Testing alternative explanations for mortality salience effects: Terror management,value accessibility,or worrisome thoughts?

Previous research has shown that reminding subjects of their mortality encourages negative reactions to others whose behaviour or attitudes deviate from the cultural worldview (e.g. Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, Rosenblatt, Veeder, Kirkland and Lyon 1990; Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski, Solomon and Chatel 1992; Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski and Lyon 1989). According to terror management theory, these findings result from a heightened need for faith in the cultural worldview that is activated by reminders of one's mortality. Study I assessed the plausibility of an alternative explanation which posits that mortality salience simply primes individuals' values. Whereas mortality salience led to harsher bond recommendations for a prostitute, a procedure that directly focused subjects on their values did not. Studies 2 and 3 assessed the possibility that reminding subjects of any worrisome future concern would produce the same effect as a reminder of mortality. In both studies, mortality salience led to negative reactions to a deviant and had no effect on self-reported affect, whereas other worrisome thoughts had no effect on reactions to a deviant but did create negative affect. Thus, consistent with terror management theory, mortality salience effects seem to result exclusively from thoughts of death.     

A double law of comparative judgment for the analysis of preferential choice and similarities data

By virtue of certain modifications in the Law of Comparative Judgment, equations are developed which (i) permit the construction of a joint scale of individuals and items, as in the case of attitude measurement, directly from their pair-comparison preferences, and (ii) take into account the variable of laterality which is significant for the construction of group preference scales.This work was supported by grant NSF-G5820 from the National Science Foundation.     

Parent and peer attachment in early adolescent depression

Insecure attachment relations have been theorized to play a significant role in the development of depressogenic modes of adaptation and to thus form a vulnerability factor for the emergence of depressive disorder in children. This study examined security of parent and peer attachment among four groups of early adolescents: clinically depressed, nondepressed psychiatric controls, nonpsychiatric controls, and adolescents with resolved depression. Depressed adolescents reported significantly less secure parent attachment than either of the control groups, and less secure peer attachment than the nonpsychiatric control group. Attachment security of adolescents with resolved depression was on a par with the nonpsychiatric control group. Among all psychiatric patients, security of attachment to parents was negatively correlated with severity of depression according to interview and self-report ratings. Less secure attachment to parents, but generally not to peers, was also related to more maladaptive attributional styles, presence of separation anxiety disorder, and history of suicidal ideation.     

Interaction of irrational beliefs with goal pursuit

152 subjects reported affective and cognitive reactions at several stages of pursuing a hypothetical goal related to the taking of a classroom test, then gave Anxious Overconcern and High Self-expectations ratings from Jones' Irrational Belief Test. Subject groups differed in kinds of goals set; e.g., easy vs. difficult. Affective and attributional correlates of the irrational beliefs appeared maladaptive, but differed as a function of difficulty and phase of pursuit of the hypothetical goal. These results supported a contextual model in which irrational beliefs are general cognitive structures which interact with other internal and/or external factors to influence reactions in particular situations. Motivational variables-such as type of goal pursued and number of steps taken in pursuit of it-appear to be important among such factors. The study thus points to growing complexity in our knowledge of how B functions in the ABC paradigm.Frank W. Wicker is Professor of Educational Psychology in the Department of Educational Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin. His research interests are focused on the cognitive bases of motivation and emotion.Gail Brown is a graduate student in the program in Cognition, Learning, and Instruction in the Department of Educational Psychology, University of Texas at Austin. Her primary research interests relate to theoretical explorations of motivation and emotion.Anastasia S. Hagen is a graduate student in the program in Cognition, Learning, and Instruction. She is especially interested in motivation as it pertains to learning and instruction.Wayne Boring is a graduate student in the program in Cognition, Learning, and Instruction. He is interested in cognitive approaches to the understanding of animal behaviors.James A. Wiehe is also a graduate student in the program in Cognition, Learning, and Instruction. He combines interests in cognitive, motivation, and the psychology of music.     

Are shy people reluctant to ask for help?

Examined the help-seeking behaviors of shy and not-shy men and women. In Study 1, Ss worked on an impossible task in the presence of a male or female confederate whom they were told had just successfully completed the task. Shy Ss asked for help no less frequently than did not-shy Ss overall, but they did seek help less frequently from opposite-sex confederates than from same-sex confederates. In Study 2, shy and not-shy men and women were required to call a man and a woman and ask them to complete a questionnaire. All respondents agreed to return the questionnaire. However, when shy Ss (compared with not-shy Ss) called opposite-sex respondents, fewer of the questionnaires were actually returned. When making their calls, shy Ss sounded somewhat less warm and confident than did not-shy Ss, and they also spoke less fluently. Fluency, in turn, predicted response rate for the shy subjects calling respondents of the opposite sex.     

FROM COLLECTIVISM TO INDIVIDUALISM? THE ACCULTURATION OF GREEK IMMIGRANTS IN AUSTRALIA*

The present study examined whether Greek immigrants in Australia have retained traditional Greek values and behaviours or moved to an integration of these with Anglo-Australian values and behaviours. The sample consisted of Anglo- and Greek-Australian parents and young adolescents and a comparison group of Greeks, resident in Greece. Measures were obtained of values and behaviours considered to be appropriate for family members in the culture. Results showed that Greek-Australians retained the collectivistic values of their Greek culture while Anglo-Australians demonstrated a more individualistic orientation. There was evidence for convergence of Anglo- and Greek-Australian perceptions of appropriate behaviours and thus support for a view that acculturation is more likely to be manifested in behaviours than in core values. Although there were some differences in expressed values and behaviours, overall there was little evidence for a cultural gap between Greek-Australian parents and their adolescents.     

Emotion in psychotherapy

The therapeutic process involves many different types of affective phenomena. No single therapeutic perspective has been able to encompass within its own theoretical framework all the ways in which emotion plays a role in therapeutic change. A comprehensive, constructive theory of emotion helps transcend the differences in the therapeutic schools by viewing emotion as a complex synthesis of expressive motor, schematic, and conceptual information that provides organisms with information about their responses to situations that helps them orient adaptively in the environment. In addition to improved theory, increased precision in the assessment of affective functioning in therapy, as well as greater specification of different emotional change processes and means of facilitating these, will allow the role of emotion in change to be studied more effectively. A number of different change processes involving emotion are discussed, as well as principles of emotionally focused intervention that help access emotion and promote emotional restructuring.     

Depression and preference for self-focusing stimuli after success and failure

Depressed individuals, who tend to have large perceived-self/ideal-self discrepancies, have been shown to be particularly high in private self-consciousness. On the bases of this finding and of several converging theoretical perspectives, we hypothesized that depressives, unlike nondepressives, do not find self-focus more aversive after failure than after success, and thus either (a) show no differential preference for self-focusing stimuli after success versus after failure (weak hypothesis), or (b) prefer self-focusing stimuli after failure over self-focusing stimuli after success (strong hypothesis). Depressed and nondepressed college students succeeded or failed on a supposed test of verbal intelligence, and then worked on two sets of puzzles, one in the presence and one in the absence of a self-focusing stimulus (mirror). Whereas nondepressed subjects liked the mirror-associated puzzle more after success than after failure, depressed subjects did not; depressed subjects tended to like the mirror-associated puzzle more after failure than after success. Nondepressed subjects also exhibited a self-serving pattern of attributions, viewing the test as less valid and luck as more responsible for their performance after failure than after success; depressed subjects showed no such differences. In consistency with their failure to use defensive strategies, depressed subjects showed a decrease in self-esteem after failure; nondepressed subjects showed no such change.     

Time Urgency and Job Performance: Field Evidence of an Interactionist Perspective1

Individual predispositions toward time urgency were assessed among 118 emergency room nurses and 145 small‐town librarians. Following from research on person–job fit, according to which people perform better when the demands of the situation match their individual characteristics than when these are mismatched, it was hypothesized that nurses (who typically face high time‐urgent demands) would perform better when they scored high in time urgency, and that librarians (who typically face low time‐urgent demands) would perform better when they scored low in time urgency. The results, based on a standardized measure of task performance, were precisely as expected. The practical ramifications of these findings are discussed along with the implications for research on person–job fit.     

Sense of Coherence (SOC) in Christian Orthodox Monks and Nuns in Greece

This paper aims to investigate the stress management skills of Christian Orthodox monks and nuns, as measured by Antonovsky’s scale sense of coherence (SOC). A case–control study was designed to test the hypotheses whether monks and nuns have higher SOC than secular people. The study population consisted of 193 individuals, 96 monks and nuns (study group) and 97 secular men and women (control group). SOC score was higher in monks and nuns as compared to the secular population (p = 0.002), men as compared to women (p = 0.012) and persons of older age (p = 0.004) as compared to younger individuals.