Cannot avert the eyes: reduced attentional blink toward others’ emotional expressions in empathic people

Empathy is one of the core components of social interaction. Although current models of empathy emphasize the role of attention, few studies have directly examined the relationship between attentional processes and individual differences in empathy. This study hypothesized that empathic people would process emotional expressions more efficiently and automatically compared to less empathic people. Crucially, such a processing advantage should be present only for faces of others compared to one’s own face. To test this hypothesis, 100 healthy participants varying in their self-reported empathy levels underwent an attentional blink task that tested preferential attentional processing. Results showed a diminished attentional blink effect for sad faces of others in the high-empathy group. Additionally, performance differences in the task were related to both trait empathy and daily prosocial behavior. Overall, our results show that emotional stimuli preferentially capture the attention of empathic people, leading to automatic processing.     

An enquiry concerning the principles of cultural norms and values: The impact of uncertainty and mortality salience on reactions to violations and bolstering of cultural worldviews

This enquiry concerning the principles of cultural norms and values focuses on the impact of mortality and uncertainty salience on people’s reactions to events that violate or bolster their cultural norms and values. Five experiments show that both mortality and uncertainty salience influence people’s reactions to violations and bolstering of their cultural worldviews, yielding evidence for both terror and uncertainty management theories. Interestingly, the five experiments consistently reveal that uncertainty salience has a bigger impact on people’s reactions than mortality salience, suggesting that the former may be a more important antecedent of reactions to norms and values than the latter. Findings further suggest that uncertainty salience did not instigate death-thoughts whereas reactions to norms and values were stronger among mortality salient participants who thought of uncertainty as a result of the mortality salience manipulation than mortality salient participants who did not think of uncertainty following this manipulation. Implications are discussed.     

Individual differences in spatial relation processing: effects of strategy, ability, and gender

Numerous studies have focused on the distinction between categorical and coordinate spatial relations. Categorical relations are propositional and abstract, and often related to a left hemisphere advantage. Coordinate relations specify the metric information of the relative locations of objects, and can be linked to right hemisphere processing. Yet, not all studies have reported such a clear double dissociation; in particular the categorical left hemisphere advantage is not always reported. In the current study we investigated whether verbal and spatial strategies, verbal and spatial cognitive abilities, and gender could account for the discrepancies observed in hemispheric lateralization of spatial relations. Seventy-five participants performed two visual half field, match-to-sample tasks (Van der Ham, van Wezel, Oleksiak, & Postma, 2007; Van der Ham, Raemaekers, van Wezel, Oleksiak, and Postma, 2009) to study the lateralization of categorical and coordinate relation processing. For each participant we determined the strategy they used in each of the two tasks. Consistent with previous findings, we found an overall categorical left hemisphere advantage and coordinate right hemisphere advantage. The lateralization pattern was affected selectively by the degree to which participants used a spatial strategy and by none of the other variables (i.e., verbal strategy, cognitive abilities, and gender). Critically, the categorical left hemisphere advantage was observed only for participants that relied strongly on a spatial strategy. This result is another piece of evidence that categorical spatial relation processing relies on spatial and not verbal processes.     

Dispositional attribution: multiple inferences about motive-related traits

This research views dispositional inference as a process whereby perceivers integrate multiple inferences about a target person's motives and traits. The findings suggest that although perceived motives may stimulate extra attributional processing (S. Fein, 1996), the content of the inferred motive is important as well. Perceivers learned about situational forces implying that a target person had free choice, no choice, or an ulterior motive for helpful behavior. Inferences about the target's helpfulness differed depending on whether the target's behavior was attributed to an obedience motive (no-choice condition) or to a selfish motive (ulterior-motive condition). In general, inferences about motives were more predictive of dispositional inferences than were global causal attributions (to situational vs. dispositional forces) or base rate assumptions.     

Consuming Entertainment Media: How Media Effects Can Vary by Users’ Controllability

Previous communication studies have focused on how media content influences human aggression. Few studies, however, have been conducted regarding the influence of situational variables on human aggression. Regarding online gaming, the present study examines how game users’ aggression is influenced by two idiosyncratic situational variables: “degree of control” (playing vs. watching) and “degree of interaction” (alone vs. together). The feeling of presence is also examined as a mediator to explicate the mechanism through which these situational variables influence the game users’ levels of aggression. The results demonstrate that degree of control significantly affects users’ aggression. Aggression is increased when players actively participate in the game versus simply watching; situational factors that are associated with the way people engage in interactive media cause short-term shifts in players’ aggression. Implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Social Anxiety and Specificity of Positive Alcohol Expectancies: Preliminary Findings

This preliminary study examined the relationship between social anxiety and specificity of positive alcohol outcome expectancies (AOE) in a community sample of 62 drinking adults. The sample was divided into subsets of socially anxious (n = 17) and nonsocially anxious (n = 45) men and women. The Drinking Expectancy Questionnaire (DEQ) and Alcohol Expectancies in Social Evaluative Situations Scale (AESES) were used to determine if groups differed in the general positive AOE they hold, or only in AOE specific to social situations. ANOVAs revealed that socially anxious individuals had greater positive AOE specific to social situations (DEQ—Assertion scale and AESES) than nonsocially anxious individuals, with no differences in other positive AOE. Partial correlations controlling for social anxiety revealed that AOE specific to social situations correlated with greater drinking and alcohol dependency levels. Findings indicate that identification of AOE specific to social situations may be useful in classifying socially anxious individuals at risk for alcoholism and as a focus of expectancy challenge strategies for individuals with co-occurring social anxiety and drinking problems.     

Psychometric Assessment of the Comprehensive Effects of Alcohol Questionnaire: Comparing a Brief Version to the Original Full Scale

The current set of studies compared the psychometric properties of the original Comprehensive Effects of Alcohol Questionnaire (CEOA) to a 15-item version (B-CEOA) in a nonclinical undergraduate sample (N = 581), and attempted to replicate and extend the B-CEOA findings in an undergraduate sample referred to an alcohol intervention (N = 734). Psychometric assessment included construct validity, internal consistency, and concurrent validity, using both positive and negative expectancy items in all analyses. Results provided further support for the empirical validity of the original CEOA, and provided support for the use of the B-CEOA despite the reduction in the number of items. The B-CEOA factor structures obtained using exploratory and confirmatory techniques provided support for a 4-factor structure of expectancies and 3-factor structure of valuations. Findings reveal potential problems with positive and negative expectancy items. Trade-offs regarding factor structure, internal consistency, and administration time should be considered in using the B-CEOA vs. the CEOA.     

Overlapping stage models and reaction time additivity: Effects of the activation equation

Many experimental factors have been found to affect mean reaction time (RT) additively in factorial experiments. What sorts of RT models are compatible with this fact? Sternberg (1969) showed that serial, discrete-stage models are consistent with additivity, and as a result additivity has sometimes been regarded as evidence in favor of such models. However, McClelland (1979) showed that an alternative “cascade” model, which violates crucial assumptions of discrete-stage models, also predicts RT additivity in many cases. This article examines various modified versions of the cascade model, and shows that mean RT additivity arises from many overlapping stage models, including some with thresholds, information quantization, and nonlinear activation transformations. This suggests that other aspects of the data besides mean RT additivity should be examined to distinguish between serial and overlapping stage models.