Toward understanding why fairness matters: the influence of mortality salience on reactions to procedural fairness

This article focuses on the question of why fairness matters to people. On the basis of fairness heuristic theory, the authors argue that people especially need fairness when they are uncertain about things that are important to them. Following terror management theory, the authors focus on a basic kind of human uncertainty: fear of death. Integrating these two theoretical frameworks, it is proposed that thinking about their mortality should make fairness a more important issue to people. The findings of three experiments support the authors' line of reasoning: Asking participants to think about their mortality led to stronger fair process effects (positive effects of perceived procedural fairness on subsequent reactions) than not asking them to think about mortality. It is argued that these findings suggest that fairness especially matters to people when they are uncertain about fundamental aspects of human life such as human mortality.     

The role of causal discourse structure in narrative writing

All writers produce text content and ideally connect it together according to discourse conventions. We investigate whether a particularly strong discourse convention, the need for causal coherence in narratives, can predict the kind of text writers will produce. Causality has been found to be a significant discourse factor in reading comprehension and hence can be expected to determine also what writers produce during composition. In Experiment 1, writers composed short continuations at various points throughout a simple narrative, whereas in Experiment 2, writers composed continuations to complete several narratives. The results indicate that causality indeed plays a major role in composition. Writers tend to produce new text in such a way that it is causally connected to the prior text. Furthermore, writers favored causal relations of necessity or of necessity and sufficiency while largely avoiding relations of sufficiency alone, which suggests a general discourse constraint to be maximally informative (e.g., Grice, 1975).     

The cascaded nature of lexical selection and integration in auditory sentence processing

An event-related brain potential experiment was carried out to investigate the temporal relationship between lexical selection and the semantic integration in auditory sentence processing. Participants were presented with spoken sentences that ended with a word that was either semantically congruent or anomalous. Information about the moment in which a sentence-final word could uniquely be identified, its isolation point (IP), was compared with the onset of the elicited N400 congruity effect, reflecting semantic integration processing. The results revealed that the onset of the N400 effect occurred prior to the IP of the sentence-final words. Moreover, the factor early or late IP did not affect the onset of the N400. These findings indicate that lexical selection and semantic integration are cascading processes, in that semantic integration processing can start before the acoustic information allows the selection of a unique candidate and seems to be attempted in parallel for multiple candidates that are still compatible with the bottom-up acoustic input.     

On the likelihood ratio test in structural equation modeling when parameters are subject to boundary constraints

The authors show how the use of inequality constraints on parameters in structural equation models may affect the distribution of the likelihood ratio test. Inequality constraints are implicitly used in the testing of commonly applied structural equation models, such as the common factor model, the autoregressive model, and the latent growth curve model, although this is not commonly acknowledged. Such constraints are the result of the null hypothesis in which the parameter value or values are placed on the boundary of the parameter space. For instance, this occurs in testing whether the variance of a growth parameter is significantly different from 0. It is shown that in these cases, the asymptotic distribution of the chi-square difference cannot be treated as that of a central chi-square-distributed random variable with degrees of freedom equal to the number of constraints. The correct distribution for testing 1 or a few parameters at a time is inferred for the 3 structural equation models mentioned above. Subsequently, the authors describe and illustrate the steps that one should take to obtain this distribution. An important message is that using the correct distribution may lead to appreciably greater statistical power.     

An investigation of appearance motives for tanning: The development and evaluation of the Physical Appearance Reasons For Tanning Scale (PARTS) and its relation to sunbathing and indoor tanning intentions

Motives for UV exposure have been shown to be related to appearance concerns, yet little research has examined specific tan appearance attitudes. Given this lacuna, Study 1 involved the identification of six factors among college female tanners: general attractiveness, media influence, family/friends influence, physical fitness appearance, acne reasons, and skin aging concerns. In Study 2, a separate sample of college female tanners were used to validate a higher order factor model, which demonstrated acceptable fit. Additionally, the factors converged in the expected directions, with the general attractiveness and skin aging concerns being the best correlate of UV exposure and sun-protection intentions. The relevance of these findings to skin cancer prevention is discussed.     

Trauma and autobiographical memory specificity in depressed inpatients

Research on autobiographical memory has shown that clinical depression is associated with a difficulty in retrieving specific autobiographical memories in response to cue words. This study examined the relation between lack of autobiographical memory specificity and self-reported trauma in a group of depressed adults (N = 23). In addition to the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT; Williams & Broadbent, 1986) participants completed a number of questionnaires assessing the presence of traumatic experiences in the past, level of depression and neuroticism. The number of specific responses was not related to depression severity, but was significantly associated with the presence and severity of reported physical abuse. Participants who had been victim of physical abuse were less specific than participants who had not been confronted with such physical adversities. The results are discussed in the context of a functional hypothesis about the developmental relations between memory specificity, trauma and depression.     

The effects of self-focused attention, performance demand, and dispositional sexual self-consciousness on sexual arousal of sexually functional and dysfunctional men

Sexually functional (N=26) and sexually dysfunctional heterosexual men with psychogenic erectile disorder (N=23) viewed two sexually explicit videos. Performance demand was manipulated through verbal instruction that a substantial genital response was to be expected from the videos. Self-focused attention was manipulated by introducing a camera pointed at the participant. Dispositional self-consciousness was assessed by questionnaire. Performance demand was found to independently inhibit the genital response. No main effect of self-focus was found. Self-focus inhibited genital response in men scoring high on general and sexual self-consciousness traits, whereas it enhanced penile tumescence in low self-conscious men. Inhibition effects were found in both volunteers and patients. No interaction effects of performance demand and self-focus were found. Subjective sexual arousal in sexually functional men was highest in the self-focus condition. In sexually dysfunctional men, subjective sexual response proved dependent on locus of attention as well as presentation order.     

Genetic and environmental mechanisms underlying stability and change in problem behaviors at ages 3, 7, 10, and 12

Maternal ratings on internalizing (INT) and externalizing (EXT) behaviors were collected in a large, population-based longitudinal sample. The numbers of participating twin pairs at ages 3, 7, 10, and 12 were 5,602, 5,115, 2,956, and 1,481, respectively. Stability in both behaviors was accounted for by genetic and shared environmental influences. The genetic contribution to stability (INT: 43%; EXT: 60%) resulted from the fact that a subset of genes expressed at an earlier age was still active at the next time point. A common set of shared environmental factors operated at all ages (INT: 47%; EXT: 34%). The modest contribution of nonshared environmental factors (INT: 10%; EXT: 6%) could not be captured by a simple model. Significant age-specific influences were found for all components, indicating that genetic and environmental factors also contributed to changes in problem behavior.     

Relationships of Functional Flexibility with Individual and Work Factors

To investigate how functional flexibility is related to demographics, personality traits, and work perceptions, 250 employees of a large Dutch passenger transport firm filled out a written questionnaire. Two dimensions of functional flexibility were discerned: willingness and ability to be flexible. Analysis of variance showed the support staff and managers were higher on willingness and ability to be flexible than workers. Hierarchic regression analysis showed that willingness to be flexible was positively related to initiative and trust in management, and was negatively related to age and task formalization. Ability to be flexible was positively related to general self-efficacy and initiative, and was negatively related to task formalization. It was concluded that willingness to be flexible depends on fair treatment and freedom provided by their organization and that ability to be flexible is part of the development of general self-efficacy.