Influence of authoritarianism,vagal tone and mental fatigue on obedience to authority

Recent research suggests that obedience in the Milgram paradigm is underpinned by stress vulnerability and inhibitory control over pain sharing. Because self-regulatory fatigue (SRF) induction is a suited method to investigate the influence of inhibitory control on behaviour, participants (n?=?99) were randomly assigned to a High vs. Low self-regulatory condition. Heart rate variability (HRV, a biomarker of stress vulnerability) was collected during 5-min baseline and continuously during the experimental procedure. Prior to the experiment, participants completed an online survey assessing right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), a well-known predictor of obedience. Using the Immersive Video Milgram Obedience Experiment, we found (i) that lower resting HRV predicted higher destructive obedience, (ii) that low self-regulatory inhibition (induced by fatigue) reduced destructive obedience, (iii) that the well-established influence of RWA on destructive obedience was suppressed in the presence of SRF. Implications for future directions in obedience research are discussed.     

Is there a direct relation between the development of vocabulary and grammar?

Previous studies of individual differences have revealed strong correlations between children's vocabulary and grammatical abilities, and these data have been used to support theoretical accounts positing direct developmental relations between these two areas of language. However, between‐person differences do not necessarily reflect intra‐individual dynamics. Thus, in the present study, we analysed longitudinal data from three annual assessments of vocabulary and grammar in 217 children (M_age = 4 years and 3 months at first assessment) using a modelling strategy with some utility in distinguishing relations at the between‐ and within‐person levels. The results revealed strong correlations between grammar and vocabulary at the between‐person level, but the evidence of direct dependencies between the variables at the within‐person level was rather limited. Specifically, we found a small direct contribution from grammar to vocabulary for children between the ages of 4 and 5, but there was no evidence of any direct contributions from vocabulary to grammar. Further analyses suggested that the home literacy environment may represent a common source of individual differences in children's vocabulary and grammatical skills. In light of these results, we argue that the evidence of direct relations between vocabulary and grammatical development in preschool‐aged children may not be as strong as previously assumed.     

Regulating Compensatory Paternalism

Res Publica - Some recent arguments for paternalist government interventions have been based in empirical results in psychology and behavioral economics that would seem to show that adult human...     

Bullying and victimization in elementary schools: a comparison of bullies, victims, bully/victims, and uninvolved preadolescents

Research on bullying and victimization largely rests on univariate analyses and on reports from a single informant. Researchers may thus know too little about the simultaneous effects of various independent and dependent variables, and their research may be biased by shared method variance. The database for this Dutch study was large (N = 1,065) and rich enough to allow multivariate analysis and multi-source information. In addition, the effect of familial vulnerability for internalizing and externalizing disorders was studied. Gender, aggressiveness, isolation, and dislikability were most strongly related to bullying and victimization. Among the many findings that deviated from or enhanced the univariate knowledge base were that not only victims and bully/victims but bullies as well were disliked and that parenting was unrelated to bullying and victimization once other factors were controlled.     

Long-term self-monitoring of weight: a case study

The aim of this study was to examine the self-monitoring of weight on a daily basis over a long period of time in order to understand the process of weight regain. An obese female client measured her weight every morning over a period of 10 years. The subject made a total of 2081 weight measurements. Thus, her weight was measured on 67% of all possible days. After the initial weight loss a pattern of gradual weight gain was observed. The subject gained weight during August and September, and at the end of December, in particular. Furthermore, her weight increased slightly at the weekends. This case study highlights the advantage of self-monitoring of weight on a daily basis. Individual patterns of weight change possibly associated with season and weekly variation may be crucial when obese subjects try to maintain their weight after weight loss. However, it may take several months or even years to detect the weekly and yearly rhythms or other patterns in the data. Thus, self-control of weight is problematic, since patterns in the weight regain process are difficult to detect. This may be one reason why self-control of weight is so difficult.     

Ambiguous figures: living versus nonliving objects

Eleven series of figures were studied, each series ranging from one extreme interpretation via five ambiguous intermediates to a second extreme interpretation. Triplets consisting of an ambiguous exemplar in the middle flanked on the left and right by its two extreme interpretations were presented to large groups of subjects. The initial aim was to establish the levels of perceptual ambiguity of each exemplar in a series, and normative data on the ambiguous figures are provided for future reference and use. However, several biases were encountered and these were examined in more detail. In experiment 1 the subject's task was to compare the middle figure with the flankers and draw an arrow from the middle figure towards the flanking extreme they judged the most similar. Here, an overall preference for the left extreme was found. Therefore the instructions were reversed in experiment 2; flankers had to be compared with the middle figure. The preference for the left extreme remained for figures of living objects, but for nonliving objects the preference switched to the right extreme. To do away with any effect of the arrows, in experiment 3 subjects were divided into two groups each receiving different instructions and were asked to circle one of the extremes. However, the pattern of biases remained the same. The bias found with figures of living objects may be explained on the basis of top-down processes. For nonliving figures, an hypothesis based on bottom-up processes like neural fatigue was considered but rejected.     

The word-frequency paradox for recall/recognition occurs for pictures

A yes-no recognition task and two recall tasks were conducted using pictures of high and low familiarity ratings. Picture familiarity had analogous effects to word frequency, and replicated the word-frequency paradox in recall and recognition. Low-familiarity pictures were more recognizable than high-familiarity pictures, pure lists of high-familiarity pictures were more recallable than pure lists of low-familiarity pictures, and there was no effect of familiarity for mixed lists. These results are consistent with the predictions of the Search of Associative Memory (SAM) model.     

Smell your way back to childhood: Autobiographical odor memory

This study addressed age distributions and experiential qualities of autobiographical memories evoked by different sensory cues. Ninety-three older adults were presented with one of three cue types (word, picture, or odor) and were asked to relate any autobiographical event for the given cue. The main aims were to explore whether (1) the age distribution of olfactory-evoked memories differs from memories cued by words and pictures and (2) the experiential qualities of the evoked memories vary over the different cues. The results showed that autobiographical memories triggered by olfactory information were older than memories associated with verbal and visual information. Specifically, most odor-cued memories were located to the first decade of life (<10 years), whereas memories associated with verbal and visual cues peaked in early adulthood (11–20 years). Also, odor-evoked memories were associated with stronger feelings of being brought back in time and had been thought of less often than memories evoked by verbal and visual information. This pattern of findings suggests that odor-evoked memories may be different from other memory experiences. nt|mis|This work was supported by a grant from the Swedish Research Council (No. F0647/2001) to M.L.     

Voluntary control of unavoidable action

Goal-oriented behavior is usually portrayed to be directly related to incentive values. Underlying mechanisms are thought to include reward-oriented response bias and perceptual sensitivity. A recent electrophysiological study by Minamimoto et al. challenges this view, and reports neural activity in the thalamus that appears to counteract response bias. This type of activity might be crucial for our ability to engage voluntarily in actions that give little or no immediate return, but are necessary in the pursuit of long-term goals.