Age differences in the organization of emotion knowledge: effects involving valence and time frame

Older and younger adults attend to and remember emotion information differently. The present study builds on this work by investigating age-related differences in the schematic organization of emotion knowledge. Younger and older adults reported on their experiences of positive and negative affect, both today and in general. Of primary interest was judgment speed as a function of matches (e.g., positive-positive) or mismatches (e.g., negative-positive) in valence and time frame across consecutive trials. Older adults exhibited stronger valence-related priming effects and weaker time-frame-related priming effects, relative to younger adults. Results remained significant when controlling for individual differences in speed, speed variability, motor priming, temperament, and life satisfaction. The discussion focuses on the manner in which age differences in the schematic organization of emotion knowledge might contribute to age differences in the self-concept, affective processing, and emotional experience.     

Turning the other cheek. Agreeableness and the regulation of aggression-related primes

Aggression-related cues (e.g., violent media) can prime both hostile thoughts and the tendency to commit aggression. However, not everyone engages in an aggressive act after being exposed to an aggression-related cue. Some thought pattern, perhaps an automatic one, may prevent the cue-aggression sequence in some individuals. These considerations motivated the present research, which examined the potential for agreeableness to moderate the effect of aggression-related cues on behavior and cognition. In Study 1, we found that priming with aggression-related cues increased aggressive behavior, but only among individuals low in agreeableness. Study 2 showed that aggression-related cues activated prosocial thoughts among individuals high in agreeable affect (a component of agreeableness). These results reveal that agreeable individuals are able to short-circuit the cue-aggression sequence, likely by recruiting prosocial thoughts in response to aggression-related primes.     

Stuck in a rut: perseverative response tendencies and the neuroticism-distress relationship

Clinical views of neuroticism-linked distress often make reference to the perseverative sorts of mental processes that reinforce such experiences. The goal of the present 7 studies, involving 488 undergraduate participants, was to directly examine such perseverative processes. Individual differences in response perseveration were operationalized in terms of choice reaction time difficulties switching (vs. repeating) responses across consecutive trials. Response perseveration interacted with neuroticism in predicting negative emotion, dissatisfaction with life, and displays of negative emotion (Studies 1-4). Specifically, neuroticism-outcome relations were quite a bit stronger at high levels of perseveration. Additional studies (Studies 5-7) provided support for the convergent and discriminant validity of response perseveration. Overall, the results highlight the manner in which response perseveration reinforces experiences of negative emotion.     

Knowing when you don't know enough: Children's judgements about ambiguous information

Two experiments were carried out to find out whether young children's failure to realise when messages are ambiguous is specific to verbally transmitted information about a person's intended meaning. In Experiment 1, children judged whether they had been told/shown enough to identify which one of a set of cards the experimenter had chosen. In one game the experimenter gave verbal messages about her chosen cards, and in a second game, she gave visual messages. With ambiguous visual messages, relevant parts of cards were physically covered. We expected that this would make it more obvious that the speaker's intended meaning was not being fully conveyed. No difference was found between verbal and visual conditions: correct judgements about message ambiguity occured with the same frequency in both.In Experiment 2, children judged in one game whether they had been told enough about the experimenter's chosen card, as in Experiment 1. In a second game, visual information about a card was not conveyed by the experimenter, Rather, the child operated a pointer, set in a disc with windows, beneath which lay cards. The child judged whether the window showed enough for him/her to tell which card the pointer indicated. Again, correct judgments about ambiguity occured with the same frequency in both games.The results implied that children's failure to realise when verbal messages are ambiguous is but one aspect of a more general failure to realise when one has insufficient information at one's disposal to guarantee a correct interpretation of what the world is like.     

Personality Moderating Variables: A Warning about Statistical Artifact and a Comparison of Analytic Techniques

ABSTRACT Personality moderating variables act to qualify the relationship between a personality trait measure and a relevant behavioral criterion. Two data analytic techniques that can be used to test for significant moderating effects are the "median split" (MS) approach and the "moderated multiple regression" (MMR) approach. The goals of the present research were ( a ) to apply the MS approach to computer-simulated data in which the moderator and trait extremity are confounded, to determine the extent of artifact, and ( b ) to compare the performance (Type I and Type II error rates) of the two approaches when applied to confounded and nonconfounded data. It was found that when the MS approach was applied to confounded data in which no real moderating effect existed, this approach produced an alarming rate of apparent, but spurious, moderating effects. When the MMR approach was applied to the same data, the rate of spurious effects was reduced to that expected by chance. When both approaches were applied to simulated data which contained genuine moderating effects, the MMR approach consistently resulted in more correct detections of these effects than the MS approach. We conclude that researchers should always employ the MMR rather than the MS approach when testing for personality moderator variable effects.     

Family adjustment,parental attitudes,and social desirability

This study examines the role of social desirability response set on the report of marital adjustment, child adjustment, and parenting attitudes. Results from 69 married couples closely replicate previous self-report findings suggesting that the more positive the report of marital adjustment, the fewer the number of child problem behaviors endorsed by parents (r = -.19(69), p less than .05). When social desirability is controlled, however, the marital-child adjustment relationship is nonsignificant. Previous reports of a global relationship between marital and child adjustment may have been inflated by individual differences in willingness to endorse problems on self-report measures. Parenting attitudes are not associated with social desirability or marital adjustment. Warmth, but not authoritarianism, is negatively correlated with child behavior problems in the home (r = -.25(69), p less than .01). The authors propose that family interaction research use a multimethod strategy to focus on circumscribed variables that influence marital and parenting behavior.