When feeling bad is expected to be good: emotion regulation and outcome expectancies in social conflicts

According to the instrumental approach to emotion regulation, people may want to experience even unpleasant emotions to attain instrumental benefits. Building on value-expectancy models of self-regulation, we tested whether people want to feel bad in certain contexts specifically because they expect such feelings to be useful to them. In two studies, participants were more likely to try to increase their anger before a negotiation when motivated to confront (vs. collaborate with) a negotiation partner. Participants motivated to confront (vs. collaborate with) their partner expected anger to be more useful to them, and this expectation in turn, led them to try to increase their anger before negotiating. The subsequent experience of anger, following random assignment to emotion inductions (Study 1) or engagement in self-selected emotion regulation activities (Study 2), led participants to be more successful at getting others to concede to their demands, demonstrating that emotional preferences have important pragmatic implications.     

A survey of the views of trainees in psychiatry regarding religious issues

Abstract

Although 94% of Americans believe in God, little is known about the religiosity of psychiatric residents and the role of religion in residents’ practice. We aimed to determine residents’ perceptions about (1) the importance of knowledge of religious beliefs, practices and priority of psychotherapy, psychopharmacology and general medical patients and (2) the relative difficulty religious issues presented compared with race, age, gender and sexuality.

All psychiatric trainees in one training program during two academic years were surveyed (n = 96). The 38 respondents (40%) reported a substantial degree of religiosity [high belief (74%), high practise (50%), high priority (71%)]. Significantly more residents reported that it was more important to know about the religiosity of psychotherapy patients than of psychopharmacology or general medical patients. Race was the only issue that the majority of residents reported as presenting more difficulty than religion.

In conclusion, the subgroup of residents who responded to the survey were more religious than expected, based on previous surveys of psychiatrists. They clearly differentiated psychotherapy patients from others when considering the importance of religion. That residents viewed religion to be a challenging issue underlines the need for further training and clinical focus on religion.     

The impact of engineering identification and stereotypes on undergraduate women’s achievement and persistence in engineering

Women almost always comprise a minority in engineering programs and a smaller percentage of women pursue engineering than other science and technology majors. The culture of engineering departments and negative stereotypes of women’s engineering and mathematical ability have been identified as factors that inhibit women’s entry into engineering and cause them to leave the major. Even for women who stay, stereotype threat or the anxiety of confirming a negative stereotype can decrease academic performance. To more fully understand this dynamic, we examined four factors associated with stereotype threat (engineering identification, gender identification, gender stereotype endorsement, and engineering ability perceptions) to determine how they impacted women’s achievement and persistence in engineering at the end of their first year of an engineering program. Participants included 363 first-year general engineering students from a large public university. Students completed a questionnaire near the end of their first year. Results indicated that there were differences between men and women for gender stereotype endorsement and engineering ability perceptions, with men more likely to hold negative stereotypes of women’s engineering abilities and women more likely to report higher perceptions of their engineering abilities. Engineering identification was a significant predictor of persistence in engineering, and engineering ability perceptions were significant predictors of achievement; the relationships were stronger for women than men. The fact that neither gender identification nor gender stereotype endorsement were related to achievement or persistence in engineering indicated that they were less important factors for first-year women engineering students than engineering identification and engineering ability perceptions.     

Extreme Versatility Versus Paucity of Play Interest

Abstract

Reorganisation of the public school system. By Frank Forest Bunker. Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1916, No. 8. 186 pages. Reviewed By A. A. Douglass

Girls of the Morning-Glory Camp Fire. By Isabel Hornibrook. Boston, Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Co., 1916. 321 p. Reviewed By Amy E. Tanner

Education and social progress. By Alexander Morgan. New York, Longmans, Green, 1916. 252 p.

American university progress and college reform relative to school and society. By James H. Baker. New York, Longmans. Green, 1916. 189 p.

República Oriental del Uruguay; Inspección Nacional de Instrucción Primaria. Memoria correspondiente a los años 1911 a 1914, inclusives, presentada a la Dirección General de Instrucción Primaria y al Ministerio de Instrucción Pública, por el Doctor Abel J. Pérez, Inspector Nacional. Montevideo, Barreiro, 1915. 570 p.

Human interest composition subjects. By George F. Paul. Syracuse, C. W. Bardeen (c. 1916). 162 p.

Plant anatomy, from the standpoint of the development and functions of the tissues; handbook of micro-technic. By William Chase Stevens. Philadelphia, P. Blakiston's Son &; Co. (c. 1916). 3d ed. rev. and enl. 399 p.

The principles of health control. By Francis M. Walters. Boston, D. C. Heath &; Co. (c. 1916). 476 p.

The essentials of effective gesture, for students of public speaking. By Joseph A. Mosher. New York, Macmillan, 1916. 188 p.

Oral English; directions and exercises for planning and delivering the common kinds of talks, together with guidance for debating and parliamentary practice. By John M. Brewer. Boston, Ginn (c. 1916). 396 p.

Report of the Commissioner of Education for the year ended June 30, 1915. Volume 1. Washington, Govt. Printing Office, 1915. 780 p.

Publications of the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio, 1916.

Boys and girls in commercial work. By Bertha M. Stevens. 181 p.

Schools and classes for exceptional children. By David Mitchell. 122 p.

Measuring the work of the public schools. By Charles Hubbard Judd. 290 p.

Department store occupations. By Iris Prouty O'Leary. 127 p.

The building trades. By Frank L. Shaw. 107 p.

Railroad and street transportation. By Ralph D. Fleming. 76 p.

Digest of state laws relating to public education, in force January 1, 1915. Compiled by William R. Hood, with the assistance of Stephen B. Weeks and A. Sidney Ford. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1915, No. 47. Washington, Govt. Printing Office, 1916. 987 p.

The Young and Field literary readers. Book Two. By Ella Flagg Young and Walter Taylor Field. Boston, Ginn (c. 1916). 208 p.

The British Isles. Cambridge geographical readers, III. Cambridge, University Press, 1915. 210 p.

Solid geometry. By William Betz and Harrison E. Webb. With the editorial coöperation of Percey F. Smith. Boston, Ginn (c. 1916). 504 p.

Present day geography. By Mrs. R. E. Brown. Syracuse, C. W. Bardeen (c. 1916). 68 p.

America the wonderland; a patriotic festival. New York, Ethical Culture School (c. 1915). 55 p.

The Germania of Tacitus. Edited by Duane Reed Stuart. New York, Macmillan, 1916. 139 p.

National Education Association yearbook and list of active members, revised to December 31, 1915. N. E. A. Bulletin, Feb., 1916, vol. 4, no. 4. 375 p.

National Education Association of the United States. Journal of proceedings and addresses of the fifty-third annual meeting and international congress on education held at Oakland, California, August 16-27, 1915. Secretary office, Ann Arbor, Mich., published by the Association, 1915. 1193 p.     

The effect of subliminal priming on sleep duration

Two experiments primed college students with either sleep‐related or neutral words and then assessed sleep during a 25 minute nap period. Both experiments showed that participants primed with sleep‐related words reported having slept longer than did those primed with neutral words. Furthermore, both experiments showed that sleep‐primed participants exhibited lower heart rate. Experiment 2 also revealed that the effect of the priming manipulation was especially strong among participants who had trouble sleeping. This suggests that priming might be a cost‐effective treatment for inducing sleep among people with sleep problems.     

The Five Senses of Haiti

The Five Senses of Haiti discusses a series of medical mission trips by physicians and medical students to the Central Plateau of Haiti delivering care in the outpatient setting. Practitioners describe their experiences through the use of their five senses to draw contrast between modern health care and medical practice in the developing world. Physicians in a resource poor setting are left without the usual diagnostic armamentarium and the safeguards and distractions of the modern hospital setting. This deficit creates an opportunity to devote time and focus to individual patients. Practicing medicine in this context clinicians use a heightened sense of awareness and increase their reliance on physical exam findings. Global medicine creates an opportunity for medical students to learn and physicians out of training to practice overlooked physical exam skills in the modern era. Physical exam findings and patient care yield diagnoses and fosters the bonds of the doctor-patient relationship.     

Is there room for criticism of studies of psychodynamic psychotherapy?

Comments on the original article, "The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy," by J. Shedler (see record 2010-02208-012). Shedler declared unequivocally that "empirical evidence supports the efficacy of psychodynamic therapy" (p. 98). He did not mention any specific criticisms that have been made of evidence on psychodynamic psychotherapies or address possible distinctions between evidence for short-term versus long-term psychodynamic psychotherapies. Instead, he attributed dissenting views to biases in evidence dissemination and review, which he suggested are rooted in a "lingering distaste in the mental health professions professions for past psychoanalytic arrogance and authority" related to a "hierarchical medical establishment that denied training to non-MDs and adopted a dismissive stance toward research" (Shedler, 2010, p. 98). Shedler (2010) justified his blanket dismissal of criticisms of evidence supporting psychodynamic psychotherapy on the basis of several published meta-analyses. The validity of conclusions from metaanalyses depends on the quality of the evidence synthesized, the nature of the studies included, and the rigor of the statistical analyses employed. Many meta-analyses, however, are not performed rigorously, which can result in treatment efficacy estimates that obscure important intertrial differences and that are unlikely to be replicated in clinical practice.     

Static and dynamic visual information about the size and passability of an aperture

The role of static eyeheight-scaled information in perceiving the passability of and guiding locomotion through apertures is well established. However, eyeheight-scaled information is not the only source of visual information about size and passability. In this study we tested the sufficiency of two other sources of information, both of which are available only to moving observers (ie are dynamic) and specify aperture size in intrinsic body-scaled units. The experiment was conducted in an immersive virtual environment that was monocularly viewed through a head-mounted display. Subjects walked through narrow openings between obstacles, rotating their shoulders as necessary, while head and shoulder position were tracked. The task was performed in three virtual environments that differed in terms of the availability of eyeheight-scaled information and the two dynamic sources of information. Analyses focused on the timing and amplitude of shoulder rotation as subjects walked through apertures, as well as walking speed and the number of collisions. Subjects successfully timed and appropriately scaled the amplitude of shoulder rotation to fit through apertures in all three conditions. These findings suggest that visual information other than eyeheight-scaled information can be used to guide locomotion through apertures.     

Recruitment Consultant Revenue: Relationships with IQ,personality, and emotional intelligence

The objective of this paper is to address the predictive validity of the workplace Swinburne University Emotional Intelligence Test. The first aim of this research project was to identify whether financial revenue earned by consultants in an Australian professional recruitment company were related to their levels of emotional intelligence (EI). The second aim was to assess whether EI competencies were more strongly related to revenue performance than measures of IQ and personality. The study consisted of 100 recruitment consultants from a large Australian‐based company who had their IQ assessed and completed a questionnaire battery consisting of measures of personality and EI. Revenue accrued by the recruitment consultants was also collected and related to the psychometric measures. Results showed that emotional competencies and personality traits are valuable predictors of job performance as measured by the revenue accrued by recruitment consultants. Further to this, the EI competencies were observed to be more strongly related to this measure of performance, and were able to predict a significant proportion of variance in performance in comparison to IQ and personality.