Going shopping and identifying landmarks: does collaboration improve older people's memory?

Older participants (mean age = 72.82 years) attempted to recall items from shopping lists while shopping in a supermarket and subsequently in their homes on recognition tests. They also attempted to identify local landmarks on a map. The recall occurred either together with their spouses or independently. Collaborative recall was compared to the pooled, nonredundant recall of spouses who completed the memory tasks alone (nominal groups). Nominal groups produced more hits on most measures and never fewer hits than did collaborative groups. However, collaborative groups consistently generated fewer memory errors than did nominal groups. In many everyday contexts, a tendency for collaboration to reduce false recall could be advantageous to older people. Signal detection analyses revealed that collaboration leads couples to require a higher level of certainty before they are willing to claim that they recognize an item. Finally, we examined the relation between expertise and recall in the shopping and landmark tasks. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Positive Feedback Bias as a Response to Out‐Group Unfriendliness1

This study tests whether Whites provide especially positive feedback to minorities who respond to feedback in an unfriendly manner. White female undergraduates (N = 66) gave verbal feedback to either a Black or a White confederate who posed as the author of a poorly written essay. Confederates responded to participants’ feedback in either a friendly or unfriendly manner. As predicted, participants who gave feedback to an unfriendly Black confederate supplied a selectively higher ratio of positive to negative comments and a selectively higher proportion of positive comments. Participants paired with an unfriendly Black confederate also provided the most positive post‐interaction ratings, despite minimal impression‐management pressures. Collectively, these findings indicate that Whites’ self‐image motives underlie the positive feedback bias.     

Irrational Wanting and Subrational Liking: How Rudimentary Motivational and Affective Processes Shape Preferences and Choices

People's wanting and liking reactions reflect not only high-level beliefs, but also the operation of rudimentary biopsychological processes. Previous studies suggest that the following wanting and liking processes may be relevant to political behavior: irrational wanting (where wanting is triggered by activation of the brain dopamine system and becomes dissociated from liking); unconscious liking and wanting (where evaluative judgments and behavior are modified without awareness of the eliciting affective stimuli or of the underlying affective response); and fluency-based liking (where preferences are influenced by the ease of stimulus processing). This review suggests how conceptual and methodological tools from affective neuroscience and psychophysiology can refine our understanding of basic affective and motivational processes that shape political attitudes and choices.     

Addictions Counselors' Attitudes and Behaviors Toward Gay,Lesbian, and Bisexual Clients

This study surveyed addictions counselors to determine factors that predict affirmative attitudes and behaviors with all clients and with gay, lesbian, and bisexual clients (GLB) in particular. Three factors were predictive with regard to all clients, and 5 factors were predictive with regard to GLB clients. Nonheterosexist organizational climate was the only factor predictive in both situations. The implications of these results are discussed with regard to practice, research, and training.     

The Big Picture of Individual Differences in Physical Activity Behavior Change: A Transdisciplinary Approach

The goal of this research is to utilize a transdisciplinary framework to guide the selection of putative moderators of the effectiveness of an intervention to promote physical activity behavior adoption and maintenance in the context of a randomized controlled intervention trial. Effective interventions to increase physical activity are sorely needed, and one barrier to the identification and development of such interventions is the lack of research targeted at understanding both the mechanisms of intervention efficacy and for whom particular interventions are effective. The purpose of this paper is to outline our transdisciplinary approach to understanding individual differences in the effectiveness of a previously successful exercise promotion intervention. We explain the rationale for and operationalization of our framework, characteristics of the study to which we apply the framework, and planned analyses. By embracing a transdisciplinary orientation for individual differences important in the prediction of physical activity (spanning molecular approaches, animal models, human laboratory models, and social psychological models), we hope to have a better understanding of characteristics of individuals that are important in the adoption and maintenance of physical activity.     

Psychosocial resources, threat, and the perception of distance and height: support for the resources and perception model

Threatening things are often perceptually exaggerated, such that they appear higher, closer, of greater duration, or more intense than they actually are. According to the Resources and Perception Model (RPM) psychosocial resources can prevent this exaggeration, leading to more accurate perception. Two studies tested RPM. Study 1 showed that the perceived closeness of a threatening object (a live tarantula) but not an innocuous object (a cat toy) was moderated by induced self-worth. Further, the more self-worth that participants experienced, the less close the tarantula appeared to them. Study 2 showed that greater levels of self-esteem reduced perceived height, but only among participants prevented from holding a protective handrail while looking down. Together, these studies confirm that resources moderate the physical perception of both distance and height, that resources moderate perception of threats but not nonthreats, that different resources have similar moderating effects, and that psychosocial resources can supplant physical resources.     

In Search of the Defensive Function of Sexual Prejudice: Exploring Antigay Bias Through Shorter and Longer Lead Startle Eye Blink

To explore the theory that some men experience antigay bias because of a defensive reaction to uncertainties surrounding their own sexuality (cf. Herek, 1987 ), we conducted a study (n = 132 men) in which we physiologically measured the affective underpinnings of antigay bias while individuals with different levels of self‐reported bias viewed sexually explicit material. Those higher in antigay bias exhibited less positive affect than did others, but did not appear to experience a defensive reaction. Given these results, combined with those of our previous studies, we conclude that evidence for the existence of a group of men who exhibit antigay bias because of a hidden or unconscious attraction toward men is difficult to demonstrate using current methodology.     

To Know and Be Known: An Intimacy‐Based Explanation for the Gender Gap in Biblical Literalism

We assess the gender gap in U.S. Christianity by examining in a national sample (Baylor Religion Survey 2010) a particularly robust measure of religiosity: biblical literalism. Women are more likely to report biblical literalism than men in bivariate comparisons, but we argue that intimate attachment to God is a related intervening mechanism. The results of this study indicate: (1) intimate attachment to God is associated with more literal views of the Bible, (2) after accounting for attachment to God women are no longer associated with increased literalism, (3) divine proximity‐seeking behaviors are associated with more literal views of the Bible, (4) proximity‐seeking moderates the relationship between attachment to God and Bible views, and (5) gender moderates the relationship between both attachment to God and proximity‐seeking behaviors and Bible views. The evidence presented here provides a plausible mechanism by which gender differences in biblical literalism may be accounted for.     

The DRD4 VNTR polymorphism influences reactivity to smoking cues

Recent research has indicated that craving for tobacco can be reliably elicited by exposure to smoking cues, suggesting that cue-elicited craving for tobacco may be a useful phenotype for research on genetic factors related to nicotine dependence. Given the potential role of dopamine in cue-elicited craving, the authors examined whether the DRD4 VNTR polymorphism is associated with cue-elicited craving for tobacco. Participants who were homozygous or heterozygous for the 7 repeat (or longer) allele were classified as DRD4 L, and all other participants were classified as DRD4 S. Participants were exposed to smoking cues before smoking either high-nicotine cigarettes or control cigarettes. Analyses suggested that participants in the L group demonstrated significantly greater craving, more arousal, less positive affect, and more attention to the smoking cues than did the participants in the S group.