Physical health problems, depressive mood, and cortisol secretion in old age: buffer effects of health engagement control strategies.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the protective role played by control behaviors aimed at overcoming physical health problems (health engagement control strategies; HECS) in the associations between older adults' physical health problems, depressive mood, and diurnal cortisol secretion. It was expected that adaptive levels of HECS would buffer the adverse effects of physical health problems on depressive mood and diurnal cortisol secretion. DESIGN AND MEASURES: Physical health problems and HECS were measured in a cross-sectional sample of 215 community-dwelling older adults. In addition, participants' depressive mood and patterns of diurnal cortisol secretion were assessed across 3 days. RESULTS: The findings demonstrate that physical health problems predicted high levels of depressive mood and diurnal cortisol secretion, but only among older adults who reported low levels of HECS (and not among older adults who reported high levels of HECS). Moreover, depressive mood completely mediated the buffering effect of HECS on the association between physical health problems and cortisol secretion. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that adaptive levels of HECS represent a psychological mechanism that can protect older adults from experiencing the adverse emotional and biological consequences of physical health problems.     

The factor structure of the MMPI-2 Restructured Clinical (RC) scales

We investigated the MMPI-2 Restructured Clinical (RC) scales (Tellegen et al., 2003) to determine if they had a more differentiated factor structure than the MMPI-2 Clinical scales. When factored alone, the RC scales had a 5-dimensional structure; the Clinical scales had 3 dimensions. When factored in combination with the Content scales, both sets of scales produced 5 dimensions. However, the RC and Content factors generally provided more efficient and logical markers of psychopathology than the Clinical and Content factors. We discuss interpretive considerations.     

Two types of recollection-based monitoring in younger and older adults: Recall-to-reject and the distinctiveness heuristic

People often use recollection to avoid false memories. At least two types of recollection-based monitoring processes can be identified in the literature. Recall-to-reject is based on the recall of logically inconsistent information (which disqualifies the false event from having occurred), whereas the distinctiveness heuristic is based on the failure to recall to-be-expected information (which is diagnostic of non-occurrence). We attempted to investigate these hypothetical monitoring processes in a single task, as a first step at delineating the functional relationship between them. By design, participants could reject familiar lures by (1) recalling them from a to-be-excluded list (recall-to-reject) or (2) realising the absence of expected picture recollections (the distinctiveness heuristic). Both manipulations reduced false recognition in young adults, suggesting that these two types of monitoring were deployed on the same test. In contrast, older adults had limited success in reducing false recognition with either manipulation, indicating deficits in recollection-based monitoring processes. Depending on how a retrieval task is structured, attempts to use one monitoring process might interfere with another, especially in older adults.     

Cocchiarella’s Formal Ontology and the Paradoxes of Hyperintensionality

This is a critical discussion of Nino B. Cocchiarella’s book “Formal Ontology and Conceptual Realism.” It focuses on paradoxes of hyperintensionality that may arise in formal systems of intensional logic.

Changing an unfavorable employer reputation: the roles of recruitment message‐type and familiarity with employer

An unfavorable employer reputation can impair an organization's ability to recruit job seekers. The present research used a 4 week longitudinal experimental design to investigate whether recruitment messages can positively change an existing unfavorable employer reputation. Two hundred and twenty‐two job seekers rated their perceptions of an organization before and after being randomly assigned to receive a series of high‐ or low‐information recruitment messages. As expected, job seekers receiving high‐information messages changed their perceptions more than job seekers who were exposed to low‐information messages. In addition, job seekers' initial familiarity with the employer was negatively related to change in their perceptions of employer reputation. Finally, there was some evidence that job seekers' familiarity with the employer influenced the impact of different recruitment messages. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

The lesson of Newcomb’s paradox

In Newcomb’s paradox you can choose to receive either the contents of a particular closed box, or the contents of both that closed box and another one. Before you choose though, an antagonist uses a prediction algorithm to accurately deduce your choice, and uses that deduction to fill the two boxes. The way they do this guarantees that you made the wrong choice. Newcomb’s paradox is that game theory’s expected utility and dominance principles appear to provide conflicting recommendations for what you should choose. Here we show that the conflicting recommendations assume different probabilistic structures relating your choice and the algorithm’s prediction. This resolves the paradox: the reason there appears to be two conflicting recommendations is that the probabilistic structure relating the problem’s random variables is open to two, conflicting interpretations. We then show that the accuracy of the prediction algorithm in Newcomb’s paradox, the focus of much previous work, is irrelevant. We end by showing that Newcomb’s paradox is time-reversal invariant; both the paradox and its resolution are unchanged if the algorithm makes its ‘prediction’ after you make your choice rather than before.