Fading Affect Bias in the Philippines: Confirmation of the FAB in Positive and Negative Memories but Not for Death Memories

Emotions associated with memories for the loss of a loved one and for negative events in general decrease in intensity more than memories associated with positive events, a phenomenon known as the fading affect bias (FAB). We tested whether FAB was cross‐culturally evident by collecting positive, negative, and memories for the deaths of loved ones from Filipinos. Memories were coded as violent/nonviolent and resolved/unresolved, and we predicted that resolved memories should show greater fading and that affective details should be lower in those memory accounts. FAB analyses revealed that negative affective intensity faded while positive affect remained constant, supporting FAB for positive and negative memories. However, there was no evidence of FAB in Filipinos' death memories. Filipinos' positive memories were distributed from the period of the reminiscence bump and focused on themes of childbirth and marriage, while negative and death memories did not cluster at any period of life.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Testing a Rebt Theory: The Effects of Rational Beliefs, Irrational Beliefs, and Their Control or Certainty Contents on the Functionality of Inferences: I. In a Social Context

This article presents two experiments that examine the validity of REBT's suggestion that contents do not influence the effect that rational and irrational beliefs (beliefs) have on the functionality of inferences (FI). Specifically, two role-playing experiments indicated that control and certainty contents that refer to rational and irrational beliefs influence the effect that those beliefs have on the FI. This finding was demonstrated when beliefs and their contents referred to either one's self or other people in a social context. Based upon the results of these two experiments, it may be prudent for REBT to modify its hypothesis that contents do not influence the effects that rational and irrational beliefs have on the FI. Specifically, it may wish to hypothesise that beliefs interact with contents to affect the FI.     

The miscommunication of deception: An adaptive perspective

Undergraduates were videotaped as they told lies and truths about their last job. Later, these undergraduates viewed the videotape and tried to guess which of their fellow subject were lying. Monetary incentives had been offered for successful lying and lie detection. Our subjects showed a “demeanor bias”—some looked honest even when they were lying; others looked dishonest even when they were telling the truth. These differences in apparent honesty were the primary determinant of deception judgments; perceivers' detection skills played a lesser role. Honest-looking subjects were predisposed to perceive others as dishonest. In general, our liars used hand gestures, maintained eye contact, and refrained from smiling. Perceivers misconstrued these behaviors as signs of honesty and could not often detect deceit—unless the lie was being told by a subject who had earlier told the truth. We draw on sociobiological concepts and offer an adaptive perspective on human deceit.     

Children's causal attributions for performance on sex-stereotypic tasks

In two experiments, third, fifth, and eleventh graders attributed males' and females' successes and failures on sex-stereotypic tasks to (a) task difficulty, (b) effort, (c) luck, or (d) skill. Male and female children responded similarly within and across age. Attributions for successes varied with congruity of actor and task stereotypes; effort was emphasized for sex-inconsistent relative to sex-consistent performance. However, over-riding sex-of-actor biases emerged in explanations for failures, suggesting failures were treated as anticipated outcomes for females. Results are considered in terms of maintenance of sex-role stereotypes beginning early in childhood.A portion of the first experiment reported in this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Washington, D. C., March 1978.     

Cross-modality matching of brightness to loudness by 5-year-olds

The purpose was to determine whether 5-year-old children could match the brightness of a light to the loudness of a sound, and whether the resulting cross-modality function resembled the power function produced by adults. Each of five children adjusted the voltage on a 15D-W lamp to make the apparent brightness appear equal to the loudness of a 500-Hz tone, which the E set to eight different levels. The results resembled those of five adults who performed the same task.     

"Little rapes," specious claims, and moral hubris: a reply to Korn, Huelsman, Reed, and Aiello

Because they failed to include our informed consent, guided imagery scenarios, and debriefing, the relevance of Koren, Huelsman, Reed, and Aiello's (1992) data remains unknown. The design of their Study 1 did not test the greater objectivity of role taking over involved participation. The design of their Study 2 did not demonstrate the effects of demand characteristics. The older "personal acquaintances" were not at higher risk of rape as they claimed. Properly gathered data from the University of Connecticut's laboratory demonstrated that participants regarded the guided imagining of rape to be personally and scientifically beneficial, educating them about the crime and the experience of the rape victim. Prior research had demonstrated that exposure to rape stimuli in combination with debriefing had an educational effect on the decreased endorsement of rape myths. Previously published ethical principles for balancing the rights of scientists, subjects, and society explicate our ethical stance. Informed consent precludes the occurrence of wrongful harms. This poorly designed and poorly reasoned "ethical" critique was unfounded; yet, it might produce a chilling effect on both the use of guided imagery and freedom of inquiry into politically sensitive topics.     

Attribute Dismissal and Valence Effects in Preferential Decision Processing

The processing of attribute information during preference‐based decision making is affected by both the valence of that information and its importance to the decision. Although these two factors have typically been examined separately, we propose that their effects on elaboration and encoding are often codependent. Results of four experiments demonstrate that the traditional negativity effect, whereby negative attribute information is processed more extensively than positive attribute information, obtains only for the subset of attributes perceived to be most important. Among other attributes, the negativity effect is reduced or even reversed (a positivity effect). Our findings suggest important qualifications to prevailing notions of selective information processing. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Decomposing a Sense of Superiority: The Differential Social Impact of Self-Regard and Regard for Others

The tendency to self-enhance has been related to a host of beneficial psychological outcomes (Taylor & Brown, 1988), although some negative social consequences have also been identified (Colvin et al., 1995, Paulhus, 1998). One operationalization of self-enhancement is derived by subtracting the rater's evaluations of others from his or her self-ratings to yield a measure of the rater's sense of superiority/inferiority, i.e., rater-derived self-enhancement. The present research assessed the psychological and social correlates of a person's sense of superiority in groups whose members worked on tasks together for 3 months. A sense of superiority was scored as a composite but also separated into its two components, self-regard and regard for others, to determine if these components of a sense of superiority have separate relationships to psychological and social processes. A sense of superiority evidenced the same self-rated psychological benefits as had been found in Western research, though it showed both positive and negative social outcomes, as assessed on an eight-factor measure of the target's personality rated by his or her other group members. Positive psychological characteristics and a stereotypically masculine reputation were associated with higher levels of self-regard; lower levels of self-rated Agreeableness, a stereotypically nonfeminine reputation, and lower liking were associated with lower levels of regard for others. Given their different functions, it is proposed that self-regard and regard for others be separated in future research and attention directed toward characterizing the behavioral profiles of those high and low in these two measures of basic personality orientation.