Conciliatory gestures facilitate forgiveness and feelings of friendship by making transgressors appear more agreeable

The authors examined how conciliatory gestures exhibited in response to interpersonal transgressions influence forgiveness and feelings of friendship with the transgressor. In Study 1, 163 undergraduates who had recently been harmed were examined longitudinally. Conciliatory gestures exhibited by transgressors predicted higher rates of forgiveness over 21 days, and this relationship was mediated by victims' perceptions of their transgressors' Agreeableness. Study 2 was an experiment including 145 undergraduates who experienced a breach in trust from an anonymous partner during an iterated prisoner's dilemma. When transgressors apologized and offered financial compensation, participants reported higher levels of forgiveness and feelings of friendship when compared to a control condition and an aggravating condition. The effects of apology/compensation on forgiveness and perceived friendship were mediated by victims' perceptions of their transgressors' Agreeableness. Results suggest that conciliatory gestures promote forgiveness in part by depicting transgressors as more sympathetic, considerate, fair, and just (i.e., agreeable).     

Motivating exercise: The interactive effect of general action goals and past behavior on physical activity

Although exercise is recognized as a powerful tool to combat obesity, remarkably few US adults pursue adequate amounts of exercise, with one major impediment being a lack of motivation for active behaviors. Recent empirical work has demonstrated that behavior can be guided by goals to be generally active or inactive. In the present paper, an experiment is presented in which participants played or observed a video game, were primed with action or inaction goals, and practiced a stretching exercise for as long as desired. Exposure to environmental action cues led to increased time spent exercising. This effect was moderated by past behavior, such that individuals who had just engaged in an active task (played a videogame) were insensitive to attempts to motivate general action. This suggests that the effectiveness of attempts to motivate activity (??just do it??, ??be active??) hinges on the recent past-behavior of the targeted individuals. An implication of this work is that participation in certain leisure activities, such as playing videogames, may be causally related to a lack of motivation for exercise.     

Improving the Accuracy of Eyewitnesses in the Presence of Misinformation with the Plurality Option

Misinformation has negative effects in the accuracy of eyewitnesses' reports. We investigated whether those negative effects could be reduced when participants are allowed to decide how many answers to include in their answers, that is, to regulate the plurality option. Participants watched a slideshow and received misinformation through a narrative. In the recognition memory test, participants had to select, out of five alternatives, one (single) and then three alternatives (plural answer) and to indicate which one they preferred to report if they were in a courtroom. Perceived likelihood ratings were also collected. Results showed that the regulation of the plurality option increased accuracy even in the presence of misinformation and highlighted the importance of the perceived likelihood ratings in the decision to select a single or plural answer. In general, the results suggest that better testimonies could be obtained if witnesses are given some control over their answers. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

La generalización del entrenamiento en las técnicas de evaluación del potencial de aprendizaje

Resumen

Dos cuestiones parecen ser las que requieren mayor investigación actualmente en el contexto de las técnicas de potencial de aprendizaje: los efectos diferenciales, en distintos tipos de sujetos, del entrenamiento suministrado y la posibilidad de generalización del entrenamiento en el tiempo y a otras tareas.

Se presentan una serie de investigaciones llevadas a cabo con el objeto de analizar estas cuestiones en sujetos de 10 a 15 años con distintos niveles intelectuales; todas ellas se han centrado en la técnica EPA: evaluación del potencial de aprendizaje, que utiliza material tipo Raven en sus entrenamientos.

Los resultados muestran la especificidad del entrenamiento suministrado aunque aparecen diferencias significativas en la generalización entre sujetos con y sin alteraciones orgánicas.     

The comprehension of action-related sentences may cause interference rather than facilitation on matching actions

This study used a dual-task paradigm to analyze the time course of motor resonance during the comprehension of action language. In the study, participants read sentences describing a transfer either away from (“I threw the tennis ball to my rival”) or toward themselves (“My rival threw me the tennis ball”). When the transfer verb appeared on the screen, and after a variable stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), a visual motion cue (Experiment 1) or a static cue (Experiment 2) prompted participants to move their hand either away from or toward themselves to press a button. The results showed meaning–action interference at short SOAs and facilitation at the longest SOA for the matching conditions. These results support the hypothesis that motor processes associated with the comprehension of action-related language interfere with an overlapping motor task, whereas they facilitate a delayed motor task. These effects are discussed in terms of resonance processes in the motor cortex.     

Successful aging: criteria and predictors

In the Anglo-Saxon scientific literature, successful aging has been consolidated during the last four decades. Nevertheless, several terms have been used as synonymous: healthy, active, productive, optimal, positive aging. Although, all these terms have been described through a broad set of bio-psycho-social factors, usually, research in this field reduces successful aging to daily life functioning and physical health. Also, in spite of the fact that authors consider that determinants might be multi-domain, empirical research usually reduces them to life styles. Logically, the prevalence of this kind of ageing found empirically is not very consistent and research of its determinants or predictors refers to biomedical conditions. In this study, data from 458 participants (170 males and 288 females; mean age: 66.47, range: 55-75) from ELEA ("Longitudinal Study of Active Aging") were examined. The results show (depending on the simple or multidimensional definitions used) a very varied range of proportions of successfully aging older persons as well as a large number of multi-domain predictors of successful ageing, among which are intelligence, personality and motivational psychological characteristics.     

Effect of stimulus opening size in global dominance with orientation classification task

The aims of this study is to examine whether global dominance depends on the opening size of the stimulus with concentric hierarchical figures and orientation classification task and to determine the role of the salience of global opening and its coincidence with vertical symmetry axis of context. In the first experiment, participants had to indicate the opening direction of stimuli, which were open-left and open-right figures. Three openings were included: 10, 25 and 50% of the total circle perimeter. The results showed a local advantage with stimuli of 10%, absence of global or local advantage with stimuli of 25% and global advantage with stimuli of 50%. In the second experiment, stimuli with an opening of 50% were presented randomly in several positions in the visual field in order to avoid the coincidence of global opening with the vertical symmetry axis of context. The results showed an absence of global or local advantage. These findings indicate that global dominance with orientation classification task depends on stimulus characteristics such as opening size, and strategies used in visual recognition.     

What do people mean when speaking of evilness?

The term evilness started to become popular in social psychology after the publication in 1999 of the special issue edited by Arthur G. Miller, "Perspectives on evil and violence". It is usually used to define behaviors that are extremely and strongly harmful. However, the concept is still imprecise and needs to be empirically delineated. This article attempts to answer the following questions. What is evilness? What is the difference between aggression and evilness? We conducted several studies with three goals: to analyze how laypersons and experts define evilness, to verify whether laypeople distinguish between different intensities of evilness, and to determine the dimensions that predict aggression and evilness. The results offer preliminary answers to the three questions.