Colonial Mentality and Mental Health Help‐Seeking of Filipino Americans

Filipino Americans present with very low rates of mental health help‐seeking. Because of the colonial history between the Philippines and the United States, the authors examined how colonial mentality and internalized oppression, along with ethnic identity, acculturation, and social support, were related to mental health help‐seeking attitudes of Filipino Americans (N = 410). Furthermore, the authors investigated how colonial mentality affects the ethnic identity of Filipino Americans. Major findings included that colonial mentality was negatively related to ethnic identity development and social support, and higher levels of colonial mentality significantly predicted negative mental health help‐seeking attitudes above and beyond ethnic identity, acculturation, social support, and demographic variables. Implications for the counseling profession are considered.     

Off Belay! The Morality of Free-soloing*

In this paper, we use qualitative and quantitative research, along with reference to current philosophical literature to consider the question of whether the sport of free-soloing is inherently immoral given the unavoidable extreme risk taken by the climber and imposed upon others not directly participating in the sport. The first thing we look at is what kind of values climbers see in free-soloing and show, through interviews we conducted with soloers and through a review of the literature on the philosophy of extreme sports, that climbers derive what might be called ‘higher pleasures’ from free-soloing. We then argue that despite its inherent riskiness, free-soloers ought to be allowed the autonomy and freedom to choose to engage in the sport, provided they are doing so in a conscientious manner. To show that they are, we again appeal to interviews we conducted to demonstrate that soloers decide to attempt a free-solo in a thoughtful manner, as prescribed by philosophers who work on the morality of decision-making under uncertainty. We finally use data that we collected through quantitative research to show that free-soloing does not make those athletes who participate in the sport into risk-taking personalities. Thus, we conclude that the sport of free-soloing is not inherently immoral.     

Tests of Matrix Structure for Construct Validation

Psychometrika - Psychologists and other behavioral scientists are frequently interested in whether a questionnaire measures a latent construct. Attempts to address this issue are referred to as...     

Solving probabilistic and statistical problems: a matter of information structure and question form

Is the human mind inherently unable to reason probabilistically, or is it able to do so only when problems tap into a module for reasoning about natural frequencies? We suggest an alternative possibility: naive individuals are able to reason probabilistically when they can rely on a representation of subsets of chances or frequencies. We predicted that naive individuals solve conditional probability problems if they can infer conditional probabilities from the subset relations in their representation of the problems, and if the question put to them makes it easy to consider the appropriate subsets. The results of seven studies corroborated these predictions: when the form of the question and the structure of the problem were framed so as to activate intuitive principles based on subset relations, naive individuals solved problems, whether they were stated in terms of probabilities or frequencies. Otherwise, they failed with both sorts of information. The results contravene the frequentist hypothesis and the evolutionary account of probabilistic reasoning.     

Effects of tDCS over the right DLPFC on attentional disengagement from positive and negative faces: An eye-tracking study

The aim of this study was to increase insight in the neural substrates of attention processes involved in emotion regulation. The effects of right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (i.e., DLPFC) stimulation on attentional processing of emotional information were evaluated. A novel attention task allowing a straightforward measurement of attentional engagement toward, and attentional disengagement away from emotional faces was used. A sample of healthy participants received 20 minutes of active and sham anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (i.e., tDCS) applied over the right DLPFC on 2 separate days and completed the attention task after receiving real or sham stimulation. Compared to sham stimulation, tDCS over the right DLPFC led to impairments in attentional disengagement from both positive and negative faces. Findings demonstrate a causal role of right DLPFC activity in the generation of attentional impairments that are implicated in emotional disturbances such as depression and anxiety.     

Postdecisional counterfactual thinking by actors and readers

How do individuals think counterfactually about the outcomes of their decisions? Most previous studies have investigated how readers think about fictional stories, rather than how actors think about events they have actually experienced. We assumed that differences in individuals' roles (actor vs. reader) can make different information available, which in turn can affect counterfactual thinking. Hence, we predicted an effect of role on postdecisional counterfactual thinking. Reporting the results of eight studies, we show that readers undo the negative outcome of a story by undoing the protagonist's choice to tackle a given problem, rather than the protagonist's unsuccessful attempt to solve it. But actors who make the same choice and experience the same negative outcome as the protagonist undo this outcome by altering features of the problem. We also show that this effect does not depend on motivational factors. These results contradict current accounts of counterfactual thinking and demonstrate the necessity of investigating the counterfactual thoughts of individuals in varied roles.     

Interpersonal patterns in close relationships: The role of sociotropy–autonomy

Sociotropy and autonomy are conceptualized as two personality dimensions that relate to an individual's vulnerability to depression. Sociotropy is characterized as an excessive investment in interpersonal relationships and autonomy is characterized as an excessive concern with personal achievement and control over the environment. The present research project consisted of two studies examining the relationships between sociotropy–autonomy and interpersonal patterns in close relationships. Data collected via self‐report and behavioural observations suggested that highly sociotropic individuals have a tendency to be high in control and low in affiliation towards individuals who are close to them. In contrast, the data suggested that highly autonomous individuals may be low in both control and affiliation towards people who are close to them. These findings are discussed in the context of the literature regarding the interpersonal characteristics of sociotropic and autonomous individuals.     

Why don’t well-educated adults understand accumulation? A challenge to researchers,educators, and citizens

Accumulation is a fundamental process in dynamic systems: inventory accumulates production less shipments; the national debt accumulates the federal deficit. Effective decision making in such systems requires an understanding of the relationship between stocks and the flows that alter them. However, highly educated people are often unable to infer the behavior of simple stock–flow systems. In a series of experiments we demonstrate that poor understanding of accumulation, termed stock–flow failure, is a fundamental reasoning error. Persistent poor performance is not attributable to an inability to interpret graphs, lack of contextual knowledge, motivation, or cognitive capacity. Rather, stock–flow failure is a robust phenomenon that appears to be rooted in failure to appreciate the most basic principles of accumulation, leading to the use of inappropriate heuristics. We show that many people, including highly educated individuals with strong technical training, use what we term the “correlation heuristic”, erroneously assuming that the behavior of a stock matches the pattern of its flows. We discuss the origins of stock–flow failure and implications for management and education.