Structured Terror: Further Exploring the Effects of Mortality Salience and Personal Need for Structure on Worldview Defense

ABSTRACT Previous research indicates that people respond to heightened death‐related cognition with increased defense of predominant cultural beliefs (cultural worldview defense). However, recent research indicates that individual differences in personal need for structure (PNS) impact responses to threatening thoughts of death such that those high, but not low, in PNS respond to death thoughts by seeking a highly structured, clear, and coherent view of the world. Research has yet to fully consider the extent to which PNS affects the cultural worldview defenses typically exhibited after death is rendered salient. The current 3 studies examine the potential for PNS to determine the extent to which people respond to mortality salience with increased worldview defense. In all three studies PNS was measured and mortality salience induced. Subsequently, university‐related (Study 1) or religious (Studies 2 and 3) worldview defense was assessed. Only individuals high in PNS responded to mortality salience with increased worldview defense.     

The weight of being: Psychological perspectives on the existential moment

As the prefrontal cortex expanded in human evolution, so too did the capacity for nesting basic biological goals within more complex systems of behavioral organization. This increased ability for abstraction brought with it the challenge of deciding how to interpret the personal significance of any given experience. The human brain appears to manage this increased complexity by defining meaning in relation to one's currently adopted goals. When encountering goal-related information, arousal and exploratory systems become engaged, such that information is processed more thoroughly. As a consequence of this enhanced attention and arousal, neural plasticity is facilitated, allowing motivationally relevant experiences to have a stronger influence on an individual's neural organization. To borrow a gravitational metaphor, the existential weight, or significance, of a particular moment will determine the strength of that moment's influence on an individual's life. Human experience thus appears to be curved around fluctuations in the existential weight of being.     

Hospital Privileges for Psychologists in the Era of Competencies and Increased Accountability

After campaigning to be granted hospital privileges decades ago, new issues are emerging that are affecting psychologists’ hospital privileges. Some of the forces shaping hospital privileges emanate from within the field of psychology, where there has been a movement to more closely examine psychologists’ competences. Other forces impinging on hospital privileges are external to psychology, most notably the Joint Commission, which has promulgated new standards for hospital-based practitioners across disciplines. This article discusses the effects of these new standards on the practice of psychology and describes the findings of a survey examining how privileges are currently obtained and maintained within hospitals.     

The effect of consumers' diurnal preferences on temporal behavior

The purpose of this study is to determine whether customers' diurnal preferences, tested at different times of the day, affect their responses and behavior. Three studies explore whether synchrony between the peak circadian arousal period and the time of participant testing influenced participants' temporal perception and behavior. Overall, the results imply a robust synchrony and time-of-day effects on the dependent variables. The authors discuss the theoretical significance of their findings and the managerial implications for consumer research and practice.     

Planning for Multiple Shopping Goals in the Marketplace

Four online grocery‐shopping experiments and one field study using video‐tracking technology at a grocery store document how shoppers’ motivation evolves from the beginning to the end of their shopping trips. We uncover unique motivational patterns as shoppers achieve multiple subgoals (i.e., choose multiple grocery items) to complete their trips: a monotonic decrease in motivation for shoppers with a shopping list versus a curvilinear trend (i.e., decrease then increase) in motivation for shoppers without a list. In addition, we demonstrate how to reverse the observed patterns for shoppers with a list by changing their reference points for tracking progress. The discovery of the moderating role of shopping‐list usage adds to the bubbling dialogue in goal pursuit and shopper psychology research concerning how consumer motivation follows either a monotonic trend (e.g., a goal gradient effect) or a nonmonotonic trend (e.g., the stuck‐in‐the‐middle effect). Importantly, we demonstrate how the stuck‐in‐the‐middle theory, which applies to single‐goal pursuits, can apply more broadly to the domain of grocery shopping, which consists of the generation and completion of multiple subgoals.     

The behavioural self-regulation strategies of Indian South African university students: An exploratory study

This study explored the race-related self-regulation strategies of eight Indian South African university students (females: n = 4) attending a historically white university. Interactive qualitative analysis of their race-related experiences revealed that the students felt that they had been judged as being different, which resulted in overwhelming unwanted emotions, primarily anger and sadness. Moreover, the students reported the use a range of self-regulation strategies (such as introspection, engaging with trusted others, managing the situation, tolerating the experience of being judged, and making friends with people from other races) in a specific sequence to enhance their social acceptance on the campus. The findings suggest that adaptive self-regulation may enhance the social outcomes of historically disadvantaged, racial minority students.     

Contrast between what is expected and what occurs increases pigeon’s suboptimal choice

Animal Cognition - When pigeons are given a choice between 50% signaled reinforcement and 100% reinforcement they typically do not choose optimally, sometimes even preferring 50% reinforcement....     

Strengthening the Child‐ and Youth‐Serving Workforce: Surveying the Landscape,Overcoming Challenges

This special issue addresses a neglected but important topic in our field: strengthening the child‐ and youth‐serving workforce. Investing in this workforce should be a national priority because considerable evidence has shown that investments in early childhood education and development, particularly in low‐resource contexts, that are reinforced through skills‐based programs in adolescence and adulthood, have beneficial impacts throughout life. Investing in quality child‐ and youth‐serving programs also has the additional benefit of creating a productive and capable future workforce. The editors and authors of the special issue should be commended for producing the first special issue on this topic in our field or in related fields, one that is long overdue. Articles in this issue survey the landscape of an amorphous and complex area of practice and research and describe key challenges for the field. In this commentary, I offer organizing frameworks to characterize the child‐ and youth‐serving workforce, note emerging issues when addressing specific challenges, and identify areas for future research.