A Pilot Study of the Development of a Measure Assessing Adolescent Reactions to Parents in the Context of Emotion Socialization

We conducted a pilot study of the initial development of a self-report measure assessing how adolescents react when parents respond in a helpful manner to their sad emotional experiences. Participants were late adolescents (ages 18–20) attending a large, racially diverse urban university (N = 86; 75% women; 46% racial/ethnic minority). A broad range of relationship-oriented literatures (e.g., early childhood and marital) were considered in creating items for the Adolescent Reactions to Parents (ARP) scale. A 3 factor solution (Accepting, Avoidant, and Attacking) appeared to provide the most parsimonious fit to the data. Adequate levels of reliability were observed for each of the three ARP subscales. Zero-order correlations among subscales of the ARP were moderate in strength. Findings indicated that participants who reported more avoidant and attacking reactions also reported more adjustment difficulties including emotion regulation difficulties and symptoms of depression. Results suggest that the ARP scale has the potential to be a valuable tool for advancing knowledge related to the socialization of emotions.     

Differential age effects for implicit and explicit conceptual associative memory

Older adults show disproportionate declines in explicit memory for associative relative to item information. However, the source of these declines is still uncertain. One explanation is a generalized impairment in the processing of associative information. A second explanation is a more specialized impairment in the strategic, effortful recollection of associative information, leaving less effortful forms of associative retrieval preserved. Assessing implicit memory of new associations is a way to distinguish between these viewpoints. To date, mixed findings have emerged from studies of associative priming in aging. One factor that may account for the variability is whether the manipulations inadvertently involve strategic, explicit processes. In two experiments we present a novel paradigm of conceptual associative priming in which subjects make speeded associative judgments about unrelated objects. Using a size classification task, Experiment 1 showed equivalent associative priming between young and older adults. Experiment 2 generalized the results of Experiment 1 to an inside/outside classification task, while replicating the typical age-related impairment in associative but not item recognition. Taken together, the findings support the viewpoint that older adults can incidentally encode and retrieve new meaningful associations despite difficulty with the intentional recollection of the same information.     

Experimental modification of attribution processes

Attributional style is hypothesized to be a causative factor in depression vulnerability; however, no studies to date have examined whether manipulation of attributional style influences depressed mood. The purpose of this study was to determine whether computer-based cognitive bias modification (CBM) procedures could modify attributional style and influence stress vulnerability. Participants were provided with multiple training trials that were intended to promote the use of either a positive or a negative attributional style. Compared with individuals in the negative attributional style condition, individuals in the positive attributional style condition showed decreased tendency to make self-deficient causal attributions for poor performance on a difficult anagram test. Furthermore, individuals in the positive attributional style condition reported less depressed mood in response to this academic stressor. These results suggest that attributional style is not invariable and can potentially be modified with CBM approaches.     

Forced confabulation affects memory sensitivity as well as response bias

A signal detection analysis assessed the extent to which forced confabulation results from a change in memory sensitivity (d _a ), as well as response criterion (β). After viewing a crime video, participants answered 14 answerable and 6 unanswerable questions. Those in the voluntary guess condition had a “don’t know” response option; those in the forced guess condition did not. One week later, the same questions were answered using a recognition memory test that included each participant’s initial responses. As was predicted, on both answerable and unanswerable questions, participants in the forced guess condition had significantly lower response criteria than did those who voluntarily guessed. Furthermore, on both answerable and unanswerable questions, d _a scores were also significantly lower in the forced than in the voluntary guess condition. Thus, the forced confabulation effect is a real memory effect above and beyond the effects of response bias; forcing eyewitnesses to guess or speculate can actually change their memory.     

An evaluation of the reliability and construct validity of eating disorder measures in White and Black women

Most measures of eating disorder symptoms and risk factors were developed in predominantly White female samples. Yet eating disorders affect individuals of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Black women appear more vulnerable to certain forms of eating pathology, such as binge eating, and less susceptible to other eating disorder symptoms and risk factors, such as body dissatisfaction, compared with their White peers. Despite concern that extant measures do not adequately assess eating concerns among Black women, the construct validity of scores on most of these measures has not been adequately examined within this population. This study included 2,208 Black and White women who completed the following: the Binge Eating Scale (BES), the Eating Disorder Diagnostic Scale (EDDS), the Eating Attitudes Test-26 (EAT-26), the Eating Disorder Inventory Body Dissatisfaction and Drive for Thinness subscales, the Bulimia Test-Revised (BULIT-R), the Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire-Appearance Evaluation subscale (MBSRQ-AE), and the Objectified Body Consciousness Scale (OBCS). Most measures yielded internally consistent scores in both races. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that loadings for some measures, including the EAT-26 and EDDS, were not invariant across groups and thus do not assess equivalent constructs in White and Black women. However, others, including the BULIT-R, BES, OBCS, and MBSRQ-AE, exhibited factorial invariance in both races. Results suggest scores are likely not equivalent across races for several popular measures of eating disorder symptoms and risk factors. Thus, it is recommended that researchers and clinicians obtain additional information regarding racial/cultural factors when using these instruments with Black women.     

Exploring the Valence‐Framing Effect: Negative Framing Enhances Attitude Strength

In his now‐classic research on inoculation theory, McGuire (1964 ) demonstrated that exposing people to an initial weak counterattitudinal message could lead to enhanced resistance to a subsequent stronger counterattitudinal message. More recently, research on the valence‐framing effect ( Bizer & Petty, 2005 ) demonstrated an alternative way to make attitudes more resistant. Simply framing a person's attitude negatively (i.e., in terms of a rejected position such as anti‐Democrat) led to more resistance to an attack on that attitude than did framing the same attitude positively (i.e., in terms of a preferred position such as pro‐Republican). Using an election context, the current research tested whether valence framing influences attitude resistance specifically or attitude strength more generally, providing insight into the effect's mechanism and generalizability. In two experiments, attitude valence was manipulated by framing a position either negatively or positively. Experiment 1 showed that negatively framed attitudes were held with more certainty than were positively framed attitudes. In Experiment 2, conducted among a representative sample of residents of two U.S. states during political campaigns, negatively framed attitudes demonstrated higher levels of attitude certainty and attitude‐consistent behavioral intentions than did attitudes that were framed positively. Furthermore, the effect of valence framing on behavioral intentions was mediated by attitude certainty. Valence framing thus appears to be a relatively low‐effort way to impact multiple features associated with strong attitudes.     

Age differences in personality traits from 10 to 65: Big Five domains and facets in a large cross-sectional sample

Hypotheses about mean-level age differences in the Big Five personality domains, as well as 10 more specific facet traits within those domains, were tested in a very large cross-sectional sample (N = 1,267,218) of children, adolescents, and adults (ages 10-65) assessed over the World Wide Web. The results supported several conclusions. First, late childhood and adolescence were key periods. Across these years, age trends for some traits (a) were especially pronounced, (b) were in a direction different from the corresponding adult trends, or (c) first indicated the presence of gender differences. Second, there were some negative trends in psychosocial maturity from late childhood into adolescence, whereas adult trends were overwhelmingly in the direction of greater maturity and adjustment. Third, the related but distinguishable facet traits within each broad Big Five domain often showed distinct age trends, highlighting the importance of facet-level research for understanding life span age differences in personality.     

Asian American college students' suicide ideation: a mixed-methods study

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore the phenomenon of suicide ideation among 293 Asian American college students. Guided by T. Joiner's (2005) interpersonal-psychological theory of suicidal behavior, the authors examined the relationships among perceived burdensomeness, thwarted belongingness, self-construals, and suicide ideation. Compared with thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomeness was a more robust predictor of suicide ideation. However, thwarted belongingness moderated the positive association between perceived burdensomeness and suicide ideation. Furthermore, interdependent self-construal and independent self-construal both weakened the link between perceived burdensomeness and suicide ideation and between thwarted belongingness and suicide ideation. The authors also conducted a qualitative analysis of participants' open-ended responses about their perceptions of why Asian American college students might consider suicide. The authors identified a core phenomenon of unfulfilled expectations as well as 2 broad themes related to this core phenomenon: unfulfilled intrapersonal expectations and unfulfilled interpersonal expectations, comprising the subthemes of (a) family, (b) relationship, (c) cultural differences, and (d) racism. These findings are discussed in terms of implications for suicide-related clinical interventions and primary prevention efforts among Asian American college students.     

Are positive emotions just as "positive" across cultures?

Whereas positive emotions and feeling unequivocally good may be at the heart of well-being among Westerners, positive emotions often carry negative associations within many Asian cultures. Based on a review of East-West cultural differences in dialectical emotions, or co-occurring positive and negative feelings, we predicted culture to influence the association between positive emotions and depression, but not the association between negative emotions and depression. As predicted, in a survey of over 600 European-, immigrant Asian-, and Asian American college students, positive emotions were associated with depression symptoms among European Americans and Asian Americans, but not immigrant Asians. Negative emotions were associated with depression symptoms among all three groups. We also found initial evidence that acculturation (i.e., nativity) may influence the role of positive emotions in depression: Asian Americans fell "in between" the two other groups. These findings suggest the importance of studying the role of culture in positive emotions and in positive psychology. The use of interventions based on promoting positive emotions in clinical psychology among Asian clients is briefly discussed.     

Relating trait self-control and forgiveness within prosocials and proselfs: compensatory versus synergistic models

The present research tested 2 competing models specifying how 2 traits (concern with the well-being of others and self-control) interact to predict forgiveness. According to the compensatory model, forgiveness requires being high on either trait; according to the synergistic model, forgiveness requires being high on both traits. Two preliminary studies demonstrated the main effect of trait (Study 1a) and primed (Study 1b) self-control on forgiveness. Three primary studies consistently supported the compensatory model in predicting willingness to forgive a partner who behaves noncooperatively in a 2-alternative prisoner's dilemma (Study 2), a continuous give-some dilemma (Study 3), and a 2-alternative maximizing difference game (Study 4). Among proselfs or those low in trait forgiveness, trait self-control positively related to forgiveness, suggesting that self-control can compensate for a lack of concern with others' well-being. Implications for theory and research on forgiveness are discussed.