Neuroticism, negative affect, and negative affect instability: Establishing convergent and discriminant validity using ecological momentary assessment

Few investigations have examined the role of affective instability within a broad model of general personality functioning. The present study employed self-report and ecological momentary assessments (EMA) to examine the relations between self-reported Five-Factor Model Neuroticism, EMA average negative affect, and EMA negative affect instability. Results suggest that Neuroticism and negative affect instability are related yet distinct constructs, and that Neuroticism better represents average negative affect across time. Results also suggest that negative affect instability is related to low Agreeableness and specific externalizing facets of Neuroticism, such as Angry Hostility and Impulsiveness. The implications of these findings and potential areas for future research are discussed.     

Clinical Differences Exist Between Patients Fulfilling the 1988 and 1994 Case Definitions of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Despite the existence of 2 different case definitions for chronic fatigue syndrome, little data exist to evaluate how each performs. We evaluated the symptom patterns of patients fulfilling either the more demanding 1988 or the less demanding 1994 case definitions of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome over an 11-year period from 1991 to 2001. Factor analysis identified 3 factors: muscular–skeletal, viral, and sleep:memory symptom factors accounting for significant variation in the data. Further discriminant analysis showed that the first 2 factors and a self-reported measure of decrease in activity alone gave 91% accuracy in the placement of patients into their respective case definitions. This analysis did indicate that both case definitions were capturing the same broad group of patients. However, the patients in the 1994 group do not endorse infectious-type symptoms as often or to the same degree of severity as those in the 1988 group. This may mean that infection as a cause of CFS is more likely in patients fulfilling the earlier, more demanding case definition.     

Learning social attitudes: children's sensitivity to the nonverbal behaviors of adult models during interracial interactions

White children show marked ingroup race preferences and a relative devaluation of Black people. The origin of these early interracial attitudes is to a large extent still unclear. The studies here test the possibility that preschool-aged children are particularly sensitive to the nonverbal behaviors performed by White adults during interracial interactions. In Study 1, children were shown a video displaying an interaction between a White and a Black adult. Across conditions, the White adult's verbal behaviors were either friendly or neutral, whereas his nonverbal behaviors showed either easiness (e.g., closeness, high eye contact) or uneasiness (e.g., distance, avoidance of eye contact). Results revealed that participants shaped their attitudes toward the Black target accordingly, independently from the White adults' verbal behaviors. Study 2 replicated the basic findings and demonstrated that the observed effects generalized to other Black targets. Results are discussed in relation to current approaches to understanding the formation of racial attitudes among children.     

Consumer Racial Discrimination in Tipping: A Replication and Extension

This study examined the effects of server race, customer race, and their interaction on restaurant tips while statistically controlling for customers' perceptions of service quality and other variables. The findings indicate that consumers of both races discriminated against Black service providers by tipping them less than White service providers. Furthermore, this server race effect on tipping was moderated by perceived service quality and dining party size. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. Particularly noteworthy is the possibility that the server race effect on tipping represents an adverse impact against Black servers that makes the use of tipping to compensate employees a violation of employment discrimination law in the United States.     

Taking a closer look: On the operation of nonconscious impression formation

In this article, we analyzed the information processing that underlies nonconscious impression formation. In the first experiment, the nonconscious activation of the impression formation goal led to a faster analysis of the trait implications of behaviors, compared with a control group. In Experiment 2, participants who were nonconsciously primed with an impression formation goal were more likely than those in a control condition to form associations in memory between behaviors and implied traits. In Experiment 3, nonconsciously primed participants were more sensitive than those in a control condition to whether inconsistent trait information was relevant or irrelevant to the actor’s disposition. Moreover, in Experiments 2 and 3, those with a nonconscious goal showed just as much evidence of impression formation as those who were consciously and intentionally trying to form an impression. Implications for nonconscious goal-pursuit and impression formation are discussed.     

On finding negative priming from distractors

Negative priming from distractors has attracted considerable interest because it appears to reveal a fundamental mechanism of selective attention. Recently, the phenomenon has become muddled because it can be explained in far too many ways. This may partly be because the empirical foundation for the phenomenon has been handicapped by an overreliance on a simplistic comparison of a single experimental condition with control. A sounder approach requires that we collect data that can rule out alternatives to the hypothesis we might favor or test. Regardless of the paradigm used, we propose collecting data from a much fuller set of conditions than is typical. Despite the variety of underlying explanations, we show that the various theories that attribute negative priming to ignoring the distractor predict a common pattern of results across the full set of related conditions. Theories, such as inhibition of return, that do not attribute the cost in performance to ignoring the distractor do not predict this pattern.     

Do Young Children Really Learn Best From the use of Direct Address in Children’s Television?

A large body of research has considered children’s novel word learning from video; however, no known work has compared children’s novel word learning from an educational television show in which the character speaks directly to the child (participatory cues) and a show in which the child overhears two characters speaking to one another (third-party joint attention). Using two professionally produced videos that mimic contemporary children’s television shows, we conducted a 2-condition experiment (N = 73) to examine under which condition children were better able to learn a novel word. Results indicated a main effect of condition and age: children in the participatory cues condition and older children demonstrated greater word learning than children in the third-party joint attention condition and younger children. There was an interaction between age and condition, but only among children between the ages of 28.20 and 41.46 months. These findings demonstrate that the participatory cues model, typically used in children’s television programming, is a better model to use to promote children’s word learning. These findings run counter to a similar study that used stimulus videos that did not mimic a children’s program, finding that the third-party joint attention condition was more effective.     

Head Coach Changes in Women’s College Soccer: An Investigation of Women Coaches Through the Lenses of Gender Stereotypes and the Glass Cliff

Sex Roles - Women are underrepresented in leadership positions in sport, including coaching. In the present study of women’s college soccer in the United States, the authors examine the...     

Cross-situational consistency of affective experiences across cultures

This study examined cross-situational consistency of affective experiences using an experience-sampling method in Japan, India, and the United States. Participants recorded their moods and situations when signaled at random moments for 7 days. The authors examined relative (interindividual) consistency and absolute (within-person) consistency. They found stable interindividual differences of affective experiences across various situations (mean r =.52 for positive affect.51 for negative affect) and cultural invariance of the cross-situational consistency of affective experiences. Simultaneously, the authors found a considerable degree of within-person cross-situational variation in affective experiences, and cultural differences in within-person cross-situational consistency. Thus, global affective traits exist among non-Western samples, but the degree to which situations exert an influence on the absolute level of affective experience varies across cultures.     

The empirical status of empirically supported psychotherapies: assumptions, findings, and reporting in controlled clinical trials

This article provides a critical review of the assumptions and findings of studies used to establish psychotherapies as empirically supported. The attempt to identify empirically supported therapies (ESTs) imposes particular assumptions on the use of randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodology that appear to be valid for some disorders and treatments (notably exposure-based treatments of specific anxiety symptoms) but substantially violated for others. Meta-analytic studies support a more nuanced view of treatment efficacy than implied by a dichotomous judgment of supported versus unsupported. The authors recommend changes in reporting practices to maximize the clinical utility of RCTs, describe alternative methodologies that may be useful when the assumptions underlying EST methodology are violated, and suggest a shift from validating treatment packages to testing intervention strategies and theories of change that clinicians can integrate into empirically informed therapies.