Solo status and women's spatial test performance: the role of individuation tendencies

The impact of anticipated solo status on women's spatial performance was investigated in an experimental study. The study was designed to test whether the underperformance of women entering testing situations who find themselves to be the only woman present is related to a tendency to individuate the self. Women performed a test of spatial ability under conditions of anticipated solo or non‐solo status and responded to a measure of self‐construal. In line with previous research, we found a disrupting solo status effect on women's performance on the spatial ability test. Most importantly, the negative effect of solo status on performance was partially mediated by individuation tendencies as reflected in a decreased predominance of the interdependent (as compared to the independent) level of the self under solo status conditions. These findings indicate that individuation tendencies play a crucial role in the process triggered in test takers under threatening performance situations. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Flow and regulatory compatibility: an experimental approach to the flow model of intrinsic motivation

The authors propose that the experience of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) as reflected in the deep involvement in an activity perceived as intrinsically rewarding represents a regulatory compatibility experience. The research addresses the notion that the compatibility of critical person (e.g., skills) and environmental factors (e.g., demands) involved in a given activity elicits subjective experiences that render the respective activity rewarding. Two studies are reported that investigate the consequences of compatibility of skills and task demands during task engagement. Departing from correlational research, the present studies employ a newly developed experimental paradigm to document the causal impact of such a skills/demands compatibility on the emergence of flow. Experiment 2 revealed that individuals characterized by a strong habitual action-orientation were most sensitive to the manipulation of the skills-demands compatibility.     

Co‐sleeping: Help or hindrance for young children's independence?

This study investigated the relationship between sleep arrangements and claims regarding possible problems and benefits related to co‐sleeping. Participants were 83 mothers of preschool‐aged children. Data were collected through parent questionnaires. Early co‐sleepers (who began co‐sleeping in infancy), reactive co‐sleepers (children who began co‐sleeping at or after age one), and solitary sleepers were compared on the dimensions of maternal attitudes toward sleep arrangements; night wakings and bedtime struggles; children's self‐reliance and independence in social and sleep‐related behaviours; and maternal autonomy support. The hypothesis that co‐sleeping would interfere with children's independence was partially supported: solitary sleepers fell asleep alone, slept through the night, and weaned earlier than the co‐sleepers. However, early co‐sleeping children were more self‐reliant (e.g. ability to dress oneself) and exhibited more social independence (e.g. make friends by oneself). Mothers of early co‐sleeping children were least favourable toward solitary sleep arrangements and most supportive of their child's autonomy, as compared to mothers in other sleep groups. Reactive co‐sleepers emerged as a distinct co‐sleeping sub‐type, with parents reporting frequent night wakings and, contrary to early co‐sleepers, experiencing these night wakings as highly disruptive. Implications for parents and pediatricians are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Die Rolle positiver Emotionen in der frühen Sozialisation

Emotions are vital characteristics of the evolved human nature. Expression and function of emotions, however, vary substantially depending on socio-cultural contexts. This paper focuses on two strategies concerning the expression of positive emotionality in early mother-child interactions. Western middle class families emphasize the expression of positive emotions in early social interactions from early infancy. Positive emotionality is associated with personal autonomy and individual uniqueness. In traditional farmer families in the non-western world emotional control is emphasized from birth. Emotional inexpressiveness is part of a socialization strategy that is oriented towards hierarchical relatedness. The early socialization experiences have measurable effects on emotion regulation of 1-year-old children. The confrontation of different cultural models in multicultural societies is inherently fraught with confliction. These implications are discussed.     

Timing accuracy of Web experiments: A case study using the WebExp software package

Although Internet-based experiments are gaining in popularity, most studies rely on directly evaluating participants’ responses rather than response times. In the present article, we present two experiments that demonstrate the feasibility of collecting response latency data over the World-Wide Web using WebExp—a software package designed to run psychological experiments over the Internet. Experiment 1 uses WebExp to collect measurements for known time intervals (generated using keyboard repetition). The resulting measurements are found to be accurate across platforms and load conditions. In Experiment 2, we use WebExp to replicate a lab-based self-paced reading study from the psycholinguistic literature. The data of the Web-based replication correlate significantly with those of the original study and show the same main effects and interactions. We conclude that WebExp can be used to obtain reliable response time data, at least for the self-paced reading paradigm.     

Predicting future affective states: How ease of retrieval and faith in intuition moderate the impact of activated content

Prior research suggests that duration bias—the tendency to overestimate the duration of affective states—is due to individuals' inordinate focus on event‐related information. We propose that the impact of focusing on event‐related (vs. unrelated) content is moderated by the ease with which the information is brought to mind. In the present experiment, participants thought about a possible future negative event and made affective forecasts after retrieving either few or many aspects in their life that would be affected (or unaffected) by the event. Participants estimated longer duration of affective consequences when they retrieved event‐related rather than event‐unrelated information. However, this effect was restricted to conditions where the respective information was brought to mind easily. Importantly, results also revealed that individual differences in faith in intuition moderated the effect of manipulated ease of retrieval. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.