Why is intelligence associated with stability of happiness?

In the National Child Development Study, life‐course variability in happiness over 18 years was significantly negatively associated with its mean level (happier individuals were more stable in their happiness, and it was not due to the ceiling effect), as well as childhood general intelligence and all Big Five personality factors (except for Agreeableness). In a multiple regression analysis, childhood general intelligence was the strongest predictor of life‐course variability in life satisfaction, stronger than all Big Five personality factors, including Emotional stability. More intelligent individuals were significantly more stable in their happiness, and it was not entirely because: (1) they were more educated and wealthier (even though they were); (2) they were healthier (even though they were); (3) they were more stable in their marital status (even though they were); (4) they were happier (even though they were); (5) they were better able to assess their own happiness accurately (even though they were); or (6) they were better able to recall their previous responses more accurately or they were more honest in their survey responses (even though they were both). While I could exclude all of these alternative explanations, it ultimately remained unclear why more intelligent individuals were more stable in their happiness.     

Taiwanese immigrant mothers' childcare preferences: socialization for bicultural competency

This paper explores how middle-class Taiwanese immigrant mothers in the United States defined the benefits of placing their children in predominantly White American childcare centers instead of using more culturally familiar forms of care. From in-depth interviews with seven Taiwanese immigrant mothers, it was learned that they viewed these settings positively, even though their children were not in cultural environments that mirrored their homes and ethnic communities. Mothers explained that they purposefully chose this type of setting because 1) they desired to develop their children's social competency in U.S. society; 2) they perceived U.S. childcare settings as multicultural and accepting of diverse cultures even if they were in the minority; and 3) they were confident that their children's participation in their own Taiwanese ethnic community would ensure the maintenance of their children's ethnic identity and knowledge of their parents' culture. For these reasons, they did not seek out race matching or cultural congruity between childcare centers and their homes. Instead, mothers viewed the childcare center as part of their overall socialization strategy for developing their children's bicultural competency in both their heritage culture as well as U.S. society.     

Overconfidence in an objective anticipatory motor task

Overconfidence can place humans in hazardous situations, and yet it has been observed in a variety of cognitive tasks in which participants have to rate their own performance. We demonstrate here that overconfidence can be revealed in a natural and objective visuo-motor task. Participants were asked to press a key in synchrony with a predictable visual event and were rewarded if they succeeded and sometimes penalized if they were too quick or too slow. If they had used their own motor uncertainty in anticipating the timing of the visual stimulus, they would have maximized their gain. However, they instead displayed an overconfidence in the sense that they underestimated the magnitude of their uncertainty and the cost of their error. Therefore, overconfidence is not limited to subjective ratings in cognitive tasks, but rather appears to be a general characteristic of human decision making.     

When Will Older Patients Follow Doctors’ Recommendations? Interpersonal Treatment,Outcome Favorability,and Perceived Age Differences1

Study participants were 104 older patients (M age = 76 years) who rated their last visit to a doctor. If they felt respectfully and honestly treated by the doctor, they were more willing to confide in a medical professional. If they received the information that they needed, they were more likely to follow the doctor's recommendations. However, if they perceived their doctor to be closer to them in age, respectful treatment was most closely related to compliance. If they perceived their doctor to be much younger than themselves, obtaining needed information was related most closely to compliance. The results illustrate the value of treating age as a salient social category that can shape older patients’ reactions to their medical visits.     

Does the distance between us matter? Influences of physical proximity to others on consumer choice

Individuals’ physical closeness to one another can either increase or decrease their preference for distinctive products. When individuals perceive their proximity to others to be voluntary, they are likely to interpret it as an indication of their affiliation motivation. Consequently, in a product choice task, they choose options that others consider desirable. When people perceive that their close proximity to others results from circumstances beyond their control, however, they feel that their personal space is violated and experience a need for to express their individuality. In this case, they are more likely to choose products that distinguish themselves from others.     

Unskilled but aware: reinterpreting overconfidence in low-performing students

People are generally overconfident in their self-assessments and this overconfidence effect is greatest for people of poorer abilities. For example, poor students predict that they will perform much better on exams than they do. One explanation for this result is that poor performers in general are doubly cursed: They lack knowledge of the material, and they lack awareness of the knowledge that they do and do not possess. The current studies examined whether poor performers in the classroom are truly unaware of their deficits by examining the relationship between students' exam predictions and their confidence in these predictions. Relative to high-performing students, the poorer students showed a greater overconfidence effect (i.e., their predictions were greater than their performance), but they also reported lower confidence in these predictions. Together, these results suggest that poor students are indeed unskilled but that they may have some awareness of their lack of metacognitive knowledge.     

Are they bothered? How the opportunity to damage a partner's reputation influences giving behavior in a trust game

Studies of reputation use in social interactions have indicated that when individuals can acquire a positive or negative reputation, they are motivated to act in a cooperative fashion. However, few researchers have examined how the opportunity to confer this reputation on a partner may influence an individual's behavior in a mixed-motive situation. In the present study, an experiment using a trust-game paradigm indicated that participants felt that they had more control over their partner's reputation when they could leave feedback regarding the outcome of their interaction with their partner. However, the participants would only donate a substantial portion of their initial endowment (i.e., over 50%) when they could leave feedback for a partner and when they felt that their partner was concerned about his or her own reputation. The author discusses these findings in regard to how they might apply to real-world reputation use and how possible future studies may further expand knowledge in this area.     

Clients talk about their experience of seeking counselling

The purpose of this study was to explore the help-seeking behaviour of a sample of counselling clients using a questionnaire and follow-up, semi-structured interviews with 20 counselling clients who were seen at a walk-in, affordable counselling agency located in a mid-sized city in New Zealand. Specifically, clients were asked if they had received counselling previously, what efforts they had made to solve their problems before seeking counselling and with what success, why they chose this particular agency, their initial impression of their relationship with their counsellor, and their reactions to participating in the research. The data were analysed to ascertain themes associated with their decision-making and choices. Findings were discussed in relation to the literature on seeking counselling, how clients determine their need for counselling and the process they go through in deciding when and where to get it. Implications for counsellors are discussed.     

Effects of feedback on the overestimated capacity to detect lies and the underestimated ability to tell lies

People tend to overestimate their capacity to detect lying in others and to underestimate their own ability to tell lies. These biases were demonstrated in a sample of 60 police officers. In a lie‐detection task, the officers evaluated their accuracy as high and were overconfident in their judgements. In fact, their performance was below chance level. Participants also received false feedback about their performance. When the feedback suggested that they had performed better than they thought, this further enhanced their perceived lie‐detection capacity and also increased their belief in their ability to conceal their own lies. When the feedback suggested they had performed worse than they thought, their ratings of both lie detection and their lie‐telling abilities were lowered. Results are discussed in terms of anchoring, availability, and the self‐assessment bias. On a practical level, the tendency of police interrogators to overestimate their ability to detect deception could change suspicion into certainty and increase the risk of a false confession. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Remembrance of remembrance past

Arnold and Lindsay (2002) found that individuals more often failed to remember they had previously recalled an item if that item had been cued in a qualitatively different way on two recall occasions: the "forgot-it-all-along" (FIA) effect. Experiment 1 was designed to determine if the FIA effect arises because participants incorrectly believe they have not been previously tested for an item, or because they incorrectly believe they have failed to recall the item when previously tested. Experiment 2 measured participants' confidence in their incorrect prior-recall judgements, and Experiment 3 tested participants' ability to "recover" their previous recollection when the prior-recall context was restored. Results indicated that participants usually believed they had not previously been cued for the items they failed to remember previously recalling; they were often confident in their incorrect judgements of prior non-remembering; and re-introducing the context of prior remembering sometimes enabled them to recapture their memories of previous recall.     

Remembrance of remembrance past

Arnold and Lindsay (2002) found that individuals more often failed to remember they had previously recalled an item if that item had been cued in a qualitatively different way on two recall occasions: the “forgot-it-all-along” (FIA) effect. Experiment 1 was designed to determine if the FIA effect arises because participants incorrectly believe they have not been previously tested for an item, or because they incorrectly believe they have failed to recall the item when previously tested. Experiment 2 measured participants' confidence in their incorrect prior-recall judgements, and Experiment 3 tested participants' ability to “recover” their previous recollection when the prior-recall context was restored. Results indicated that participants usually believed they had not previously been cued for the items they failed to remember previously recalling; they were often confident in their incorrect judgements of prior non-remembering; and re-introducing the context of prior remembering sometimes enabled them to recapture their memories of previous recall.     

Speakers' overestimation of their effectiveness

Successful communication depends in part on an ability to anticipate miscommunication. We investigated speakers' ability to gauge their addressees' understanding. Participants in our experiments were asked to say ambiguous sentences while attempting to convey a specific intention to their addressee. When they estimated the addressee's understanding of the intended meaning, they showed a consistent tendency to overestimate their effectiveness. They expected the addressee to understand more often than the addressee actually did. In contrast, overhearers who were informed about the speakers' intention did not systematically overestimate the speakers' effectiveness. Our findings suggest that when speakers monitor their own utterances, they do not act as unbiased observers. Instead, they underestimate the ambiguity of their own utterances and overestimate the extent to which their disambiguating cues make their intention transparent. Such overestimation could be a systematic source of miscommunication in natural conversation, and should be accounted for by any theory of language production.     

Characteristics of secrets and the frequency,reasons and effects of secrets keeping and disclosure

This longitudinal study examines secrets keeping and disclosure. College students filled in two questionnaires, with a 4 months time span in between. Their psychological and physical wellbeing was investigated, together with self‐esteem, the topic and some characteristics of their most important secret (if they had a secret), reasons for having the secret, to whom they confide the secret, how they felt about confiding, and whether they thought that their behaviour would reveal that they kept a secret when they talked with someone who is not aware of their secret. The findings showed that total secrecy was rare, and that most secret‐holders had informed at least one other person about their secret. Moreover, the findings challenge the view that secrets keeping has negative effects on secret‐holders. Results revealed some negative effects, but only when the secret was serious. No positive effects were found for secrets disclosure. Secret‐holders confided information to those with whom they felt emotionally close; were more reluctant to confide when they kept the secret to avoid disapproval, and more likely to confide when they believed that others would find out about their secrets by paying attention to their (secret‐holders) behaviour. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Suffering and the sovereignty of God: one Evangelical's perspective on doctor-assisted suicide.

This paper presents my personal convictions, as an Evangelical, regarding the absolute impropriety of doctor-assisted suicide for Christians. They have been "bought with a price" and are owned by Another. Hence, they must always strive to glorify God in their bodies, both in life and in death. Although they crave the well-being of temporal health, when they are ill seek healing or relief, and may well recoil even from the thought of suffering and dying, they should realize that their values and priorities must be rooted in biblical truths and that their well-being is eternal and not temporal, spiritual and not material. As Christians, their attitudes and responses to suffering and dying must be molded by the reality that their Creator and Sovereign will cause all things to work together for their good and that their Lord has called them into a fellowship of His suffering in which they are sustained by dependence upon Him. Hence, for Christians to take their lives in order to escape from the trials and testings ordained by Him would be a failure of love and a breach of trust.     

Young Children Have Difficulty Predicting Future Preferences in the Presence of a Conflicting Physiological State

This study examined children's predictions about their future preferences when they were in two different physiological states (thirsty and not thirsty). Ninety 3‐ to 7‐year‐olds were asked to predict what they would prefer tomorrow: pretzels to eat or water to drink after having consumed pretzels, and again after having had the opportunity to quench their thirst with water. Results showed that although children initially preferred pretzels to water at baseline, they more often indicated that they would prefer water the next day after they had consumed pretzels. After consuming water, however, the same children indicated they would prefer pretzels the next day. Children's verbal justifications for their choices rarely made reference to their current or future states, but rather justifications were more likely to make reference to their general preferences when they were no longer thirsty compared to when they were thirsty. Results suggest that current physiological states have a powerful influence on future preferences. The findings are discussed in the context of the development of episodic foresight, the Bischof‐Kohler hypothesis, and the important and often overlooked role that children's current states play in future decision making. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Young children's knowledge of their memory span: effects of task and experience

This study investigated the hypothesis that young children have knowledge about their memory that they may be unable to articulate, but are able to reflect on and use in problem-solving. Forty-eight kindergarteners made one of two types of judgments about their memory span for words. Half of the children made prospective verbal predictions about the number of words they thought they could recall from a list of 10. The other half made concurrent, nonverbal predictions by listening to words on a tape and manually stopping the tape when they heard as many words as they thought they could recall. Children's actual recall for words was then assessed. All children participated in multiple trials to assess the effect of task experience on their predictions. Analyses revealed that predictions made in the concurrent task were significantly more accurate than those made in the prospective task. All children lowered their predictions across trials, although only in the concurrent task were children's final-trial predictions not significantly greater than their actual recall. No meaningful effects or interactions were associated with actual recall scores. These results revealed that young children manifested greater memory knowledge when this knowledge was assessed through their concurrent problem-solving behavior rather than through their prospective verbal predictions.     

Therapist perspectives on using silence in therapy: A qualitative study

Twelve experienced therapists were interviewed about their perceptions of why they used silence in therapy. Qualitative analyses revealed that these therapists typically perceived themselves as using silence to convey empathy, facilitate reflection, challenge the client to take responsibility, facilitate expression of feelings, or take time for themselves to think of what to say. Therapists generally indicated that a sound therapeutic alliance was a prerequisite for using silence, and they typically educated their clients about how they used silence in therapy. Therapists typically believed they did not use silence with clients who were psychotic, highly anxious, or angry. They typically thought they now used silence more flexibly, comfortably, and confidently than when they began doing therapy. Therapists typically believed they learned how to use silence from their own experience as a client and from supervision.     

Women's disclosure of sexual abuse

Abstract

In this qualitative study of women who have experienced nonconsensual sexual activity, participants were asked to write accounts of their experiences focusing on what motivated them to confide in someone, to whom they confided, what the outcome was, and how it effected them. Participants had to be female and 18 years of age or older, and they had to have been sexually abused at some point in their lives. A total of 10 women participated. Nine of the women wrote about an abusive experience that happened to them as a child, and one wrote about an experience that occurred in adulthood. The participants wrote that they were able to disclose their past sexually abusive experience because they felt safe with the person to whom they confided, they felt they needed help, and the opportunity presented itself. They were more likely to disclose to non-family members than family members, and the majority of the people they disclosed to had a positive reaction. Consequently, most of the women in this study were positively affected by their disclosure. Findings of this study are similar to those of other studies on disclosure and sexual abuse.