Implicit Candidate‐Trait Associations in Political Campaigns

While the study of political attitudes has incorporated implicit processes in its theoretical models, the predominant approach to candidate‐trait perception focuses exclusively on explicit processes. Our novel, dual‐process approach to candidate perception sees voters as holding both conscious, explicit impressions of candidate traits and automatic, implicit candidate‐trait associations that cannot be measured using traditional self‐report techniques. We examine implicit candidate‐trait associations for the first time using data from a three‐wave online panel conducted in the last month of the 2012 U.S. presidential election. First, we demonstrate that implicit candidate‐trait associations exist. Second, we show that implicit associations of warmth and competence with the candidates predict explicit candidate evaluations, economic evaluations, and vote choice, above and beyond conventional political science controls and explicit trait perceptions. Finally, we find that these effects are strongest among nonpartisans and partisans with conflicted feelings about their party's nominee. We suggest future directions for implicit political cognition research, including trait perception.     

The Continuing Role of Hardiness and Grit on Performance and Retention in West Point Cadets

Being an army reservist involves stress and uncertainty. While some individuals use exercise to cope with stress, no previous research has ever studied the relationship between army reservists exercise habits and perceived stress. The current study examined the hypothesis that Israeli army reserves in combat roles would report greater perceived stress and (to cope with the stress) exhibit more intensive exercise habits, as well as higher risk for exercise addiction, than the army reserves who are in a non-combat (i.e., office job) role and controls who are not in the army reserve. Participants (n = 277) completed questionnaires assessing their regular exercises habits, perceived stress, and risk for exercise addiction. The results showed that combat reserves scored higher on all dependent measures than non-combat reserves and controls. Perceived stress accounted for 38.8% to 56.6% of the variance in the risk of exercise addiction. Findings suggest that Israeli army reserves in combat role exercise more, for longer episodes, with greater reported intensity, and are at a greater risk for exercise addiction than the reserves in non-combat roles and controls. The higher risk for exercise addiction in the combat reserves, accompanied by a lower predictive power of the perceived stress, reflects a weaker association between these two variables in this group, most likely because combat reserves feel obliged to be physically fit in case of active deployment. This is the first study to show that differences in reservists’ roles is associated with different levels of risk for exercise addiction.     

Sexism,rape myths and feminist identification explain gender differences in attitudes toward the #metoo social media campaign in two countries

ABSTRACT

On October 15, 2017, actress Alyssa Milano popularized the #metoo campaign, which sought to expose the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault in public domains by encouraging victims to share their experiences on social media using the hashtag metoo. The online campaign rapidly grew to a global phenomenon, which was generally well supported. However, some criticized the campaign online as a battle of the sexes, which pits men against women. Our cross-cultural research investigated whether gender differences in attitudes and feelings toward #metoo are due to underlying differences in ideologies and experiences that only partly overlap with gender. We surveyed respondents in the United States, where the campaign began, and in Norway, a highly gender-egalitarian country. In both countries, men expressed less positivity toward #metoo than women and perceived it as substantially more harmful and less beneficial. These gender differences were largely accounted for by men being higher than women in hostile sexism, higher in rape myth acceptance, and lower in feminist identification. The results, hence, suggest that gender differences in attitudes to social media campaigns such as #metoo might be best characterized as dimensional ideological differences rather than fundamental group differences.     

Improving Customer Reactions to Electronic Brokered Ultimatums: The Benefits of Prior Experience and Explanations

Because of the growth of online discount travel intermediaries (e.g., Priceline), researchers have become interested in how customers react to electronic brokered ultimatum bargaining contexts. This paper investigates how characteristics of the customer and characteristics of the bargaining context might ameliorate customers' (a) perceptions of justice; (b) willingness to recommend the intermediary to others; and (c) willingness to repatronize the intermediary. We found that customer familiarity generally improved customer reactions to the electronic intermediary. We found a moderating effect for intermediary explanations in the form of an excuse, as explanations improved customer reactions when offers were rejected, but worsened reactions when offers were accepted.     

Unlocking the effects of gender faultlines on team creativity: is activation the key?

The purpose of this study was to use faultline theory to examine the effects of gender diversity on team creativity. Results from 80 teams working on an idea generation task indicated that the activation of gender faultlines negatively affected the number and overall creativity of ideas. However, gender faultlines that were not activated had no effect. Results also indicated that the relationship between activated gender faultlines and team creativity was partially mediated by the level of conflict within the team. Specifically, emotional conflict partially mediated the effects of activated gender faultlines on the number of ideas generated. Implications are discussed, as well as possible limitations and directions for future research.     

Self-representation in mediated environments: the experience of emotions modulated by auditory-vibrotactile heartbeat.

In 1890, William James hypothesized that emotions are our perception of physiological changes. Many different theories of emotion have emerged since then, but it has been demonstrated that a specifically induced physiological state can influence an individual's emotional responses to stimuli. In the present study, auditory and/or vibrotactile heartbeat stimuli were presented to participants (N = 24), and the stimuli's effect on participants' physiological state and subsequent emotional attitude to affective pictures was measured. In particular, we aimed to investigate the effect of the perceived distance to stimuli on emotional experience. Distant versus close sound reproduction conditions (loudspeakers vs. headphones) were used to identify whether an "embodied" experience can occur in which participants would associate the external heartbeat sound with their own. Vibrotactile stimulation of an experimental chair and footrest was added to magnify the experience. Participants' peripheral heartbeat signals, self-reported valence (pleasantness) and arousal (activation) ratings for the pictures, and memory performance scores were collected. Heartbeat sounds significantly affected participants' heartbeat, the emotional judgments of pictures, and their recall. The effect of distance to stimuli was observed in the significant interaction between the spatial location of the heartbeat sound and the vibrotactile stimulation, which was mainly caused by the auditory-vibrotactile interaction in the loudspeakers condition. This interaction might suggest that vibrations transform the far sound condition (sound via loudspeakers) in a close-stimulation condition and support the hypothesis that close sounds are more affective than distant ones. These findings have implications for the design and evaluation of mediated environments.     

Disjunctivism, contextualism and the sceptical aporia

We know things that entail things we apparently cannot come to know. This is a problem for those of us who trust that knowledge is closed under entailment. In the paper I discuss the solutions to this problem offered by epistemic disjunctivism and contextualism. The contention is that neither of these theories has the resources to deal satisfactory with the problem.     

A systematic review and meta‐analysis of tertiary interventions in clinical burnout

Clinical burnout is one of the leading causes of work absenteeism in high‐ and middle‐income countries. There is hence a great need for the identification of effective intervention strategies to increase return‐to‐work (RTW) in this population. This review aimed to assess the effectiveness of tertiary interventions for individuals with clinically significant burnout on RTW and psychological symptoms of exhaustion, depression and anxiety. Four electronic databases (Ovid MEDLINE, PsychINFO, PubMed and CINAHL Plus) were searched in April 2016 for randomized and non‐randomized controlled trials of tertiary interventions in clinical burnout. Article screening and data extraction were conducted independently by two reviewers. Pooled odds ratios (ORs) and hazard ratios (HRs) were estimated with random‐effects meta‐analyses. Eight articles met the inclusion criteria. There was some evidence of publication bias. Included trials were of variable methodological quality. A significant effect of tertiary interventions compared with treatment as usual or wait‐list controls on time until RTW was found, HR = 4.5, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 2.15–9.45; however, considerable heterogeneity was detected. The effect of tertiary interventions on full RTW was not significant, OR = 1.33, 95% CI = 0.59–2.98. No significant effects on psychological symptoms of exhaustion, depression or anxiety were observed. In conclusion, tertiary interventions for individuals with clinically significant burnout may be effective in facilitating RTW. Successful interventions incorporated advice from labor experts and enabled patients to initiate a workplace dialogue with their employers.     

Backing up behaviors in teams: the role of personality and legitimacy of need

In this article, the authors developed several hypotheses regarding both the main and interactive effects of 2 types of team inputs on backing up behaviors in teams: (a) team composition characteristics in terms of the personality of the members of the team and (b) team task characteristics in terms of the extent to which the nature of the task is one that legitimately calls for some members of the team to back up other members of the team. Results from a study of 71 4-person teams performing a computerized tactical decision-making task suggest that the legitimacy of the need for back up has an important main effect on the extent to which team members provide assistance to and receive assistance from each other. In addition, the legitimacy of the need for back up also has important interactive effects with both the personality of the back up recipient and the personality of the back up providers on backing up behaviors in teams.