What wealth-happiness paradox? A short note on the American case

Happiness scholars have tried to resolve the seeming paradox that as Americans’ wealth increased substantially over the last few decades, their happiness did not. This article questions whether the paradox is real. Demonstrations of the paradox almost always rely on GDP per capita as the measure of wealth, but that is a poor measure of a people’s well-being. It is heavily and increasingly skewed; it does not account for effort. Using instead measures of household income, male income, and average wages eliminates the paradox; these indicators of affluence have grown only slowly or declined in the same period, paralleling the changes in happiness scores. Moreover, using these indicators reveals a modest but real correlation between material well-being and national happiness.     

Jugendgewalt als Lebensbewältigungsprozess

Aggression und Gewalt bei Jugendlichen stilisieren sich zum Sinnbild für unsere „kranke Gesellschaft“. Was sich bei jüngeren Jugendlichen noch – oft als Lausbuben-Verhalten bagatellisiertes – Herumschubsen und Rangeln im Pausenhof ?u?ert, tritt in Form von Bullying und Mobbing immer st?rker zutage. Jugendliche, die trinken, stehlen, Drogen zu sich nehmen, Mitschüler oder Gruppenmitglieder bedrohen und Gegenst?nde ?ffentlichen Gutes besch?digen etc., stehen auf der Tagesordnung. Selbst Erpressung von Mitschülern ist kein Einzeldelikt mehr.     

Reconsidering qualitative and quantitative research approaches: A cognitive developmental perspective

Rather than embracing the notion that contextualism requires purely qualitative methodologies, Westerman and Yanchar argue that there is a place for quantification in post-positivist research. Both authors provide compelling arguments for this position. From our cognitive developmental perspective, we see this as a move toward a new level of integration in psychology. Whereas reactive shifts between positivist quantification and radical contextualism exemplify the kind of pendulum swing we see in individual development immediately before the emergence of a new developmental level, the moves suggested by Westerman and Yanchar are in the direction of a qualitative shift—a new level of differentiation and integration. We argue that the arguments put forward by Westerman and Yanchar do not quite achieve consolidation at this new level, because they remain embedded in a post-positivist contextualism that demands an a priori rejection of psychological universals and strong forms of quantification. In our view, consolidation at this new level requires a shift to a problem-focused methodological pluralism that assimilates a wide range of methodological approaches, critiques them, and adapts them in light of the problems researchers seek to solve.     

Credibility of Self‐Report for Ethnic‐Minority Pregnant Smokers1

Two independent samples of pregnant smokers were interviewed about their cigarette smoking and were tested with biochemical markers at the beginning and end of their pregnancies. Participants were mainly unmarried, racial minorities (chiefly Hispanic), and residents of the inner city. Phi coefficients between self‐reported and chemical indicators ranged from .42 to .74. Contrary to expectations, the self‐report/biochemical‐measure correlations were higher at the end than at the beginning of the pregnancy term. The higher end‐of‐term correspondence between self‐report and chemical indicators likely reflected better reliability of the measures, when taken at term. The results are in accord with earlier research with other populations, indicating adequate validity for self‐reported smoking.     

Epicureanism About Death and Immortality

In this paper I discuss some of Martha Nussbaum’s defenses of Epicurean views about death and immortality. Here I seek to defend the commonsense view that death can be a bad thing for an individual against the Epicurean; I also defend the claim that immortality might conceivably be a good thing. In the development of my analysis, I make certain connections between the literatures on free will and death. The intersection of these two literatures can be illuminated by reference to my notion of a Dialectical Stalemate.     

Sexual activity is inversely related to women’s perceptions of the facial attractiveness of unknown men

A study was conducted to assess whether individual differences in sexual activity during the past 30 days, in particular penile–vaginal intercourse (PVI; which is associated with measures of relationship quality), are related to the perception of the facial attractiveness of unknown men. Forty-five women reported the frequency of a variety of sexual behaviors and rated the facial attractiveness and friendliness of 24 men. Women who reported more frequent orgasm from masturbation rated men as less friendly. This finding might be reflective of the more anti-social attitude associated with more frequent masturbation. The results also show that women who engaged more frequently in most kinds of sexual behavior, not only PVI, considered unknown men to be less facially attractive. That is, individuals who engage more frequently in a variety of sexual behaviors with their partner perceived unknown men as less attractive and thereby may be less susceptible to the lure of other (or if the only sexual behavior is masturbation, any) men.     

Methodological and empirical issues when dissociating cue-related from task-related processes in the explicit task-cuing procedure

In the explicit cuing version of the task-switching paradigm, each individual task is indicated by a unique task cue. Consequently, a task switch is accompanied by a cue switch. Recently, it has been proposed that priming of cue encoding contributes to the empirically observed switch costs. This proposal was experimentally supported by using a 2:1 mapping of cues to tasks, so that a cue switch does not necessarily imply a task switch. The results indeed suggested a substantial contribution of “cue-switch costs” to task-switch costs. Here we argue that the 2:1 mapping potentially leads to an underestimation of “pure” task-switch costs. To support this argument, we report the results of a new study in which we used “transition cues” that indicate the identity of the current task based on the identity of the preceding task. This new type of cue allows a full factorial manipulation of cue switches and task switches because it includes the condition in which a cue repetition can also indicate a task switch (i.e., when the “switch” cue is repeated). We discuss the methodological implications and argue that the present approach has merits relative to the previously used 2:1 mapping of cues to tasks.     

Leitlinie für die Begutachtung von Schmerzen

The present guidelines for expert testimony have been elaborated for the first time in 2004 by medico-legal representatives from several German professional academic societies (neurology, orthopedic surgery, psychiatry, psychosomatic medicine, psychotherapy). Their aim is to standardize the course and the content of expert testimony in subjects, who complain about chronic pain as the leading symptom for seeking pension or other compensation. In 2006, the guidelines have been revised and completed by adding detailed data about classification and prognosis of chronic pain, about causality questions, and about estimation of functional impairment in different legal areas.     

Accessory stimuli modulate effects of nonconscious priming

In a recent study, it was shown that subliminal priming (SP) effects are affected by the temporal predictability of a stimulus onset. If predictability is not given, SP effects are eliminated (Naccache, Blandin, & Dehaene, 2002). In two experiments, we investigated how different levels of preparation for target processing affect SP effects. For this purpose, an accessory tone stimulus was presented at different times prior to a subliminal priming task. The results demonstrate a clear modulation of the SP effects at different foreperiod intervals. Relative to conditions without an accessory stimulus, SP effects were smaller for short foreperiod intervals of the accessory stimulus, and larger for long foreperiod intervals. The results suggest that the presentation of an accessory stimulus facilitates response activation processes because of the participants' enhanced level of preparation for stimulus processing.     

Right-handers' reaching in contralateral hemispace: a kinematic observation

C. Gabbard and C. Helbig (2004) found, when examining seated participants' limb selection for reaching and grasping in hemispace, that right-handers preferred to switch to the nondominant left arm for objects located approximately 20 degrees horizontally from body midline (90 degrees) in left hemispace. In the present study, the authors examined 13 strongly lateralized seated right-handers' kinematics of reaching to object positions ranging from body midline to 40 degrees horizontally in left hemispace. Participants executed faster reaches with the left arm than with the right arm to objects placed 20 degrees-40 degrees from midline, whereas they did not change the proportion of time they spent accelerating the hands when the position of the object changed. A 2nd main finding was an increase in the left hand's trajectory curvature as object position moved farther from midline, with a corresponding decrease in the contribution of upper-arm motion to the reach. Those observations suggest that the switch from dominant right-arm reaching to nondominant left-arm reaching in left hemispace reported in the aforementioned study may have emerged from a shift from a shoulder-driven reach to an elbow-driven action.