Deconstructing the Myth of the Monolithic Male Athlete: A Qualitative Study of Men’s Participation in Athletics

A qualitative study using field-based methods examined motivations for participation in collegiate team sports, the psychological and emotional rewards of team membership, and the dynamics of relationships with teammates among male athletes. Previous cross-disciplinary research largely reinforces clear and consistent gender differences within communal and agentic domains. In-depth, oral bibliographic interviews with 11 varsity athletes from basketball and soccer teams were conducted at a university in the USA. Participants spoke freely about multiple dimensions of their experiences as athletes—experiences frequently dichotomized by researchers as masculine or feminine. Analyses document that male athletes rated the importance of interpersonal and emotional relationships with teammates as valuably as they did instrumental needs. Results are discussed in terms of cultural imperatives that polarize domains presumed to be highly gender based and sex-segregated.     

The Augustinian methodological family of psychology

In his Investigations, Wittgenstein employed a quotation from Augustine to capture certain of the essential features of an incoherent conception of language that he believed was at root of many of the dominant theories of meaning of his day. It is argued in the current paper that this very same Augustinian conception of language (ACL) is the foundation of some of the most influential methodological orientations of present-day psychological science, and, as a result, these orientations suffer from a range of ACL-induced incoherences. This thesis is illustrated by way of a case study drawn from the construct validation literature.     

The Symbolic Power of Money: Reminders of Money Alter Social Distress and Physical Pain

ABSTRACT— People often get what they want from the social system, and that process is aided by social popularity or by having money. Money can thus possibly substitute for social acceptance in conferring the ability to obtain benefits from the social system. Moreover, past work has suggested that responses to physical pain and social distress share common underlying mechanisms. Six studies tested relationships among reminders of money, social exclusion, and physical pain. Interpersonal rejection and physical pain caused desire for money to increase. Handling money (compared with handling paper) reduced distress over social exclusion and diminished the physical pain of immersion in hot water. Being reminded of having spent money, however, intensified both social distress and physical pain.     

Going With the Flow: Preschoolers Prefer Nondissenters as Informants

ABSTRACT— In two experiments, 3- and 4-year-olds were tested for their sensitivity to agreement and disagreement among informants. In pretest trials, they watched as three of four informants ( Experiment 1 ) or two of three informants ( Experiment 2 ) indicated the same referent for an unfamiliar label; the remaining informant was a lone dissenter who indicated a different referent. Asked for their own judgment, the preschoolers sided with the majority rather than the dissenter. In subsequent test trials, one member of the majority and the dissenter remained present and continued to provide conflicting information about the names of unfamiliar objects. Children remained mistrustful of the dissenter. They preferred to seek and endorse information from the informant who had belonged to the majority. The implications and scope of children's early sensitivity to group consensus are discussed.     

Effects of suppression and appraisals on thought frequency and distress

Cognitive theories of obsessions highlight appraisals of personal significance and thought suppression in the development and maintenance of intrusive thoughts. The current study examined the role of personal significance within the context of a thought suppression paradigm. The primary aim was to examine whether suppression would have differential effects for target thoughts appraised as personally meaningful versus relatively unimportant. A blasphemous thought served as the target thought, and highly religious and nonreligious participants were recruited. Participants completed a two-interval thought suppression task; during interval 1 they were randomly assigned to suppress or not suppress the target thought and during interval 2, all participants were given “do not suppress” instructions. Suppression resulted in sustained frequency of thoughts in contrast to the decline in thought frequency observed for non-suppression. Differential effects of suppression were found across the two groups. Moreover, suppression was associated with increased negative mood and anxiety. Results suggest that suppression of personally meaningful thoughts is a counterproductive strategy.     

Increasing Low-Responding Students’ Participation in Class Discussion

Students in six sections of a large undergraduate class were asked to record their class comments on notecards in all course units. Additionally, in some units, they received points toward their course grade based on their reported comments in class discussion. The study was conducted over a two-semester period, with slight variation in both the recording and crediting procedures across the two semesters. The primary goal of the study was to determine the effects of two credit and self-recording arrangements on initially low-responding students’ subsequent participation in class discussion (first semester n = 49, second semester n = 45). A higher percentage of low-responding students reported participating in class discussion when credit was given for participation than when no credit was awarded. Nonetheless, 39% of the initially low-responding students the first semester and 38% of the initially low-responding students the second semester did not participate in class discussion in any phase of the study.     

Preschoolers continue to trust a more accurate informant 1 week after exposure to accuracy information

To determine whether children retain a preference for a previously accurate informant only in the short term or for long‐term use, 3‐ and 4‐year‐old children were tested in two experiments. In both experiments, children were given accuracy information about two informants and were subsequently tested for their selective trust in the two informants (Experiment 1: immediately, 1 day and 1 week later; Experiment 2: immediately, 4 days and 1 week later). Both age groups preferred to trust the accurate informant not only immediately after receiving accuracy information but also at subsequent time‐points. Children who were immediately able to explicitly identify the accurate informant were significantly more likely to seek and accept information from her 1 week later. However, even when they had not been asked to explicitly identify the accurate informant both age groups still maintained their preference for her. Thus, by 3 years of age, children spontaneously choose a previously accurate informant up to 1 week after exposure to information regarding her accuracy.     

The impact of music on learning and consolidation of novel words

Music can be a powerful mnemonic device, as shown by a body of literature demonstrating that listening to text sung to a familiar melody results in better memory for the words compared to conditions where they are spoken. Furthermore, patients with a range of memory impairments appear to be able to form new declarative memories when they are encoded in the form of lyrics in a song, while unable to remember similar materials after hearing them in the spoken modality. Whether music facilitates the acquisition of completely new information, such as new vocabulary, remains unknown. Here we report three experiments in which adult participants learned novel words in the spoken or sung modality. While we found no benefit of musical presentation on free recall or recognition memory of novel words, novel words learned in the sung modality were more strongly integrated in the mental lexicon compared to words learned in the spoken modality. This advantage for the sung words was only present when the training melody was familiar. The impact of musical presentation on learning therefore appears to extend beyond episodic memory and can be reflected in the emergence and properties of new lexical representations.     

A misleading feeling of happiness: metamemory for positive emotional and neutral pictures

Emotional information is often remembered better than neutral information, but the emotional benefit for positive information is less consistently observed than the benefit for negative information. The current study examined whether positive emotional pictures are recognised better than neutral pictures, and further examined whether participants can predict how emotion affects picture recognition. In two experiments, participants studied a mixed list of positive and neutral pictures, and made immediate judgements of learning (JOLs). JOLs for positive pictures were consistently higher than for neutral pictures. However, recognition performance displayed an inconsistent pattern. In Experiment 1, neutral pictures were more discriminable than positive pictures, but Experiment 2 found no difference in recognition based on emotional content. Despite participants’ beliefs, positive emotional content does not appear to consistently benefit picture memory.     

A Review of Technology-Based Youth and Family-Focused Interventions

In the past 10 years, mental and behavioral health has seen a proliferation of technology-based interventions in the form of online and other computer-delivered programs. This paper focuses on technology-based treatment and preventive interventions aimed at benefitting children and adolescents via either involving the parents and families, or only the youth. The review considered only technology-based interventions that had at least one published study with a randomized controlled trial design. Questions being addressed included: (1) What are the technology-based interventions in the mental/behavioral health area that have been systematically evaluated in published studies? (2) What are the common and unique characteristics of these interventions and their application with respect to sample characteristics, target problems, and technology characteristics (platforms, structures, elements, and communication formats)? and (3) Which intervention approaches and strategies have accrued the greatest evidence? The review identified 30 technology-based psychosocial interventions for children and families, 19 of which were parent or family-focused (32 studies) and 11 of which were youth-focused (in 13 studies). For the parent/family-focused interventions, greatest promise was found in those that addressed either youth behavioral problems or depressive/anxious symptoms, as well as more general bolstering of parenting efficacy. The youth-focused interventions showed some promise in reducing depressive/anxious symptoms. Advantages and disadvantages of the technology-based approaches were considered, and areas for future research and development were discussed.