The Integration of Personal Identity,Religious Identity,and Moral Identity in Emerging Adulthood

The present study investigated the relative roles of identity structure (i.e., personal identity) and identity contents (i.e., religious identity and moral identity) in predicting emerging adults’ prosocial and antisocial behaviors. The sample included 9,495 college students. A variable-centered analysis (path analysis) used personal identity, religious identity, and moral identity as predictors of prosocial and antisocial behavior and tested interactions of personal identity with religious identity and moral identity. Moral identity was the strongest predictor of both behaviors, and religious identity and moral identity both interacted with personal identity in predicting antisocial behavior. A person-centered analysis (latent profile analysis) found three classes: integrated, moral identity–focused, and religious identity–focused, with integrated being most adaptive on both outcomes.     

Don’t make me angry,you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry: Volitional choices to act or inhibit are modulated by subliminal perception of emotional faces

Volitional action and self-control—feelings of acting according to one’s own intentions and in being control of one’s own actions—are fundamental aspects of human conscious experience. However, it is unknown whether high-level cognitive control mechanisms are affected by socially salient but nonconscious emotional cues. In this study, we manipulated free choice decisions to act or withhold an action by subliminally presenting emotional faces: In a novel version of the Go/NoGo paradigm, participants made speeded button-press responses to Go targets, withheld responses to NoGo targets, and made spontaneous, free choices to execute or withhold the response for Choice targets. Before each target, we presented emotional faces, backwards masked to render them nonconscious. In Intentional trials, subliminal angry faces made participants more likely to voluntarily withhold the action, whereas fearful and happy faces had no effects. In a second experiment, the faces were made supraliminal, which eliminated the effects of angry faces on volitional choices. A third experiment measured neural correlates of the effects of subliminal angry faces on intentional choice using EEG. After replicating the behavioural results found in Experiment 1, we identified a frontal-midline theta component—associated with cognitive control processes—which is present for volitional decisions, and is modulated by subliminal angry faces. This suggests a mechanism whereby subliminally presented “threat” stimuli affect conscious control processes. In summary, nonconscious perception of angry faces increases choices to inhibit, and subliminal influences on volitional action are deep seated and ecologically embedded.     

Explaining White Opposition to Black Political Leadership: The Role of Fear of Racial Favoritism

Despite the election of America's first Black president, most non‐Hispanic Whites continue to oppose Black political leadership. The conventional explanation for White opposition is sheer racial prejudice, yet the available empirical evidence for this theory is inconsistent. I test an alternative theory that Whites perceive Black political leaders as a threat to their group's interests. Using a new survey measure and nationally representative panel data covering the 2008, 2010, and 2012 U.S. elections, I find that a majority of Whites perceive Black elected officials as likely to favor Blacks over Whites. Moreover, fear of racial favoritism predicts support for Barack Obama in both cross‐sectional models and fixed‐effects models of within‐person change, controlling for negative racial stereotypes. I replicate these findings using a separate cross‐sectional survey fielded after the 2014 election that controls for racial resentment. Collectively, these results suggest that perceptions of conflicting group interests—and not just prejudice—drive White opposition to Black political leadership.     

Contrastive Constraints Guide Explanation‐Based Category Learning

This paper provides evidence for a contrastive account of explanation that is motivated by pragmatic theories that recognize the contribution that context makes to the interpretation of a prompt for explanation. This study replicates the primary findings of previous work in explanation‐based category learning (Williams & Lombrozo, 2010), extending that work by illustrating the critical role of the context in this type of learning. Participants interacted with items from two categories either by describing the items or explaining their category membership. We manipulated the feature overlap between the categories and examined both the explanations generated and acquired knowledge of the categories. Explanations for membership in a given category were influenced by the unprompted contrast category, indicating an important role for contrastive processing in the generation of explanations. The influence of the contrast category was similarly seen in the transfer performance of the participants.     

What's Context Got to Do with It? Comparative Difficulty of Test Questions Influences Metacognition and Corrected Scores for Formula‐scored Exams

Summary: On formula‐scored exams students receive points and penalties for correct and incorrect answers, respectively, but they can avoid the penalty by withholding incorrect answers. However, test‐takers have difficulty strategically regulating their accuracy and often set an overly conservative metacognitive response bias (e.g., Higham, 2007). The current experiments extended these findings by exploring whether the comparative difficulty of surrounding test questions (i.e., easy vs. hard)—a factor unrelated to the knowledge being tested—impacts metacognitive response bias for medium‐difficulty test questions. Comparative difficulty had no significant influence on participants' ability to choose correct answers for medium questions, but it did affect willingness to report answers and confidence ratings. This difference carried over to corrected scores (scores after penalties are applied) when comparative difficulty was manipulated within‐subjects: Scores were higher in the hard condition. Results are discussed in terms of implications for interpreting formula‐scored tests and underlying mechanisms of performance.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Integrating fieldwork into employment counseling for methadone‐treatment patients

An innovative employment counseling model, Customized Employment Supports, was developed for methadone‐treatment patients, a population with historically low employment rates. The effectiveness of a key component of the model, “vocational fieldwork,” the delivery of services in the community rather than only within the clinic, was assessed through a quasi‐experimental study of the first 55 patients receiving the model in 2 clinics. Employment outcomes after 6 months were compared between patients who received vocational fieldwork (n = 18) and those who did not (n = 37). Logistic regression analysis demonstrated that patients receiving vocational fieldwork had significantly better outcomes for competitive work, informal work, and any paid work.     

An innovative cognitive strategy to assist problem gamblers

The clinical and research literature suggests that cognitive and behavioural therapies are particularly helpful in assisting clients overcome problem gambling behaviour. Several articles have described the efficacy of a range of cognitive interventions, especially provision of information regarding rates of return and the odds of games and the exploration of irrational beliefs and myths and misconceptions regarding gambling activity. This paper describes in detail an innovative cognitive strategy which focuses on problem gambling clients' financial status. The strategy incorporates the use of illustrations, generally using a whiteboard, to highlight how problem gambling behaviour negatively impacts on financial wealth over time. Step by step instructions are provided, together with illustrations, to allow clinicians to incorporate the strategy in treatment with their own clients.