The Effect of Participating in Suicide Research: Does Participating in a Research Protocol on Suicide and Psychiatric Symptoms Increase Suicide Ideation and Attempts?

The effect of engaging in an intensive research protocol that inquired extensively about psychiatric and suicide symptoms and exposed participants to a number of images, including suicide-related content was explored. Individuals experiencing a major depressive episode were called at 1 and 3 months after the initial protocol. Participants were asked about changes in suicide ideation and the occurrence of self-harm or suicide attempts following participation. Participants reported experiencing reductions in suicide ideation at the first follow-up and no changes at the second follow-up. No participant reported having engaged in self-harm or having attempted suicide at either follow-up. Results suggest that basic science/nontreatment research can be conducted safely with suicidal participants and in a manner that does not increase suicide symptoms or suicide risk.     

Self-Esteem Instability and Humor Styles: Does the Stability of Self-Esteem Influence How People Use Humor?

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether self-esteem instability moderated the association between self-esteem level and the use of humor. This was accomplished by examining the associations that humor styles had with self-esteem level and self-esteem instability among 499 undergraduates. The results of the present study show that self-esteem instability moderated the association between self-esteem level and humor styles such that individuals with stable high self-esteem reported the highest levels of affiliative humor as well as the lowest levels of aggressive and self-defeating humor. These results suggest that individuals with stable and unstable forms of self-esteem employ different styles of humor.     

Prevention of Youth Suicide: How Well Informed Are the Potential Gatekeepers of Adolescents in Distress?

Australia has one of the higher rates of suicide among young people. Although a role for doctors and teachers in the prevention of youth suicide has been suggested, no prior Australian study has assessed adequately the level of suicide knowledge held by these professionals. Knowledge about adolescent suicide was investigated using the Adolescent Suicide Behaviour Questionnaire, a 39-item instrument developed for the purpose. The stratified random sample comprised 404 general practitioners and 481 teachers from 56 secondary schools. General practitioners and teachers scored, on average, 71% and 59% of the questionnaire items correct, respectively. There was wide individual variability: The number of items correct ranged from 4 to 38 for general practitioners and 0 to 34 for teachers. Strengths and deficits in knowledge across the two professions are discussed in terms of the potential gatekeeping role of these professionals in suicide prevention.     

Does Scope of Attention Affect Creativity? Testing the Attentional Priming Hypothesis

Creativity is linked to broad scope of attention, a state or trait that allocates attentional resources over a wide range of perceptual stimuli. According to the attentional priming hypothesis, a mechanism underlying the creativity–attention link is that broad perceptual attention scope primes broad conceptual attention scope—the activation of a wide range of memory contents—which therefore facilitates creative ideation. This study aimed to test the hypothesis in three experiments using three manipulations and two creativity tasks. Experiment 1 used the Navon letter task to prime attention to global patterns or local details of composite stimuli and measured creativity via the task to generate alternative uses of daily objects. Experiment 2 modified a cue-size procedure in which participants repeatedly attended to large or small visual cues before a target stimulus appeared. Experiment 3 devised a manipulation that required participants to view and visualize images associated with broad or narrow attention and adopted the alternative uses task and the task to invent alien creatures. Across the experiments, although the results were in the predicted direction, they were non-significant. This study found no evidence that broadness of perceptual attention affects creativity.     

Does Suppressing the Thought of a Self-Relevant Stigma Affect Interpersonal Interaction?

ABSTRACT

In the current study, we examined the effects of women's suppressing negative gender stereotypes while interacting with a male confederate. Compared with control participants, those who suppressed negative thoughts about women's ability experienced less self-confidence, lower self-esteem, and were more nonverbally submissive during the interaction, particularly if they were high in stigma consciousness (Pinel, 1999 Pinel, E. C. 1999. Stigma consciousness: The psychological legacy of social stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76: 114–128. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). These findings illustrate the negative intra- and interpersonal consequences of stigma suppression.     

Does Bullying Affect Work-to-Private-Life Interference? Testing the Mediating Role of Resilience

Objectives. The present study, using the conservation of resources theory as a theoretical framework, aims to establish whether work-related bullying is associated with the development of two different types of work-to-private-life interference, i.e., time based and strain based. The study also aims to test whether these relationships are mediated by resilience. Method. In total, 333 nurses filled out a self-report questionnaire. Data analyses were performed by using structural equation model. Results. Results confirmed the hypothesized model: work-related bullying is associated with both strain-based and time-based work-to-private-life interferences. The bootstrap test indicated the presence of an indirect effect of bullying on both types of work-to-private-life interference via resilience. Originality/Value. The present study contributes to improve the understanding on the mechanisms linking work-related bullying and worker well-being, by providing evidence for the mediating role of resilience between bullying and both time-based and strain-based work–life interferences. Practical implications. The present study suggests that the intervention programs, in order to be effectiveness in sustaining work–life balance among nurses, should take into great account the social climate in the organizational context, e.g., the quality of the social climate with particular reference to the bullying prevention.     

How Does More Attention to Subjective Well-Being Affect Subjective Well-Being?

There is an ongoing debate as to whether pursuing happiness is beneficial for people’s subjective well-being (SWB). To address this question, we tested whether attention to SWB – measured by participation in SWB surveys – is related to experienced SWB in two longitudinal studies. The initial study was conducted from November to December 2013 (N?=?129), and the replication study, three years later from November to December 2016 (N?=?120). The studies include two groups: one group (the control group) answered three SWB surveys over 4 weeks, and the other group (the experimental group) followed the same procedure but additionally tracked their SWB in detail using the experience sampling method four times a day and the day reconstruction method once a day using a smartphone application for two weeks to heighten their attention to their SWB. Both studies show higher SWB scores at later measurements compared to the first ones.     

Use of positive interventions: Does neuroticism moderate the sustainability of their effects on happiness?

Previous research indicates that performing positive activities boosts happiness. The present studies examined whether neuroticism would moderate the sustainability of the effects of positive activities on happiness. Study 1 showed that the effects of counting blessings/kindness daily for seven days lasted a week after participants stopped performing the activity, but only for low-neuroticism individuals (who reported increased happiness) and not high-neuroticism individuals. However, a week post-intervention, gratitude-/kindness-listing participants were more likely to choose an amusing rather than a sad film, regardless of neuroticism differences. This suggests that behavioral choice is more sensitive to positive intervention effects than self-reported happiness. In Study 2, high-neuroticism individuals who occasionally visualized and wrote about their best possible selves over three weeks were happier than their counterparts in the control condition. The present research illustrates that although neuroticism moderates the sustainability of positive intervention effects, encouraging continuance of positive activities may produce more lasting effects.     

How Does Kant Justify the Universal Objective Validity of the Law of Right?

Abstract

Since more than 50 years Kant scholars debate the question whether the Law of Right as introduced in the Metaphysics of Morals by Kant can be justified by the Categorical Imperative. On the one hand we have those who think that Kant’s theory of right depends from the Categorical Imperative, on the other hand we find a growing group of scholars who deny this. However, the debate has been flawed by confusion and misunderstanding of the crucial terms and principles. Therefore, my first task will be to clarify these terms and principles by introducing distinctions that have been neglected too often. After this I try to show a) that the Law of Right can in fact be justified by using the testing method the Categorical Imperative prescribes and b) that there is no other way to justify it. Doing this I criticize in detail the new arguments adherents of the independence thesis have recently put forward.     

The Tyranny of Numbers: Does Group Size Affect Petition Signing?

Conformity research proposes that an individual's tendency to conform increases linearly as a function of group size, reaches an early plateau, and remains stable thereafter, An experiment was performed to test the generality of this notion to a common group pressure situation: petition-signing. Results revealed no meaningful relationships whatever between the percent of subjects who signed and the number of previous signatures (0 through 8), the forcefulness of the solicitor's approach, and subject's sex. A female petitioner did receive more signatures than a male, however. Results were interpreted as supporting the validity of petitions as indicators of public sentiment.     

Explaining Addiction: How Far Does the Reward Account of Motivation Take Us?

ABSTRACT

Choice theorists such as George Ainslie and Gene Heyman argue that the drug-seeking behaviour of addicts is best understood in the same terms that explain everyday choices. Everyday choices, they claim, aim to maximise the reward from available incentives. Continuing drug-use is, therefore, what addicts most want given the incentives they are aware of but they will change their behaviour if and when better incentives become available. This model might explain many typical cases of addiction, but there are hard cases that pose a problem. In these hard cases the addicted individual does not cease using drugs in the face of consequences that are so adverse it is implausible that they are unaware of more rewarding paths of action. These cases force the choice theorist into a dilemma: either these addicts’ drug use does not count as action and so is best described by a neurobiological model, or reference to ‘reward’ in these cases means merely ‘motivated’ and so provides no explanatory power. We propose a different model of motivation that takes self-conception into account. We show how that can better explain the hard cases of addiction and also inform our understanding of recovery and self-control.     

Does the Onset Controllability of Diagnostic Labels Affect the Perceived Appropriateness of an Insanity Verdict?1

The present study attempted to look at reactions to an insanity verdict by asking participants to rate the appropriateness of an insanity verdict already handed down by a jury. A sample of 196 adults read a short vignette describing the defendant's crime, a courtappointed psychiatrist's diagnosis, and a jury's verdict (guilty; or not guilty by reason of insanity, NGRI). Using Weiner's (1995) responsibility model, it was predicted and found that an insanity verdict was deemed less appropriate when the defendant was construed to have an onset controllable disorder. Path analyses indicate that onset controllability, responsibility judgments, and affective reactions do not account for the perceived appropriateness of guilty and NGRI verdicts in the same way.     

Does Children's Colour Use Reflect the Emotional Content of their Drawings?

When children draw in clinical contexts, clinicians sometimes rely on children's colour use to make inferences about their emotional reaction to the subject of the drawing. Here, we examined whether children use colour to portray emotion in their drawings. In Experiment 1, children indicated their colour preferences and then coloured in outlines of figures characterized as nasty or nice. Children also drew complex, multi‐coloured pictures about their own happy or sad experiences. In Experiment 2, hospitalized children drew about being worried or scared in hospital and about their positive experiences. In both experiments, we examined the relation between children's colour use and their colour preferences. Three‐ to 10‐year‐old children used more preferred colours to colour in the nice outline. Although they were more likely to use non‐preferred colours to colour in the nasty outline, they tended to used a mix of preferred and non‐preferred colours. When both normal and hospitalized children produced drawings about positive and negative events, there was no relation between children's colour choices and their colour preferences; children primarily used preferred colours. These data suggest that clinicians should exercise extreme caution when interpreting the meaning of colour in children's drawings. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Talking Health With a Machine: How Does Message Interactivity Affect Attitudes and Cognitions?

By affording interactive communication and natural, human‐like conversations, can media tools affect the way we engage with content in human–machine interactions and influence our attitudes toward that content? A between‐subjects experiment (N = 172) examined the effects of two communication variables: (a) message‐interactivity and (b) conversational tone, in an online health information (Q&A) tool. Findings suggest that informal conversational tone lowers perceptions of relative susceptibility to health risks. Perceived contingency positively mediates the influence of message interactivity on individuals' health attitudes and behavioral intentions whereas perceived interactivity negatively mediates the relationships between these variables. These contrasting mediation effects are further explored via a phantom model analysis that tests two theoretically distinct paths, with implications for both theory and practice.     

Does Economic Inequality Affect the Quality of Life of Older People in Rural Vietnam?

By combining data from the 2011 Vietnam National Aging Survey and the 2011 Rural, Agricultural and Fishery Census, this study examined whether expenditure inequality has any effect on the quality of life (life satisfaction or happiness) among the elderly in rural Vietnam. It was confirmed from our regression analysis that individuals who live in the communes with high inequality tend to self-report as being less happy, even after controlling for various individual and household attributes. The findings are robust to the choice of inequality measures and the specification of econometric models. We also find that older rural people who are farmers or poor are more sensitive to inequality. Given that these people tend to be less happy than others, the result shows the risk that inequality further lowers their subjective well-being. This finding, in part, supports the view that rural Vietnam is not a mobile society.     

Six Ways of Salvation: How Does Jesus Save?

Abstract : Using the model method for comparative analysis of theological theories, this article compares and contrasts six models of atonement: (1) Jesus as teacher of true knowledge; (2) Jesus as moral example and influence; (3) Jesus as the victorious champion and liberator; (4) Jesus as our satisfaction; (5) Jesus as the happy exchange; and (6) Jesus as the final scapegoat.     

How Does the Body Get Into the Mind?

In this article, we propose that gestures play an important role in the connection between sensorimotor experience and language. Gestures may be the link between bodily experience and verbal expression that advocates of embodied cognition have postulated. In a developmental sequence of communicative action, gestures, which are initially similar to action sequences, substantially shorten and represent actions in metonymic form. In another process, action sequences are based on kinesthetic schemata that themselves find their metaphoric expression in language. Again, gestures enact kinesthetic schemata that are correlated with verbal expressions. Examples from a large database are used to illustrate the various processes by means of which language arises when students conduct school science investigations.     

Salvation and Suicide: What Does Islamic Theology Say?

Abstract : The Islamic soteriological doctrine advocates good deeds and God's mercy as the pre‐requisites for human salvation. This article introduces these two important dimensions of the Muslim belief of salvation. In contemporary settings it addresses some of the motives behind the spate of suicide bombings by Muslims and argues that taking one's own life is totally forbidden in Islam. The moving notion that suicide bombing is an open door to salvation is, therefore, untenable. Whatever the mitigating factors, there is no legitimacy in Islamic Law (shariah) to the crime of suicide or the derived terrorism.     

How Does It Feel? The Development of the Experience of Creativity Questionnaire

Creativity research has tended to neglect the phenomenology of the creative process. This article addresses this by describing the development of the Experience of Creativity Questionnaire (ECQ), designed to measure experiential (Part A) and existential (Part B) dimensions of artistic creativity. The questionnaire items were generated on the basis of an earlier qualitative investigation. Participants were 100 artists, from diverse fields of the creative arts. Two Maximum Likelihood factor analyses with Promax rotation were performed on the items comprising the initial ECQ, resulting in 6 factors in Part A and 3 factors in Part B. Factor analyses were then performed on a reduced number of items, providing the basis for 5 scales in Part A (labeled Distinct Experience, Anxiety, Absorption, Power/Pleasure, Clarity/Preparation) and 3 scales in Part B (Transformation, Centrality, Beyond the Personal). The scales demonstrated acceptable reliability, ranging from .82 to.60 (Guttman coefficient). Use of the ECQ in future research will facilitate further investigation of the phenomenology of the creative process and afford greater integration of research paradigms in creativity research.