Keeping Up with the Joneses: Friends’ Perfectionism and Students’ Orientation Toward Extrinsic Aspirations

Kasser and Ryan (1993,1996) have contrasted two types of life values: intrinsic aspirations, which include community contribution, building close relationships, and self‐growth, and extrinsic aspirations, which include fame, wealth, and physical beauty. Prioritization of extrinsic relative to intrinsic aspirations has been related cross‐sectionally to decreased well‐being (Kasser, 2002). However, the influence of close others in the etiology of young adults' prioritization of extrinsic aspirations, and the prospective effects of aspirations on well‐being, are not well understood. In a multiple‐informant prospective study of 341 university students (mean age = 19.4; 64% Caucasian; 74% female), we examined the influence of friends’ and family members’ perfectionism on participants’ aspirations, and the outcomes of prioritization of extrinsic aspirations. Having friends high in other‐oriented perfectionism was significantly positively related to prioritization of extrinsic over intrinsic aspirations. Furthermore, living with friends amplified the effect. Last, prioritization of extrinsic aspirations at T1 was related to decreased subjective well‐being and self‐concordance for goals 3 months later. The study provides preliminary evidence for a relationship between friends’ other‐oriented perfectionism and students’ orientation toward extrinsic aspirations, as well as negative prospective consequences of students’ orientation to extrinsic aspirations.     

African American and Mexican American Youths’ College Adjustment and Perceptions of Parental Academic Socialization: Interactions Between Ethnicity and Parental Education

In a sample of 283 African American and Mexican American college students, we investigated the effects of ethnicity and parental education on three dimensions of parental academic socialization (PAS), active involvement, autonomy support, and demanding hard work, and their impact on college adjustment. Controlling for parental education, African Americans reported higher parental active involvement. Academic self-efficacy mediated the effects of both demanding hard work and autonomy support on college adjustment, controlling for parental education. Moderated mediation models suggested that effects of both demanding hard work and autonomy support on academic self-efficacy were stronger for African Americans than for Mexican Americans.     

Sarcasm and emoticons: Comprehension and emotional impact

Most theorists agree that sarcasm serves some communicative function that would not be achieved by speaking directly, such as eliciting a particular emotional response in the recipient. One debate concerns whether this kind of language serves to enhance or mute the positive or negative nature of a message. The role of textual devices commonly used to accompany written sarcastic remarks is also unclear. The current research uses a rating task to investigate the influence of textual devices (emoticons and punctuation marks) on the comprehension of, and emotional responses to, sarcastic versus literal criticism and praise, for both unambiguous (Experiment 1) and ambiguous (Experiment 2) materials. Results showed that sarcastic criticism was rated as less negative than literal criticism, and sarcastic praise was rated as less positive than literal praise, suggesting that sarcasm serves to mute the positive or negative nature of the message. In terms of textual devices, results showed that emoticons had a larger influence on both comprehension and emotional impact than punctuation marks.     

Judgments of Decision Effectiveness: Actor-Observer Differences in Overconfidence

Subjects playing the role of psychiatrists (actors) engaged in a simulated medical decision-making task in which they attempted to bring the value of a patient indicator variable into a desired range. For each treatment recommended by the actor, both the actor and an observer subject playing the role of a nurse assessed the probability that the treatment would be effective. Both actors and observers were overconfident. Actors were more confident in their treatment recommendations than were observers, but this difference was eliminated when observers were given the opportunity to offer their own alternative recommendation. Under the latter circumstances, actors and observers were equally confident in the actors' decisions but observers were more confident than actors in the observers' decisions. These findings suggest that while control over the outcome of the decision has little influence on actor-observer differences in confidence, feedback regarding this outcome plays a crucial role.     

Traumatic memories and pseudomemories in posttraumatic stress disorder

Intrusive imagery was investigated in survivors of motor vehicle accidents with (a) posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and accurate recall of the trauma, (b) PTSD and amnesia of the trauma, (c) no PTSD, or (d) control participants who simulated PTSD. Imagery was precipitated by presentation of an audiotape of a motor vehicle accident. Whereas the traumatic imagery of participants who had accurate recall of their trauma was consistent with third party accounts of the trauma, the imagery of amnesic participants was inconsistent with these accounts. Participants were then interviewed about cognitive and emotional aspects of their responses. All participants with PTSD and simulators reported similar levels of imagery detail, involuntariness, re-experiencing, and emotional response, and reported higher levels than participants with no PTSD. Findings are discussed in terms of cognitive and contextual factors that can mediate accurate and inaccurate traumatic imagery. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Collecting information: Optimizing outcomes, screening options, or facilitating discrimination?

Collection of information prior to a decision may be integrated into a compensatory choice process; if it is, the information packet that is collected should be the one that produces the highest net gain. Alternatively,information may be collected in order to screen out options that fail to meet minimum standards; if this is the case, people should not choose options on which they have not collected available information. We tested these and other predictions from the two approaches in four experiments. Participants were given specific information about three attributes of each choice option but only probabilistic information about a fourth one. They rated attractiveness of options, decidedwhether to collect specific information about the fourth attribute of each one, rated options again, and then selected one of them. Data were consistent with neither of the above approaches. Instead they suggested that people collect information in order to facilitate their ability to discriminate between the attractiveness of options.     

What Good is a Feminist Identity?: Women’s Feminist Identification and Role Expectations for Intimate and Sexual Relationships

Women’s feminist identification is associated with a growing list of favorable outcomes, predicting that these correlations will extend to egalitarian and assertive role expectations for committed and sexual partnerships, respectively. Surveying 165 undergraduate US women, nonfeminist passive acceptance was linked to low egalitarian expectations overall and across all seven subscales of the marriage role expectation inventory. It also was related to depressed sexual assertiveness overall and specifically in initiating sexual encounters and engaging in safe sexual practices. These negative associations were nonsignificant or positive for women with stronger feminist identification. When endorsement of passive acceptance was controlled for, the positive correlation between egalitarian and assertive expectations fell to nonsignificance, consistent with regarding nonfeminist attitudes as a confounded third common factor.     

Biased forecasting of postdecisional affect

Although anticipated postdecisional regret is a significant contributor to people's decision-making processes, the accuracy of people's regret forecasts has yet to be assessed systematically. Here we report two studies to fill this lacuna. In Study 1, we found that subjects who made reasonably high offers overpredicted the regret that they experienced after they unexpectedly failed at a negotiation. In Study 2, we found that subjects overpredicted the rejoicing and marginally underpredicted the regret that they experienced when they received higher marks than they had expected for their course work. Systematic affective misprediction implies that people making decisions should discount the regret and rejoicing that they anticipate will be associated with potential outcomes arising from those decisions.     

Sleep and Immunity: Cytokine Pathways Linking Sleep and Health Outcomes

ABSTRACT— The functions of sleep are enigmatic but are beginning to be delineated. Sleep has been long thought to be important for health, and poor sleep is prospectively associated with worsened health outcomes. Yet the mechanisms accounting for this are only partially understood. In this review, we suggest that the immune system plays a role in the relationship between sleep and health and that sleep processes and immunity show bidirectional interactions, as evidenced in both animal and human studies. Immunological signaling molecules, termed cytokines, are important in coordinating brain–immune system communication, and particular cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor, interleukin-1, and interleukin-6 play a crucial role in sleep regulation. Elevated levels of these cytokines are also associated with a number of chronic diseases and may provide a pathway linking poor sleep with health outcomes.