Locus of control,life stress,and social networks: Gender differences in the health status of the elderly

A sample of community-based older adults were interviewed and given a questionnaire in order to examine the effects of stress, social support, and locus of control on two measures of health: the number of actual symptoms and self-ratings of health. Subjects were 83% white, 63% female, and represented middle- and working-class backgrounds. All variables showed association with symptom levels, and for men, both locus of control and friend support networks predicted subjective ratings of health even after controlling for the level of symptomatology. Moreover, an internal locus of control was found to buffer the deleterious effect of symptoms of physical illness on self-rated health. The results suggest that a supportive network and a sense of control build confidence in one's capacity to cope both with external stressors and with sickness itself, but these factors are stronger influences for males than for females.     

Invariance of a two-factor model of Social Dominance Orientation across gender

This research examined the measurement and structural invariance of the 16-item Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) scale across gender. The Social Dominance Theory (SDT) invariance hypothesis proposes that men are higher than women in SDO. Tests of this hypothesis have compared summary scores with t-tests, but there is no psychometric work of measurement invariance across gender, which makes interpretation of t-test comparisons problematic. Some research suggests the scale captures two distinct factors: support for group-based dominance (GBD) and general opposition to equality (OEQ). However, gender differences in GBD and OEQ have mixed findings. Results replicated the two-factor structure. Multiple-group CFA indicated that loadings, intercepts, factor variances, and factor covariance are equivalent across gender. Males demonstrated higher latent means of GBD and OEQ, supporting the SDT invariance hypothesis.     

Think and act globally, think and act locally: Cooperation depends on matching construal to action levels in social dilemmas

The authors proposed and tested hypotheses that cooperation in social dilemmas depends on matching construal to action levels. Using a computerized resource dilemma that modeled fishing the oceans, when motives were framed at abstract levels, in terms of values (e.g., cooperation vs. competition), high construal levels produced more cooperativeness and competitiveness, respectively. Conversely, when motives were framed at concrete levels, in terms of actions (e.g., returning vs. taking), low construal levels produced more cooperativeness and competitiveness, respectively. Implications for integrating and extending research on construal levels in social dilemmas and increasing cooperation are discussed.     

Testing a neurocomputational model of recollection, familiarity, and source recognition

The authors assess whether the complementary learning systems model of the medial temporal lobes (Norman & O'Reilly, 2003) is able to account for source recognition receiver operating characteristics (ROCs). The model assumes that recognition reflects the contribution of a hippocampally mediated recollection process and a cortically mediated familiarity process. The hippocampal process is found to produce threshold output functions that lead to U-shaped zROCs, whereas the cortical process produces Gaussian signal detection functions and linear zROCs. The model is consistent with several dual process theories of recognition and is capable of producing the types of zROCs observed in studies of item and source recognition. In addition, the model makes the novel prediction that as the level of feature similarity across items increases, the ability of the hippocampus to encode distinct representations for each stimulus will diminish, and the threshold nature of recollection will break down, leading source zROCs to become more linear. The authors conducted 3 new behavioral source experiments that confirmed the model's prediction. The results demonstrate that the model provides a viable account of item and source recognition performance.     

Anger management: age differences in emotional modulation of visual processing

Although positive and negative images enhance the visual processing of young adults, recent work suggests that a life-span shift in emotion processing goals may lead older adults to avoid negative images. To examine this tendency for older adults to regulate their intake of negative emotional information, the current study investigated age-related differences in the perceptual boost received by probes appearing over facial expressions of emotion. Visually-evoked event-related potentials were recorded from the scalp over cortical regions associated with visual processing as a probe appeared over facial expressions depicting anger, sadness, happiness, or no emotion. The activity of the visual system in response to each probe was operationalized in terms of the P1 component of the event-related potentials evoked by the probe. For young adults, the visual system was more active (i.e., greater P1 amplitude) when the probes appeared over any of the emotional facial expressions. However, for older adults, the visual system displayed reduced activity when the probe appeared over angry facial expressions.     

Age-related equivalence and deficit in knowledge updating of cue effectiveness

Knowledge updating involves learning about cue effectiveness based on task experience. Priorresearch has yielded inconsistent conclusions regarding age and knowledge updating. To resolve this inconsistency, the authors analyzed the effects of aging within a single paradigm. Participants studied cue-target associates during 2 study-test trials. Cues included rhyme cues and highly effective category cues. On each study-test trial, different items were presented, and participants predicted recall performance, received a cued recall test, and postdicted performance. Knowledge updating was operationalized as an improvement in the accuracy of predictive judgments across trials. An age deficit was evident in improvements in absolute accuracy, whereas age equivalence was evident in relative accuracy. Evidence suggested that deficient inferential processes contributed to the age deficit in knowledge updating.     

Envisioning a kinder,gentler world: On recognition and remuneration for care workers

In this paper, I argue that thestatus of those who take care of persons withdisabilities, and persons with disabilities,are inextricably linked. That is, devaluingthe status of one necessarily devalues that ofthe other. Persons with disabilities and thosewho help care for them must form an alliance toadvance their common interests. This alliancecan gain insight and inspiration from feministthought insofar as caretaking is literallylinked to problems of the representation ofcaretaking as ``women's work,' and morephilosophically, by borrowing from the toolboxof feminist social, political, and economicanalyses. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Impact of psychoeducational content delivered online to a positive psychology aware community

Happiness-increasing interventions demonstrate significant variation in outcomes, suggesting that the people who use them might be as important as the interventions themselves to determine efficacy. In light of this, instructive interventions might not be necessary to increase happiness given a population with knowledge of happiness-increasing strategies. We recruited 270 participants with knowledge of positive psychology to receive six weeks of online psychoeducation. We explored participants’ use of the website, reported use of happiness strategies, and changes in well-being. Those who spent more time on the website reported smaller changes in well-being than those who spent less time on the website. Conversely, those who reported employing more happiness strategies reported greater increases in well-being than those who used fewer strategies. This shows that for those already familiar with positive psychology, information, rather than instruction, might increase well-being. This has implications for studies evaluating the efficacy of happiness-increasing interventions more broadly.