Investigating the interface of the investment model and adult attachment theory

We examined whether the extent to which individuals accord importance to components of the investment model varies by attachment. In Study 1, rewards and costs in a hypothetical relationship were experimentally manipulated, and participants (single and dating undergraduates) reported perceptions of rewards, costs, and satisfaction. In Study 2, investments and alternative quality were manipulated, and participants reported perceptions of investments, alternatives, satisfaction, and commitment. Study 1 revealed that relative to others, individuals high in both anxiety and avoidance (i.e., fearful) accord less weight to rewards when determining satisfaction. Study 2 revealed that relative to others, individuals low in anxiety and high in avoidance (i.e., dismissing) accord more weight to investments and alternatives, and less weight to satisfaction when determining commitment. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluating fit of the Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ) in a Nigerian adult population

This study aimed to evaluate the latent structure of the Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ) and to estimate the reliability and validity of scores from the measure in a Nigerian adult population (N = 758; age range = 18 - 63 years; females = 52.24%). Respondents also completed the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ). The data were analysed utilising confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The results suggest the PRMQ to have a tripartite structure characterised by the following features: general memory, plus eight prospective and eight retrospective memory items. Scores from the PRMQ had evidence of convergent validity with the CFQ. The reliability of scores from the PRMQ was of acceptable magnitude for the research purposes investigated in the study.     

Ethical social justice: Do the ends justify the means?

This article offers an ethical decision‐making model, informed by community psychology values, as a means for guiding psychologists when engaging in social justice‐oriented work. The applicability of this model is demonstrated through a case analysis elucidating how America's psychologists individually and collectively arrived at the decision to endorse torture—ostensibly as a means for preventing terrorism. Critics have wondered how the American Psychological Association succumbed to these involvements, and how to prevent such ethical lapses in the future. Unfortunately, the American Psychological Association's ethical codes fail to provide explicit guidance for psychologists' involvement in social justice work that impacts communities and systems. To address this gap, we present a values‐driven, ethical decision‐making framework that may be used to guide psychologists' future practices. This framework infuses fundamental community psychology values (i.e., caring and compassion; health; self‐determination and participation, human diversity, social justice; and critical reflexivity) into a 9‐step model.     

Eliminating inhibition of return by changing salient nonspatial attributes in a complex environment

Inhibition of return (IOR) occurs when a target is preceded by an irrelevant stimulus (cue) at the same location: Target detection is slowed, relative to uncued locations. In the present study, we used relatively complex displays to examine the effect of repetition of nonspatial attributes. For both color and shape, attribute repetition produced a robust inhibitory effect that followed a time course similar to that for location-based IOR. However, the effect only occurred when the target shared both the feature (i.e., color or shape) and location with the cue; this constraint implicates a primary role for location. The data are consistent with the idea that the system integrates consecutive stimuli into a single object file when attributes repeat, hindering detection of the second stimulus. The results are also consistent with an interpretation of IOR as a form of habituation, with greater habituation occurring with increasing featural overlap of a repeated stimulus. Critically, both of these interpretations bring the IOR effect within more general approaches to attention and perception, rather than requiring a specialized process with a limited function. In this view, there is no process specifically designed to inhibit return, suggesting that IOR may be the wrong framing of inhibitory repetition effects. Instead, we suggest that repetition of stimulus properties can interfere with the ability to focus attention on the aspects of a complex display that are needed to detect the occurrence of the target stimulus; this is a failure of activation, not an inhibition of processing.     

Empathy gaps for social pain: why people underestimate the pain of social suffering

In 5 studies, the authors examined the hypothesis that people have systematically distorted beliefs about the pain of social suffering. By integrating research on empathy gaps for physical pain (Loewenstein, 1996) with social pain theory (MacDonald & Leary, 2005), the authors generated the hypothesis that people generally underestimate the severity of social pain (ostracism, shame, etc.)--a biased judgment that is only corrected when people actively experience social pain for themselves. Using a social exclusion manipulation, Studies 1-4 found that nonexcluded participants consistently underestimated the severity of social pain compared with excluded participants, who had a heightened appreciation for social pain. This empathy gap for social pain occurred when participants evaluated both the pain of others (interpersonal empathy gap) as well as the pain participants themselves experienced in the past (intrapersonal empathy gap). The authors argue that beliefs about social pain are important because they govern how people react to socially distressing events. In Study 5, middle school teachers were asked to evaluate policies regarding emotional bullying at school. This revealed that actively experiencing social pain heightened the estimated pain of emotional bullying, which in turn led teachers to recommend both more comprehensive treatment for bullied students and greater punishment for students who bully.     

Facing a Disruptive Face: Embodiment in the Everyday Experiences of “Disfigured” Individuals

In recent years, facial difference is increasingly on the public and academic agenda. This is evidenced by the growing public presence of individuals with an atypical face, and the simultaneous emergence of research investigating the issues associated with facial variance. The scholarship on facial difference approaches this topic either through a medical and rehabilitation perspective, or a psycho-social one. However, having a different face also encompasses an embodied dimension. In this paper, we explore this embodied dimension by interpreting the stories of individuals with facial limb absence against the background of phenomenological theories of the body, illness and disability. Our findings suggest that the atypical face disrupts these individuals’ engagement with everyday projects when it gives rise to disruptive perceptions, sensations, and observations. The face then ceases to be the absent background to perception, and becomes foregrounded in awareness. The disruptions evoked by facial difference call for adjustments: as they come to terms with their altered face, the participants in our study gradually develop various new bodily habits that re-establish their face’s absence, or relate to its disruptive presence. It is through these emergent habits that facial difference comes to be embodied. By analyzing the everyday experiences of individuals with facial limb absence, this article provides a much-needed exploration of the embodied aspects of facial difference. It also exemplifies how a phenomenological account of illness and disability can do justice both to the impairments and appearance issues associated with atypical embodiment.     

Attachment avoidance and feelings of connection in social interaction

Individuals high in attachment avoidance claim to be indifferent to the opinions of others. Carvallo and Gabriel (2006) showed that dismissive avoidants who received positive social feedback reported higher levels of positive affect and state self-esteem than dismissives in control conditions. Their data suggest that avoidant individuals are sensitive to acceptance cues, despite avoidants' claims to the contrary. However, the affect and self-esteem effects could represent feelings of hubristic pride (and thus superiority) rather than connection (and thus belongingness). In the current study, participants were randomly assigned to interact with either a highly positive or mildly negative research confederate. Low avoidant individuals felt more connected with the positive than negative confederate, but this effect of experimental condition was even stronger for those high in avoidance. These findings affirm that avoidantly attached invidividuals' feelings of belonging are sensitive to the positivity of social conditions, supporting the universality of the need to belong.     

Frontal cortex functioning in the infant broader autism phenotype

Atypical attention has been proposed as a marker of the broader autism phenotype. In the present study we investigated this and the related process of inhibitory control at the youngest possible age through the study of infant siblings of children with an autism spectrum disorder (Sibs-ASD). Both attention and inhibition have been related to the frontal cortex of the brain. Nine- to ten-month-old Sibs-ASD and low-risk control infants completed the Freeze-Frame task, in which infants are encouraged to inhibit looks to peripherally presented distractors whilst looking at a central animation. The attractiveness of the central stimulus is varied in order to investigate the selectivity of infants’ responses. In line with previous studies, it was found that a subset of Sibs-ASD infants had difficulty disengaging attention from a central stimulus in order to orient to a peripheral stimulus. The Sibs-ASD group also showed less Selective Inhibition than controls. However, Sibs-ASD infants did demonstrate Selective Inhibitory Learning. These results provide preliminary evidence for atypical frontal cortex functioning in the infant broader autism phenotype.     

Development and psychometric evaluation of a quantitative measure of “fat talk”

Based on her anthropological research, Nichter (2000) concluded that it is normative for many American girls to engage in body self-disparagement in the form of “fat talk.” The purpose of the present two studies was to develop a quantitative measure of fat talk. A series of 17 scenarios were created in which “Naomi” is talking with a female friend(s) and there is an expression of fat talk. College women respondents rated the frequency with which they would behave in a similar way as the women in each scenario. A nine-item one-factor scale was determined through principal components analysis and its scores yielded evidence of internal consistency reliability, test–retest reliability over a five-week time period, construct validity, discriminant validity, and incremental validity in that it predicted unique variance in body shame and eating disorder symptoms above and beyond other measures of self-objectification.     

Three Approaches to the Disjunction Between Psychological Measurement and Psychological Persons: Methodological and Ethical Considerations

In this paper, we take forward Schwarz’s (2009) disjunction between measurement-apparatus-questionnaire and measurement-apparatus-man to examine how the crisis in contemporary psychology is related to assumptions about two sets of connections in research: connections between research tools, research behaviours, and psychological phenomena; and connections between researchers and researchees. By setting up a research problem with methodological and ethical implications, we describe three approaches that involve different assumptions and research activities in relation to the ways each makes these connections: Disassociated, Conventionally Connected and Persons in Dialogue Approaches. We argue that a Persons in Dialogue Approach is the most appropriate approach for a 21st Century psychology in crisis.