Water contaminant levels interact with parenting environment to predict development of depressive symptoms in adolescents

Contaminants in drinking water, such as lead, nitrate, and arsenic, have been linked to negative physical health outcomes. We know less, however, about whether such pollutants also predict mental health problems and, if so, the conditions under which such effects are strongest. In this longitudinal study, we examined whether drinking water contaminants interact with negative family environments (parental psychological control) to predict changes in depressive symptoms in 110 adolescents—a developmental period when symptoms often first emerge. We found that for adolescents in psychologically controlling families, levels of drinking water contaminants prospectively predicted depressive symptoms 2 years later; this effect was not present in adolescents in non‐controlling families. Importantly, these associations were not accounted for by family‐ or community‐level socioeconomic resources, demographic features, or by the adolescents’ stress exposure. These findings highlight the interplay of physical and psychological environments in influencing depressive symptoms in adolescents. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/thBV-DwnGcY     

The Boeing 737 MAX: Lessons for Engineering Ethics

Science and Engineering Ethics - The crash of two 737 MAX passenger aircraft in late 2018 and early 2019, and subsequent grounding of the entire fleet of 737 MAX jets, turned a global spotlight on...     

Knowing minds: Culture and perceptions of mental state access

How does culture influence the ways in which individuals reflect upon their knowledge of others’ mental states? We addressed this question in a two‐study cross‐cultural investigation examining perceptions of mental state access in the United States and Japan. Study 1 (n = 100) revealed that American participants reported greater mental state access than did Japanese participants. Study 2 (n = 146) showed that both Americans and Japanese perceived greater access to the mental states of a close friend relative to a casual friend and that the observed cultural differences in perceived mental state access to a close friend’s mental states were mediated by how much access was considered appropriate. Overall, the results indicate that culturally variable norms specifying appropriate levels of mental state access play an important role in how individuals estimate their knowledge of other people’s minds in close relationships.     

认知负荷取向下基于记忆-反应冲突的欺骗检测

欺骗检测一直是心理学的重要研究问题。基于欺骗理论的认知视角, 研究者提出欺骗检测的认知负荷取向。采用隐瞒信息测试这一测谎范式, 通过操纵认知负荷影响个体在虚假反应时的记忆-反应冲突解决过程, 考察增加认知负荷对欺骗检测的影响, 以期更好地揭示欺骗检测的认知机制。在此基础上, 以普通人群和犯罪嫌疑人为被试探查基于记忆-反应冲突的欺骗检测的行为和生理指标, 并根据获得的行为和生理指标, 采用机器学习方法进行建模, 预测个体的欺骗行为。研究结果将服务于司法、安防和人际交往等领域的欺骗检测。     

自我损耗降低决策理性:心理机制与边界条件

处于自我损耗状态时, 个体在意愿上偏好即时利益和目标, 并且会做出许多非理性决策行为。在梳理自我损耗对行为决策的影响基础上, 指出自我损耗降低决策理性的注意机制和执行机制:一方面, 损耗使个体注意力更容易为即时利益所捕获, 进而重视短期利益而忽视长远利益, 即降低个体关注未来的能力; 另一方面, 损耗导致个体缺少计划性和行为实施的执行力, 即降低个体坚守未来的能力。此外, 损耗对决策理性的影响存在个体和情境两个方面的重要边界。未来可结合眼动技术验证损耗降低决策理性的注意机制, 进一步探究潜在边界条件以及寻找助推理性决策的方法。     

The analysis of the homoerotic and the pursuit of meaning

This paper explores the dynamic tension between an evolving collective phenomenon and the nature of analytic process. Specifically, the focus will be erotic experiences which acquire a meaning through the culture at large, a meaning that may not be supportable when that material is subjected to psychological analysis. This stimulates a conflict between the symbolic attitude and the cultural perspective of the time. While the struggle between the individual and collective consciousness always emerges in analysis, the subject of same-gender sexual relations has become such a controversial and divisive issue in the current political environment that views toward homosexuality demand powerful allegiances and identification with either historic or contemporary ideas. People now identify as 'gay' and tend to see themselves as something akin to a race or perhaps alternative gender. Sexuality and relationship between same gendered people tends to be viewed through the lens of civil rights and the undeniable need for social equality. In this far-reaching and expanding collective phenomenon, psychology, in its support of human rights and accommodation to emerging trends, may be diminished in its capacity to pursue the meaning inherent in these human experiences. The position developed in this paper is that psychological experience, whether in the imaginal realm, dreams or personal consciousness, must be available for full analysis. Clinical experience and dreams are used to amplify this challenge to dynamic analytic practice.     

Intentions in teasing: when "just kidding" just isn't good enough

Teasing is ambiguous. Although the literal content of a tease is, by definition, negative, seldom do teasers intend for their tease to be taken literally. Toward this aim, teasers often attempt to mitigate the negative surface content of the tease by communicating via gesture, facial expression, or tone of voice that they are "just kidding." The research presented here suggests that such attempts often fall on deaf ears. Despite teasers' attempts to mitigate the tease, targets are often unaware of--and unmoved by--the teaser's benign intentions. As a result, teasers and targets systematically differ in their perceptions of teasing: Although it is often seen as innocent and playful by the teaser, it tends to be construed as considerably more malicious by the target.     

Cognition and belief in paranormal phenomena: gestalt/feature-intensive processing theory and tendencies toward ADHD, depression, and dissociation

Belief in paranormal phenomena and cryptids--unknown animals such as Bigfoot--may predispose individuals to interpret real-world objects and events in the same way that eyewitness identification can be biased by unrelated information (P. James and N. Thorpe, 1999). Psychological tendencies toward attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dissociation, and depression, even at subclinical levels, may be associated systematically with particular paranormal or cryptozoological beliefs. The authors evaluated these psychological tendencies using the Conners Adult ADHD Rating Scales (C. K. Conners, D. Erhardt, and E. Sparrow, 1999), the Dissociative Experiences Scale (L. Coleman & J. Clark, 1999), and the Beck Depression Inventory-II (A. T. Beck, 1996). They performed regression analyses against beliefs in ghosts, unidentified flying objects (UFOs), extrasensory perception (ESP), astrology, and cryptids. ADHD, dissociation, and depression were associated with enhanced tendencies toward paranormal and cryptozoological beliefs, although participants who believed in each of the phenomena differed from one another in predictable and psychologically distinguishable ways. Cognitively biasing influences of preexisting psychological tendencies may predispose individuals to specific perceptual and cognitive errors during confrontation of real-world phenomena.     

Exemplar similarity, study list homogeneity, and short-term perceptual recognition

Kahana and Sekuler (2002) conducted short-term perceptual recognition experiments and modeled the data with a noisy exemplar similarity model. They found model-based evidence that list homogeneity (i.e., the degree to which exemplars on a study list are similar to one another) exerted a significant impact on recognition performance--a finding that is not predicted by standard global familiarity models. A potential limitation of their experiments is that they tested complex stimuli in which psychological similarities among exemplars may have been misspecified. Also, the relative importance of list homogeneity was not compared with that of alternative forms of parametric variation in the model. We conducted conceptual replications of their experiments, using a simpler set of stimuli in which interexemplar similarities could be more precisely measured. Extensive model-based comparisons reveal, in accord with the results of Kahana and Sekuler, strong evidence for a role of listhomogeneity on old-new recognition performance. We suggest that subjects systematically adjust their response criteria on the basis of the homogeneity of the study list items.