Expectation Biases and Context Management with Negative Polar Questions

Journal of Philosophical Logic - This paper examines distinctive discourse properties of preposed negative yes/no questions (NPQs), such as Isn’t Jane coming too?. Unlike with other yes/no...     

“They've Put Nothing in the Pot!”: Brexit and the Key Psychological Motivations Behind Voting 'Remain' and 'Leave'

In June 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Voting followed a general trend: disadvantaged areas of the United Kingdom tended to vote “leave,” and more affluent areas tended to vote “remain.” This project investigates the psychological variables underlying this overall trend by distinguishing four psychological motivations: the need for justice, threat reduction needs, need to belong, and the need for control. Participants were recruited from different areas across Greater Manchester (N = 158). A survey assessed voting preference, socioeconomic status, collective relative deprivation (CRD), perceptions of threat from immigration, European and British identification, sense of control in life, and relative gratification. Discriminant function analysis showed that leave voting was characterized by greater realistic threat, symbolic threat, CRD, and British identification. Remain voting was characterized by strong European identification. Findings highlight that a need for justice, threat-reduction needs, and identity needs were key predictors of voting behavior.     

Effects of Gender and Appearance Comparisons on Associations Between Media-Based Appearance Pressure and Disordered Eating: Testing a Moderated Mediation Model

Sex Roles - Appearance pressure from mass media and appearance social comparisons have been implicated in theory and research on disordered eating. However, mediating effects of upward and downward...     

Subgroup differences in situational judgment test scores: Evidence from large applicant samples

To promote diversity in organizations it is important to have accurate knowledge about subgroup differences associated with selection procedures. However, current estimates of subgroup differences in situational judgment tests (SJTs) are overwhelmingly based on range‐restricted incumbent samples that are downwardly biased. This study provides much‐needed applicant level estimates of SJT subgroup differences (N = 37,530). As a key finding, Black‐White differences (d = 0.66) were higher than in incumbent samples (d = 0.38). Overall, sex differences were small. Females scored higher for management jobs (d = ?0.13) and males scored higher for administrative jobs (d = 0.15). By analyzing applicant samples that do not suffer from range restriction, this study adds knowledge about subgroup differences in SJTs.     

Sex differences on the serial color-word test

The Serial Color-Word Test was administered to nonclinical volunteers of three age strata (17-29, 30-45, 46-65 yr.). Sex differences on the 17 variables of the test were explored for each age stratum. Only six significant intersex differences were found. In all age strata women scored significantly higher on linear regression of reading times in one of the last two subtests, i.e., R4 or R5.     

The impact of communal-mastery versus self-mastery on emotional outcomes during stressful conditions: a prospective study of Native American women

Past research has examined the stress resiliency of individuals high in sense of personal-mastery. However, it has been theorized that within more collectivist cultures, a sense of shared efficacy, which we call communal-mastery, may be more central to people's resiliency in the face of challenging life circumstances. We compared the impact of sense of self-mastery (i.e., I am the key to my success) to that of communal-mastery (i.e., I am successful by virtue of my social attachments) in a prospective study among a group of rural 103 Native American women residing on Indian Reservations in Montana. We found that women high in communal-mastery experienced less increase in depressive mood and anger, especially when faced with high stress circumstances, than women who were low in communal-mastery. In addition, the beneficial impact of communal-mastery was found to be more effective than self-mastery for these women.     

Arousal and the Relationship Between Positive and Negative Affect: An Analysis of the Data of Ito,Cacioppo, and Lang (1998)

Research on positive and negative emotional states has supported several models of how those states relate to each other. Many studies suggest that they are independent, the bivariate view, while others suggest that they are inversely correlated, the bipolar view. Other research has shown that stress is a major moderator of the relationship; the affects become coupled under conditions of high stress, a contextual model, but are relatively independent otherwise. To expand the range of tests of this dynamic model of affect, we reanalyzed a data set initially reported by Ito, Cacioppo, and Lang (1998) on affect-eliciting picture stimuli. In that study, arousal was assessed separately from positive and negative affect, allowing investigation of a source of interaffect relationships different from stress, per se. Arousal interacted with positive and negative affect, showing both bivariate and bipolar relationships, and effects similar to stress. Affective reactions to the stimuli became more inversely correlated when the affects were high and interacting with higher arousal. The data supported the dynamic model of affect and suggest the need for further analyses of the linkages between stress, arousal, and reduced levels of emotional complexity.     

The accuracy of abstracts in psychology journals

This article provides an empirically supported reminder of the importance of accuracy in scientific communication. The authors identify common types of inaccuracies in research abstracts and offer suggestions to improve abstract-article agreement. Abstracts accompanying 13% of a random sample of 400 research articles published in 8 American Psychological Association journals during 1997 and 1998 contained data or claims inconsistent with or missing from the body of the article. Error rates ranged from 8% to 18%, although between-journal differences were not significant. Many errors (63%) were unlikely to cause substantive misinterpretations. Unfortunately, 37% of errors found could be seriously misleading with respect to the data or claims presented in the associated article. Although deficient abstracts may be less common in psychology journals than in major medical journals (R. M. Pitkin, M. A. Branagan, & L. F. Burmeister, 1999), there is still cause for concern and need for improvement.     

Timing and Foraging: Gibbon's Scalar Expectancy Theory and Optimal Patch Exploitation

We present a study that links optimal foraging theory (OFT) to behavioral timing. OFT's distinguishing feature is the use of models that compute the most advantageous behavior for a particular foraging problem and compare the optimal solution to empirical data with little reference to psychological processes. The study of behavioral timing, in contrast, emphasizes performance in relation to time, most often without strategic or functional considerations. In three experiments, reinforcer-maximizing behavior and timing performance are identified and related to each other. In all three experiments starlings work in a setting that simulates food patches separated by a flying distance between the two perches. The patches contain a variable and unpredictable number of reinforcers and deplete suddenly without signal. Before depletion, patches deliver food at fixed intervals (FI). Our main dependent variables are the times of occurrence of three behaviors: the “peak” in pecking rate (Peak), the time of the last peck before “giving in” (GIT), and the time for “moving on” to a new patch (MOT). We manipulate travel requirement (Experiment 1), level of deprivation and FI (Experiment 2), and size of reinforcers (Experiment 3). For OFT, Peak should equal the FI in all conditions while GIT and MOT should just exceed it. Behavioral timing and Scalar Expectancy Theory (SET) in particular predict a Peak at around the FI and a longer (unspecified) GIT, and make no prediction for MOT. We found that Peak was close to the FI and GIT was approximately 1.5 times longer, neither being affected by travel, hunger, or reinforcer size manipulations. MOT varied between 1.5 and just over 3 times the FI, was responsive to both travel time and the FI, and did not change when the reinforcer rate was manipulated. These results support the practice of producing models that explicitly separate information available to the subject from strategic use of this information.