Cognitive Control in the Face of Fear: Reduced Cognitive-Emotional Flexibility in Women with a History of Child Abuse

Child abuse can negatively affect neurobiological systems involved in regulating emotions. Adults who were maltreated as children show diminished capacity to flexibly integrate the prefrontal and limbic circuits underlying emotion regulation. Using a facial identification Stroop task with nonemotional and emotional stimuli, we found that women who reported more childhood abuse (N = 44) were no different from women reporting less childhood abuse (N = 45) on nonemotional conflict adaptation, but were significantly less able to adapt to emotional conflict. Women who reported more abuse were especially impaired in adapting to emotional conflict when incongruent stimuli involved a fearful face. These results help characterize the relation between cognitive control and emotion regulation and highlight the far-reaching effects of childhood abuse on cognitive-emotional flexibility.     

Individual and Social Factors in the Development of Graphic Symbolization

College student attitudes toward United States involvement in three international conflict areas were measured at various times during the years 1965 through 1971. An examination of the mean attitude scores obtained toward United States involvement in the Arab-Israel, India-Pakistan, and Vietnam conflicts revealed some reluctance on the part of the students to have the United States involved in any of these areas of international conflict.

Younger students were most dovish concerning United States involvement in Vietnam and were less so on the issues of the India-Pakistan and the Arab-Israel conflicts, whereas older students were more dovish regarding the issues of United States involvement in the Arab-Israel and India-Pakistan conflicts and least dovish with respect to the Vietnam conflict. Attitudes toward the involvement of the United States in both the Vietnam and Arab-Israel conflicts became significantly more dovish over time.     

The Place of Mania Among the Depressions from a Biological Standpoint

One hundred college women completed a situational story that dealt with a traditional feminine occupation, while another 100 women completed a story that dealt with a more nontraditional, masculine occupation. The stories were used to measure fear of success. All women furnished information on their college major, career aspirations, and year in school, and completed the Masculinity and Ascendency scales from the Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey. Both two- and three-dimensional chi square tests of association were performed to determine the relationship between fear of success and other variables.

Results (p < .05) indicated that fear of success is greater toward a nontraditional occupation, especially for women of low ascendency, and fear of success is greater the closer women get to graduation.     

Can't Shake It Off? Attachment Moderates the Link Between Hostility and Forgiveness

ABSTRACT

Although previous research has indicated that forgiveness is an essential part of relationships that thrive, forgiveness tends to become increasingly difficult as the intensity and duration of hostility rises. Understanding conditions that help make forgiveness more possible, as well as those that actually make forgiveness more difficult, then becomes an important asset for clinicians promoting healthier relational dynamics and longevity. Using data from 257 participants across two time points, we measured the association between hostility and forgiveness to test the moderating role of attachment. Greater hostility was linked with less benevolent forgiveness and more resentment. Moreover, anxious attachment moderated the association between hostile interactions and resentment—the inability to forgive. Implications for helping professionals and clinicians are discussed.     

Truthmakers and modality

This paper attempts to locate, within an actualist ontology, truthmakers for modal truths: truths of the form <Possibly, p> or <Necessarily, p>. In Sect. 1 I motivate the demand for substantial truthmakers for modal truths. In Sect. 2 I criticise Armstrong’s account of truthmakers for modal truths. In Sect. 3 I examine essentialism and defend an account of what makes essentialist attributions true, but I argue that this does not solve the problem of modal truth in general. In Sect. 4 I discuss, and dismiss, a theistic account of the source of modal truth proposed by Alexander Pruss. In Sect. 5 I offer a means of (dis)solving the problem.     

Being distinctive versus being conspicuous: The effects of numeric status and sex-stereotyped tasks on individual performance in groups

Being in the numeric minority (e.g., being a solo woman in a group of men) influences how well a person performs within a work group. But being the solo member is only one way in which people can be atypical in a group; a person can also represent a social or demographic category that has not typically been associated with the task that the group is working on. Using a design with four categories of group composition (minority, balanced, majority, homogeneous) and two categories of tasks (sex-typical, sex-atypical) we found that the sex composition of the group interacted with the sex typicality of the task to influence both positive deferrals by group members and individual performance in groups. But, rather than consistently reducing performance as prior research has suggested, being numerically atypical enhanced individual performance when the task was typical for that person’s sex. Further, positive deferrals mediated between the interaction of numeric composition and task typicality in influencing individual performance suggesting that both majority group members and the solo member affect one another’s performance in groups. We conclude by discussing why understanding the interplay between these two sources of stereotyping, numeric composition and task typicality, is important for understanding the social nature of individual performance in groups.     

Designing Health Communications: Harnessing the Power of Affect,Imagery, and Self‐Regulation

We review recent advances in self‐regulation theory and research, highlighting implications for communication strategies aimed at persuading individuals to adopt health‐protective behaviors. We focus on the role of affect and imagery processes in health persuasion, reviewing research on how fear arousal and imagery influence health information processing and decision‐making. Despite ongoing controversy over the use of fear‐arousing appeals, considerable empirical evidence supports their efficacy. Such threat appeals can backfire, however, if they fail to address key aspects of self‐regulation processes. Research on the cognitive and emotional influences of imagery and other concrete‐perceptual stimuli points to strategies for integrating them into health persuasion efforts. Mental simulation techniques represent another promising avenue for communications aimed at fostering health behavior change. New directions of inquiry include research on appeals that arouse emotions other than fear (e.g., positive emotions), more nuanced applications of fear arousal in communications, and applications for computer‐based and Internet communications.