Presleep attributions about arousal during sleep: nocturnal panic

This study examined the role of presleep attributions about physiological events during sleep in nocturnal panic attacks. Patients who regularly experienced nocturnal panic were physiologically monitored as audio signals were presented during sleep. They were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: expected, in which signals of intense physiological changes were expected; unexpected, in which signals of intense physiological changes were not expected; or control, involving distinctly different signals unrelated to physiological responses. The unexpected condition led to substantially more self-reported distress and panic attacks. The experimental conditions did not elicit different autonomic reactions, but those who panicked showed stronger physiological responses than those who did not panic. The findings are consistent with a cognitive model of nocturnal panic attacks.     

The materialist mentality revisited

My thanks to Jacob Joshua Ross for his helpful advice, and to an anonymous reviewer for detailed and useful comments on an earlier version of this essay.     

Who Fights,Who Flees? An Integration of the LC4MP and Psychological Reactance Theory

ABSTRACT

This study tests the hypothesis that defensive message processing, like defensive behaviors in the real world, has two directions, fight-and-flight. The Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing (LC4MP) characterizes defensive message processing by increases in unpleasantness and arousal reports, and accelerated heart rate indicating either a focus on internal processing (internal thoughts) or the active withdrawal of cognitive resources from processing highly arousing and unpleasant media messages. However, the LC4MP has not included direct measures that allow discrimination between fight-and-flight responses. Psychological reactance theory (PRT) predicts defensive responses including anger and counterarguments (reactance) when media messages threaten viewers’ freedom and autonomy. We hypothesized that PRT provides the LC4MP with the appropriate measures (anger and counterarguments) needed to discriminate fight-or-flight responses. Results supported this prediction. Participants (N = 49 adult-smokers) high in defensive and low in appetitive reactivity (risk-avoiders) withdrew from the message (fled: characterized by low anger and counterarguments) while those high in appetitive and low in defensive reactivity (risk-takers) experienced reactance (fought: characterized by high anger and counterarguments) in response to freedom threatening antitobacco messages that are highly arousing and unpleasant. Moreover, both reactance and message withdrawal yielded the same cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses predicted by the LC4MP as indicators of defensive message processing. Theoretical and message design recommendations are discussed.     

The anxiety disorder spectrum: Fear imagery,physiological reactivity,and differential diagnosis∗

Abstract

This review considers recent research assessing psychophysiological reactivity to fear imagery in anxiety disorder patients. As in animal subjects, fear cues prompt in humans a state of defensive motivation in which autonomic and somatic survival reflexes are markedly enhanced. Thus, a startle stimulus presented in a fear context yields a stronger (potentiated) reflex, providing a quantitative measure of fearful arousal. This fear potentiation is further exaggerated in specific or social phobia individuals when viewing pictures or imagining the phobic object. Paradoxically, fear imagery studies with more severe anxiety disorder patients – panic disorder with agoraphobia, generalized anxiety disorder, or anxious patients with comorbid depression – show a blunted, less robust fear potentiated response. Furthermore, this reflex blunting appears to systematically be more pronounced over the anxiety disorder spectrum, coincident with lengthier chronicity, worsening clinician-based judgments of severity and prognosis, and increased questionnaire-based indices of negative affectivity, suggesting that normal defensive reactivity may be compromised by an experience of long-term stress.     

How gender affects the relationship between hedonic shopping motivation and purchase intentions?

Five hundred and fifteen consumer responses are used to model the affect of online hedonic shopping motivation and online purchase intentions: moderated by the consumers' perceptions of their offline and online gendered behaviour. The model was applied across five product categories using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. We conclude that there is no online‐gender effect on hedonic shopping motivation and purchase intentions. However, offline‐gendered behaviour does significantly affect hedonic shopping motivation and purchase intentions for females across all product categories. Our findings support the proposition that gender is merely a prosthetic device of the private self and is an intentional manipulation and misrepresentation of the anonymous body. Online gender is a performance that is hidden by the technological veil from the offline space and public self, without social constraints or criticisms. Research implications are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.