Sex differences in the jealousy‐evoking effect of rival characteristics

Four studies examined sex differences in the jealousy‐evoking nature of rival characteristics. Study 1, among 130 undergraduates, made an inventory of all relevant rival characteristics that were spontaneously mentioned when asked about a rival to whom one's partner might feel attracted. On the basis of these findings, in Study 2, among 240 undergraduates, a questionnaire was constructed, containing 56 rival characteristics. A factor analysis distinguished five dimensions of rival characteristics, i.e. Social Dominance, Physical Attractiveness, Seductive Behaviors, Physical Dominance, and Social Status. In line with the predictions, men reported more jealousy when a rival was high in Social Dominance, Physical Dominance, and Social Status, whereas women reported more jealousy when a rival was high in Physical Attractiveness. Study 3 largely replicated these findings in a community sample of 144 heterosexuals. Study 4 showed that gay men (n = 80) reported more jealousy than lesbian women (n = 73) when the rival was high in Physical Dominance, and more jealousy than heterosexual men when the rival was high in Social Dominance. Lesbian women reported more jealousy than heterosexual women when the rival was high in Physical Attractiveness. In Studies 2–4, favorable rival characteristics evoked more jealousy among those high in Social Comparison Orientation, particularly among women. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of golf expertise and presentation modality on memory for golf and everyday items

The present study assessed whether golf expertise, presentation modality, and domain relevance affected memory for golf-related and everyday items. Forty-eight experienced golfers and 48 non-golfers were compared in their memory for golf-related ("putt to the hole") and everyday ("turn on the lamp") items. To-be-remembered items were presented verbally, visually, or were enacted. Enacted information was recalled best, followed by visually presented information. Combined effects of modality and golf expertise on recall of golf items were demonstrated on immediate but not on delayed recall. The findings suggest that recall of domain-relevant information is optimal when one has relevant background knowledge, and under conditions of visual encoding. The data support research on facilitation of domain-relevant knowledge on recall [Weber, N., & Brewer, N. (2003). Expert memory: The interaction of stimulus structure, attention, and expertise. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 295-308]. Interpersonal body representation may have played a role in recall processes among experts [Thomas, R., Press, C., & Haggard, P. (2006). Shared representations in body perception. Acta Psychologica, 121, 317-330].     

What Dutch women of different ages regret most

The present study examined the relationship between age, regret, well-being, and three categories of current interpretation of regretted events (not having come to terms, putting the best face on it, and coming to terms) in a large sample (n = 3579) of women varying in age from 16 to 81. Although the occurrence of regret was not related to age, its interpretation was: with age, both a growing number of women interpreted their regret experience as something they could not come to terms with also a growing number of women were able to do so. In addition, as women were more able to come to terms with their regrets, they reported higher well-being.     

From Assigning to Designing Technological Agency

In What Things Do, Verbeek (What things do: philosophical reflections on technology, agency and design. Penn State University Press, University Park, 2005a) develops a vocabulary for understanding the social role of technological artifacts in our culture and in our daily lives. He understands this role in terms of the technological mediation of human behavior and perception. To explain mediation, he levels out the modernist separation of subjects and objects by decreasing the autonomy of humans and increasing the activity of things. His approach consists primarily within a clever integration of the theories of Latour and Ihde, which provides a comprehensive understanding of the social role of technological artifacts. Despite the fact that Verbeek’s book is carefully thought out and already quite influential in the field of philosophy of technology, his approach raises some conceptual and pragmatic questions. The conceptual questions concern (a) the precise meaning of the concept of mediation and the possibility of distinguishing between different forms of mediation, and (b) the differences and similarities between human and technological agency and intentionality. The pragmatic questions concern the application of his theory to the realm of engineering ethics. Particularly pressing is the question of how to assign (moral) responsibility to humans when technological artifacts are mediating the outcomes of human actions. With this article, I will raise these issues, and look forward to Verbeek’s reply.

Technological Delegation: Responsibility for the Unintended

This article defends three interconnected premises that together demand for a new way of dealing with moral responsibility in developing and using technological artifacts. The first premise is that humans increasingly make use of dissociated technological delegation. Second, because technologies do not simply fulfill our actions, but rather mediate them, the initial aims alter and outcomes are often different from those intended. Third, since the outcomes are often unforeseen and unintended, we can no longer simply apply the traditional (modernist) models for discussing moral responsibility. We need to reinterpret moral responsibility. A schematic layout of a model on Social Role-Responsibility that incorporates these three premises is presented to allow discussion of a new way of interpreting moral responsibility.

Aging and situation model processing

Over the past several years, a number of studies have been done that assess processing at the level of the situation model in relation to issues of aging (Morrow, Leirer, & Altieri, 1992; Radvansky, Copeland, Berish, & Dijkstra, 2003; Radvansky, Copeland, & Zwaan, 2003; Stine-Morrow, Gagne, Morrow, & DeWall, 2004; Stine-Morrow, Morrow, & Leno, 2002). In contrast to age-related declines that have been demonstrated at surface form and textbase levels of processing, no such declines have been found in the creation and updating of situation models (Radvansky, 1999). This review focuses on the relevant factors in cognitive aging and situation model processing and places them within the larger frameworks of language processing, working memory capacity, and aging.     

Worry about health in smoking behaviour change

Many smokers and ex-smokers worry about their health. Given that worry keeps attention focused on the threat, it was expected that worrying about health in smokers would motivate them to quit and in ex-smokers may prevent relapse. Furthermore, worry was expected to influence the process of smoking cessation in interaction with self-efficacy, which is a measure of control over smoking, and with disengagement beliefs, which distorts the threatening meaning of potential motivating information. In the present study 380 smokers and 324 ex-smokers were recruited to join a prospective study with a follow-up of eight months. At T1, smoking/quitting behavior, worry and the other psychological constructs were assessed. At T2 quitting activity in smokers and relapse in ex-smokers were assessed. As expected, smokers who worried about the health effects of smoking reported higher quitting activity at T2. The three-way interactions between worry, self-efficacy and disengagement beliefs in the prospective prediction of quitting activity and relapse were significant: Among smokers with high self-efficacy combined with strong disengagement beliefs, worry led to more quitting activity. Among ex-smokers with low self-efficacy combined with strong disengagement beliefs, worry led to more relapse. The present results suggest new ways of approaching the stimulation of quitting and the prevention of relapse.     

Consistent Partial Least Squares for Nonlinear Structural Equation Models

Partial Least Squares as applied to models with latent variables, measured indirectly by indicators, is well-known to be inconsistent. The linear compounds of indicators that PLS substitutes for the latent variables do not obey the equations that the latter satisfy. We propose simple, non-iterative corrections leading to consistent and asymptotically normal (CAN)-estimators for the loadings and for the correlations between the latent variables. Moreover, we show how to obtain CAN-estimators for the parameters of structural recursive systems of equations, containing linear and interaction terms, without the need to specify a particular joint distribution. If quadratic and higher order terms are included, the approach will produce CAN-estimators as well when predictor variables and error terms are jointly normal. We compare the adjusted PLS, denoted by PLSc, with Latent Moderated Structural Equations (LMS), using Monte Carlo studies and an empirical application.     

Intersexualität oder Störung der Geschlechtsentwicklung

Intersexuality is suspected when a person either lacks the gender-typical attributes or they are too pronounced or if the attributes of both genders are present in one individual. Intersexuality is an umbrella term for a multitude of diagnoses having different causes, different disease patterns and different developments. Some of them are described in this article, such as the adrenogenital syndrome showing virilisation phenomena with a 46,XX chromosome set or reduced virilisation with a 46,XY chromosome set in the case of an androgen insensitivity syndrome, disturbances of androgenic biosynthesis or gonadal dysgenesis mostly with a feminine gender role. Examples of treatment situations from the psychotherapeutic practice are presented.     

Peer victimization in single-grade and multigrade classrooms

Although peer victimization mainly takes place within classrooms, little is known about the impact of the classroom context. To this end, we examined whether single-grade and multigrade classrooms (referring to classrooms with one and two grades in the same room) differ in victim–bully relationships in a sample of elementary school children (646 students; age 8–12 years; 50% boys). The occurrence of victim–bully relationships was similar in single-grade and multigrade classrooms formed for administrative reasons, but lower in multigrade classrooms formed for pedagogical reasons. Social network analyses did not provide evidence that peer victimization depended on age differences between children in any of the three classroom contexts. Moreover, in administrative multigrade classrooms, cross-grade victim–bully relationships were less likely than same-grade victim–bully relationships. The findings did not indicate that children in administrative multigrade classrooms are better or worse off in terms of victim–bully relationships than are children in single-grade classrooms.