Impulsivity in the eye of the beholder: an analysis of teachers' concepts of impulsive and reflective behaviour

The aim of this research was to investigate teachers' perception of the concept of impulsivity and its relation to the concept of reflectivity. Teacher rating scales for both concepts were constructed by means of the prototype method (Study 1). It appeared that impulsivity refers to social behaviour, whereas reflectivity is more cognitive in character. A Principal Components Analysis (Study 2) showed that the item pools for impulsive and reflective behaviour account for separate components. It is concluded that impulsivity and reflectivity as perceived by teachers are not two extremes of one dimension, but refer to different behavioural domains: social and cognitive.     

The Credibility of Newspapers and Fear of Crime

It was hypothesized that the effect of a fear-arousing newspaper article about crime on fear of crime and concern about crime as a societal problem is dependent on source (newspaper) credibility. In an experimental study, participants were presented with an article on street robberies, ostensibly published in a more credible newspaper or in a less credible newspaper, whereas a control group did not read any article. As predicted, it was found that the article's effect on fear of robbery, fear of crime in general, and concern about robbery as a societal problem was fully dependent on source credibility. Further, women reported more fear of robbery and fear of crime in general than did men.     

Reorienting attention and inhibition of return

In experiments examining inhibition of return (IOR), it is common practice to present a second cue at fixation during the cue-target interval. The purpose of this fixation cue is to reorient attention away from the cued location to ensure that the facilitative effects of spatial attention do not obscure IOR. However, despite their frequent use, relatively little is known about the relationship between fixation cues and IOR. In the present experiments, we examined the role of fixation cues by manipulating their presence in tasks that either did or did not require target identification. When the participants were required to either detect (Experiment 1A) or localize (Experiment 2A) a target, the magnitude of IOR was unaffected by the presence of a fixation cue. In contrast, when the participants were required to identify a target (Experiments 1B, 2B, and 3), IOR was observed only when a fixation cue was presented. This result was obtained regardless of the type of response that was required (two-alternative forced choice or go/no go). The effectiveness of the fixation cue in revealing IOR in these tasks is consistent with its putative role in reorienting attention away from the cued location.     

Masking T1 difficulty: processing time and the attenional blink

When observers are presented with 2 targets in rapid succession, identification of the 1st is highly accurate, whereas identification of the 2nd is impaired at brief intertarget intervals (i.e., 200-500 ms). This 2nd-target deficit is known as the attentional blink (AB). According to bottleneck models, the AB arises because attending to the 1st target delays allocation of attention to the 2nd target. Thus, these models predict that increasing 1st-target processing time will increase the magnitude of the AB. Previous tests of this prediction have yielded mixed results. The present work suggests that one factor contributing to this uncertainty is masking of the 1st target: When this mask is omitted, processing time and AB magnitude are reliably related. These findings clarify the role of 1st-target masking in the AB and support the validity of the bottleneck account.     

The relationships among asymmetry in task dependence, perceived helping behavior, and trust

Social relations analyses involving 132 working relationships among 60 individuals from 29 teams revealed that an increase in a team member's task dependence on another team member was associated with higher levels of perceived help from and interpersonal trust in that specific team member, provided the other member was highly task dependent on the focal member. The degree to which an actor perceived a relationship with a partner to be helpful partially mediated the relationship between task dependence and trust. These findings highlight the importance of attending to asymmetries in task dependence and provide valuable insights into mechanisms that can explain the development of trust in organizational work teams.     

Cost-effectiveness of online positive psychology: Randomized controlled trial

As yet, no evidence is available about the cost-effectiveness of positive psychological interventions. When offered via the Internet, these interventions may be particularly cost-effective, because they are highly scalable and do not rely on scant resources such as therapists’ time. Alongside a randomized controlled trial of an online positive psychological intervention, a health-economic evaluation was conducted. Mild to moderately depressed adults seeking self-help and recruited in the general population were randomly assigned to the intervention group (n?=?143) and a waitlisted usual care group (n?=?141). Improved clinical outcomes were achieved in the intervention group (at least for depression) at higher costs. When outliers (the top 2.5%, n?=?5 in intervention group, n?=?2 in control group) were removed, cost-effectiveness was increased considerably. For positive psychology, economic evaluations may be a means to nudge policy decision-makers towards placing positive psychological interventions on the health agenda.     

The Mandate of the Ecumenical Movement

This is the text of the address given by Willem A. Visser 't Hooft to the Uppsala Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1968 after being named honorary president of the WCC, following his retirement as general secretary two years earlier. In this address, Visser 't Hooft reviews the 20th‐century history of the ecumenical movement and the contemporary mandate of the WCC, in which the central issue is the relationship between the church and the world, where the vertical dimension to God of the church's unity determines the horizontal dimension of its service to the world. The address concludes with four challenges: no horizontal advance without vertical orientation; the ecumenical movement and the churches need each other; church unity is important; and youth expects answers.     

Why People Gossip: An Empirical Analysis of Social Motives,Antecedents, and Consequences

In 3 studies with student samples, we advance a social‐motivational approach to gossip. We developed the Motives to Gossip Questionnaire to distinguish negative influence, information gathering and validation, social enjoyment, and group protection as motives underlying gossip. Study 1 demonstrated that these motives can be distinguished empirically, and that the informational motive was the most prevalent reason to instigate gossip. Study 2 showed that group protection was especially important when the opportunity to gossip with a group member about another member's norm‐violating behavior was salient. Study 3 showed that when participants imagined someone gossiped to them about another group member's norm violation, and ascribed this to group protection, they rated the gossip as social and did not disapprove of it.