Emotion Priming and Attributions for Terrorism: Americans' Reactions in a National Field Experiment

The terrorist attacks of September 11 elicited many forms of negative affect, including anger and sadness. They also elicited a search for explanations. A national field study that experimentally primed emotion evaluated how priming anger and sadness differentially evoked causal judgments about the attacks. It found that priming anger triggered more causal attributions than did priming sadness. Thus, specific emotions, rather than general negativity, shaped citizens' attributions regarding September 11. In addition to its theoretical implications, the study demonstrates a method for studying ecologically valid emotions, under conditions of experimental control, with a nationally representative sample.     

The psychology of the unthinkable: taboo trade-offs, forbidden base rates, and heretical counterfactuals

Five studies explored cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses to proscribed forms of social cognition. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that people responded to taboo trade-offs that monetized sacred values with moral outrage and cleansing. Experiments 3 and 4 revealed that racial egalitarians were least likely to use, and angriest at those who did use, race-tainted base rates and that egalitarians who inadvertently used such base rates tried to reaffirm their fair-mindedness. Experiment 5 revealed that Christian fundamentalists were most likely to reject heretical counterfactuals that applied everyday causal schemata to Biblical narratives and to engage in moral cleansing after merely contemplating such possibilities. Although the results fit the sacred-value-protection model (SVPM) better than rival formulations, the SVPM must draw on cross-cultural taxonomies of relational schemata to specify normative boundaries on thought.     

Are self-enhancing cognitions associated with healthy or unhealthy biological profiles?

Self-enhancement is variously portrayed as a positive illusion that can foster health and longevity or as defensive neuroticism that can have physiological-neuroendocrine costs. In a laboratory stress-challenge paradigm, the authors found that high self-enhancers had lower cardiovascular responses to stress, more rapid cardiovascular recovery, and lower baseline cortisol levels, consistent with the positive illusions predictions and counter to the predictions of the defensive neuroticism position. A second set of analyses, replicating the "illusory mental health paradigm" (J. Shedler, M. Mayman, & M. Manis, 1993), also did not support the defensive neuroticism hypothesis. The association between self-enhancement and cortisol was mediated by psychological resources; analyses of the cardiovascular results provided no definitive mediational pathway. Discussion centers on the potential stress-buffering effects of self-enhancing beliefs.     

Portrait of the self-enhancer: well adjusted and well liked or maladjusted and friendless?

Research has variously portrayed self-enhancement as an indicator of narcissistic defensiveness or as a concomitant of mental health. To address this controversy, the present study used multiple measures of self-enhancement along with multiple measures and judges of mental health, comprehensively assessing their relationship. The results indicated that self-enhancement is positively associated with multiple indicators of mental health and with a more favorable impact on others. Discussion centers on a reconciliation of discrepant portraits of the self-enhancer.     

Early environment, emotions, responses to stress, and health

A harsh early family environment is related to mental and physical health in adulthood. An important question is why family environment in childhood is associated with these outcomes so long after its initial occurrence. We describe a program of research that evaluates a model linking these variables to each other. Specifically, we hypothesize that low social competence and negative emotional states may mediate relations between a harsh early family environment and physiological/neuroendocrine responses to stress, as well as long-term health outcomes. We report evidence that the model characterizes self-rated health, cortisol responses to stress, and, in males only, elevated cardiovascular responses to stress. We discuss how the social context of early life (such as SES) may affect the family environment in ways that precipitate adverse health consequences. Perspectives on comorbidities in physical and mental health are discussed.     

Character Development within Youth Development Programs: Exploring Multiple Dimensions of Activity Involvement

We examined links among three dimensions of youth involvement (intensity, duration, and engagement) in Boy Scouts of America (BSA), an international out‐of‐school time (OST) youth development program designed to promote moral and performance character in boys. Using data from 737 youth and their parents who participated in one of 40 BSA program sites (commonly referred to as “packs”), we first considered how individual‐ and pack‐level measures of program involvement were differentially linked with character development. Next, we examined whether pack‐level involvement characteristics moderate individual‐level involvement characteristics, hypothesizing that highly involved packs would serve to further enhance the positive effects of high levels of individual involvement. Results indicated engagement was the strongest, most frequent predictor of increases in both moral and performance character. Although there were no direct effects of pack‐level intensity, duration, or engagement, the effects of individual‐level engagement were moderated by pack‐level engagement, suggesting that the largest increases in moral and performance character occurred among highly engaged youth who were enrolled in highly engaged packs. These results highlight the need to examine multiple dimensions of OST program involvement simultaneously, and suggest that strengthening youth engagement in programming may provide a means for enhancing the positive effects of high‐quality youth programming.     

The role of neighborhood ecological assets and activity involvement in youth developmental outcomes: Differential impacts of asset poor and asset rich neighborhoods

Developmental system theories recognize that variables from multiple levels of organization within the bioecology of human development contribute to adolescent development, including individual factors, family factors and the neighborhood which includes extracurricular activities. Extracurricular activities provide a context for youth development, and participation has been linked with positive developmental outcomes. This study uses data from a subsample of early adolescents in the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development to determine whether neighborhood assets moderate the effect of adolescent activity involvement on positive and negative developmental outcomes. The relationship between activity involvement and neighborhood assets was different for girls as compared to boys when assessing outcomes of positive youth development, risk behavior, and depression. Consistent with a developmental systems perspective, the findings affirm the need for researchers and practitioners to consider multiple contextual influences when seeking to understand or promote, respectively, positive youth development.