Relationships between anxiety,self-consciousness,and cognitive failure

Abstract

Two studies of correlates of the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) are reported. The first study tested for empirical personality correlates of the CFQ; the second study investigated the role of self-consciousness as a possible mediator of the association betyeen cognitive failures and stress vulnerability. Study 1 (n = 60) showed significant correlations between CFQ score and several 16PF primary and secondary traits, notably anxiety. Study 2 (n = 100) used multiple regression to verify the hypothesis that the positive association between CFQ score and anxiety is at least partially mediated by individual differences in self-consciousness. It is concluded that high CFQ subjects are vulnerable to stress because self-attentional processing disrupts their coping strategies.     

Deus Ex Machina: The Influence of Polling Place on Voting Behavior

Voting is perceived as free and rational. Citizens make whatever choices they wish, shielded from external influences by the privacy of the voting booth. The current paper, however, suggests that a subtle source of influence—polling places themselves—can impact voting behavior. In two elections, people voting in churches were more likely to support a conservative candidate and a ban on same‐sex marriage, but not the restriction of eminent domain. A field experiment found that people completing questionnaires in a chapel awarded less money (relative to people in a secular building) to insurance claimants seeking compensation for abortion pills, but not to worker's compensation claimants. A laboratory experiment found that people subliminally exposed to ecclesiastical images awarded less money (relative to people exposed to control images) to abortion pill claimants, but not to worker's compensation claimants. Exposure to ecclesiastical images affected only Christians; non‐Christians' awards were unaffected by the prime. These findings show that polling locations can exert a powerful and precise influence on political attitudes and decision making.     

Parallel Group Treatment of Pre-School Children and Their Mothers

Object relations concepts are applicable in children's group psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The author attempts to explore and delineate areas in which developmental conflicts in object relations, emotional deprivations, traumas, and family pathologies are recapitulated in the group, and how the manifestations of pathologies can be rectified by the process and formation of the group and the role of the therapist as a “new object” in the management of individual and group transferences. Clinical examples are presented.     

The influence of leg-to-body ratio (LBR) on judgments of female physical attractiveness: Assessments of computer-generated images varying in LBR

The leg-to-body ratio (LBR), which is reliably associated with developmental stability and health outcomes, is an understudied component of human physical attractiveness. Several studies examining the effects of LBR on aesthetic judgments have been limited by the reliance on stimuli composed of hand-drawn silhouettes. In the present study, we developed a new set of female computer-generated images portraying eight levels of LBR that fell within the typical range of human variation. A community sample of 207 Britons in London and students from two samples drawn from a US university (Ns = 940, 114) rated the physical attractiveness of the images. We found that mid-ranging female LBRs were perceived as maximally attractive. The present research overcomes some of the problems associated with past work on LBR and aesthetic preferences through use of computer-generated images rather than hand-drawn images and provides an instrument that may be useful in future investigations of LBR preferences.     

Music and driving game performance

This study investigated the effects of the nature of music and a concurrent task on measures of task performance and musical preference. Subjects completed 5 laps of a computer motor racing game whilst listening to either arousing or relatively unarousing music in either the presence or absence of a backward-counting task. Both these manipulations affected performance on the game with arousing music and backward-counting leading to slower lap times than relatively unarousing music and the absence of the backward-counting task. Backward-counting led to lower liking for the music than did the absence of this task. These results support the idea that music and the concurrent task competed for a limited processing resource. The results also indicated that liking for the music was positively related to task performance, and in conjunction these findings seem to suggest a direct link between music and the listening context.     

Personality and work motivation

A total of 92 job applicants completed the Eysenck Personality Profiler (EPP) which measures the three primary (superfactor) traits (as well as 21 second-order factors), and the Work Values Questionnaire, which requires subjects to rate how important various work factors were to them when considering applying for a job. These work factors were then categorised into the traditional Herzberg classification of Hygiene and Motivation factors, each with a satisfactory internal reliability. Correlational and regressional analyses showed that extraverts stressed the importance of motivation factors to them, while neurotics rated hygiene factors as more important to them in choosing a particular job. Psychoticism was marginally related to the hygiene factor, as was test-taking style. In view of the fact that personality factors appeared to account for between 20 and 30% of the variance in work performance, it is surprising that they have been neglected, until recently, in the organisational psychology literature.     

Thinking Outside the Disciplinary Box: a Reply to the Comments

This article is a reply to the comments on my target article, “Presentism and diversity in the history of psychology” (Brock Psychological Studies, 60, 2015a). The most controversial aspect of the article by far was my views on what it is appropriate to call, “psychology” and what it is not. Having established that psychology has its origins in Europe, I refer to the efforts of psychologists from outside the Western world to construct an “indigenous psychology”. I conclude by discussing the view of Staeuble (2006) that the disciplinary order of the social sciences is “Eurocentric” in that it reflects the assumptions of the culture in which it was produced. As long as psychologists outside the Western world continue to unquestioningly adopt a disciplinary order that reflects its cultural origins in the West, and even insist on projecting it backwards onto their own intellectual traditions, the process of indigenisation will be incomplete.     

The Role of Body Weight,Waist-to-Hip Ratio,and Breast Size in Judgments of Female Attractiveness

It was demonstrated by Singh and Young (1995)that morphological features such as overall body fatdistribution measured by waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) andbreast size, influence judgments of femaleattractiveness, age, and desirability for relationships. Thepresent study was a replication and extension of thatresearch, using both male and female participants. Theresults supported the general findings of the original study, and as predicted, the effect of breastsize on attractiveness judgments depended on overallbody fat and WHR. The significance of interactionswithin the different morphological features whichdetermine female attractiveness were noted. Overall,there were surprisingly few sex differences. Results arediscussed in terms of the socio-biological theoriescurrently popular in the literature.