Physical Distance and AIDS: Too Close for Comfort?1

The purpose of the study was to assess attitudes toward AIDS as measured by physical distance. Fifty-two female students were told that they would be interviewing an AIDS patient, a homosexual, a cancer patient, or another student. While waiting, they arranged the two chairs for the interview. The distance between chairs was measured. Subjects placed the chairs significantly farther apart when they anticipated interviewing an AIDS patient than when they anticipated interviewing people under the other conditions. The results suggest that people are still uncomfortable with AIDS patients even under casual circumstances that require minimal physical contact. Implications for social interactions are discussed.     

Something in the way we move: Motion dynamics, not perceived sex, influence head movements in conversation

During conversation, women tend to nod their heads more frequently and more vigorously than men. An individual speaking with a woman tends to nod his or her head more than when speaking with a man. Is this due to social expectation or due to coupled motion dynamics between the speakers? We present a novel methodology that allows us to randomly assign apparent identity during free conversation in a video-conference, thereby dissociating apparent sex from motion dynamics. The method uses motion-tracked synthesized avatars that are accepted by naive participants as being live video. We find that 1) motion dynamics affect head movements but that apparent sex does not; 2) judgments of sex are driven almost entirely by appearance; and 3) ratings of masculinity and femininity rely on a combination of both appearance and dynamics. Together, these findings are consistent with the hypothesis of separate perceptual streams for appearance and biological motion. In addition, our results are consistent with a view that head movements in conversation form a low level perception and action system that can operate independently from top-down social expectations.     

A meta-analysis of subjective well-being interventions among elders

This meta-analysis demonstrated that interventions have a significant (p less than .05) immediate posttreatment influence on elders' subjective well-being but that their beneficial effect dissipates within 1 month. For 28 effect sizes derived from immediate posttreatment occasions (delay = 0 days), the median value was 0.67. Immediate posttreatment effect sizes for control enhancement (M = 1.12), psychoeducational (M = 0.70), and social activity (M = 0.66) treatments were significantly (p less than .05) above zero and not significantly different from each other. In contrast, for 17 effect sizes derived from delayed posttest occasions (delay greater than 0 days), the median value was 0.07. For effect sizes extracted from studies with both an immediate and a delayed posttest, the mean decrease over a 30-day period was 1.02.     

Open hearts build lives: positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources

B. L. Fredrickson's (1998, 2001) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions asserts that people's daily experiences of positive emotions compound over time to build a variety of consequential personal resources. The authors tested this build hypothesis in a field experiment with working adults (n = 139), half of whom were randomly-assigned to begin a practice of loving-kindness meditation. Results showed that this meditation practice produced increases over time in daily experiences of positive emotions, which, in turn, produced increases in a wide range of personal resources (e.g., increased mindfulness, purpose in life, social support, decreased illness symptoms). In turn, these increments in personal resources predicted increased life satisfaction and reduced depressive symptoms. Discussion centers on how positive emotions are the mechanism of change for the type of mind-training practice studied here and how loving-kindness meditation is an intervention strategy that produces positive emotions in a way that outpaces the hedonic treadmill effect.     

Children’s Depressive Symptoms in Relation to EEG Frontal Asymmetry and Maternal Depression

This study examined the relations of school-age children’s depressive symptoms, frontal EEG asymmetry, and maternal history of childhood-onset depression (COD). Participants were 73 children, 43 of whom had mothers with COD. Children’s EEG was recorded at baseline and while watching happy and sad film clips. Depressive symptoms were measured using parent-report of Children’s Depression Inventory. The key findings are the interaction effects between baseline and film frontal EEG asymmetry on child depressive symptoms. Specifically, relative right frontal EEG asymmetry while watching happy or sad film clip was associated with elevated depressive symptoms for children who also exhibited right frontal EEG asymmetry at baseline. Results suggest that right frontal EEG asymmetry that is consistent across situations may be an marker of depression-prone children.     

In search of durable positive psychology interventions: Predictors and consequences of long-term positive behavior change

A number of positive psychology interventions have successfully helped people learn skills for improving mood and building personal resources (e.g., psychological resilience and social support). However, little is known about whether intervention activities remain effective in the long term, or whether new resources are maintained after the intervention ends. We address these issues in a 15-month follow-up survey of participants from a loving-kindness meditation intervention. Many participants continued to practice meditation, and they reported more positive emotions (PEs) than those who had stopped meditating or had never meditated. All participants maintained gains in resources made during the initial intervention, whether or not they continued meditating. Continuing meditators did not differ on resources at baseline, but they did show more PE and a more rapid PE response to the intervention. Overall, our results suggest that positive psychology interventions are not just efficacious but of significant value in participants' real lives.     

Errors of commission and omission: comment on Anderson and Anderson's (1998) "temperature and aggression"

This note identifies errors in a review of research on heat and aggression by Anderson and Anderson (1998), and it reaffirms a previously stated conclusion: Violence in a midwestern city, in 1987 and 1988, can be explained more parsimoniously and completely in terms of routine activity theory than by Anderson and Anderson's general affective model of aggression.