Distraction and placebo: two separate routes to pain control

An explosion of recent research has studied whether placebo treatments influence health-related outcomes and their biological markers, but almost no research has examined the psychological processes required for placebo effects to occur. This study tested whether placebo treatment and cognitive distraction reduce pain through shared or independent processes. We tested the joint effects of performance of an executive working memory task and placebo treatment on thermal pain perception. An interactive effect of these two manipulations would constitute evidence for shared mechanisms, whereas additive effects would imply separate mechanisms. Participants (N = 33) reported reduced pain both when they performed the working memory task and when they received the placebo treatment, but the reductions were additive, a result indicating that the executive demands of the working memory task did not interfere with placebo analgesia. Furthermore, placebo analgesia did not impair task performance. Together, these data suggest that placebo analgesia does not depend on active redirection of attention and that expectancy and distraction can be combined to maximize pain relief.     

Self-deception's adaptive value: effects of positive thinking and the winner effect

There is a puzzle about why self-deception, a process that obscures the truth, is so pervasive in human behavior given that tracking the truth seems important for our survival and reproduction. William von Hippel and Robert Trivers argue that, despite appearances, there is good reason to think that self-deception is an adaptation by arguing: (1) self-deception leads to a positive self-perception and (2) a positive self-perception increases an individual's fitness. D.S. Neil Van Leeuwen, however, gives persuasive arguments against both steps. In response, we will defend both propositions, thereby supporting the conclusion that self-deception indeed has adaptive value. The first premise will be bolstered by a survey of the philosophical literature and empirical work on self-deception, whereas the second will be strengthened by empirical research on a behavioral phenomenon known as the winner effect.     

Audience design affects acoustic reduction via production facilitation

In this article, we examine the hypothesis that acoustic variation (e.g., reduced vs. prominent forms) results from audience design. Bard et al. (Journal of Memory and Language 42:1-22, 2000) have argued that acoustic prominence is unaffected by the speaker's estimate of addressee knowledge, using paradigms that contrast speaker and addressee knowledge. This question was tested in a novel paradigm, focusing on the effects of addressees' feedback about their understanding of the speaker's intended message. Speakers gave instructions to addressees about where to place objects (e.g., the teapot goes on red). The addressee either anticipated the object, by picking it up before the instruction, or waited for the instruction. For anticipating addressees, speakers began speaking more quickly and pronounced the word the with shorter duration, demonstrating effects of audience design. However, no effects appeared on the head noun (e.g., teapot), as measured by duration, amplitude, and perceived intelligibility. These results are consistent with a mechanism in which evidence about addressee understanding facilitates production processes, as opposed to triggering particular acoustic forms.     

Seeing the silver lining: potential benefits of trauma exposure in college students

In the current study we compare college students exposed to a potentially traumatic event (PTE) meeting self-report criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), PTE-exposed students not meeting criteria for PTSD, and non-exposed students on measures of perceived social support, self-esteem, and optimism (i.e., personal resources) and report use of specific coping strategies. Results indicate that the PTE-exposed/probable PTSD group reported fewer personal resources, greater use of avoidance-focused coping, and less use of approach-focused coping than the other two groups. The PTE-exposed/no PTSD group reported greater perceived social support and less use of avoidance-focused coping than the non-exposed group. We discuss the findings' implications for the prevention and treatment of trauma-related psychopathology.     

Attitudes of Business Students’ Toward Plagiarism

This research examines the ethical orientations of students (ethical idealism, ethical relativism and Machiavellianism) towards their attitude to plagiarize. It also examines the moderating effect of religious orientation on the relationship of the independent variables toward students’ attitude towards plagiarism. Data was collected from 160 business diploma and undergraduate students from a local private college and a local public university in Malaysia. Results from the hierarchical regression analysis showed that ethical relativism and Machiavellianism had a positive relationship with students’ attitude towards plagiarism whilst ethical idealism was negatively related to students’ attitude towards plagiarism. Religious orientation was found to have no moderating effect on the relationship between the three independent variables: ethical idealism, ethical relativism and Machiavellianism and the dependent variable, students’ attitude towards plagiarism.     

Inhibitory guidance in visual search: The case of movement–form conjunctions

We used a probe-dot procedure to examine the roles of excitatory attentional guidance and distractor suppression in search for movement-form conjunctions. Participants in Experiment?1 completed a conjunction (moving X amongst moving Os and static Xs) and two single-feature (moving X amongst moving Os, and static X amongst static Os) conditions. "Active" participants searched for the target, whereas "passive" participants viewed the displays without responding. Subsequently, both groups located (left or right) a probe dot appearing in either an occupied or an unoccupied location. In the conjunction condition, the active group located probes presented on static distractors more slowly than probes presented on moving distractors, reversing the direction of the difference found within the passive group. This disadvantage for probes on static items was much stronger in conjunction than in single-feature search. The same pattern of results was replicated in Experiment?2, which used a go/no-go procedure. Experiment?3 extended the go/no-go procedure to the case of search for a static target and revealed increased probe localisation times as a consequence of active search, primarily for probes on moving distractor items. The results demonstrated attentional guidance by inhibition of distractors in conjunction search.     

Towards a Global Human Embryonic Stem Cell Bank

An increasingly unbridgeable gap exists between the supply and demand of transplantable organs. Human embryonic stem cell technology could solve the organ shortage problem by restoring diseased or damaged tissue across a range of common conditions. However, such technology faces several largely ignored immunological challenges in delivering cell lines to large populations. We address some of these challenges and argue in favor of encouraging contribution or intentional creation of embryos from which widely immunocompatible stem cell lines could be derived. Further, we argue that current immunological constraints in tissue transplantation demand the creation of a global stem cell bank, which may hold particular promise for minority populations and other sub-groups currently marginalized from organ procurement and allocation systems. Finally, we conclude by offering a number of practical and ethically oriented recommendations for constructing a human embryonic stem cell bank that we hope will help solve the ongoing organ shortage problem.     

College Student Cheating: The Role of Motivation,Perceived Norms,Attitudes, and Knowledge of Institutional Policy

This study provides a comparative analysis of students' self-reported beliefs and behaviors related to six analogous pairs of conventional and digital forms of academic cheating. Results from an online survey of undergraduates at two universities (N = 1,305) suggest that students use conventional means more often than digital means to copy homework, collaborate when it is not permitted, and copy from others during an exam. However, engagement in digital plagiarism (cutting and pasting from the Internet) has surpassed conventional plagiarism. Students also reported using digital “cheat sheets” (i.e., notes stored in a digital device) to cheat on tests more often than conventional “cheat sheets.” Overall, 32% of students reported no cheating of any kind, 18.2% reported using only conventional methods, 4.2% reported using only digital methods, and 45.6% reported using both conventional and digital methods to cheat. “Digital only” cheaters were less likely than “conventional only” cheaters to report assignment cheating, but the former was more likely than the latter to report engagement in plagiarism. Students who cheated both conventionally and digitally were significantly different from the other three groups in terms of their self-reported engagement in all three types of cheating behavior. Students in this “both” group also had the lowest sense of moral responsibility to refrain from cheating and the greatest tendency to neutralize that responsibility. The scientific and educational implications of these findings are discussed in this study.     

Attachment–aversion (AA) model of customer–brand relationships

The present paper proposes a customer–brand relationships model and empirically tests the following: (1) brand–self distance and brand prominence as representing customers' attachment–aversion relationships (AA Relationships) with a brand, (2) key distinguishing differences between the AA Relationships measure and other alternative relationship measures (i.e., brand attachment, emotional valence and brand attitude strength) based on a set of dependent variables, (3) three key determinants of the AA Relationships and the underlying process between the AA Relationships and behavioral intentions and actual brand behaviors, and (4) customer age as moderating the customer–brand relationships specified in the nomological model of the AA Relationships. The results offer strong support for the unique and important contribution of the AA Relationships model as representing consumers' relationship valence with a brand and its salience.