The relation of moral orientation and moral judgment to prosocial and antisocial behaviour of Chinese adolescents

The present study investigated the relation of moral orientation and moral judgment to prosocial and antisocial behaviour from a first‐person perspective. The major findings support the following four hypotheses. (la) The moral orientation of girls is higher than that of boys, and (1b) boys are more delinquent than girls; (2) the moral orientation of prosocial adolescents is higher than that of delinquent adolescents; (3) the moral judgment of prosocial adolescents is higher than that of delinquent adolescents; and (4) the moral development of prosocial adolescents is higher than that of delinquent adolescents. Few researchers have attempted to investigate how moral orientation and moral judgment relate to prosocial and antisocial behaviour in a single study. The present study fills this research gap. Moreover, the study of moral judgment from a first‐person perspective appears to be a meaningful and useful approach. Future studies should be conducted to investigate whether moral judgment from a first‐person perspective is more predictive of moral behaviour than moral judgment from a third‐person perspective. It would also be meaningful to conduct a cross‐cultural study to investigate the relation of moral orientation and moral judgment to prosocial and antisocial behaviour in different cultures. The use of a self‐report method in a study of prosocial and antisocial behaviour has certain limitations; for example, respondents may not give honest responses. However, this method has been found to be useful and acceptable, especially for researching the correlations among a large number of variables.     

Positive mood boosts the expression of a dispositional need for closure

Three studies (N=539) examined the hypothesis that positive mood increases the degree to which epistemic motivation, i.e., the need for closure (NFC), affects the way in which an individual processes information (heuristic vs. systematic processing). In each of the studies, different methods of operationalising mood were used: in Study 1, mood was measured as a state; in Study 2, mood was induced by asking participants to recall emotional events; and in Study 3, mood was induced by emotional pictures. The styles of information processing that were utilised by our participants were operationalised in terms of their preferences for (Study 1) and ability to recall (Studies 2 and 3) schema-consistent and schema-inconsistent information. Taken together, the results of the three studies show that only under positive mood, NFC level of an individual is consistent with his or her style of information processing, that is, only under positive mood is there a negative relationship between the NFC level of an individual and the utilisation of schema-inconsistent information. Our results can be explained in terms of the effect that mood has on an individual's perceived ability to achieve NFC.     

Suppressor Effects of Positive and Negative Religious Coping on Academic Burnout Among Korean Middle School Students

Statistical suppressor effects in prediction models can provide evidence of the interdependent relationship of independent variables. In this study, the suppressor effects of positive and negative religious coping on academic burnout were examined using longitudinal data. First, 388 middle school students reported their type of religion and use of positive and negative religious coping strategies. Four months later, they also reported their level of academic burnout. From structural equation modeling, significant suppressor effects were found among religious students. That is, the coefficients became larger when both positive and negative religious coping predicted academic burnout simultaneously, compared to when each religious coping predicted academic burnout alone. However, suppressor effects were not found among non-religious students.     

Examining the Latent Structure of Posttraumatic Growth Between Male and Female Survivors in the Immediate Aftermath of a Flash Flood Disaster

The study examined and compared the latent structure of posttraumatic growth (PTG) based on three proposed models: 1-factor, 3-factor and 5-factor models in order to (1) find out the factor structure that has the best fit for the Filipino sample; (2) find out the factor structure that best represents PTG in the immediate aftermath of a flash flood disaster; and (3) examine the generalizability of the best-fitted model across gender. A sample of 895 survivor-respondents answered the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) within a month after a deadly flash flood. Based on the best-fitted model, a multi-group comparison between male and female was conducted to determine gender generalizability. Results showed that the 3-factor model comprising of Changes in Self/Positive Life Attitudes, Philosophy of Life, and Relating to Others fitted best in contrast to the other two models. The data also demonstrated the generalizability of the 3-factor model across gender, with invariance in factor loadings, item intercepts, factor variance and covariance, and factor means.     

Bimodal emotion congruency is critical to preverbal infants’ abstract rule learning

Extracting general rules from specific examples is important, as we must face the same challenge displayed in various formats. Previous studies have found that bimodal presentation of grammar‐like rules (e.g. ABA) enhanced 5‐month‐olds’ capacity to acquire a rule that infants failed to learn when the rule was presented with visual presentation of the shapes alone (circle‐triangle‐circle) or auditory presentation of the syllables (la‐ba‐la) alone. However, the mechanisms and constraints for this bimodal learning facilitation are still unknown. In this study, we used audio‐visual relation congruency between bimodal stimulation to disentangle possible facilitation sources. We exposed 8‐ to 10‐month‐old infants to an AAB sequence consisting of visual faces with affective expressions and/or auditory voices conveying emotions. Our results showed that infants were able to distinguish the learned AAB rule from other novel rules under bimodal stimulation when the affects in audio and visual stimuli were congruently paired (Experiments 1A and 2A). Infants failed to acquire the same rule when audio‐visual stimuli were incongruently matched (Experiment 2B) and when only the visual (Experiment 1B) or the audio (Experiment 1C) stimuli were presented. Our results highlight that bimodal facilitation in infant rule learning is not only dependent on better statistical probability and redundant sensory information, but also the relational congruency of audio‐visual information. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KYTyjH1k9RQ     

Would You Be Happier If You Looked Better? A Focusing Illusion

Some people might believe that individuals who are more satisfied with their body are also happier. However, people tend to overrate the influence of some factors (e.g. money or health) on their happiness; a phenomenon termed the focusing illusion. Our aim was to examine the focusing illusion in relation to body satisfaction. We experimentally manipulated body satisfaction and life satisfaction focus by varying the order of relevant measurement scales. Volunteers (N = 97) completed two questionnaires placed in separate envelopes to control the order of scales administration. Participants either completed the Body Satisfaction Scale followed by the Satisfaction with Life Scale or vice versa. In line with the focusing illusion the association between body satisfaction and life satisfaction was significantly stronger when participants were asked about their body satisfaction first. Body satisfaction as a focusing illusion may need to be considered by scientist as well as lay people who try to look better and be happier.     

个体智力差异的脑电生理学基础 ——来自EEG和ERP的证据

智力的脑电生理学研究近年来蓬勃发展。文章分析了EEG、ERP这两种主要的电生理学技术在智力差异探究中的应用,在智力水平与大脑激活程度的负相关受到任务难度、内容以及被试性别的影响等方面的研究所取得的进展;指出了以往个体智力差异脑电生理学研究中存在的ERP智力差异研究采用的任务略显简单、难以体现智力活动的本质等问题;认为今后利用多种脑电技术结合研究个体智力差异的趋势日趋明显。