Conceptions of love in Ghana: An exploration among Ghanaian Christians

We explored conceptions of love from the perspective of Ghanaian Christians. Using an ethnographic approach, we interviewed 61 participants (males = 39; females = 22; age range 20 to 70) on their understanding and experiences of love in the context of family. Thematic analysis of the interview data revealed understandings of love expression in meeting material needs (of children, spouse, parents, and close relatives), helping other people in need (including the elderly, friends, and strangers), and affectionate care. Communal and maintenance-oriented love appears to characterise love expression among Ghanaian Christians.     

The effect of foregone outcomes on choices from experience

We examined the relative weight given to obtained and foregone outcomes (i.e., outcomes from the non-chosen options) in repeated choices using cognitive modeling. Previous modeling studies have yielded mixed results. When participants' choices are analyzed by models that predict the next choice ahead in a sequence of decisions, the results imply that people give less weight to foregone than to obtained outcomes. In contrast, in simulation models of n trials ahead, the results imply that, on average, people give equal weight to foregone and obtained outcomes. Using datasets of experience-based binary choices with fixed (stationary) payoff distributions (Erev & Haruvy, in press) and dynamic (nonstationary) payoff distributions (Rakow & Miler, 2009), we employed generalization tests at the individual level to examine whether the findings derived from the one-step-ahead method are due to overfitting. The results of trial-ahead model fitting implied that for the nonstationary tasks only, foregone outcomes received lower weight. However, when this dataset was assessed via generalization criteria at the individual level, equal weighting of foregone and obtained outcomes was the best assumption. This implies that overfitting is implicated in the superior fit of models that assume discounting of foregone outcomes.     

Identity Development in Adulthood: A Longitudinal Study

Identity status interviews involving five domains of life (religious beliefs, political ideology, occupational career, intimate relationships, and lifestyle) were conducted with 249 women and men at ages 27 and 36. The results on overall identity and domain-specific identities confirmed our general hypothesis as to the strengthening of the commitment process: (1) stability was higher in the identity statuses involving commitment (identity achievement and foreclosure) than in the statuses not involving commitment (identity diffusion and moratorium); (2) an increase in the salience of identity domains could be attributed to an increase in the commitment process; (3) transitions into identity statuses involving commitment were more frequent than transitions into statuses not involving commitment; indicating that both identity achievement and foreclosure might be end points of identity development. It was concluded that the results pointed to identity development in adulthood rather than to a random fluctuation in identity statuses over time.     

QUAID: A questionnaire evaluation aid for survey methodologists

QUAID (question-understanding aid) is a software tool that assists survey methodologists, social scientists, and designers of questionnaires in improving the wording, syntax, and semantics of questions. The tool identifies potential problems that respondents might have in comprehending the meaning of questions on questionnaires. These problems can be scrutinized by researchers when they revise questions to improve question comprehension and, thereby, enhance the reliability and validity of answers. QUAID was designed to identify nine classes of problems, but only five of these problems are addressed in this article: unfamiliar technical term, vague or imprecise relative term, vague or ambiguous noun phrase, complex syntax, and working memory overload. We compared the output of QUAID with ratings of language experts who evaluated a corpus of questions on the five classes of problems. The corpus consisted of 505 questions on 11 surveys developed by the U.S. Census Bureau. Analyses of hit rates, false alarm rates,d′ scores, recall scores, and precision scores revealed that QUAID was able to identify these five problems with questions, although improvements in QUAID’s performance are anticipated in future research and development.     

Differential effects of the menstrual cycle on reactive and proactive aggression in borderline personality disorder

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by rapidly shifting symptoms, including intense anger and aggressive behavior. Understanding how fluctuations in ovarian hormones across the menstrual cycle may contribute to symptom instability is key for accurate assessment of BPD symptoms and effective interventions. Reactive and proactive aggression, as well as anger-in and anger-out, were assessed daily in 15 physically healthy, unmedicated naturally cycling female individuals meeting criteria for BPD across 35 days. Urine luteinizing hormone surge and salivary progesterone were used to confirm ovulation and verify the cycle phase. Multilevel models evaluated cyclical differences of symptoms between cycle phases. Both forms of aggressive behavior demonstrated marked cycle effects, with reactive aggression highest during the midluteal cycle phase, co-occurring with initial increases in anger and irritability and followed by perimenstrual peaks in anger and anger-in. In contrast, highest levels of proactive aggression were observed during the follicular and ovulatory phases, when emotional symptoms and anger were otherwise at lowest levels. These findings highlight the importance of identifying the function of aggression when considering potential psychological and biological influences. Naturally cycling individuals with BPD may be at elevated risk for luteal worsening of a range of interpersonally reactive symptoms, including reactive aggression, whereas proactive aggression may occur more in phases characterized by less emotional and cognitive vulnerability and greater reward sensitivity. Research on aggression in this population should consider cycle effects. Cycling individuals with BPD attempting to reduce aggressive behavior may benefit from cycle-tracking to increase awareness of these effects and to develop appropriate strategies.     

Components of events and processes

Rips and Estin (1998) provided evidence that mental events such as dreaming are more homogeneous than physical events such as checking out a book; that is, their parts are more difficult to distinguish. In their experiment, participants listed more distinctive properties for the parts of physical events than for the parts of mental events. However, the physicality of stimuli was confounded with temporal aspects. Mental stimuli tended to be processes, and physical stimuli, events. This study tested homogeneity with new stimuli separating out the factors of physicality and aspect. Consistently, both physicality and aspect had significant effects on the perceived homogeneity of activities, as measured by the number of listed parts, the number of distinctive properties of each part, and homogeneity ratings. The study shows that homogeneity is strongly influenced by aspect but that physicality remains a robust factor for homogeneity, even after taking aspect into account.     

Auditory distractor processing in sequential selection tasks

In this review, we analyze the cognitive processes contributing to selection in audition. In particular, we focus on the processing of auditory distractors in sequential selection paradigms in which target stimuli are accompanied by distractors. We review the evidence from two established tasks, namely the auditory negative priming and the auditory distractor–response binding task, and discuss the cognitive mechanisms contributing to the results typically observed in these tasks. In fact, several processes have been suggested as to explain how distractors are processed and handled in audition; that is, auditory distractors can be inhibited, encoded with a do-not-respond-tag, integrated into a stimulus–response episode containing the response to the target, or upheld in working memory and matched/mismatched with the following distractor. In addition, variables possibly modulating these cognitive processes are discussed. Finally, auditory distractor processing is compared with distractor processing in vision.     

Ownership Status and the Representation of Assets of Uncertain Value: The Balloon Endowment Risk Task (BERT)

Owners tend to overvalue possessions relative to non‐owners: a phenomenon known as the endowment effect. In three experiments, using markets for goods of uncertain value, we investigated whether this can be partly attributed to misperceiving an asset's profitability or to uncertainty about a good's utility. To test our hypotheses, we devised the Balloon Endowment Risk Task, in which participants can sell or buy their right to participate in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task. Once purchased/retained, a virtual balloon is pumped to accrue money, which is lost if the balloon bursts. Participants first learn about the risky asset (balloon) by observing others playing the Balloon Analogue Risk Task before they enter the market. In Experiment 1, we replicated the endowment effect; yet, owners and non‐owners predicted pumping the same number of times and subsequently did so when given that opportunity. In Experiments 2 and 3, the level of uncertainty about the balloon's profitability was manipulated by modifying the number of bursts that participants viewed in the initial learning stage. When more diagnostic information was provided, making the average burst point easier to estimate and reducing value uncertainty and increasing confidence in valuation, the endowment effect diminished although mean estimates of the average burst point did not differ between owners and non‐owners. Thus, endowment effects were partly attributable to value uncertainty but could not be explained by owners and non‐owners having divergent perceptions of the asset's payoff distribution. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.