Adjustment to hemodialysis treatment through behavioral controls

The present study was conducted to examine the hypothesis that compliant chronically ill patients, typically described as adjusted, reinforce more positive social environments using behavioral controls than noncompliant patients, typically described as maladjusted. Specifically, it is hypothesized that diet-compliant chronic hemodialysis patients emit significnatly more active involvement-in-treatment behaviors and more social behaviors than diet-noncompliant chronic hemodialysis patients. Subjects, who ranged in age from 30 to 77 years, were outpatients at a kidney center. Behavioral observations were conducted to assess the occurrence or frequency of (1) four involvement-in-treatment behaviors that are routinely taught to all patients and (2) two social behaviors, which were patient verbalizations and smiles. The results showed that compliant patients emitted significantly more involvement-in-treatment behaviors and smiles than noncompliant patients. Results support the proposed control framework that compliant, in contrast to non-compliant, chronically ill patients have recourse through positive behavioral controls when adjusting to the stresses of illness. It was proposed that through these controls, compliant patients reinforce positive environments rather than simply respond to life circumstances as given.     

Implications of Individual Differences in Subjective Happiness for Perceiving,Interpreting, and Thinking About Life Events

Both anecdotal and empirical evidence suggest that characteristically happy and unhappy individuals seem to differ in the ways in which they respond to life events and daily situations. This paper reports two questionnaire studies and a laboratory study testing the hypothesis that happy people perceive, interpret, and think about the same events in more positive ways than do unhappy ones. The results of Study 1 showed that students nominated by their peers as very happy reported experiencing similar types of both positive and negative life events, as did peer-nominated unhappy students. However, self-rated happy students tended to think about both types of events more favorably and adaptively—e.g., by seeing humor in adversity and emphasizing recent improvement in their lives. This pattern of results was conceptually replicated in Study 2 using hypothetical events. In Study 3, self-rated happy students interacted with a female confederate in the laboratory, then watched a series of videotapes depicting a fellow (but unfamiliar) student in three different situations. Happy individuals liked the person they met, and recalled her in more favorable terms, more than did unhappy ones. The same pattern of results, albeit weaker, was found for liking of the videotaped target. Implications of our findings for the question of how happiness (or unhappiness) is maintained are discussed.     

Implications of counterfactual structure for creative generation and analytical problem solving

In the present research, the authors hypothesized that additive counterfactual thinking mind-sets, activated by adding new antecedent elements to reconstruct reality, promote an expansive processing style that broadens conceptual attention and facilitates performance on creative generation tasks, whereas subtractive counter-factual thinking mind-sets, activated by removing antecedent elements to reconstruct reality, promote a relational processing style that enhances tendencies to consider relationships and associations and facilitates performance on analytical problem-solving tasks. A reanalysis of a published data set suggested that the counterfactual mind-set primes previously used in the literature tend to evoke subtractive counterfactuals. Studies 1 and 2 then demonstrated that subtractive counterfactual mind-sets enhanced performance on analytical problem-solving tasks relative to additive counterfactual mind-sets, whereas Studies 3 and 4 found that additive counterfactual mind-sets enhanced performance on creative generation tasks relative to subtractive counterfactual mind-sets.     

Newcomer adjustment during organizational socialization: a meta-analytic review of antecedents, outcomes, and methods

The authors tested a model of antecedents and outcomes of newcomer adjustment using 70 unique samples of newcomers with meta-analytic and path modeling techniques. Specifically, they proposed and tested a model in which adjustment (role clarity, self-efficacy, and social acceptance) mediated the effects of organizational socialization tactics and information seeking on socialization outcomes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job performance, intentions to remain, and turnover). The results generally supported this model. In addition, the authors examined the moderating effects of methodology on these relationships by coding for 3 methodological issues: data collection type (longitudinal vs. cross-sectional), sample characteristics (school-to-work vs. work-to-work transitions), and measurement of the antecedents (facet vs. composite measurement). Discussion focuses on the implications of the findings and suggestions for future research.     

Development of the positive–negative asymmetry effect: in‐group exclusion norm as a mediator of children's evaluations on negative attributes

Two studies were conducted that go beyond previous research by examining when and why children might show intergroup bias in the attribution of positive, but not negative traits (PNAE: the positive–negative asymmetry effect, Mummendey & Otten, 1998, European review of social psychology, Vol. 9). In Study 1 (n = 107) children completed a ‘mixed’ trait attribution task in a dichotomous group context. As predicted there was a developmental trend between 7 and 12 years of age in the PNAE. The 7‐year olds were the only age group not to show the effect. Study 1 also found a quadratic developmental trend in children's national intergroup bias. Study 2 (n = 62) replicated the developmental path of the PNAE found in Study 1 using a wider age range of 6–16 years. This study used a ‘mixed’ list of traits which were not only antonyms and a procedure that made the positive and negative trait dimensions explicitly independent. Significantly, Study 2 found in‐group exclusion norm partially mediated the development of the PNAE. These findings support an account of the positive–negative asymmetry effect based upon normative processes. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cognitive Tendencies in Analogical Forecasting1

This article attempts to identify some cognitive tendencies involved in analogical forecasting of the outcomes of medical treatment. Sixty-one medical doctors were involved in two experimental tasks concerned with prediction of the outcomes of a new medical treatment when the result with a first patient was known to be either negative or positive. The same subjects were also tested by the Short Optimism/Pessimism Questionnaire (SO/PQ) to explore relationships between life attitude and the cognitive tendencies observed in the experiment. The following findings were reported: (1) The first step of forecasting was recognized as a Data Evaluation Process (DEP), where the physician decides if the given data are sufficient to forecast the result of the same treatment with a new patient. (2) Two cognitive tendencies were identified: non-data-suggested tendency—drawing a conclusion opposite to the data given; and data-suggested tendency—drawing an optimistic conclusion when forecasting from “positive” data and a pessimistic conclusion when forecasting from “negative” data. The second tendency appeared to be dominant; however, the “positive” data created a stronger atmosphere to draw conclusions on a negative outcome. (3) It was stated that analogical forecasting involves two integrated processes, i.e., concluding and asserting. If the integration process is not complete, the subject is drawing analogical conclusions with a low confidence. (4) An optimistic life attitude appeared to be an important factor in determining analogical forecasting.     

Mindless decision making and environmental issues: gestalt/feature-intensive processing and contextual reasoning in environmental decisions

In the absence of relevant information in working memory during decision consideration, respondents tend to rely on a style of cognitive processing that may result in premature or inaccurate decision making (M. J. Sharps, 2003). M. J. Sharps and S. S. Martin (2002) demonstrated this effect in executive decision making. In the present study, the authors extended these methods to decisions about environmental issues. Respondents rated decisions about issues such as overpopulation, energy policy, and food production in the presence or absence of simple pertinent information. The presence of such information in the immediate context of environmental decisions, and therefore in working memory, significantly improved respondents' ability to understand negative decision consequences. These results demonstrate the importance of contextual information in environmental decision making.     

Examining “fat talk” experimentally in a female dyad: How are women influenced by another woman's body presentation style?

Fat talk, the verbal dissatisfaction that women express about their bodies, was studied in a female dyad whereby participants interacted with a female confederate who either self-derogated, self-accepted, or self-aggrandized. A 2 (participant body esteem: high vs. low) ×3 (confederate style of body image presentation) design was used. Results revealed that participants’ public disclosure of their body image varied according to confederate's style. Consistent with a reciprocity effect, participants disclosed the lowest public body image ratings in the self-derogate condition, with moderate ratings in the self-accept condition, and highest ratings in the self-aggrandize condition. Moreover, participants with low compared to high body esteem stated lower public body image. Participants’ judgments of the confederates’ likeability did not vary as a function of the confederate's body presentational style. Findings support the recursive nature of the social psychology of body image such that personal body image dissatisfaction is partially influenced by fat talk social norms.