The Social Construction of Inter-Ethnic Marriages in the Greek Cypriot (GC) Republic of Cyprus: An Ethnographic Investigation of GC Male Marriages to Eastern European (EE) Females

This exploratory ethnographic investigation attempts to delve into the intrapersonal and interpersonal gender/sexual roles and marital dynamics of Greek Cypriot (GC) male marriages to Eastern European (EE) females. European Westernization and consumerism, with its increased attention on self-actualization, sexual fulfillment, material well-being, women’s rights, and men’s parental and emotional involvement, has led, over the past two decades, to a reconfiguration of the traditional GC values and beliefs concerning appropriate male and female gender/sexual roles and identities. This, in turn, has created considerable confusion over the marital roles and expectations of GC male and female partners, who seem to be waging a difficult struggle to effectively and efficiently combine Western European and GC traditional standards in their own families. Ethnographic analysis of a limited sample of 20 GC males married to EE females indicate that the former prefer EE to GC wives because of better-reported emotional, psychological, and sexual satisfaction.     

Experimental comparison of dyspnea and pain

Dyspnea and pain are similarly unpleasant, alarming physical sensations, but studies examining both sensations in combination are lacking. In the present study, dyspnea was induced in 7 healthy volunteers by breathing through inspiratory resistive loads and the effects were compared with those of a heat pain stimulus. End-tidal partial pressures of carbon dioxide (PET_CO2), inspiratory time (Ti), breathing frequency (f), experienced unpleasantness, and intensity were measured. No difference was observed between dyspnea and pain in experienced intensity and unpleasantness (p >.05). During dyspneic stimulation, slightly higherTi was found than for pain (p<.08). PET_CO2 showed slight increases during the dyspneic versus the baseline and painful conditions (ΔPET_CO2=1.5 and 1.3 mmHg, respectively;p<.01 andp<.05). This study shows that the effects of dyspnea and heat pain can be compared within one experiment; both stimuli can be presented with similar intensity and unpleasantness, which is a prerequisite for comparing responses to them. The changes in PET_CO2 between our conditions were minimal, allowing an application of the present design to future fMRI studies.     

Cognitive processes in the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task: a task-set switching account of EAST effects

Recently, De Houwer (2003) introduced the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST) as a new procedure for the indirect assessment of attitudes. In the present paper, we propose an explanation of EAST effects based on a task-set switching account. Specifically, we argue that EAST effects result from difficulties in efficiently switching between two different task sets. Results from two experiments support the assumptions of the task-set switching account: While there were strong EAST effects in task-shift trials, no robust effects were found in task-repetition trials. In Experiment 2, the robustness of this task-shift effect on the EAST was demonstrated: Visual similarity between concept and attribute stimuli did not qualify the task-shift effects. Implications for the interpretation of EAST effects are discussed.     

Implicit Theories About Willpower Predict Subjective Well‐Being

Lay theories about willpower—the belief that willpower is a limited versus nonlimited resource—affect self‐control and goal striving in everyday life (Job, Dweck, & Walton, 2010). Three studies examined whether willpower theories also relate to people's subjective well‐being by shaping the progress they make toward their personal goals. A cross‐sectional (Study 1) and two longitudinal studies (Studies 2 and 3) measured individuals’ willpower theories and different indicators of subjective well‐being. Additionally, Study 3 measured goal striving and personal goal progress. A limited theory about willpower was associated with lower subjective well‐being in a sample of working adults (Study 1, N = 258). Further, a limited theory predicted lower levels of well‐being at a time when students faced high self‐regulatory demands (Study 2, N = 196). Study 3 (N = 157) replicated the finding that students with a limited theory experienced lower well‐being in phases of high self‐regulatory demands and found that personal goal progress mediated this relationship. Results suggest that the belief that willpower is based on a limited resource has negative implications not only for self‐control but also for personal goal striving and subjective well‐being.     

Planning sentences while doing other things at the same time: effects of concurrent verbal and visuospatial working memory load

This study investigated to what extent advance planning during sentence production is affected by a concurrent cognitive load. In two picture–word interference experiments in which participants produced subject–verb–object sentences while ignoring auditory distractor words, we assessed advance planning at a phonological (lexeme) and at an abstract–lexical (lemma) level under visuospatial or verbal working memory (WM) load. At the phonological level, subject and object nouns were found to be activated before speech onset with concurrent visuospatial WM load, but only subject nouns were found to be activated with concurrent verbal WM load, indicating a reduced planning scope as a function of type of WM load (Experiment 1). By contrast, at the abstract–lexical level, subject and object nouns were found to be activated regardless of type of concurrent load (Experiment 2). In both experiments, sentence planning had a more detrimental effect on concurrent verbal WM task performance than on concurrent visuospatial WM task performance. Overall, our results suggest that advance planning at the phonological level is more affected by a concurrently performed verbal WM task than advance planning at the abstract–lexical level. Also, they indicate an overlap of resources allocated to phonological planning in speech production and verbal WM.     

A test of the diffusion model explanation for the worst performance rule using preregistration and blinding

People with higher IQ scores also tend to perform better on elementary cognitive-perceptual tasks, such as deciding quickly whether an arrow points to the left or the right Jensen (2006). The worst performance rule (WPR) finesses this relation by stating that the association between IQ and elementary-task performance is most pronounced when this performance is summarized by people’s slowest responses. Previous research has shown that the WPR can be accounted for in the Ratcliff diffusion model by assuming that the same ability parameter—drift rate—mediates performance in both elementary tasks and higher-level cognitive tasks. Here we aim to test four qualitative predictions concerning the WPR and its diffusion model explanation in terms of drift rate. In the first stage, the diffusion model was fit to data from 916 participants completing a perceptual two-choice task; crucially, the fitting happened after randomly shuffling the key variable, i.e., each participant’s score on a working memory capacity test. In the second stage, after all modeling decisions were made, the key variable was unshuffled and the adequacy of the predictions was evaluated by means of confirmatory Bayesian hypothesis tests. By temporarily withholding the mapping of the key predictor, we retain flexibility for proper modeling of the data (e.g., outlier exclusion) while preventing biases from unduly influencing the results. Our results provide evidence against the WPR and suggest that it may be less robust and less ubiquitous than is commonly believed.     

What Provides Justification for Cheating—Producing or Observing Counterfactuals?

When people can profit financially by lying, they do so to the extent to which they can justify their lies. One type of justification is the observation and production of desirable counterfactual information. Here, we disentangle observing and producing of desired counterfactuals and test whether the mere observation is sufficient or whether one actually needs to produce the information in order to justify lying. By employing a modified version of the Die‐Under‐Cup task, we ask participants to privately roll a die three times and to report the outcome of the first die roll (with higher values corresponding to higher payoffs). In all three conditions, participants produce (roll the die) and observe the first die roll, which is relevant for pay. We manipulate whether participants produce and observe versus only observe the second and third die roll outcomes, which are both irrelevant for pay. Results reveal that people lie to the same extent—when producing and observing the counterfactuals, and when merely observing them. It seems that merely observing counterfactual information is sufficient to allow people to use this information to justify their lies. We further test whether creativity and moral disengagement are associated with dishonesty and replicate the finding showing that unethical behavior increases with creativity. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Future Work Self and Calling: The Mediational Role of Life Meaning

Research on calling prevailingly focuses on the positive effects on well-being and career development. However, explorations of the predictors and emergence of callings are sparse. We tested a model in which clarity about the future work self promotes one’s sense of calling through increased life meaning. We sampled 473 Chinese college students with a three-wave panel design over 1 year. Using time-lagged analysis, we found that the future work self at T1 significantly predicted increased life meaning at T2, which, in turn, significantly predicted increased calling at T3. This indirect effect was significant and supported the hypothesized longitudinal mediation model. The reverse effects of one’s calling as a predictor of self-clarity about one’s future work life or life meaning were not confirmed. Our findings suggest that among Chinese college students, self-clarity about one’s future work life and understanding one’s life meaning are two important steps in the development of one’s calling.     

Similarity Arguments in the Genetic Modification Debate

In the ethical debate on genetic modification (GM), it is common to encounter the claim that some anti-GM argument would also apply an established, ethically accepted technology, and that the anti-GM argument is therefore unsuccessful. The paper discusses whether this argumentative strategy, the Similarity Argument, is sound. It presents a logically valid, generic form of the Similarity Argument and then shows that it is subject to three types of objection: (i) It does not respect the difference between pro tanto reasons and all-things-considered judgments; (ii) it relies on the unproblematic transferability of reasons from one case to another; and (iii) it runs the risk of equivocations, especially in cases where the anti-genetic-modification argument relies on gradable features. The paper then shows how these issues play out in three specific Similarity Arguments that can be found in the literature. Finally, the paper discusses what conclusions we can draw from the fact that genetic modification and established technologies are similar for the ethical status of genetic modification.     

Pre-attentive auditory processing of lexicality

The effects of lexicality on auditory change detection based on auditory sensory memory representations were investigated by presenting oddball sequences of repeatedly presented stimuli, while participants ignored the auditory stimuli. In a cross-linguistic study of Hungarian and German participants, stimulus sequences were composed of words that were language-familiar, lexical, meaningful in Hungarian but language-unfamiliar, not lexical, meaningless in German, and words with the opposite characteristics. The roles of frequently presented stimuli (Standards) and infrequently presented one (Deviants) were fully crossed. Language-familiar and language-unfamiliar Deviants elicited the Mismatch Negativity component of the event-related brain potential. We found differences in processes of change detection depending on whether the Standard was language-familiar, or not. Whereas, the lexicality of the Deviant had no effect on the processes of change detection. Also, language-familiar Standards processed differently than language-unfamiliar ones. We suggest that pre-attentive (default) tuning to meaningful words sets up language-specific preparatory processes that affect change detection in speech sequences.