Becoming a vampire without being bitten: the narrative collective-assimilation hypothesis

We propose the narrative collective-assimilation hypothesis--that experiencing a narrative leads one to psychologically become a part of the collective described within the narrative. In a test of this hypothesis, participants read passages from either a book about wizards (from the Harry Potter series) or a book about vampires (from the Twilight series). Both implicit and explicit measures revealed that participants who read about wizards psychologically became wizards, whereas those who read about vampires psychologically became vampires. The results also suggested that narrative collective assimilation is psychologically meaningful and relates to the basic human need for connection. Specifically, the tendency to fulfill belongingness needs through group affiliation moderated the extent to which narrative collective assimilation occurred, and narrative collective assimilation led to increases in life satisfaction and positive mood, two primary outcomes of belonging. The implications for the importance of narratives, the need to belong to groups, and social surrogacy are discussed.     

Exploring the informational sources of metaperception: the case of Change Blindness Blindness

Perceivers generally show a poor ability to detect changes, a condition referred to as “Change Blindness” (CB). They are, in addition, “blind to their own blindness”. A common explanation of this “Change Blindness Blindness” (CBB) is that it derives from an inadequate, “photographical” folk-theory about perception. This explanation, however, does not account for intra-individual variations of CBB across trials. Our study aims to explore an alternative theory, according to which participants base their self-evaluations on two activity-dependent cues, namely search time and perceived success in prior trials. These cues were found to influence self-evaluation in two orthogonal ways: success-feedback influenced self-evaluation in a global, contextual way, presumably by recalibrating the norm of adequacy for the task. Search time influenced it in a local way, predicting the success of a given trial from its duration.     

Reciprocal relations between cognitive neuroscience and formal cognitive models: opposites attract?

Cognitive neuroscientists study how the brain implements particular cognitive processes such as perception, learning, and decision-making. Traditional approaches in which experiments are designed to target a specific cognitive process have been supplemented by two recent innovations. First, formal cognitive models can decompose observed behavioral data into multiple latent cognitive processes, allowing brain measurements to be associated with a particular cognitive process more precisely and more confidently. Second, cognitive neuroscience can provide additional data to inform the development of formal cognitive models, providing greater constraint than behavioral data alone. We argue that these fields are mutually dependent; not only can models guide neuroscientific endeavors, but understanding neural mechanisms can provide key insights into formal models of cognition.     

Schedule control, supervisor support and work engagement: A winning combination for workers in hourly jobs?

The changing natures of both work and the lives of the U.S. workforce have created an array of challenges for organizations attempting to foster work engagement. To accommodate the work and family needs of an increasingly diverse workforce, many firms are offering flexible work solutions to employees. However, the distribution of these types of organizational resources is unequal, with workers in lower-wage hourly jobs having the least access to any form of flexibility. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship of schedule control, as a form of flexible work practice, and work engagement among workers employed in hourly retail jobs. Authors tested a model whereby the relationship between schedule control and work engagement is mediated by schedule satisfaction and perceived supervisor support. A sample of 1343 full-time hourly retail workers was used to address the study's purpose. Hypothesized relationships were fully or partially supported. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Public understanding of climate change in the United States

This article considers scientific and public understandings of climate change and addresses the following question: Why is it that while scientific evidence has accumulated to document global climate change and scientific opinion has solidified about its existence and causes, U.S. public opinion has not and has instead become more polarized? Our review supports a constructivist account of human judgment. Public understanding is affected by the inherent difficulty of understanding climate change, the mismatch between people's usual modes of understanding and the task, and, particularly in the United States, a continuing societal struggle to shape the frames and mental models people use to understand the phenomena. We conclude by discussing ways in which psychology can help to improve public understanding of climate change and link a better understanding to action. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).     

Reviewers and the Detection of Deceptive Information in Recorded Interviews

Being able to detect deceptive information early is worthwhile for recruiters and other information‐based organizational workers; unfortunately, people generally are not good at detecting deception successfully. We conducted an experiment to determine how successful reviewers can be at detecting deception in several types of dispersed interviews. The results indicated that reviewers were more accurate at detecting deceptive information than were participant interviewers; that a warning about deception's presence improved reviewers' detection accuracy; and that a warning did not have any effect on reviewers' number of false alarms between text and audio media. These findings imply that if reviewers are warned about the possible presence of deception, organizations might be able to minimize the chance of hiring high‐risk job applicants.     

The relations of daily task accomplishment satisfaction with changes in affect: a multilevel study in nurses

Focusing on a sample of nurses, this investigation examined the relationships of daily task accomplishment satisfaction (for direct and indirect care tasks) with changes in positive and negative affect from preshift to postshift. Not accomplishing tasks to one's satisfaction was conceptualized as a daily workplace stressor that should increase daily negative affect and decrease daily positive affect from preshift to postshift. Further, because of the greater centrality of direct care nursing tasks to nursing work role identities (relative to indirect care tasks), we expected that task accomplishment satisfaction (or lack thereof) for these tasks would have stronger effects on changes in affect than would task accomplishment satisfaction for indirect care tasks. We also examined 2 person-level resources, collegial nurse-physician relations and psychological resilience, as moderators of the relationships among these daily variables, with the expectation that these resources would buffer the harmful effects of low task accomplishment satisfaction on nurse affect. Results supported almost all of the proposed effects, though the cross-level interactions were observed only for the effects of indirect care task accomplishment satisfaction on affect and not for direct care task accomplishment satisfaction on affect.     

Metatheoretical Structuralism: a General Program for Analyzing Science

In spite of the ‘experimental turn’ now fashionable in the philosophy of science, the question of the structure and identity criteria of scientific theories continues to be a central issue for the philosophical analysis of empirical science. We need a precise metatheory of empirical theories to deal with this issue. Metatheoretical structuralism appears to offer the most adequate approach in this sense so far. First, some basic intuitions about what empirical theories are, and how they are structured, are laid out. Then, the main notions used by metatheoretical structuralism to analyze theories are explained, and they are illustrated by applying them to an example of a simple physical theory. Finally, it is argued that the picture of the structure and identity of empirical theories coming out of structuralistic analysis adequately corresponds to the basic intuitions stated at the beginning.