A self-help book is better than sleep hygiene advice for insomnia: a randomized controlled comparative study

The objective was to compare the effects of two types of written material for insomnia in a randomized trial with follow-up after three months. Insomniacs were recruited through newspaper advertisements to a web-based survey with validated questionnaires about sleep, anxiety, depression, and use of sleep medications. A self-help book focusing on cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia was compared to standard sleep hygiene advice; 77 and 78 participants were randomized to self-help book or sleep hygiene advice, respectively. The response rate was 81.9%. The self-help book gave significantly better scores on the sleep questionnaires compared to sleep hygiene advice. The proportion using sleep medications was reduced in the self-help book group, whereas it was increased in the sleep hygiene group. Compared to pre-treatment, the self-help book improved scores on the sleep (effect sizes 0.61-0.62) and depression (effect size 0.18) scales, whereas the sleep hygiene advice improved scores on some sleep scales (effect sizes 0.24-0.28), but worsened another (effect size -0.36). In addition, sleep hygiene advice increased the number of days per week where they took sleep medications (effect size -0.50). To conclude, in this randomized controlled trial, the self-help book improved sleep and reduced the proportion using sleep medications compared to sleep hygiene advice. The self-help book is an efficient low-threshold intervention, which is cheap and easily available for patients suffering from insomnia. Sleep hygiene advice also improved sleep at follow-up, but increased sleep medication use. Thus, caution is warranted when sleep hygiene advice are given as a single treatment.     

The Effects of Magnitude-Based Differential Reinforcement on the Skill Acquisition of Children with Autism

A common recommendation for teaching skills to children with autism is to apply differential reinforcement by reserving high-quality reinforcement for unprompted responses (Sundberg and Partington in Teaching language to children with autism or other developmental disabilities, Behavior Analysts Inc., Pleasant Hill, 1998). Earlier research focuses primarily on schedules or quality of reinforcement, rather than magnitude of reinforcement, when evaluating the use of differential reinforcement in practice. The utility of magnitude-based differential reinforcement may be dependent upon evidence that a learner responds differentially to large and small amounts of reinforcement such that he or she selects the large amount of reinforcement over the small amount of reinforcement and engages in more responses that produce the relatively larger magnitude reinforcement. Three individuals with autism participated in a treatment comparison of differential reinforcement. The manipulation of magnitude of differential reinforcement in a skill acquisition program did not have an appreciable effect on the rate of acquisition for any of the three participants.     

Controlling racial prejudice: social-cognitive goals affect amygdala and stereotype activation

The malleability of stereotyping matters in social psychology and in society. Previous work indicates rapid amygdala and cognitive responses to racial out-groups, leading some researchers to view these responses as inevitable. In this study, the methods of social-cognitive neuroscience were used to investigate how social goals control prejudiced responses. Participants viewed photographs of unfamiliar Black and White faces, under each of three social goals: social categorization (by age), social individuation (vegetable preference), and simple visual inspection (detecting a dot). One study recorded brain activity in the amygdala using functional magnetic resonance imaging, and another measured cognitive activation of stereotypes by lexical priming. Neither response to photos of the racial out-group was inevitable; instead, both responses depended on perceivers' current social-cognitive goal.     

Stereotype content model explains prejudice for an envied outgroup: Scale of anti-Asian American Stereotypes

The Stereotype Content Model hypothesizes anti-Asian American stereotypes differentiating two dimensions: (excessive) competence and (deficient) sociability. The Scale of Anti-Asian American Stereotypes (SAAAS) shows this envious mixed prejudice in six studies. Study 1 began with 131 racial attitude items. Studies 2 and 3 tested 684 respondents on a focused 25-item version. Studies 4 and 5 tested the final 25-item SAAAS on 222 respondents at three campuses; scores predicted outgroup friendships, cultural experiences, and (over)estimated campus presence. Study 6 showed that allegedly low sociability, rather than excessively high competence, drives rejection of Asian Americans, consistent with system justification theory. The SAAAS demonstrates mixed, envious anti-Asian American prejudice, contrasting with more-often-studied contemptuous racial prejudices (i.e., against Blacks).     

An ambivalent alliance. Hostile and benevolent sexism as complementary justifications for gender inequality

The equation of prejudice with antipathy is challenged by recent research on sexism. Benevolent sexism (a subjectively favorable, chivalrous ideology that offers protection and affection to women who embrace conventional roles) coexists with hostile sexism (antipathy toward women who are viewed as usurping men's power). The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, first validated in U.S. samples, has been administered to over 15,000 men and women in 19 nations. Hostile and benevolent sexism are complementary, cross-culturally prevalent ideologies, both of which predict gender inequality. Women, as compared with men, consistently reject hostile sexism but often endorse benevolent sexism (especially in the most sexist cultures). By rewarding women for conforming to a patriarchal status quo, benevolent sexism inhibits gender equality. More generally, affect toward minority groups is often ambivalent, but subjectively positive stereotypes are not necessarily benign.     

Personality feedback and situational norms can control stereotyping processes.

Impressions are influenced by motivations stemming primarily from the target (e.g., interdependence), 3rd parties (e.g., accountability or time pressure), or the self. The current studies investigate motivations stemming primarily from the self. In Study 1, Ss were given dispositional feedback about their abilities to categorize or to individuate. In Study 2, they were given situational information about the appropriate norms to categorize or to individuate. As predicted, dispositional feedback influenced low self-monitors, and situational information influenced high self-monitors. Both altered attention to potentially individuating category-inconsistent attributes as well as requests for additional information. Causal models further illuminated the mediating processes. These results suggest that people's flexible self-concepts are an important source of motivation in impression formation.     

Nonverbal behaviors and social evaluation1

Male and female observers watched videotapes of short interactions between previously unacquainted dyads of one sex or the other and then rated one target. An evaluation measure derived from the ratings was positively correlated with a majority of the diverse nonverbal behaviors coded from the videotapes. The significant correlations were all positive and all but one involved social behaviors directed toward the other person. In a multiple regression analysis, nod rate, short vocal back-channel rate, smile time, filled pause rate, and gaze time were sufficient to predict evaluations by either sex. Although no overall effects were found for sex of target, weights for behaviors varied with sex of observer in the second root of a canonical correlation analysis. Consistent with the findings of others, the amount of nonverbal activity, especially socially oriented activity, is related to favorableness of observers' evaluative impressions. The contribution of some behaviors varies with the sex of the observer.     

Comprehensive stereotype content dictionaries using a semi‐automated method

Advances in natural language processing provide accessible approaches to analyze psychological open‐ended data. However, comprehensive instruments for text analysis of stereotype content are missing. We developed stereotype content dictionaries using a semi‐automated method based on WordNet and word embeddings. These stereotype content dictionaries covered over 80% of open‐ended stereotypes about salient American social groups, compared to 20% coverage from words extracted directly from the stereotype content literature. The dictionaries showed high levels of internal consistency and validity, predicting stereotype scale ratings and human judgments of online text. We developed the R package Semi‐Automated Dictionary Creation for Analyzing Text (SADCAT; https://github.com/gandalfnicolas/SADCAT ) for access to the stereotype content dictionaries and the creation of novel dictionaries for constructs of interest. Potential applications of the dictionaries range from advancing person perception theories through laboratory studies and analysis of online data to identifying social biases in artificial intelligence, social media, and other ubiquitous text sources.