Naming times and standardized norms for the italian PD/DPSS set of 266 pictures: Direct comparisons with American, English, French, and Spanish published databases

The present study provides Italian normative measures for 266 line drawings belonging to the new set of pictures developed by Lotto, Dell’Acqua, and Job (in press). The pictures have been standardized on the following measures: number of letters, number of syllables, name frequency, within-category typicality, familiarity, age of acquisition, name agreement, and naming time. In addition to providing the measures, the present study focuses on indirect and direct comparisons (i.e., correlations) of the present norms with databases provided by comparable studies in Italian (in which normative data were collected with Snodgrass & Vanderwart’s set of pictures; Nisi, Longoni, & Snodgrass, 2000), in British English (Barry, Morrison, & Ellis, 1997), in American English (Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980; Snodgrass & Yuditsky, 1996), in French (Alario & Ferrand, 1999), and in Spanish (Sanfeliu & Fernandez, 1996).     

The God Mysticism Scale: a Brief Version

Pastoral Psychology - This paper presents two studies concerned with developing a brief version of the 32-item God Mysticism Scale (GMS; Hood Jr. and Williamson Journal of Psychology and...     

Muslim attitudes and spirituality: relationships with Dark Triad and Harmony Control in Iranian teachers

Iranian teachers (N?=?250) responded to Muslim attitude and spirituality measures in a project testing the hypothesis that Muslim personality functioning will reflect beliefs in the beneficence of society and a consequent need to restrain personal desires. Muslim attitudes were especially noteworthy in displaying negative relationships with disturbances in personal restraint as represented by the Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, and Narcissism components of the Dark Triad. Muslim attitudes even more strongly predicted lower Machiavellianism and Psychopathy when Muslim spirituality was also high. Muslim attitudes and spirituality both correlated positively with at least some factors of a Harmony Control Scale that essentially presupposes beliefs in the beneficence of society. Although complexities appeared, these data supported the argument that aspects of Muslim personality functioning reflect beliefs in the beneficence of society.     

A systematic investigation of the differential predictors for speeding,drink-driving,driving while fatigued,and not wearing a seat belt,among young drivers

Risky driving has been identified as a key contributor to road crashes. Past research suggests that different risky driving behaviours are influenced by different factors, but has not been systematic in its investigation of the factors associated with different behaviours. The present research systematically examined a range of relevant demographic, personality and attitudinal factors (age, gender, sensation seeking, driver anger, time urgency, authority rebellion, perceived relative risk, perceived personal risk, perceived costs, perceived benefits, and peer influence) in the prediction of speeding, drink-driving, driving while fatigued, and not wearing seat belts, for a student sample of young drivers. In addition, relevant mediators of the relationship between gender and risky driving, as well as moderators of the relationship between perceived risk and risky driving, were examined for each of the four behaviours. Results demonstrate that the lists of significant predictors differed between risky driving behaviours. In addition, perceived personal risk was observed to mediate the relationship between gender and driving while fatigued only, and gender was observed to moderate the relationship between perceived risk and risky driving, for drink-driving and not wearing seat belts. Results highlight the importance of designing individual road safety interventions for individual driving behaviours, and suggest factors which might be targeted in younger driver populations.     

The turple effect is modulated by base word frequency: Implications for models of lexical and semantic access

People who are asked to classify whether words presented visually belong to the category of animals respond to nonwords derived from animal names more slowly than they do to nonwords derived from nonanimal names. This is known as the turple effect (Forster, 2006; Forster & Hector, 2002). In the present article, we show that the turple effect is modulated by the frequency of the animal names from which the nonwords are derived: In particular, we show that nonwords derived from high-frequency animal names are rejected faster than those derived from low-frequency animal names. We discuss the implications of this result for two approaches to lexical and semantic access modeling. 2008 Psychonomic Society, Inc.     

Sexual activity is inversely related to women’s perceptions of the facial attractiveness of unknown men

A study was conducted to assess whether individual differences in sexual activity during the past 30 days, in particular penile–vaginal intercourse (PVI; which is associated with measures of relationship quality), are related to the perception of the facial attractiveness of unknown men. Forty-five women reported the frequency of a variety of sexual behaviors and rated the facial attractiveness and friendliness of 24 men. Women who reported more frequent orgasm from masturbation rated men as less friendly. This finding might be reflective of the more anti-social attitude associated with more frequent masturbation. The results also show that women who engaged more frequently in most kinds of sexual behavior, not only PVI, considered unknown men to be less facially attractive. That is, individuals who engage more frequently in a variety of sexual behaviors with their partner perceived unknown men as less attractive and thereby may be less susceptible to the lure of other (or if the only sexual behavior is masturbation, any) men.     

Religious reflection in Pakistan: further evidence of integration between Muslim faith and intellect

Religious groups outside the West have displayed a positive correlation between faith and intellect-oriented reflection in contrast to the negative relationship found with American Christians. This study extended the analysis to Pakistani Muslims. University students (N = 180) responded to religious reflection scales along with measures of religious orientation and satisfaction with life. Faith- and intellect-oriented reflection correlated positively, and both displayed direct relationships with religious orientations and satisfaction with life. In multiple regression analyses, both combined to predict the intrinsic religious orientation, but faith-oriented reflection was the only significant predicter of other measures. These data further documented a compatibility between Muslim faith and intellect and supplemented other cross-cultural findings in suggesting that understandings of more conservative religious beliefs may require sensitivity not only to their content, but also to their cultural context.     

Moving faces, looking places: validation of the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set (ADFES)

We report two studies validating a new standardized set of filmed emotion expressions, the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set (ADFES). The ADFES is distinct from existing datasets in that it includes a face-forward version and two different head-turning versions (faces turning toward and away from viewers), North-European as well as Mediterranean models (male and female), and nine discrete emotions (joy, anger, fear, sadness, surprise, disgust, contempt, pride, and embarrassment). Study 1 showed that the ADFES received excellent recognition scores. Recognition was affected by social categorization of the model: displays of North-European models were better recognized by Dutch participants, suggesting an ingroup advantage. Head-turning did not affect recognition accuracy. Study 2 showed that participants more strongly perceived themselves to be the cause of the other's emotion when the model's face turned toward the respondents. The ADFES provides new avenues for research on emotion expression and is available for researchers upon request.     

Inaction inertia in retirement saving

In retirement saving, many people miss out on early opportunities to save and subsequently fail to take adequate actions for a long time thereafter. We examined whether these two observations—the initial failure to act and the subsequent inertia—could be related through the phenomenon of inaction inertia. In Experiment 1 (N = 180), participants were less likely to save for retirement when the difference in annual return between the current opportunity and the missed opportunity was large versus small. In Experiment 2 (N = 180), participants were less likely to start saving for retirement when reminded of a missed opportunity 10 years ago versus 1 year ago. These data constitute the first demonstration of inaction inertia in retirement saving: People's reluctance to act on attractive saving opportunities may be induced by their previous inaction. In Experiment 3 (N = 340) and Experiment 4 (N = 628), we find that the observed inertia is the product of a tendency to underestimate exponential growth combined with a focus on past opportunities. Building on this mechanism, Experiment 5 (N = 916) provided evidence for a potential remedy; the inaction inertia effect completely disappeared when focus was shifted from required contributions to future outcomes.