Self-construal and social anxiety: Considering personality

Self-construal has been identified as a potential means to explain cultural differences in social anxiety. Yet, research findings suggest that self-construal is an individual difference as much as a cultural difference. We tested for mediation and moderation regarding self-construal, social anxiety, and other primary individual difference constructs. Our results indicated that the relation of extraversion and neuroticism to social anxiety was partially mediated by independent self-construal. In addition, the relationship between social anxiety and interdependent self-construal was moderated by neuroticism. These results suggest that personality traits play an important role in the relationship between social anxiety and self-construal. Clinical interventions that consider the interplay between self-construal and personality may be helpful in decreasing social anxiety.     

垂直等值的应用及最新发展述评

由于实际的需求,垂直等值方法在近些年来迅速发展。但从垂直等值方法的整个过程来看,包括垂直等值的选用、双向细目编制、发展性量尺的构建、程序的选择和结果的报告,仍存在大量有待解决的问题。同时,随着其他测量方法的发展与进步,垂直等值与之相结合从而获得了进一步的完善。综观之,垂直等值方法的发展与完善,一方面依赖于各种模型和参数估计方法的改进与创新,另一方面还依赖于研究者对学业发展本质的不断深入认识。     

A taxometric analysis of actual Internet sports gambling behavior

This article presents findings from the first taxometric study of actual gambling behavior to determine whether we can represent the characteristics of extreme gambling as qualitatively distinct (i.e., taxonic) or as a point along a dimension. We analyzed the bets made during a 24-month study period by the 4,595 most involved gamblers among a cohort of 48,114 people using an Internet service to gamble on sporting events. We applied two taxometric procedures (i.e., MAMBAC and MAXCOV) to three indicators of betting behavior: total money lost, total number of bets, and total money wagered. The results fail to provide support for the view that the most involved Internet sports gamblers include a distinct category of gamblers. More research is necessary to clarify the similar features of recreational and extreme gamblers and the dimensions that scientists can use to measure these behaviors. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for clinical, research, and public policy activities.     

Report of the AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs: professionalism in the use of social media

Although many physicians have been using the internet for both clinical and social purposes for years, recently concerns have been raised regarding blurred boundaries of the profession as a whole. In both the news media and medical literature, physicians have noted there are unanswered questions in these areas, and that professional self-regulation is needed. This report discusses the ethical implications of physicians' nonclinical use of the internet, including the use of social networking sites, blogs, and other means to post content online. It does not address the clinical use of the internet, such as telemedicine, e-prescribing, online clinical consultations, health-related websites, use of electronic media for clinical collaboration, and e-mailing patients (some of which are already covered in the AMA's Code of Medical Ethics).     

Perception of facial expression depends on prior attention

Attending versus ignoring a stimulus can later determine how it will be affectively evaluated. Here, we asked whether attentional states could also modulate subsequent sensitivity to facial expressions of emotion. In a dual-task procedure, participants first rapidly searched for a gender-defined face among two briefly displayed neutral faces. Then a test face with the previously attended or ignored face’s identity was presented, and participants judged whether it was emotionally expressive (happy, angry, or fearful) or neutral. Intensity of expression in the test face was varied so that an expression detection threshold could be determined. When fearful or angry expressions were judged, expression sensitivity was worse for faces bearing the same identity as a previously ignored versus attended face. When happy expressions were judged, sensitivity was unaffected by prior attention. These data support the notion that the motivational value of stimuli may be reduced by processes associated with selective ignoring.     

Self-Objectification and Pregnancy: Are Body Functionality Dimensions Protective?

Objectification theory contends that women are socialized to view their body as an object to be evaluated by others (Fredickson and Roberts 1997). In contrast, pregnancy may be a time that women are more attuned to their body??s functionality. Extending objectification theory, we investigate relationships among body surveillance, awareness and appreciation of body functionality, depressive symptoms, and prenatal health behaviors among an on-line sample of 156 predominantly White, middle-class pregnant women from throughout the U.S recruited through maternity stores, message boards, listservs, and snowballing techniques. We examine whether higher levels of awareness and appreciation of body functionality may attenuate, and thereby possibly protect women from the negative effects of high body surveillance. We found that higher body surveillance was associated with depressive symptoms and, although not significant, tended to be associated with engagement in unhealthy prenatal behaviors. Awareness and appreciation of body functionality were each associated with fewer depressive symptoms and less engagement in unhealthy prenatal behaviors. Supporting our hypotheses, we found that at higher levels of appreciation of body functionality, the relationship between body surveillance and engagement in unhealthy behaviors was attenuated. However, in contrast to our hypotheses, the relationship between body surveillance and depression was stronger at higher levels of awareness of body functionality, and attenuated at lower levels. These findings suggest appreciation of body functionality may buffer negative effects of body surveillance. Future research examining these relationships over the course of pregnancy, and among ethnically and socioeconomically diverse women, is needed.     

Mother-Child and Father-Child Interactional Synchrony in Dyadic and Triadic Interactions

Patterns of interactional synchrony were compared in mother-child and father-child dyads during dyadic and triadic interactions. Forty-two dual-earner families from the French province of Québec, Canada, participated in the study with their 32 months-old child. Parent?Cchild interactions were coded using a taxonomy including the social partners?? physical proximity, visual and body orientation, and dyadic involvement. Analyses show similar patterns of interactional synchrony in mother-child and father-child dyads in the dyadic context while father-child dyads presented less interactional synchrony than mother-child dyads when interacting in triad. Discussion focuses on the impact of the context and on the factors that could explain the changes in father-child patterns of interaction from one context to another.     

The process of selective exposure: Why confirmatory information search weakens over time

The present research investigated whether the tendency to prefer decision-consistent to decision-inconsistent information after making a preliminary choice would vary during the sequential process of searching for additional pieces of decision-relevant information. Specifically, it was tested whether decision makers would be more confirmatory in their information evaluation and search at the commencement rather than end of an information search process. In fact, five studies revealed that participants exhibited stronger confirmatory tendencies in both information evaluation (Studies 2 and 5) and search (Studies 1, 3, and 4) immediately after making a preliminary decision compared to during the later stages of an information search process. With regard to the underlying mechanism, results further revealed that individuals appear to be more motivated to detect the best decision alternative at the beginning (as opposed to the end) of an information search process, which leads to increases in confirmatory information processing during these stages.     

Motivational incentives modulate age differences in visual perception

This study examined whether motivational incentives modulate age-related perceptual deficits. Younger and older adults performed a perceptual discrimination task in which bicolored stimuli had to be classified according to their dominating color. The valent color was associated with either a positive or negative payoff, whereas the neutral color was not associated with a payoff. Effects of incentives on perceptual efficiency and response bias were estimated using the diffusion model (Ratcliff, 1978). Perception of neutral stimuli showed age-related decline, whereas perception of valent stimuli, both positive and negative, showed no age difference. This finding is interpreted in terms of preserved top-down control over the allocation of perceptual processing resources in healthy aging.     

Chronic exposure to violent video games is not associated with alterations of emotional memory

Although acute effects of violent video game (VVG) exposure on affect and behaviour have been studied extensively, less is known about VVG effects on cognition. The present study examined whether chronic exposure to VVGs was associated with alterations in emotional long‐term memory. Participants completed an old‐new recognition task with 300 pictures of scenes ranging in emotion (negative, neutral and positive). We analysed accuracy and reaction time data using diffusion modelling to test a desensitization hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, VVG players would show reduced memory or a less liberal response bias for negative stimuli, compared with nonplayers. Contrary to the desensitization hypothesis, VVG exposure was not associated with differences in memory or response bias. This result suggests that, unlike other cognitive domains, long‐term memory may be robust to deleterious influences of chronic VVG exposure. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.