Priming the trait category “hostility”: The moderating role of trait anxiety

Recent studies on affective priming with the naming task have revealed an influence of trait anxiety on the direction of affective priming effects (e.g., Berner & Maier, 2004 Berner, M. P. and Maier, M. A. 2004. The direction of affective priming as a function of trait anxiety when naming target words with regular and irregular pronunciation. Experimental Psychology, 51: 180–190. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). This moderating role of trait anxiety was further investigated in a study employing a conceptual priming task. After masked presentation of either hostile or neutral primes, participants performed a person judgment task. As expected, the direction of the hostility rating difference score, defined as the difference between hostility ratings of a target person in the hostility priming condition and in the neutral priming condition, changed from positive to negative with increasing levels of self-reported trait anxiety. The findings are interpreted in terms of salience-dependent overcorrection processes (Glaser & Banaji, 1999 Glaser, J. and Banaji, M. R. 1999. When fair is foul and foul is fair: Reverse priming in automatic evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77: 669–687. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Implications for our understanding of the cognitive functioning in high trait anxiety are discussed.     

Adaptation to altered visual—vestibular feedback: Mechanisms of maintenance and recovery

Adaptation of perceived movement during head motion (apparent concomitant motion, ACM) and the subsequent elimination of adaptation were studied in two experiments. During the adaptation phase of both experiments, subjects performed voluntary 1-Hz head oscillations for 6 min while fixating a stimulus moving either in the same (with) direction as or the opposite (against) direction of head movements. In Experiment 1, ACM adaptation was measured following either a 1- or a 4-min delay after the adaptation phase. Results indicated some loss of adaptation during the additional 3-min delay, demonstrating a tendency of the system linking head and image to return to its preadaptation state following removal of an adaptation stimulus. In Experiment 2, subjects viewed a stimulus after adaptation that appeared to move minimally in the same manner as the adaptation stimulus during 3 min of head oscillations. No loss of adaptation was measured in these subjects between the beginning and the end of the 3-min interval. In another condition, subjects viewed a stimulus that appeared to move alternately in the same direction as and in the opposite direction of the adaptation stimulus during a similar 3-min interval following adaptation. ACM adaptation was substantially reduced during this 3-min interval. These results implicate two mechanisms that operate to either maintain or eliminate ACM adaptation. One is passive and operates in the absence of visual feedback to eliminate the short-term adapted state, and the other responds to postadaptation visual feedback.     

Look up to the body: An eye-tracking investigation of 7-months-old infants’ visual exploration of emotional body expressions

The human body is an important source of information to infer a person’s emotional state. Research with adult observers indicate that the posture of the torso, arms and hands provide important perceptual cues for recognising anger, fear and happy expressions. Much less is known about whether infants process body regions differently for different body expressions. To address this issue, we used eye tracking to investigate whether infants’ visual exploration patterns differed when viewing body expressions. Forty-eight 7-months-old infants were randomly presented with static images of adult female bodies expressing anger, fear and happiness, as well as an emotionally-neutral posture. Facial cues to emotional state were removed by masking the faces. We measured the proportion of looking time, proportion and number of fixations, and duration of fixations on the head, upper body and lower body regions for the different expressions. We showed that infants explored the upper body more than the lower body. Importantly, infants at this age fixated differently on different body regions depending on the expression of the body posture. In particular, infants spent a larger proportion of their looking times and had longer fixation durations on the upper body for fear relative to the other expressions. These results extend and replicate the information about infant processing of emotional expressions displayed by human bodies, and they support the hypothesis that infants’ visual exploration of human bodies is driven by the upper body.     

Daydreams and trait affect: The role of the listener’s state of mind in the emotional response to music

Music creates room for the mind to wander, mental time travel, and departures into more fantastical worlds. We examined the mediating role of daydreams and the moderating function of personality differences for the emotional response to music by using a moderated mediation approach. The results showed that the valence of daydreams played a mediating role in the reaction to the musical experience: happy music was related to more positive daydreams, which were associated with greater relaxation with the happy music and to greater liking of the happy music. Furthermore, negative affect (trait) moderated the direct effect of sad vs. happy music on the liking of the music: individuals with high scores on negative affect preferred sad music. The results are discussed with regard to the interplay of general and personality-specific processes as it is relevant to better understand the effects music can have on the listeners.     

Mindset matters: the role of employees’ stress mindset for day-specific reactions to workload anticipation

In this diary study, we extended knowledge on the role of employees’ stress mindset in the anticipatory phase of the stress process. We examined how workload anticipation is related to approach-coping efforts throughout the workday and how employees’ stress mindset moderates this relationship. Moreover, we investigated how approach-coping efforts are related to vigour and task performance at the end of the workday. Finally, we proposed conditional indirect effects of workload anticipation on vigour and task performance that are moderated by employees’ stress mindset. We conducted a daily diary study over five workdays with 171 employees. Results of multilevel path analysis showed that employees with a more positive stress mindset made more approach-coping efforts when anticipating high workload. Approach-coping efforts were positively related to vigour and task performance. For employees with a more positive stress mindset, workload anticipation had a positive conditional indirect effect on vigour and task performance. Our results suggest that employees react differently to workload anticipation depending on their stress mindset. Moreover, approach-coping efforts may be a cognitive-behavioural mechanism that explains how workload relates to vigour and task performance for employees with a more positive stress mindset.     

Fear of success: A personality trait or a response to occupational deviance and role overload?

This study clarifies the extent to which individuals' fear-of-success scores may vary with the presence or absence of occupational deviance and/or role overload in stimulus materials describing situations of female competitive success. Four TAT-type verbal cues describing female competitive success in situations of presence or absence of occupational deviance and/or role overload were administered to 60 males and 60 females, ages 30 to 60. Horner and colleagues' revised scoring system was employed. Results of planned comparisons showing no effect of sex of participant on scores, but significant effects of deviance and overload, are interpreted as support for a situational as opposed to motive interpretation of expressed fear of success.This article is based on a master's thesis written by the first author under the direction of the second author and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the M.A. degree at California State University, Northridge. Parts of this article were presented by the first author at the American Psychological Association Convention, San Francisco, California, August 1977; paper accepted for publication September 21, 1977.     

The mind–body problem and the role of pain: cross-fire between Leibniz and his Cartesian readers

This article is about the exchanges between Leibniz, Arnauld, Bayle and Lamy on the subject of pain. The inability of Leibniz’s system to account for the phenomenon of pain is a recurring objection of Leibniz’s seventeenth-century Cartesian readers to his hypothesis of pre-established harmony: according to them, the spontaneity of the soul and its representative nature cannot account for the affective component of pain. Strikingly enough, this problem has almost never been addressed in Leibniz studies, or only incidentally, through the more general problem of evil. My purpose in this article is to clarify Leibniz’s psychophysical parallelism by opposing his representationist account of pain to the functionalist account endorsed by Arnauld, Bayle, Lamy and Malebranche.     

Women's and Men's Reactions to Man-to-Man Sexual Harassment: Does the Sexual Orientation of the Victim Matter?

We manipulated the sexual orientation of the victim in a hypothetical case to address 3 key questions: Is it harassment, does the case need to be investigated further, and is the harasser's behavior punishable? Our sample comprised 433 undergraduates (91.5% of whom were White). We hypothesized that women would rate the case as more sexually harassing, as needing further investigation, and as more punishable than men would. We also hypothesized that the sexual orientation of the victim would affect perceptions of the case; specifically, students would significantly rate the incident as more harassing, as needing further investigation, and would recommend more punishment when the victim was homosexual rather than heterosexual. We hypothesized that female respondents would perceive more categories of inappropriate behaviors perpetrated by men on other men as constituting sexual harassment than would male respondents. Furthermore, we hypothesized that lewd comments and enforcement of the traditional masculine gender role would predict responses to the 3 key questions asked about the case. With the exception of recommending greater punishment when the victim was homosexual rather than heterosexual, all hypotheses were supported.     

Affective reactions to real-life stressors and the role of physical activity in sports students – An Ambulatory Assessment study

Students are exposed to a variety of stressors that can negatively affect their health and performance. Using an Ambulatory Assessment approach, this study investigated whether and how positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) changed in response to real-life stressors in sports students. In addition, the study investigated how physical activity (PhyA) moderated affective reactions to stressors. 62 participants of a German university (m = 23, f = 38, d = 1; age: M = 21.55 years, SD = 2.47) reported their daily stressors, affective states and PhyA (context, intensity and duration) six times per day via smartphone over five days (30 prompts per participants). To test the hypotheses multilevel models were calculated. Stressor context predicted affective reactions. PA was lower and NA was higher when general (financial problems) or academic (exam periods) stressors were reported. General PhyA had a positive effect on sports students affect (higher PA, lower NA). However, when PhyA was performed in exercise classes within their study program and a stressor was reported, PA decreased. The results showed that certain stressors interact negatively with affective states. Furthermore, the results suggested that PhyA, depending on the context where it occurred, may also induce negative affective changes in this target group of sport students. More studies need to examine how PhyA moderates affective reactions to stressors and examine the influences of context specific PhyA (e.g., type of PhyA) in more detail.     

Romantic partners and body image disturbance: Further evidence for the role of perceived—actual disparities

In this study, female and male college dyads (primarily Caucasian) involved in a “romantic relationship” used schematic figures to rate their conceptions of body size on a variety of rating protocols, including actual self, ideal self, ideal opposite gender, perceived partner's ideal opposite gender, perceived partner's rating of self, and rating of partner's body size. Based on the reflected-appraisal literature and previous body image research on perceived—actual disparities in body size ratings, five discrepancy indices were created and related to dispositional levels of body image disturbance, eating dysfunction, and general psychological function (self-esteem, depression). The results clearly indicated gender differences in the particular predictor associated with all measures of disturbance. For females, the discrepancy between the Self rating and the Perceived Partner's Ideal Other Gender rating accounted for almost all of the variance associated with clinical indices of disturbance. For males, the discrepancy between the Self rating and the Actual Partner's Ideal Other Gender rating was the only important predictor to emerge in regression analyses. The findings are interpreted in light of recent research on actual/perceived differences in body size ratings.     

Correction to: Classroom goal structures and communication style: the role of teacher immediacy and relevance-making in students’ perceptions of the classroom”

Social Psychology of Education - A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-021-09628-9     

The role of disbalance between “natural school” and informational overloading in genesis of stress reactions

Data obtained during 15 years supervision over teenagers indicate the influence of the socialeconomic deformations of the former Soviet society. We use the term natural school to denote the whole ontogenesis of human beings including the first 3- to 5-year period of a child's life when children perceive a surrounding microcosm, their bodies and abilities, and acquire a basic fund of native language skills and habits. Natural school balances a person's mental and physical activities and through the trials and mistakes provides every person with a sphere of friends, important for coping with stress by sharing sorrows and joys. The twentieth century brought informational overloading, the triad, consisting of: (1) enormous mass of information; (2) deficit of time for using it; and (3) high motivation of activity. These conditions restrict the physical activity (hypodynamy) and contact with children of the same age (social deprivation). The influence over a person's development takes place mainly in ones youth, when one seeks his/her place in society. Subsequent stress situations cause the following psychopathological reactions: anxiety, anxiety and frustration, vegeto-dystonic reactions and somatic discomfort, panic attacks, neurosis. Later, disorders of autonomic regulations and somatic discomfort leads to psychosomatic diseases. Preventive measures, like skills minimizing hypodynamy and tools to improve soul's confession seem to be a way of minimizing disbalance and decreasing psychosomatic disorders.     

That Which “Has No Name in Philosophy”: Merleau-Ponty and the Language of Literature

In this paper I address some related aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s unfinished texts, The Visible and the Invisible and The Prose of the World. The point of departure for my reading of these works is the sense of philosophical disillusionment which underlies and motivates them, and which, I argue, leads Merleau-Ponty towards an engagement with art in general and with literature in particular. I suggest that Merleau-Ponty’s emerging conception of ethics—premised on the paradox of a “universal singularity” and concerned with the concrete experience of the individual subject, rather than with abstractions and formal categories—can best be articulated through the formalist concept of “defamiliarization,” the fundamental performativity of all literature, and the dialogic relations which, though inherent in all discourse, become most powerfully evident in the dynamics of reading.

Antiabortion Rhetoric and the Undermining of Choice: Women's Agency as Causing “Psychological Trauma” Following the Termination of a Pregnancy

Historically the antiabortion movement has opposed abortions through reference to the fetus' human status. However, recently there has been a rhetorical shift whereby abortion is criticized based on its alleged negative psychological impact on women, with some authors voicing concerns related to this medicalized repertoire undermining women's capacity to act as rational decision-makers. However, no research to date has systematically analyzed how women's agency over their abortions features in antiabortion rhetoric. In this article, through a discourse analysis of interviews with 15 antiabortion supporters, I explore how psychological concepts are employed to indirectly undermine women's agency to abort. Participants construct the termination of a pregnancy as psychologically damaging when women's agency is evident (e.g., in abortions or rape-pregnancy abortions). Women's choice also appears as enforced by society, victimizing them and removing accountability over it. However, unintentional termination (e.g., miscarriage) is constructed as “natural” and psychologically harmless due to the lack of agency. Overall, the pathologization of abortion through reference to psychological trauma stemming from the exercise of agency allows antiabortionists to naturalize motherhood and oppose abortions in an “objective,” depoliticized, nonrestrictive, and prowoman manner, without explicitly disregarding women's ability to choose or breaching Western norms of autonomy and freedom of choice.     

“The interviewer is a machine!” Investigating the effects of conventional and technology-mediated interview methods on interviewee reactions and behavior

Despite the growing number of organizations interested in the use of asynchronous video interviews (AVIs), little is known about its impact on interviewee reactions and behavior. We randomly assigned participants (N = 299) from two different countries (Switzerland and India) to a face-to-face interview, an avatar-based video interview (with an avatar as a virtual recruiter), or a text-based video interview (with written questions) and collected data on a set of self-rated and observer-rated criteria. Overall, we found that whereas participants reported more negative reactions towards the two asynchronous interviews, observer ratings revealed similar performance across the three interviews and lower stress levels in the two AVIs. These findings suggest that despite technology-mediated interview methods still not being well-accepted, interviewees are not at a disadvantage when these methods are used in terms of how well interviewees perform and how stressed they appear to external observers. Implications are discussed.     

“Islam and Woman: Where Tradition Meets Modernity”: History and Interpretations of Islamic Women's Status

The status of Islamic women varies in different Muslim countries, which interpret Islamic religion and law differently, especially with regard to their attitudes toward women. Most of these Islamic countries have specific beliefs about women and have restrictions concerning them. Gender stereotypes of Islamic women have their origin in the evolution of the Muslim religion. This is similar to the early development of many other religions and how the gender stereotypes of women developed along with the development of these religions. This paper describes the meaning of being a Muslim and the doctrine of the Qur'an, which came from the revelations to Muhammad, Islam's founder and prophet about 610 C.E. During Muhammad's life, he was sympathetic toward women and was concerned about their equal treatment, including full religious responsibility. Although the restrictions were still there on women, their treatment was much more favorable than after Muhammad's death. Conditions for women under Muhammad's successors became worse. Attitudes and perceptions about women were even more negative. Women were isolated, secluded, forced to pray at home—not in the mosque, and exclusion was put into practice. Women were essentially removed from most sectors of society. Veiling of women included covering specific parts of their body to prevent enticing men. Women's status declined rapidly and any freedoms they had were essentially abolished. And as Islam spread across the centuries, these restrictions and practices were adopted, amended, or made more extreme by most if not all Muslim countries and have continued until the present time. The current status of women in Islamic countries is described along with the intensified discussions and debates concerning women, presently taking place. In some states, bills and laws were passed to improve conditions of women but some have already been revoked. In other countries, new restrictions have been proposed. Nevertheless, Islamic women and women's groups are continuing the struggle for their rights. This struggle, amidst the continuing turmoil in the Middle East and the increase in fundamentalist groups, has unfortunately made the final outcome for women yet to be decided.