Potential negative consequences of mindfulness in the moral domain

Mindfulness is a state of paying conscious and nonjudgmental attention to present-moment experiences. Previous research relates this state to more effective emotion regulation and less emotion reactivity. We therefore hypothesized an attenuating effect of a mindfulness exercise on moral reactions that usually results from a bad conscience when having caused harm. Across five studies, we experimentally induced mindfulness via a short breathing exercise and then assessed harm-based moral reactions. As hypothesized, participants in the mindfulness (vs. control) exercise condition showed (i) attenuated repair intentions after having read a scenario in which participants caused harm to a friend (Study 3) and (ii) attenuated intentions to change harm-causing eating habits (Study 4). Results of Studies 1, 2 and 5 did not provide evidence for our hypothesis. A following meta-analysis across all five studies yielded an overall significant effect of mindfulness in the harm-condition, providing preliminary evidence for a potential downside to mindfulness.     

Unravelling the Interplay Between Genetic and Environmental Contributions in the Unfolding of Personality Differences from Early Adolescence to Young Adulthood

In two studies, we examined the genetic and environmental sources of the unfolding of personality trait differences from childhood to emerging adulthood. Using self‐reports from over 3000 representative German twin pairs of three birth cohorts, we could replicate previous findings on the primary role of genetic sources accounting for the unfolding of inter‐individual differences in personality traits and stabilizing trait differences during adolescence. More specifically, the genetic variance increased between early (ages 10–12 years) and late (ages 16–18 years) adolescence and stabilized between late adolescence and young adulthood (ages 21–25 years). This trend could be confirmed in a second three‐wave longitudinal study of adolescents' personality self‐reports and parent ratings from about 1400 Norwegian twin families (average ages between 15 and 20 years). Moreover, the longitudinal study provided evidence for increasing genetic differences being primarily due to accumulation of novel genetic influences instead of an amplification of initial genetic variation. This is in line with cumulative interaction effects between twins' correlated genetic makeups and environmental circumstances shared by adolescent twins reared together. In other words, nature × nurture interactions rather than transactions can account for increases in genetic variance and thus personality variance during adolescence. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Differences in the neurocognitive profiles of professional and semi-professional male South African rugby union players

This study investigated possible cognitive functioning profile differences between professional and semi-professional rugby players. Seventy-nine male rugby union players (professional = 55, semi-professional = 24; age range = 19–37 years) participated in the study. The players completed a battery of neuropsychological functioning tests covering the following domains: memory tasks, attention and behavioural tasks, sensory-motor tasks, executive functioning tasks, verbal tasks, and emotion identification tasks. Results following Fisher’s exact test comparisons revealed no significant group differences in the cognitive functioning profiles.     

Linking organizational resources and work engagement to employee performance and customer loyalty: the mediation of service climate

This study examined the mediating role of service climate in the prediction of employee performance and customer loyalty. Contact employees (N=342) from 114 service units (58 hotel front desks and 56 restaurants) provided information about organizational resources, engagement, and service climate. Furthermore, customers (N=1,140) from these units provided information on employee performance and customer loyalty. Structural equation modeling analyses were consistent with a full mediation model in which organizational resources and work engagement predict service climate, which in turn predicts employee performance and then customer loyalty. Further analyses revealed a potential reciprocal effect between service climate and customer loyalty. Implications of the study are discussed, together with limitations and suggestions for future research.     

Explaining disproportionately high rates of adverse birth outcomes among African Americans: the impact of stress, racism, and related factors in pregnancy

Compared with European Americans, African American infants experience disproportionately high rates of low birth weight and preterm delivery and are more than twice as likely to die during their 1st year of life. The authors examine 5 explanations for these differences in rates of adverse birth outcomes: (a) ethnic differences in health behaviors and socioeconomic status; (b) higher levels of stress in African American women; (c) greater susceptibility to stress in African Americans; (d) the impact of racism acting either as a contributor to stress or as a factor that exacerbates stress effects; and (e) ethnic differences in stress-related neuroendocrine, vascular, and immunological processes. The review of literature indicates that each explanation has some merit, although none is sufficient to explain ethnic disparities in adverse birth outcomes. There is a lack of studies examining the impact of such factors jointly and interactively. Recommendations and cautions for future research are offered.     

Higher-order activity beyond the word level: cortical dynamics of simple transitive sentence comprehension

Slow electrophysiological effects, which fluctuate throughout the course of a sentence, independent of transient responses to individual words, have been reported. However, this type of activity has scarcely been studied, and with only limited use of electrophysiological information, so that the brain areas in which these variations originate have not been clearly identified. To improve this state of affairs, a principal component analysis and a modern source analysis algorithm (LORETA) were applied to the slow activity underlying transitive sentence reading. Four components explained 97.3% of the variance. Of key interest was a slow variation that occurred throughout the entire sentence but peaked with the appearance of the verb. The main solution for this component was localized in prefrontal and temporal regions presumably involved in semantic sentence processing. This constitutes empirical evidence for cortical activity--related to semantic processes thought to be involved in thematic role assignment--developing throughout the sentence but presenting a conspicuous maximum with the appearance of the verb. This finding also highlights the central role of verb information in the understanding of transitive sentences.     

Democracy justifies the means: political group structure moderates the perceived legitimacy of intergroup aggression

The present research tested the hypothesis that the political structure of conflicting groups moderates perceived legitimacy of intergroup aggression. In two experiments, participants read scenarios of fictitious summer camps in which members of one group aggressed members of another group. The political structure of both the perpetrator and the victim groups was described as either egalitarian (defined with democratic decision-making procedures) or hierarchical (authoritarian decision-making procedures). Results of both experiments showed that aggressions perpetrated by members of egalitarian groups at the expense of members of hierarchical groups were evaluated as less illegitimate than aggressions committed in the three remaining conditions. This effect is discussed as a function of the higher social value attributed to democratic groups.     

Auditory discrimination of anisochrony: influence of the tempo and musical backgrounds of listeners

This study explored the influence of several factors, physical and human, on anisochrony's thresholds measured with an adaptive two alternative forced choice paradigm. The effect of the number and duration of sounds on anisochrony discrimination was tested in the first experiment as well as potential interactions between each of these factors and tempo. In the second experiment, the tempo or the inter onset interval (IOI) was varied systematically between 80 and 1000 ms. The results showed that just noticeable differences increase linearly and proportionally with IOI in accordance with Weber's law except for quickest tempo (IOI of 80 ms). The third experiment investigated the role of musical training on anisochrony thresholds obtained for different IOI. It focused on differential effects of musical experiences by comparing non-musicians, instrumentalists, and percussionists thresholds. The results of the present study replicated the findings of previous experiments regarding the adequacy of Weber's law for slow rhythm and provided evidence for its departure for fast tempos. Moreover, thresholds from percussionists seem distinguishable from the ones of other listeners by their highest sensitivity to temporal shifts suggesting therefore the necessity to control the nature of musical experiences. The results are discussed according to current models of time perception.     

On the difference between response inhibition and negative priming: Evidence from simple and selective stopping

Negative priming is a commonly observed after-effect in studies concerning inhibition. Effects of the preceding trial are also found in other paradigms, like the stop signal paradigm. In the present study, stop signals were introduced in a negative priming paradigm and the relation between stop signal inhibition and negative priming was investigated. In Experiment 1, we used a simple stop signal task. Stopping data clearly suggest that stopping performance was not influenced by negative priming. Interestingly, on no-signal probes the negative priming effect disappeared after successful inhibition of the response on the prime trial. On the contrary, when inhibition failed, the negative priming effect remained. In Experiment 2, we used the selective stop signal task. As in Experiment 1, inhibition of motor responses was not influenced by negative priming. The hypothesis that negative priming disappeared due to a general nonspecific stop was confirmed in this experiment, as a negative priming effect was found after both successful and unsuccessful behavioral inhibition. The results of both experiments show that response inhibition is not influenced by negative priming, and that negative priming is only affected after a successful general stop.     

Electrophysiological evidence of automatic early semantic processing

This study investigates the automatic-controlled nature of early semantic processing by means of the Recognition Potential (RP), an event-related potential response that reflects lexical selection processes. For this purpose tasks differing in their processing requirements were used. Half of the participants performed a physical task involving a lower-upper case discrimination judgement (shallow processing requirements), whereas the other half carried out a semantic task, consisting in detecting animal names (deep processing requirements). Stimuli were identical in the two tasks. Reaction time measures revealed that the physical task was easier to perform than the semantic task. However, RP effects elicited by the physical and semantic tasks did not differ in either latency, amplitude, or topographic distribution. Thus, the results from the present study suggest that early semantic processing is automatically triggered whenever a linguistic stimulus enters the language processor.