Physiological and nonverbal correlates of extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism during active and passive coping

Correlations of extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism with state anxiety, physiological arousal, and facial expressivity were assessed in 45 adolescents during a passive task (venipuncture) and an active coping task (speech). Task was a major determiner of the relationship between these variables. During venipuncture heart-rate increase was positively correlated with state anxiety, neuroticism, and anxiety expression and negatively correlated with extraversion. However, during the speech, HR change was negatively correlated with state anxiety and nonverbal indices of anxiety, but was positively correlated with extraversion and positive nonverbal expression. Skin conductance change findings were weaker but, when occurring, were in the same direction as the HR findings. Extraversion was highly associated with all nonverbal expressivity measures: inversely correlating with venipuncture and speech anxiety expression and positively correlating with venipuncture and speech positive expression. Neuroticism was positively correlated with nonverbal expression of anxiety during venipuncture but not speech. Psychoticism correlated positively with nonverbal positive expression during both venipuncture and speech.     

Decisions and revisions: the affective forecasting of changeable outcomes

People prefer to make changeable decisions rather than unchangeable decisions because they do not realize that they may be more satisfied with the latter. Photography students believed that having the opportunity to change their minds about which prints to keep would not influence their liking of the prints. However, those who had the opportunity to change their minds liked their prints less than those who did not (Study 1). Although the opportunity to change their minds impaired the postdecisional processes that normally promote satisfaction (Study 2a), most participants wanted to have that opportunity (Study 2b). The results demonstrate that errors in affective forecasting can lead people to behave in ways that do not optimize their happiness and well-being.     

Initial internal reliability and descriptive statistics for a brief assessment tool for the Life Skills Training drug-abuse prevention program

Adolescent drug use in the United States remains the highest in the industrialized world. Fortunately there have been significant advances in developing effective prevention programs for adolescent drug use. An important issue in evaluating such programs is that the self-report surveys have adequate psychometric properties and assess constructs targeted by an intervention. A questionnaire focusing on knowledge and drug-related measures was developed to evaluate the research-based Life Skills Training drug prevention intervention. The questionnaire showed good internal reliability, detected change from pretest to posttest, and was brief and easy to complete by 45 middle-school students.     

Phenomenological Argumentative Structure

The nontechnical ability to identify or match argumentative structure seems to be an important reasoning skill. Instruments that have questions designed to measure this skill include major standardized tests for graduate school admission, for example, the United States-Canadian Law School Admission Test (LSAT), the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE), and the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT). Writers and reviewers of such tests need an appropriate foundation for developing such questions – they need a proper representation of phenomenological argumentative structure – for legitimacy, and because these tests affect people's lives. This paper attempts to construct an adequate and appropriate representation of such structure, that is, the logical structure that an argument is perceived to have by mature reasoners, albeit ones who are untrained in logic.     

Effects of Diversity Management on Attachment

The theoretical underpinnings of this paper explain the process of organizational transformation to value differences and the attitudinal transformation of minority and majority individuals to appreciate diversity. As an empirical test of these theories, the research investigated absenteeism and psychological attachment in 2 Fortune 100 conglomerates in different stages of managing their diversity. Cox (1991) suggests that organizations evolve toward multiculturalism, a state in which employee differences are valued and appreciated. Analyses of 284 respondents reveal that majority and minority employees in a more multicultural firm experienced greater attitudinal attachment. Study results suggest that a culture that stresses inclusion of all individuals will have a positive impact on the demographic majority.     

Mispredicting the hedonic benefits of segregated gains

The hedonic benefit of a gain (e.g., receiving $100) may be increased by segregating it into smaller units that are distributed over time (e.g., receiving $50 on each of 2 days). However, if these units are too small (e.g., receiving 1 cent on each of 10,000 days), they may fall beneath the person's hedonic limen and have no hedonic benefit at all. Do people know where their limens lie? In 6 experiments, participants predicted that the hedonic benefit of a large gain would be increased by segregating it into smaller units, and they were right; but participants also predicted that the hedonic benefit of a small gain would be increased by segregating it into smaller units, and they were wrong. Segregation of small gains decreased rather than increased hedonic benefit. These experiments suggest that people may underestimate the value of the hedonic limen and thus may oversegregate small gains.