Weekly Cycles in Daily Report Data: An Overlooked Issue

Daily diaries and other everyday experience methods are increasingly used to study relationships between two time‐varying variables X and Y. Although daily data potentially often have weekly cyclical patterns (e.g., stress may be higher on weekdays and lower on weekends), the majority of daily diary studies have ignored this possibility. In this study, we investigated the effect of ignoring existing weekly cycles. We reanalyzed an empirical dataset (stress and alcohol consumption) and performed Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the impact of omitting weekly cycles. In the empirical dataset, ignoring cycles led to the inference of a significant within‐person X–Y relation whereas modeling cycles suggested that this relationship did not exist. Simulation results indicated that ignoring cycles that existed in both X and Y led to bias in the estimated within‐person X–Y relationship. The amount and direction of bias depended on the magnitude of the cycles, magnitude of the true within‐person X–Y relation, and synchronization of the cycles. We encourage researchers conducting daily diary studies to address potential weekly cycles in their data. We provide guidelines for detecting and modeling cycles to remove their influence and discuss challenges of causal inference in daily experience studies.     

Beware of “reducing prejudice”: imagined contact may backfire if applied with a prevention focus

Imagined intergroup contact—the mental simulation of a (positive) interaction with a member of another group—is a recently developed, low‐risk, prejudice‐reducing intervention. However, regulatory focus can moderate of the effects of prejudice‐reducing interventions: a prevention focus (as opposed to a promotion focus) can lead to more negative outcomes. In two experiments we found that a prevention focus altered imagined contact's effects, causing the intervention to backfire. In Experiment 1, participants who reported a strong prevention‐focus during imagined contact subsequently reported higher intergroup anxiety and (indirectly) less positive attitudes toward Asians. We found similar moderating effects in Experiment 2, using a different outgroup (gay men) and a subtle regulatory focus manipulation. Theoretical and practical implications for imagined contact are discussed.     

Anger and the virtues: a critical study in virtue individuation

Aristotle and others suggest that a single virtue – ‘good temper’ – pertains specifically to anger. I argue that if good temper is a single virtue, it is constituted by aspects of a combination of other virtues. I present three categories of anger-relevant virtues – those that (potentially) dispose one to anger; those that delay, mitigate, and qualify anger; and those required for effortful anger control – and show how virtues in each category make distinct contributions to good temper. In addition to clarifying the relationship between anger and the virtues, my analysis has theoretical implications for virtue individuation more generally, and practical implications for character cultivation.     

Home-Based Early Head Start plus Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up: A Qualitative Study of Implementation Outcomes

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Elucidating factors that promote or hinder successful implementation of evidence-based practices in real-world settings is an essential component of...     

"Let me count the ways:" fostering reasons for living among low-income, suicidal, African American women

Protective factors for fostering reasons for living were examined among low-income, suicidal, African American women. Bivariate logistic regressions revealed that higher levels of optimism, spiritual well-being, and family social support predicted reasons for living. Multivariate logistic regressions indicated that spiritual well-being showed unique predictive value for reasons for living. Further, the multivariate model accurately predicted reasons for living 72% of the time. Partial support was found for a cumulative protective model hypothesizing a linear relationship between the number of protective factors endorsed and increased reasons for living. Implications for community-based preventive and recovery-oriented intervention efforts and future research are discussed.     

The association between chronic exposure to video game violence and affective picture processing: an ERP study

Exposure to video game violence (VGV) is known to result in desensitization to violent material and may alter the processing of positive emotion related to facial expressions. The present study was designed to address three questions: (1) Does the association between VGV and positive emotion extend to stimuli other than faces, (2) is the association between VGV and affective picture processing observed with a single presentation of the stimuli, and (3) is the association between VGV and the response to violent stimuli sensitive to the relevance of emotion for task performance? The data revealed that transient modulations of the event-related potentials (ERPs) related to attentional orienting and sustained modulations of the ERPs related to evaluative processing were sensitive to VGV exposure.     

“Telling tales”: Using narrative in career guidance

In this article the authors argue for the importance of narrative-based approaches in career guidance work in an uncertain, unpredictable world. This requires a paradigmatic shift in thinking that can be too difficult, at present, for some practitioners. The article reports on the first phase of a collaborative project with a group of practitioners – working in guidance in schools and with young people in public access points – to develop and evaluate narrative methods. Our analysis highlights the usefulness of the approach, but also reveals tensions derived from the working cultures of career guidance practitioners.     

Emotionally avoidant language in the parenting interviews of substance‐dependent mothers: Associations with reflective functioning,recent substance use,and parenting behavior

Parenting and emotion regulation are two known, and potentially interrelated, areas of impairment among substance‐abusing mothers. In this study, we examine substance ‐abusing mothers' (positive and negative) emotion language word use during their discussion of negative parenting experiences on the Parent Development Interview for its association with reflective functioning (RF), recent substance‐use history, and sensitivity to child cues. Within a sample of 47 methadone‐maintained mothers, we evaluate the hypothesis that linguistic evidence of emotional avoidance (more frequent positive feeling words and less frequent negative emotion words) will be associated with lower RF, more recent substance use, and more insensitive parenting. Further, we evaluate whether language use mediates the association between self‐focused RF and insensitive parenting. Results of hierarchical regressions suggest that more frequent positive feeling word use, but not negative emotion word use, is associated with lower RF, more recent substance use, and lower sensitivity to child cues. Positive feeling word use partially mediates the association between self‐focused RF and insensitive parenting. Results are discussed in the context of their contribution to the literature on emotion and parenting in substance‐abusing populations.