Reactivity and unreliability of husbands as participant observers

This study examined the reliability and reactivity of participant observation. Twelve couples engaged in two discussions in a laboratory, one on a conflict topic and one on a consensus topic. For the eight couples in the experimental sequences, a baseline discussion was followed by participant observation in which the husband recorded his wife's use of I while continuing to converse. The four couples in the control sequences conversed without participant observation. Compared to observations made by a trained observer, the husbands were unreliable observers, underestimating their wives' use of I. Participant observation was reactive (P<.01), with more wives decreasing their use of I in the experimental sequences than in the control sequences (p<.094). The topic of discussion did not differentially influence reliability or reactivity.This research was conducted as the first author's independent doctoral research project. We extend gratitude to the Research Council of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for Grant 0-2-110-218-XXXXX-7548; the Statistical Consulting Center of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro; two anonymous reviewers; and our research assistants, Suzanne Brannon, Ben Hardie, Kathy Lindamood, Amy Mitchem, Regina Pierce, and Elga Wulfert. Portions of this paper were presented at the meeting of the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy, Washington, D.C., December 1983.     

Digital daydreaming: Introducing the spontaneous smartphone checking scale

Smartphones are a ubiquitous part of many people's lives, but little is known about their impact on everyday thought processes. Here we introduce the spontaneous smartphone checking scale (SSCS)—which measures the tendency to direct attention toward one's smartphone, unpreceded by external prompts (e.g., notifications, or alerts) and with no specific conscious goal in mind, as a parallel to mind-wandering directed toward internal thoughts. The SSCS showed good psychometric properties and construct validity. It separated from measures of daydreaming and mind-wandering by not loading on dimensions related to self-consciousness, reflection, and rumination, but instead loading highly on a factor associated with other aspects of digital communication and concerns about public appearance on social media. This suggests that spontaneous smartphone checking serves different mental and social functions than internally generated spontaneous thought processes. We discuss possible long-term effects of spontaneous smartphone checking taking up time for internally generated spontaneous thoughts.     

Implicit and explicit COVID-19-vaccine harmfulness/helpfulness associations predict vaccine beliefs,intentions, and behaviors

We investigated the role of implicit and explicit associations between harm and COVID-19 vaccines using a large sample (N = 4668) of online volunteers. The participants completed a brief implicit association test and explicit measures to evaluate the extent to which they associated COVID-19 vaccines with concepts of harmfulness or helpfulness. We examined the relationship between these harmfulness/helpfulness COVID-19 vaccine associations and vaccination status, intentions, beliefs, and behavior. We found that stronger implicit and explicit associations that COVID-19 vaccines are helpful relate to vaccination status and beliefs about the COVID-19 vaccine. That is, stronger pro-helpful COVID-19 vaccine associations, both implicitly and explicitly, related to greater intentions to be vaccinated, more positive beliefs about the vaccine, and greater vaccine uptake.     

Social cohesion predicts COVID-19 vaccination intentions and uptake

COVID-19 vaccination is widely regarded as an individual decision, resting upon individual characteristics and demographic factors. In this research, we provide evidence that psychological group membership, and more precisely, social cohesion—a multidimensional concept that encompasses one's sense of connectedness to, and interrelations within, a group—can help us understand COVID-19 vaccination intentions (Study 1) and uptake (Study 2). Study 1 is a repeated-measures study with a representative sample of 3026 Australians. We found evidence that social cohesion can be conceptualised as a multidimensional structure; moreover, social cohesion at Wave 1 (early in the COVID-19) predicted greater vaccination intention and lower perceived risk of vaccination at Wave 2 (4 months later). In Study 2 (a cross-sectional study, N = 499), the multidimensional structure of social cohesion was associated with greater uptake of vaccine doses (in addition to willingness to receive further doses and perceived risk of the vaccine). These relations were found after controlling for a series of demographic (i.e., sex, age, income), health-related factors (i.e., subjective health; perceived risk; having been diagnosed with COVID-19), and individual differences (political orientation, social dominance orientation, individualism). These results demonstrate the need to go beyond individual factors when it comes to behaviours that protect groups, and particularly when examining COVID-19 vaccination—one of the most important ways of slowing the spread of the virus.     

A comparison of leverpress and head-poke discriminated Sidman avoidance

A discriminated Sidman avoidance procedure used by Forgione (1970) was replicated using a head-poke response instead of a leverpress as the avoidance operant. The resultant data were described in terms of the five dependent measures reported by Forgione. Head-poke avoidance was found to be more efficient than its leverpress counterpart and compared very favorably with the lever-disabling (or shock-timer-on) procedure used by Forgione to break up inefficient leverpress behavior patterns.