Psychosocial Effects of Conditions of Military Deployment

Deployment may lead the soldiers to dichotomise their profession and their family life, resulting in unwanted effects on family or career. Effects on reintegration and functioning within family are considered. Reunions may be characterized by perceived negative reception and consequences could spill over to children as parents attempt to equivocate their differences. Risks exist for fragmentation of the family system or divorce. Social support may serve to buffer families with members on deployment.     

The Rationality of Ultimate Concern: Moral Exemplars,Theological Ethics,and the Science of Moral Cognition

This paper argues that consideration of moral exemplars may provide a means for integrating insights across philosophical ethics, theological ethics, and the scientific study of moral cognition. Key to this endeavor is an understanding of the relation of cognition and emotion in ethical decision-making, a relation that is usually understood to be oppositional but which in proper circumstances may be understood to be quite the opposite. Indeed, a distinctive feature of moral exemplarity may consist in the ability to properly integrate the emotions into the moral life, and reference to and imitation of exemplars may involve a referencing and imitating of the emotions of the exemplar.     

Reconceptualizing Cultivation: Implications for Testing Relationships Between Fiction Exposure and Self-Reported Alcohol Use Evaluations

ABSTRACT

This article responds to calls for conceptual clarification in the media effects domain by providing a definition for attitudinal cultivation effects. Our definition contains 5 core characteristics: the (a) linear effects of (b) repeated media exposure on (c) the evaluation as given by memory associations (d) strengthened by and (e) valenced in line with those media messages. We reason that, when accepting this definition, the cultivation hypothesis predicts effects of repeated media use on evaluations to primarily occur at the level of gut evaluations given by automatically activated memory associations. Corroborating this logic for the effects of alcohol use portrayals in television fiction, we find the relationship between fiction exposure and self-reported alcohol use evaluations to be (a) moderated by speed of expressing those evaluations and (b) mediated by responses to self-reports tapping into gut feelings. The implications of these findings for future media effects studies are discussed.     

SCA with rotation to distinguish common and distinctive information in linked data

Often data are collected that consist of different blocks that all contain information about the same entities (e.g., items, persons, or situations). In order to unveil both information that is common to all data blocks and information that is distinctive for one or a few of them, an integrated analysis of the whole of all data blocks may be most useful. Interesting classes of methods for such an approach are simultaneous-component and multigroup factor analysis methods. These methods yield dimensions underlying the data at hand. Unfortunately, however, in the results from such analyses, common and distinctive types of information are mixed up. This article proposes a novel method to disentangle the two kinds of information, by making use of the rotational freedom of component and factor models. We illustrate this method with data from a cross-cultural study of emotions.     

Three-level meta-analysis of dependent effect sizes

Although dependence in effect sizes is ubiquitous, commonly used meta-analytic methods assume independent effect sizes. We describe and illustrate three-level extensions of a mixed effects meta-analytic model that accounts for various sources of dependence within and across studies, because multilevel extensions of meta-analytic models still are not well known. We also present a three-level model for the common case where, within studies, multiple effect sizes are calculated using the same sample. Whereas this approach is relatively simple and does not require imputing values for the unknown sampling covariances, it has hardly been used, and its performance has not been empirically investigated. Therefore, we set up a simulation study, showing that also in this situation, a three-level approach yields valid results: Estimates of the treatment effects and the corresponding standard errors are unbiased.     

Learning Impacts of a Digital Augmentation in a Science Museum

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the effects of using digital augmentation to enhance an exhibit device to influence conceptual understanding about a science topic in a science museum setting. In particular, the study considered how students in Grades 6–8 engaged with the device that was available in both augmented and nonaugmented (control) conditions. Results show increased cognitive (critical thinking) skills when the digital augmentation was present that we hypothesize led to increased conceptual gains. We illustrate how this research contributes to three important areas of need identified in informal science literature: the need for evidence of conceptual and cognitive gains; the need for understanding how digital platforms improve the learning experience; and the need to demonstrate how designed interactive devices may impact higher order skills such as critical thinking and theorizing.     

A cross-cultural study of hindsight bias and conditional probabilistic reasoning

Hindsight bias is a mistaken belief that one could have predicted a given outcome once the outcome is known. Choi and Nisbett (2000 Choi, I. and Nisbett, R. E. 2000. Cultural psychology of surprise: Holistic theories and recognition of contradiction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79: 890–905. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) reported that Koreans showed stronger hindsight bias than Americans, and explained the results using the distinction between analytic cognition (Westerners) and holistic cognition (Easterners). The purpose of the present study was to see whether hindsight bias is stronger among Easterners than among Westerners using a probability judgement task, and to test an “explicit–implicit” hypothesis and a “rule-dialectics” hypothesis. We predicted that the implicit process is more active among Easterners to generate hindsight bias, and that Easterners are more dialectical thinkers, whereas Westerners are more rule-based thinkers. French, British, Japanese, and Korean participants were asked to make probabilistic judgements in a Good Samaritan scenario (Experiment 1) and in a scenario including conditional probabilistic judgement (Experiment 2). In both Experiments, we presume that the implicit revision of causal models is made just by being given unexpected outcome information, and that explicit revision is made by being asked to point out possible factors for an unexpected outcome. In the results Easterners showed greater hindsight bias generally and it was greater in the Good Samaritan scenario. We conclude that the reason why hindsight bias was lower among Westerners is primarily that they tried to follow a rule to suppress the bias.     

A randomised Monty Hall experiment: The positive effect of conditional frequency feedback

The Monty Hall dilemma (MHD) is a notorious probability problem with a counterintuitive solution. There is a strong tendency to stay with the initial choice, despite the fact that switching doubles the probability of winning. The current randomised experiment investigates whether feedback in a series of trials improves behavioural performance on the MHD and increases the level of understanding of the problem. Feedback was either conditional or non-conditional, and was given either in frequency format or in percentage format. Results show that people learn to switch most when receiving conditional feedback in frequency format. However, problem understanding does not improve as a consequence of receiving feedback. Our study confirms the dissociation between behavioural performance on the MHD, on one hand, and actual understanding of the MHD, on the other. We discuss how this dissociation can be understood.     

Not all job demands are equal: Differentiating job hindrances and job challenges in the Job Demands–Resources model

This study aimed to integrate the differentiation between two types of job demands, as made in previous studies, in the Job–Demands Resources (JD-R) model. Specifically, this study aimed to examine empirically whether the differentiation between job hindrances and job challenges, next to the category of job resources, accounts for the unexpected positive relationships between particular types of job demands (e.g., workload) and employees' work engagement. Results of confirmatory factor analyses supported the differentiation between the three categories of job characteristics in two samples (N ₁ = 261 and N ₂ = 441). Further, structural equation modelling confirmed the hypotheses that job hindrances associate positively with exhaustion (i.e., the main component of burnout) and negatively with vigour (i.e., the main component of work engagement). Job resources displayed the reversed pattern of relations. Job challenges were positively related to vigour. Rather unexpectedly, they were unrelated to exhaustion. Based on these findings, we discuss the importance of the differentiation between different types of job demands in the JD-R model for both theory and practice.