Event valence and estimates of own, average person's, and randomly chosen person's risk

People typically believe they have a lower likelihood of experiencing negative events and a greater likelihood of experiencing positive events than does the average person. This effect is greater for negative than positive events. It has been proposed that this is a by-product of a tendency for estimates of the average person's likelihood to increase with the size of the group concerned. If so, event valence should affect estimates of the average person's likelihood, but not estimates of one's own likelihood or estimates of the likelihood of a person selected at random. These predictions were tested for a single event using a student sample (N = 113). Results were not in accord with the proposal. An explanation in terms of motivational processes is offered instead.     

Increasing seat belt use in service vehicle drivers with a gearshift delay

This study evaluated a device that prevents drivers from shifting vehicles into gear for up to 8 s unless seat belts are buckled. Participants were 101 commercial drivers who operated vans, pickups, or other light trucks from the U.S. and Canada. The driver could escape or avoid the delay by fastening his or her seat belt before shifting out of park. Unbelted participants experienced either a constant delay (8 s) or a variable delay (M = 8 s). A 16‐s delay was introduced for those U.S. drivers who did not show significant improvement. Seat belt use increased from 48% to 67% (a 40% increase) for U.S. drivers and from 54% to 74% (a 37% increase) for Canadian drivers. The fixed delay was more effective for U.S. drivers than the variable delay, but there was no difference between these two delay schedules for Canadian drivers. After the driver fastened his or her seat belt, it tended to remain fastened for the duration of the trip.     

Repression and high anxiety are associated with aberrant diurnal cortisol rhythms in women with metastatic breast cancer.

Previous research has provided evidence of autonomic, endocrine, and immunological dysregulation in repressers and a possible association with cancer incidence and progression. Recently published data from the authors' laboratory demonstrated that flatter diurnal cortisol slopes were a risk factor for early mortality in women with metastatic breast cancer. In the current analysis of this same sample (N=91), the authors tested differences at baseline between groups scored using the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory on diurnal cortisol slope and mean cortisol levels. When compared with self-assured and nonextreme groups, the represser and high-anxious groups had a significantly flatter diurnal slope. Diurnal slope was similar for repressers and high-anxious groups. Groups did not differ on mean cortisol levels, nor did they differ on intercept (morning) values.     

Iowa Gambling Task Modified for Military Domain

One key component of optimal military decision making is that the decision maker demonstrates reinforcement learning. The modification of psychological tasks gives insight into understanding how to effectively train military decision makers and how experienced decision makers arrive at optimal or near optimal decisions. We developed a task modeled after the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) to measure military decision making performance. This new task focuses on high stakes and uncertain environments particular to military decision making conditions. Thirty-four U.S. military officers from all branches of service completed the tasks yielding decision data for validation. The new task retains essential characteristics of the foundational task and gives insight into reinforcement learning of military decision makers. Results indicate that the additional metric of regret defines higher performance at a trial-by-trial level, and clustering by multiple metrics defines high performance groups.     

Cross-Cultural Patterns of Student Victimization in Israel and Chile

School violence is a global concern that calls for international research using cross context methods. Although there are several international surveys that compare school violence across countries, they do not clearly address issues of similarities and differences in relative prevalence of different types of victimization and their relations with age, sex, and cultural group. We explored these questions among Israeli-Arab (n?=?13,606), Israeli-Jewish (n?=?10,637), and Chilean students in poor schools in a large Chilean city (n?=?4557), using the same self-report questionnaire that measures verbal-social victimization, victimization by threats, physical victimization, and sexual harassment. As hypothesized, we found similarities in the patterns of relative prevalence of victimization types, as well as study group, sex, and age main effects and interactions. These effects were evident even when the lowest third SES group in Israel was compared with the Chilean students. These findings suggest group differences in prevalence of student victimization, and at the same time cultural invariance in relative prevalence of victimization types and their relations with sex and age. We discuss the need for more international comparative research in this field that takes into account cultural values and the structure and organizations of schools within the different educational systems.     

Theosis and Human Enhancement

Recent theological work on the meaning of theosis or deification has largely ignored today’s cultural context in which ordinary Christians are expected to put theosis into practice. The widespread use of various technologies of human enhancement creates expectations that might distort the interpretation of theosis. Human enhancement technologies tend to feed off the desire to expand the self, while theosis is grounded in the idea that true divinization means becoming like God in God’s own kenosis of self-giving love. The theology of theosis is a call to empty the self, not to expand it. If theosis defines the Christian life, the use of human enhancement technology is largely a matter of indifference.     

Two Models of Moral Judgment

This paper compares two theories and their two corresponding computational models of human moral judgment. In order to better address psychological realism and generality of theories of moral judgment, more detailed and more psychologically nuanced models are needed. In particular, a motivationally based theory of moral judgment (and its corresponding computational model) is developed in this paper that provides a more accurate account of human moral judgment than an existing emotion‐reason conflict theory. Simulations based on the theory capture and explain a range of relevant human data. They account not only for the original data that were used to support the emotion – reason conflict theory, but also for a wider range of data and phenomena.     

Data‐driven Methods for Modeling Social Perception

How do we model the complexity of social perception? A major methodological problem is that the space of possible variables driving social perceptions is infinitely large, thus posing an insurmountable hurdle for conventional approaches. Here, we describe a set of data‐driven methods whose objective is to identify quantitative relationships between high‐dimensional variables (e.g., visual images) and behaviors (e.g., perceptual decisions) with as little bias as possible. We focus on social perception of faces, although the methods could be applied to other visual and nonvisual categories. We review two reverse correlation approaches: (a) psychophysical methods based on judgments of images altered with randomly generated noise, where the analysis relates the random variations of the images to judgments; and (b) methods based on judgments of randomly generated faces from a statistical, multidimensional face space model, where the analysis relates the dimensions of the face model to judgments.     

The Interaction Between Pubertal Timing and Peer Popularity for Boys and Girls: An Integration of Biological and Interpersonal Perspectives on Adolescent Depression

The transition to adolescence marks a time of sharply increased vulnerability to the development of depression, particularly among girls. Past research has examined isolated risk factors from individual theoretical models (e.g., biological, interpersonal, and cognitive) of depression, but few have examined integrative models. This study investigated the conjoint effects of early pubertal timing and popularity in the longitudinal prediction of depressive symptoms. A total of 319 girls and 294 boys (ages 11–14) provided information on their pubertal status, depressive symptoms, and the social status (i.e., popularity) of their peers. Adolescents completed a second measure of depressive symptoms 11 months after the initial time point. Findings supported an integrated biological-interpersonal model in explaining the development of depressive symptoms during adolescence. Early pubertal development was associated with increase in depressive symptoms only when accompanied by low levels of popularity. High levels of popularity buffered the association between early pubertal development and later depressive symptoms. Unexpectedly, these results were significant both for girls and boys. Results are discussed in terms of dynamic systems theories.