From sucker to saint: moralization in response to self-threat

ABSTRACT— When people's rationality and agency are implicitly called into question by the more expedient behavior of others, they sometimes respond by feeling morally superior; this is referred to as the sucker-to-saint effect. In Experiment 1, participants who completed a tedious task and then saw a confederate quit the same task elevated their own morality over that of the confederate, whereas participants who simply completed the task or simply saw the confederate quit did not. In Experiment 2, this effect was eliminated by having participants contemplate a valued personal quality before encountering the rebellious confederate, a result suggesting a role for self-threat in producing moralization. These studies demonstrate that moral judgments can be more deeply embedded in judges' immediate social contexts—and driven more by motivations to maintain self-image—than is typically appreciated in contemporary moral-psychology research. Rather than uphold abstract principles of justice, moral judgment may sometimes just help people feel a little less foolish.     

Confidence in work‐related goals and feelings of exhaustion during a therapeutic intervention for burnout: A time‐series approach

This study investigated recursive relations between confidence in achieving work‐related goals and work exhaustion among employees who participated in an intervention to reduce their burnout. Thirty‐six employees of age 33–59 years suffering from severe burnout (28 females and 8 males) filled in burnout and well‐being measures before and after a 10‐month therapeutic intervention. They also filled in weekly measures of confidence in work‐related goals (progress and capability) and work exhaustion throughout the intervention, as well as 4 weeks before and 4 weeks afterwards. Intra‐individual variation was modelled using dynamic factor analyses. The results showed that, for most participants, confidence in work‐related goals and work exhaustion during a given week could be predicted from those of the preceding week. Moreover, high self‐esteem predicted low weekly stability in goal confidence, whereas high burnout contributed to high weekly stability in work exhaustion. The intra‐individual stabilities in goal confidence and exhaustion also predicted which of the participants benefited from the intervention in terms of increasing well‐being and decreasing work‐related stress.     

Brazilian version of the Protocole Montréal d'Evaluation de la Communication (Protocole MEC): normative and reliability data

The lack of standardized instruments to evaluate communication disorders related to the right hemisphere was verified. A new evaluation tool was developed: Protocole Montréal d'Evaluation de la Communication--Protocole MEC, adapted to Brazilian Portuguese--Bateria Montreal de Avalia??o da Comunica??o--Bateria MAC (Montreal Evaluation of Communication Battery). The purpose was to present stratified normative data by age and educational level, and to verify the reliability parameters of the MEC Battery. 300 individuals, between the ages of 19 and 75 years, and levels of formal education between 2 and 35 years, participated in this study. They were divided equally into six normative groups, according to three age categories (young adults, intermediary age, and seniors) and two educational levels (low and high). Two procedures were used to check reliability: Cronbach alpha and reliability between evaluators, Results were established at the 10th percentile, and an alert point per task for each normative group. Cronbach's alpha was, in general, between .70 and .90 and the average rate of agreement between evaluators varied from .62 to .94. Standards of age and education were established. The reliability of this instrument was verified. The psychometric legitimization of the MEC Battery will contribute to the diagnostic process for communicative disorders.     

Memory awareness following episodic inhibition

Three experiments used directed forgetting (DF) and retrieval practice (RP) to investigate the relation of inhibited items to states of memory awareness occurring at test. In Experiment 1 using list DF robust inhibitory effects were present in cued recall, but in a recognition test these effects were only present in responses accompanied by recollective experience. In Experiments 2 and 3 using RP reliable effects of inhibition were found but these did not relate systematically to states of memory awareness. It is suggested that in DF the to-be-forgotten items are tagged at study as not to be recollectively experienced and so have a specific, inhibitory, relation to states of recollective experience occurring during test. In RP no tagging takes place, and inhibition is automatic or nonintentional and consequently does not have a specific relation to states of memory awareness at test.     

Expressing anger in conflict: when it helps and when it hurts

Do expressions of anger in conflict elicit competition or cooperation? To reconcile inconsistent results obtained in previous research, the authors developed and tested a dual-process model that proposes that power and the appropriateness of the expressions of anger jointly determine whether an individual facing an angry antagonist competes by demanding value or cooperates by conceding value. In a scenario study and a computer-mediated negotiation simulation, (a) participants with lower power claimed less value from an angry adversary than from a nonemotional one, regardless of the appropriateness of the expressions of anger, and (b) participants with higher power demanded more value when the adversary's expressions of anger were inappropriate than when they were appropriate or when the adversary was nonemotional. The theoretical and practical implications of the model and findings are discussed.     

Postural stabilization of perceptual but not cognitive performance

In 2 experiments, the authors independently varied the degree of cognitive and perceptual difficulty of suprapostural tasks. Participants were 23 students in Experiment 1 and 15 in Experiment 2. Increases in perceptual difficulty tended to be correlated with decreases in the variability of postural sway, consistent with the hypothesized functional integration of postural control with suprapostural tasks. Sway variability was not influenced by changes in the cognitive difficulty of tasks when perceptual difficulty was held constant, contrary to predictions derived from the perspective that postural and suprapostural activities compete for a limited pool of central processing resources. The results underscore the need for researchers to differentiate between suprapostural tasks that require perceptual contact with the environment and those that do not.     

Correlations of conceptual development with motor skills for a Turkish sample of kindergarten children

The purpose was to research the conceptual development and motor skills of 36 healthy children of kindergarten age (M age = 67.6 mo., SD = 3.6). 19 girls and 17 boys completed the Bracken Basic Concept Scale-Revised and the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency-Short Form.     

Beliefs in Equality for Women and Men as Related to Economic Factors in Central and Eastern Europe and the United States

Do economic indicators predict the general level of support for gender equality? This question was investigated in a sample of countries in Central and Eastern Europe, a region that has been undergoing rapid economic changes since the early 1990s. In this overall sample of male and female college students from ten countries, including the United States as a comparison, the predicted association between stronger beliefs in gender role egalitarianism and positive economic factors was generally supported. Also, consistent with other research, women were more in support of gender equality than men were. There was no support for a predicted trend in less support for gender equality over the time period of the present study.