If I'm not hot, are you hot or not? Physical attractiveness evaluations and dating preferences as a function of one's own attractiveness

Prior research has established that people's own physical attractiveness affects their selection of romantic partners. This article provides further support for this effect and also examines a different, yet related, question: When less attractive people accept less attractive dates, do they persuade themselves that the people they choose to date are more physically attractive than others perceive them to be? Our analysis of data from the popular Web site http://HOTorNOT.com suggests that this is not the case: Less attractive people do not delude themselves into thinking that their dates are more physically attractive than others perceive them to be. Furthermore, the results also show that males, compared with females, are less affected by their own attractiveness when choosing whom to date.     

Are Secret Relationships Hot,Then Not? Romantic Secrecy as a Function of Relationship Duration

ABSTRACT

Are secret romances alluring or aversive? One theory suggests that romantic secrecy increases obsessive preoccupation with romantic partners and thereby enhances romantic relationships. Another theory suggests that romantic secrecy is burdensome and thereby undermines romantic relationships. We sought to rectify these conflicting perspectives by examining romantic secrecy and relationship duration using a large, Internet-based sample (N = 564). We predicted that romantic secrecy would have a positive influence in newer romantic relationships (obsessive preoccupation theory) and a negative influence in older romantic relationships (burden theory). In contrast, the obtained results indicate that romantic secrecy is a burden to both new and old romantic relationships     

The efficacy of “right” as a function of its relationship with reinforcement

The effects of the relationship between the presentation of a verbal stimulus (“right”) and an established reinforcer (M&Ms) on the reinforcement efficacy of the verbal stimulus was tested with three groups of retarded boys. Blocks of training and test trials alternated. During training of the Discriminative Group, “right” reliably preceded candy. For the Contiguous Group, “right” accompanied candy, and for the Random Group “right” and candy were programmed independently. “Right” promoted learning in the Discriminative Group but did not in the latter two groups. The results support Cairns' analysis of the often found failure of approval to be an effective reinforcer in laboratory tasks.     

Commitment in romantic relationships as a function of partners’ encoding of important couple-related memories

The purpose of the present study was to investigate how significant couple-related events are encoded in the episodic memory of each partner of a romantic relationship and how they relate to each of these partners’ level of commitment in an independent and additive fashion. Each partner of a couple reported a significant couple-related memory and rated their level of need satisfaction experienced during the event of the memory. In addition, each partner was shown his/her partner’s memory and also rated their own level of need satisfaction for this event. Results showed that partners need satisfaction ratings of their own memory positively predicted their own commitment to the relationship directly (for women) as well as through their need satisfaction generally experienced in the relationship (for men). In addition, men’s need satisfaction ratings of their own memory were associated with women’s commitment while controlling for women’s need satisfaction ratings of men’s memory, but no such cross-partner effects were found for women. Overall, the findings shed light on an initial understanding of how a person’s own memory of an event can impact another person’s attitudes even when taking into account this other person’s memory encoding of that same event.     

When does giving voice or not matter? Procedural fairness effects as a function of closeness of reference points

The present study examined whether manipulating the closeness of reference points can provide further insights into explaining why people care so much about receiving voice (i.e., the opportunity to express one’s opinion with respect to allocation decisions). Participants read a scenario portraying a situation where they had always been a member of the relevant team (i.e., distant referent point condition) or where they had just become a member of the relevant team (i.e., close referent point condition). Thereafter, they were either told that they would receive voice or no voice with respect to the issue of distributing a financial bonus. The results showed that people cared more about voice when they were placed in the distant referent condition rather than in the close referent condition. This effect was strongest on participants’ positive emotions (i.e., being positive when receiving voice vs. receiving no voice) than on their negative emotions. The findings are discussed in light of procedural fairness, counterfactual thinking, and emotion literature.     

When does giving voice or not matter? Procedural fairness effects as a function of closeness of reference points

The present study examined whether manipulating the closeness of reference points can provide further insights into explaining why people care so much about receiving voice (i.e., the opportunity to express one’s opinion with respect to allocation decisions). Participants read a scenario portraying a situation where they had always been a member of the relevant team (i.e., distant referent point condition) or where they had just become a member of the relevant team (i.e., close referent point condition). Thereafter, they were either told that they would receive voice or no voice with respect to the issue of distributing a financial bonus. The results showed that people cared more about voice when they were placed in the distant referent condition rather than in the close referent condition. This effect was strongest on participants’ positive emotions (i.e., being positive when receiving voice vs. receiving no voice) than on their negative emotions. The findings are discussed in light of procedural fairness, counterfactual thinking, and emotion literature.     

Want a tip? Service performance as a function of emotion regulation and extraversion

Surface acting and deep acting with customers are strategies for service performance, but evidence for their effectiveness is limited and mixed. We propose that deep acting is an effective strategy for most employees, whereas surface acting's effect on performance effectiveness depends on employee extraversion. In Study 1, restaurant servers who tended to use deep acting exceeded their customers' expectations and had greater financial gains (i.e., tips) regardless of extraversion, whereas surface acting improved tips only for extraverts, not for introverts. In Study 2, a call center simulation, deep acting improved emotional performance and increased the likelihood of extrarole service behavior beyond the direct and interactive effects of extraversion and other Big Five traits. In contrast, surface acting reduced emotional performance for introverts and not extraverts, but only during the extrarole interaction. We discuss implications for incorporating traits into emotional labor research and practice.     

Was that a man? Sex identification as a function of menstrual cycle and masculinity

The accuracy of female perceivers on a face sex‐categorization task was investigated as a function of perceivers' menstrual cycle and target facial qualities. Regularly ovulating female participants completed a sex‐categorization task twice, once during ovulation (high fertility) and once during menstruation (low fertility). Perceivers made more errors in identifying male than female faces at both testing sessions. Fewer errors were made in identifying male targets rated high on masculinity, but only during periods of high fertility. For female targets accuracy was negatively associated with masculinity and positively associated with attractiveness ratings, at both high and low fertility testing sessions. Results are discussed in terms of adaptive person construal. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What's in an author's name? Differential evaluations of performance as a function of author's name

Three hundred college students (150 female, 150 male) were asked to evaluate an academic article in the field of politics, psychology of women, or education (judged masculine, feminine, and neutral, respectively) that was written by either a male, a female, or an author with a sexually ambiguous name. The results indicated that ratings of the articles were differentially perceived and evaluated according to the name of the author. An article written by a male was valued more positively than if the author was not male. Furthermore, subjects' bias against women was stronger when they believed that sexually neutral authors were female.We thank Brad Waite for his help in data collection.     

Strength of instigation as a determinant of the aggression—Attraction relationship

Somewhat surprisingly, previous research has failed to demonstrate what was thought to be an intuitively obvious negative relationship between aggression and attraction toward the victim of aggression. It was proposed that powerful instigation procedures in past research had served to obscure the effects of attraction on aggression. It was therefore hypothesized that aggression toward a stranger occurs as an inverse function of attitudinally induced attraction toward that stranger only when instigation strength is low. Male subjects (N=60) responding on the Buss aggression apparatus were exposed to a similar or dissimilar victim and to one of three levels of instigation: no instigation, a moderately aggressive model, or insulting evaluations. The hypothesized interaction between similarity and strength of instigation was confirmed for shock intensity (p<.02). For shock duration, main effects were found for both similarity (p<.02) and strength of instigation (p<.02). It was concluded that relatively negative feelings about another individual increase the probability of aggressing against him, but that such feelings do not constitute a necessary or sufficient condition for that aggression.This research was supported in part by Research Grant GS-40329 from the National Science Foundation. The authors wish to thank Dr. Don A. Nelson and Dr. Robert A. Baron for their aid in this experiment.     

Evaluations of family by youth: do they vary as a function of family structure, gender, and birth order?

In the present study, 334 youths evaluated their families by responding to the Personal Attribute Inventory for Children. An analysis of variance revealed no significant main effects due to respondents' birth order or gender, but did find a significant main effect due to family structure and a significant two-way interaction effect between respondents' family structure and gender. Specifically, males from divorced remarried families and females from divorced nonremarried families were found to evaluate their respective families significantly more negatively than did their counterparts from other familial configurations. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Habituation of orienting responses as a function of “instructional set”

Electrodermal and plethysmographic recordings were obtained from three groups of alcoholic patients. The groups differed with respect to instructions given for response to a series of words spoken by the experimenter. Group A was told to report verbally their first associations for each word presented. Group B received instructions to think of an association for each word without reporting it. Group C was to respond to each word by repeating it after it was spoken by the experimenter. The instructions did not have the predicted differing effects upon rate of EDR habituation. However, the over-all amplitude of EDR was lower for Group B than for Group A or C. We observed very little habituation of the plethysmographic OR as measured by per cent of subjects responding to each word. As with the EDR data, Group B shows less responsivity, i.e., this group produced significantly fewer plethysmographic responses over all words than did either of the other two groups. The relative importance of association and of verbal responding to a stimulus word for eliciting autonomic responses was considered.     

Suicide without explicit precursors: a state of secret despair?

Although it is usually assumed that all those who commit suicide give some prior indication of their intention to take their own life, there is growing evidence that a small but significant proportion of suicides occur without any clear, explicit indicators. It is proposed that these suicides share similar pathways to other suicides but that the despair involved is not expressed so clearly, often being kept secret. In order to identify such suicides and potential suicides it is helpful to have an indicator of the dominant sub‐sets of constituents that are precursors to suicide. A 14‐item Suicide Precursors Scale (SPS) was therefore developed. This was applied to 128 cases of suicide that occurred between January 1997 and December 2000 in Stockport (South Manchester, UK). A very high alpha coefficient of 0.98 supported the reliability and homogeneity of the SPS. A Multi‐Dimensional Scaling (MDS) analysis of the SPS revealed three prototypical sub‐sets of expressions of suicidal actions—illness, life circumstances, and depressive history. These are offered as coherent themes in the life of potential suicides, which may be of assistance both in determining whether an equivocal death is suicide or not, and in alerting caring agencies to the potential for suicide even when the despair is kept secret. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Externality as a function of obesity in children: pervasive style or eating-specific attribute?

The developmental sources of the link between stylistic externality and food-related externality found in the obese by Schacter and others were explored by testing whether the externality phenomena that have been found to differentiate obese and normal adults are also discriminators of obese and normal children. The results suggest that obese children as young as 7-12 years of age show an external responsiveness to salient food cues but not yet a generally external perceptual style. The implications of these findings for the development of obese externality are examined.     

The substrate for long-lasting memory: If not protein synthesis,then what?

The prevailing textbook view that de novo protein synthesis is required for memory (e.g., [Bear, M. F., Connors, B., & Paradiso, M. 2006. Neuroscience. Lippincott, New York]) is seriously flawed and an alternative hypothesis has been proposed in which post-translational modification (PTM) of proteins already synthesized and already present within the synapse is 'the' substrate for long-lasting memory. Protein synthesis serves a replenishment role. The first part of this review discusses how long-lasting memory can be achieved with 'only' PTM of existing synaptic proteins. The second part critically reviews a recent report published in Neuron 2007 that exemplifies the current view of protein synthesis and memory while also illustrating how these results can be understood within this new PTM framework. A necessary yet unexpected conclusion to emerge from consideration of the consequences of a PTM mechanism as the necessary, sufficient and exclusive substrate for long-lasting memory, is that the central Hebbian dogma that cells that 'fire together, wire together' is an unlikely mechanism for long-lasting memory. Thus, a unique feature of the PTM model is that longevity of information storage is achieved not by stability of the synaptic mechanism, but by impermanent pseudoredundant circuits. This is so because PTM is a reversible process and thus any permanent connection, any 'lasting effect' cannot be in the form of stable synapse formation. We have therefore proposed a solution in which network level processes regulate cellular mechanisms, even as such mechanisms regulate the network. Thus, synapses are 'meta-stabilized' by regulated feedback mediated by the circuit in which the synapse is embedded. For example, spontaneous activity is proposed to be a substrate feedback mechanism we term 'cryptic rehearsal' to sustain for some period of time after learning an approximation to the state initially created by input. Additionally, because the duplication of these traces is ongoing, this provides a degenerate code for the engram. Stability is thus achieved, not by stabilizing the synapse, but by implementing a pseudo-redundant yet malleable circuitry so that memory can be protected in the face of small catastrophes in network representation.