudes to driving to see how they change over time. The results from two questionnaires indicated significant gender differences and changes in responses (both long-term and short-term) over a 6-month period. It is concluded that adolescent attitudes and intentions towards driving remain fluid such that they may be positively influenced through pre-driver interventions, even if only temporarily. Regular pre-driver interventions could thus reinforce safe driving messages and create safety-conscious driving attitudes in the next generation of drivers.     

Whose memories are they and where do they go? Problems surrounding internalization in children on the autistic spectrum

Recent work in neuroscience has highlighted the contrast between 'procedural' memory for bodily experiences and skills, which is unconscious though unrepressed, and verbalizable, 'declarative' memory, which includes autobiographical memory. Autobiographical memory is weak in people with autistic spectrum disorder, who frequently turn to self-generated sensations for reassurance that they continue to exist. The author suggests that, instead of internalizing shared experiences leading to growth, children with autism can feel that they add to themselves by taking over the qualities of others through the 'annexation' of physical properties that leads to a damaged object and can trigger a particular sort of negative therapeutic reaction. Clinical illustrations drawn from the treatment of two children on the autistic spectrum illustrate some ramifications of these processes in relation to the sense of a separate identity and the capacity to access memories.     

Seeing what they read and hearing what they say: Readers’ representation of the story characters’ world

Do readers “see” the words that story characters read and “hear” the words that they hear? Just as priming effects are reduced when stimuli are presented cross-modally on two different occasions, we found reduced transfer effects when story characters were described as experiencing stimuli cross-modally. In Experiment 1, a repeated phrase was described as being part of a spoken message in both Story A and Story B, and transfer effects were found. In Experiment 2, in contrast, when the phrase was described as a written note in one story and a spoken message in the other, reading-time results indicated that readers did not retrieve the meaning of the repeated phrase. The results are consistent with findings indicating that visual imagery simulates visual processing and that auditory imagery simulates auditory processing. We conclude that readers mentally simulate the perceptual details involved in story characters’ linguistic exchanges.     

Privacy and control: Are they related?

This study examines the relationship of privacy preference with sense of control over privacy, and the discrepancy between desired and actual privacy. Results indicate that (a) sense of control is a fairly good predictor of privacy preference, (b) most subjects report low actual privacy than desired, and the highest desired privacy was in the case of intimacy, (c) discrepancy between desired and actual privacy significantly relates to privacy preference, and sense of control was significantly related to the discrepancy between desired and actual privacy. The results suggest that the experience of control is a significant external correlate of privacy preference.     

Why don't they just let it go?

Discrepancies between what children expect about physical causality (indexed by looking time) and how they act on that knowledge have led to criticisms of claims about what infants "know." Baillargeon [Baillargeon, R. (1999). Young infants' expectations about hidden objects: A reply to three challenges. Developmental Science, 2, 115-163] advocates examining more tasks before revising views of early cognitive development. We report another discrepancy which suggests an additional indicator of what is salient for preverbal infants. While examining the Uzgiris-Hunt test performances of 40 children (26 females), 7.6-26.9-months-old, infants appeared captivated by the bouncing of a small rubber ball. However, most infants reproduced the motion of the bounce event itself, repeatedly hitting the ball against the table, rather than the experimenter's action (dropping). Comparing performances of those who did and did not imitate the drop, two possibly interrelated interpretations remained consistent with the data: infants perform goal-directed imitation of interesting phenomena, perhaps because they believe they must apply force to make them happen.     

Three approaches to the psychology of culture: Where do they come from? Where can they go?

Cultural psychology, cross-cultural psychology, and indigenous psychology are three approaches to the psychology of culture. The author begins by comparing the three approaches – conceptually, methodologically; and historically. She concludes that each approach has contributed knowledge of the "deep structure" of culture to the field of psychology. This "deep structure" consists of the framework of individualism and collectivism; particular cultures are therefore surface forms of one or the other of these basic cultural frameworks. Rather than being universal, classical social and developmental psychology are seen as reflecting a particular indigenous psychology. For the future, a truly universal psychology must offer a theoretical framework that encompasses alternative indigenous psychologies.