Four empirical tests of Unconscious Thought Theory

According to Unconscious Thought Theory, people make better decisions after unconscious than after conscious thought (Dijksterhuis, Bos, Nordgren, & van Baaren, 2006a). Unconscious Thought Theory yields four specific predictions. First, an exact replication of Dijksterhuis et al. (2006a) study should indicate that unconscious decisions are superior to conscious decisions. Second, decisions should improve with duration of conscious thought. Third, unconscious decisions should be superior to conscious decisions, even if unconscious decisions are deliberated while having access to information. Fourth, unconscious decisions should be based on a weighting strategy. We report results of four studies, featuring 480 participants, that yield no evidence in favor of these predictions. Therefore our findings cast doubt on Unconscious Thought Theory and its advice to base decisions on unconscious thought. The results of our studies suggest that it is better to base decisions on conscious thought while having access to information.     

A retrospective chart study: the pathway to a diagnosis for adults referred for ASD assessment

Charts of 125 adults (18 to 82 years), referred to an autism expert team for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) assessment, were reviewed to explore the pathway to an adulthood ASD diagnosis. The participants first contacted the mental health care clinic at a median age of 19 years (range 2 to 78 years). Men contacted the clinic slightly earlier than women. The main referral reasons were social problems, feelings of anxiety and mood disturbances. The most common earlier diagnoses were anxiety and mood disorders or psychosis-related disorders. These diagnoses were more common in women than in men. Surprisingly few differences emerged between those who finally received an ASD diagnosis and those who did not. However, those with an ASD diagnosis contacted the clinic a mean of 15 years earlier and less frequently received different former diagnoses, although the type of diagnoses did not differ. The diagnostic criteria that were prevalent during early childhood of these adults did not influence their diagnostic history. A quarter of these clients were known with social problems within the mental health care system, but ASD was not assessed. Hence, the current study shows that the pathways to an adulthood ASD diagnosis are very heterogeneous.     

Bicycle helmets – A case of risk compensation?

Several studies have shown that bicycle helmets have the potential of reducing injuries from accidents. Yet, no studies have found good evidence of an injury reducing effect in countries that have introduced bicycle helmet legislation. Two of the most promising explanations for why helmet laws do not work as intended are risk compensation and shifts in the cycle population as a response to the law.The present article investigates whether the lack of effect of helmet wearing laws is due to risk compensation mechanisms or population shifts (i.e. discouraging cyclists with the lowest accident risk, and thereby increasing the overall average risk per cyclist). A random sample of 1504 bicycle owners in Norway responded to a questionnaire on among other things helmet use, bicycle equipment use, accident involvement, cycling behaviour and risk perception. Data were analysed by using structural equation model (SEM). The results show that the cyclist population in Norway can be divided into two sub-populations: one speed-happy group that cycle fast and have lots of cycle equipment including helmets, and one traditional kind of cyclist without much equipment, cycling slowly. With all the limitations that have to be placed on a cross sectional study such as this, the results indicate that at least part of the reason why helmet laws do not appear to be beneficial is that they disproportionately discourage the safest cyclists.     

Development of a Facebook Addiction Scale

The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS), initially a pool of 18 items, three reflecting each of the six core elements of addiction (salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse), was constructed and administered to 423 students together with several other standardized self-report scales (Addictive Tendencies Scale, Online Sociability Scale, Facebook Attitude Scale, NEO-FFI, BIS/BAS scales, and Sleep questions). That item within each of the six addiction elements with the highest corrected item-total correlation was retained in the final scale. The factor structure of the scale was good (RMSEA = .046, CFI = .99) and coefficient alpha was .83. The 3-week test-retest reliability coefficient was .82. The scores converged with scores for other scales of Facebook activity. Also, they were positively related to Neuroticism and Extraversion, and negatively related to Conscientiousness. High scores on the new scale were associated with delayed bedtimes and rising times.     

Development of a work addiction scale

Andreassen, C. S., Griffiths, M. D., Hetland, J. & Pallesen, S. (2012). Development of a work addiction scale. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53, 265–272. Research into excessive work has gained increasing attention over the last 20 years. Terms such as “workaholism,”“work addiction” and “excessive work” have been used interchangeably. Given the increase in empirical research, this study presents the development of the Bergen Work Addiction Scale (BWAS), a new psychometrically validated scale for the assessment of work addiction. A pool of 14 items, with two reflecting each of seven core elements of addiction (i.e., salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, relapse, and problems) was initially constructed. The items were then administered to two samples, one recruited by a web survey following a television broadcast about workaholism (n = 11,769) and one comprising participants in the second wave of a longitudinal internet‐based survey about working life (n = 368). The items with the highest corrected item‐total correlation from within each of the seven addiction elements were retained in the final scale. The assumed one‐factor solution of the refined seven‐item scale was acceptable (root mean square error of approximation = 0.077, Comparative Fit Index = 0.96, Tucker‐Lewis Index = 0.95) and the internal reliability of the two samples were 0.84 and 0.80, respectively. The scores of the BWAS converged with scores on other workaholism scales, except for a Work Enjoyment subscale. A suggested cut‐off for categorization of workaholics showed good discriminative ability in terms of working hours, leadership position, and subjective health complaints. It is concluded that the BWAS has good psychometric properties.     

Adolescent smoking behavior and outcome expectancies

Adolescent smoking behavior is assumed to be associated with smoking outcome expectancies. Results in this paper are based on data from the control group of two data collections among Norwegian secondary school students taken approximately 30 months apart (T1 and T2). The dimensionality of smoking outcome expectancies was the same at both time points, revealing three components ("Addicted", "Not harmful" and "Social"). After correction for attenuation, the Pearson's correlation between T1 and T2 was 0.41 for the total sumscore, indicating low to moderate relative stability. When examining smoking expectancy sumscore means by smoking habits at T1 and T2, never smokers were different from smokers on both occasions. Never smokers scored low on "Social" and "Not harmful", and high on "Addictive". All associations were statistically significant (p < 0.001). The "Social" dimension was the strongest predictor of smoking behavior at T1 and T2. One of the outcome expectancy sumscores ("Addictive") at T1 predicted smoking habits at T2 after controlling for smoking habits at T1 (p < 0.01). This predictor was significant also after entering outcome expectancy sumscores at T2 into the model (p < 0.05). These results indicate that outcome expectations other than the health-related ones should be paid attention to when planning new prevention programs.     

Generalizing parametric models by introducing trial-by-trial parameter variability: The case of TVA

We identify two biases in the traditional use of Bundesen’s Theory of Visual Attention (TVA) and show that they can be substantially reduced by introducing trial-by-trial variability in the model. We analyze whole and partial report data from a comprehensive empirical study with 347 participants and elaborate on Bayesian model selection theory for quantifying the advantage of trial-by-trial generalization in general. The analysis provides strong evidence of trial-by-trial variation in both the VSTM capacity parameter and perceptual threshold parameter of TVA. On average, the VSTM capacity bias was found to be at least half an item, while the perceptual threshold parameter was found to be underestimated by about 2 ms.