Defending the doomed: implicit strategies concerning protection of first-person shooter games

Censorship of violent digital games, especially first-person shooter (FPS) games, is broadly discussed between generations. While older people are concerned about possible negative influences of these games, not only players but also nonplayers of the younger net-generation seem to deny any association with real aggressive behavior. Our study aimed at investigating defense mechanisms players and nonplayers use to defend FPS and peers with playing habits. By using a lexical decision task, we found that aggressive concepts are activated by priming the content of FPS but suppressed afterward. Only if participants were instructed to actively suppress aggressive concepts after priming, thought suppression was no longer necessary. Young people still do have negative associations with violent video games. These associations are neglected by implicitly applying defense strategies--independent of own playing habits--to protect this specific hobby, which is common for the net-generation.     

Repetition, not number of sources, increases both susceptibility to misinformation and confidence in the accuracy of eyewitnesses

Are claims more credible when made by multiple sources, or is it the repetition of claims that matters? Some research suggests that claims have more credibility when independent sources make them. Yet, other research suggests that simply repeating information makes it more accessible and encourages reliance on automatic processes—factors known to change people's judgments. In Experiment 1, people took part in a “misinformation” study: people first watched a video of a crime and later read eyewitness reports attributed to one or three different eyewitnesses who made misleading claims in either one report or repeated the same misleading claims across all three reports. In Experiment 2, people who had not seen any videos read those same reports and indicated how confident they were that each claim happened in the original event. People were more misled by—and more confident about—claims that were repeated, regardless of how many eyewitnesses made them. We hypothesize that people interpreted the familiarity of repeated claims as markers of accuracy. These findings fit with research showing that repeating information makes it seem more true, and highlight the power of a single repeated voice.     

Maternal Emotion Dysregulation Predicts Emotion Socialization Practices and Adolescent Emotion Lability: Conditional Effects of Youth ADHD Symptoms

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Maternal emotional functioning and emotion socialization practices can facilitate or hinder children’s emotional development, and youth with...     

The Relationship between Mindfulness and Subjective Well-Being: Examining the Indirect Effects of Self-Connection and Meaning in Life

Over the past decade, support for the relationship between mindfulness and happiness has increased dramatically. The consensus is that people who are mindful also experience greater happiness. However, little is still known about how and why greater mindfulness leads one to be happier. The current research calls on recent theorizing to help understand the process by which this occurs. In particular, we studied the indirect effects of both self-connection and meaning in life on the relationship between mindfulness and subjective well-being. To this end, we compiled data collected in our lab over the past 3 years. A total of 2,929 participants provided cross-sectional data while 465 participated in longitudinal studies. Across both samples, the data supported our proposed model. Self-connection and meaning in life combined to mediate the relationship between mindfulness and the various aspects of subjective well-being. In all, it is clear that, although mindfulness is important, self-connection and meaning in life play key roles in one’s subjective well-being. This suggests that more research and interventions should focus on ways to increase self-connection and meaning in life as ways to help people experience greater happiness.

     

Participating in Research: Attitudes within the African American Church

We assessed associations between pastor and congregant characteristics and congregant attitudes about research participation among African American churches. Respondents shared their attitudes regarding how willing, ready, and confident they were about research participation. The outcome measure, the index of research preparedness, summed responses across the domains of willingness, readiness, and confidence. Pastor age and pastor educational attainment were independently associated with a congregants’ higher index of research preparedness. Young and educated pastors were significantly associated with congregant attitudes about participation preparedness, a finding that highlights the importance of the pastor regarding congregant research participation decisions.     

Judges' views of child sexual abuse: Evaluating beliefs against research findings in a Finnish sample

Beliefs impact our decision‐making and different professionals have been shown to have beliefs about child sexual abuse (CSA) that do not coincide with scientific findings. In the present study, judges' beliefs regarding CSA were explored. Finnish judges (N = 104) answered a questionnaire about CSA related issues as well as questions regarding their professional experience of CSA cases. The judges held both correct and incorrect beliefs; while their CSA prevalence estimates were rather well in line with research findings, half of the participants estimated that no professionals use suggestive methods when interviewing children and more than 40% thought suggestive methods can be useful when trying to get a child to tell about real events. Judges correctly assumed symptoms cannot be used to assess a CSA case, however, the majority thought play observations were appropriate means for evaluating such suspicions. Experience seemed to lead to more confidence in their own expertise but not in an actual increase in knowledge, namely, judges thought themselves more expert when more experienced although their expertise as measured by the questionnaire did not improve. Overall, the judges had both correct and erroneous beliefs but while experience did not improve the situation, gaining information about CSA did. More research about the beliefs of judges and how such beliefs impact legal decision‐making is needed.     

Social support from fellow group members triggers additional effort in groups

This research demonstrates social support from fellow group members as unique trigger of additional effort and performance in groups. Support‐induced effort gains are shown both compared with groups without social support and individual work. Study 1 examined existing beliefs about motivating group work among employees with professional group work experience (n = 130). The results revealed social support as one of the most frequently reported sources of group‐induced effort gains. Study 2 explored self‐reported effort intentions in group training scenarios among athletes (n = 94). Finally, Study 3 examined performance as a manifest indicator of effort in an experimental persistence task among students (n = 88). The results of Study 2 and Study 3 showed significant gains due to social support in both self‐reported effort and manifest performance, respectively. Together, the results demonstrate that receiving social support from fellow group members leads to higher effort in groups at the level of existing beliefs about motivating group work, at the level of effort intentions, and at the level of manifest performance behavior. The observed findings cannot be explained by established sources of motivation gains in groups such as social comparison or social indispensability. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Synchronous online CPD: empirical support for the value of webinars in career settings

The careers profession in England is facing unprecedented challenges. Initiatives to improve service delivery while keeping costs low are attractive and online training holds the promise of high impact at low cost. The present study employs a qualitative methodology to evaluate a series of online ‘webinars’ conducted with 15 careers advisers. Results showed that the technology itself could impede learning, and participants missed out on the peer-to-peer interaction that takes place in a ‘bricks and mortar’ setting, but overall participants found that access to relevant, good quality training from the convenience of their workplace more than compensated for the challenges. The article offers conceptual support for the viability of online learning through the theory of equivalency, andragogy and transactional distance theory, and makes recommendations for practice.