Perceived Threat,Social Identification,and Psychological Well‐Being: The Effects of Political Conflict Exposure

Using data drawn from the adult population in Northern Ireland (N = 1,515), this article examines the relationship between perceived intergroup threat and psychological well‐being, taking into consideration the mediating role of social identification and the moderating role of political conflict exposure. Results by and large confirmed our predictions that perceived threat would be directly associated with poorer well‐being but would also exert a positive indirect effect on well‐being via increased social identification. However, these relationships were dependent on individuals' prior conflict exposure, such that the positive indirect relationship between perceived threat and psychological well‐being emerged only for two subpopulations: individuals who had high direct and high indirect exposure to conflict, and individuals who had low direct, but high indirect conflict exposure. No indirect effects emerged for individuals with relatively lower conflict exposure. Results are discussed with regard to their implications for research on the consequences of intergroup threat in political conflict settings and beyond.     

Bigger knows better: Young children selectively learn rule games from adults rather than from peers

Preschoolers' selective learning from adult versus peer models was investigated. Extending previous research, children from age 3 were shown to selectively learn simple rule games from adult rather than peer models. Furthermore, this selective learning was not confined to preferentially performing certain acts oneself, but more specifically had a normative dimension to it: children understood the way the adult demonstrated an act not only as the better one, but as the normatively appropriate/correct one. This was indicated in their spontaneous normative interventions (protest, critique, etc.) in response to third party acts deviating from the one demonstrated by the adult model. Various interpretations of these findings are discussed in the broader context of the development of children's social cognition and cultural learning.     

When the half-full glass is appraised as half empty and memorised as completely empty: mood-congruent true and false recognition in depression is modulated by salience

Since the 1980s a large body of empirical effort has been devoted to mood-congruent memory (MCM) biases in clinical depression. Whereas there is broad, albeit not unequivocal, evidence that depressive patients retain negative-valenced memory items better than neutral material, few studies have investigated false memories in depression. In a pilot study we gathered support for both enhanced true and false memory for emotional material in depression. The present study aimed to extend these preliminary findings. In view of investigations suggesting that arousing and meaningful stimuli have facilitated access to memory, personal salience was considered a moderator for MCM. In the present study 21 depressed and 22 healthy participants were presented six false memory lists dealing with neutral, negative, and positive themes. At recognition, each item had to be appraised for its degree of valence subsequent to an old-new judgement. Pre-categorised and subjective valence did not discriminate groups. However, relative to controls depressed patients showed both more veridical as well as false recognition for items that concurrently elicited higher salience ratings in patients. In contrast, group differences in recognition performance did not significantly affect salience ratings. Results indicate that salience modulates MCM and may account for discrepancies in the literature.     

Psychische Betreuung von Patienten und Angehörigen in der Transplantationsmedizin

During the decision making process and waiting period before organ transplantation patients and their families often suffer from psychological distress. After transplantation a subgroup of patients keeps showing psychological symptoms and also impairments of quality of life. Psychological treatment manuals are often demanded, but are rarely achieved. This study describes the experience with a low frequent (8 sessions/year) therapeutic group for lung transplant candidates. The group, which is based on a cognitive behavioural concept, is lead by a physician (internal medicine), a psychotherapist and a physiotherapist. This therapeutic group has been continuously offered for patients and their caregivers for the past 7 years. About 50% of all patients participated in this program before transplantation, after transplantation only a few patients visited the group sessions. On average 12 patients and 8 caregivers visited each session. One problem for these patients with severe lung-disease was the long distance between patient’s homes and the hospital. This has been the reason for self-help organisations to demand better psychotherapeutic outpatient support for patients and their families before and after organ transplantation.     

Attitudes towards people with AIDS and avoidance behavior: Automatic and reflective bases of behavior

We tested the assumption that implicit attitude measures are related to automatic behavior, while explicit attitude measures are related to reflective behavioral intentions. In our study, attitudes towards persons with AIDS were assessed with both the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and an explicit attitude measure. Behavioral intentions were measured through a questionnaire. Automatic approach and avoidance predispositions were operationalized as the speed with which a computer mouse was either pulled towards (approach) or pushed away from the body (avoidance). Consistent with our expectations, the IAT was related to the automatic approach and avoidance behaviors, while the explicit attitude measure was related to behavioral intentions. These findings support the idea that automatic and reflective processes exert independent effects on behavior.     

Body language reading of emotion in schizophrenia: Associations with symptoms and functional outcome

Our aim was to explore how body language reading of emotion relates to neurocognition, symptoms and functional outcome in schizophrenia. Fifty‐four individuals with schizophrenia and eighty‐four healthy controls participated in the study. Emotion perception was assessed with a point‐light display (PLD) task, the Emotion in Biological Motion (EmoBio) test, neurocognition was measured with the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB), and functioning was indexed by one measure of functional capacity and by one self‐report questionnaire. Clinical symptoms were assessed with a five factor Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) symptoms model. Participants with schizophrenia had impaired body language reading of emotions compared to healthy controls (Cohen's d = 0.69). In participants with schizophrenia, emotion perception was associated with neurocognition (r = 0.42), functional capacity (r = 0.27) and disorganization symptoms (r = –0.27). Mediation analyses showed that disorganization symptoms mediated the effects of emotion perception and neurocognition, respectively, on social functional capacity. These results suggest that in individuals with schizophrenia, reduced emotion perception from body movements has negative consequences for functional outcome, but that the effect is mediated through disorganization symptoms.     

To be or Not to be Authentic. In Defence of Authenticity as an Ethical Ideal

It has recently been pointed out that the cloudiness of the concept of authenticity as well as inflated ideologies of the ‘true self’ provide good reasons to criticize theories and ideals of authenticity. Nevertheless, there are also good reasons to defend an ethical ideal of authenticity, not least because of its critical and oppositional force, which is directed against experiences of self-abandonment and self-alienation. I will argue for an elaborated ethical ideal of authenticity: the ambitious ideal of a continuous self-reflective process of ‘self-authentication’. For this purpose, the ideal of being authentic in expressing and unfolding one’s individual personality and characteristics will be combined with the ideal of being ‘an authentic person’ - whereby ‘a person’ is to be understood in a Kantian sense as an autonomous person who is (at least potentially) reasonable and morally responsible.     

Modulatory effects of happy mood on performance monitoring: Insights from error-related brain potentials

Goal-adaptive behavior requires the rapid detection of conflicts between actions and intentions or goals. Although many studies have focused in the past on the influence of negative affect on this cognitive control process (and more specifically, on error monitoring), little is known about the possible modulatory effects of positive affect on it. To address this question, we used a standard (positive) mood induction procedure (based on guided imagery) and asked participants to carry out a speeded go/no-go task while high-density electroencephalography was recorded concurrently. As a control condition, we used a group with neutral mood. Event-related potential results showed that the error-related negativity (ERN) component, reflecting early error detection within the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, was not influenced by happy mood. In contrast, the subsequent error positivity (Pe) component, related to the appraisal of the motivational significance of errors, was reliably smaller in the happy than in the neutral mood group. Complementing source localization analyses showed that this effect was explained by decreased activation within the posterior cingulate and insular cortices. These results were obtained in the absence of group differences regarding behavioral performance and tonic arousal. These findings suggest that happy mood likely decreases and changes the motivational significance of worse-than-expected events (Pe), while leaving their earlier automatic detection (ERN) unaltered. We discuss these new results in terms of dynamic changes in the complex interplay of performance monitoring with motivation.