Correction to: Office Housework,Burnout, and Promotion: Does Gender Matter?

Journal of Business and Psychology - In the final version of the publication, the acknowledgement was missing. The data were supported by an ERC pilot grant, and they should be acknowledged.     

Letter Therapy: A Model for Enhancing Counseling Intervention

Based on 15 letters between a counselor and a female client, this article outlines and discusses a unique letter therapy process, which is loosely adapted from the Morita Therapy approach to counseling. The five-step Letter therapy approach consists of 1) opening up, 2) focusing on life themes, 3) redirecting toward strengths, 4) reinforcing actions, and 5) affirming a positive attitude toward life. Letter writing has the potential of being used by counselors either in conjunction with face-to-face counseling or as a separate therapeutic method.     

Applying the self-determination theory continuum to unhealthy eating: Consequences on well-being and behavioral frequency

The present research applies self-determination theory (SDT) to the context of unhealthy eating. The extent to which each of the six types of motivations stemming from the SDT continuum applies to unhealthy eating is examined, as well as the contribution of each motivation for eating unhealthily in predicting psychological well-being and frequency of unhealthy eating. A three-wave longitudinal study (N = 379) was conducted before, during, and after the Christmas holidays. Results demonstrated that three types of motivations (i.e., identified, introjected, and external regulation) for unhealthy eating fluctuated over time and peaked during the holidays, a time when unhealthy eating becomes especially salient in Western societies. However, amotivation for unhealthy eating reached its lowest level during the holidays. While identified regulation was associated with greater well-being, introjected regulation, and amotivation for unhealthy eating were linked with lower well-being. Integrated regulation was associated with lower well-being only before and after the holiday period. Finally, the integrated, introjected, external regulations, and amotivation were linked to higher frequency of unhealthy eating. These results confirm that each type of motivation presents distinct patterns of associations with well-being and actual behavior. Results also demonstrate that the social context in which eating takes place can have an impact on the relationship between motivations and well-being as well as behavior.     

Examining the item response process to personality measures in high-stakes situations: Issues of measurement validity and predictive validity

We conducted two experimental studies with between-subjects and within-subjects designs to investigate the item response process for personality measures administered in high- versus low-stakes situations. Apart from assessing measurement validity of the item response process, we examined predictive validity; that is, whether or not different response models entail differential selection outcomes. We found that ideal point response models fit slightly better than dominance response models across high- versus low-stakes situations in both studies. Additionally, fitting ideal point models to the data led to fewer items displaying differential item functioning compared to fitting dominance models. We also identified several items that functioned as intermediate items in both the faking and honest conditions when ideal point models were fitted, suggesting that ideal point model is “theoretically” more suitable across these contexts for personality inventories. However, the use of different response models (dominance vs. ideal point) did not have any substantial impact on the validity of personality measures in high-stakes situations, or the effectiveness of selection decisions such as mean performance or percent of fakers selected. These findings are significant in that although prior research supports the importance and use of ideal point models for measuring personality, we find that in the case of personality faking, though ideal point models seem to have slightly better measurement validity, the use of dominance models may be adequate with no loss to predictive validity.     

The Value of Perception

This paper develops a form of transcendental naïve realism. According to naïve realism, veridical perceptual experiences are essentially relational. According to transcendental naïve realism, the naïve realist theory of perception is not just one theory of perception amongst others, to be established as an inference to the best explanation and assessed on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis that weighs performance along a number of different dimensions: for instance, fidelity to appearances, simplicity, systematicity, fit with scientific theories, and so on. Rather, naïve realism enjoys a special status in debates in the philosophy of perception because it represents part of the transcendental project of explaining how it is possible that perceptual experience has the distinctive characteristics it does. One of the potentially most interesting prospects of adopting a transcendental attitude towards naïve realism is that it promises to make the naïve realist theory of perception, in some sense, immune to falsification. This paper develops a modest form of transcendental naïve realism modelled loosely on the account of the reactive attitudes provided by Strawson in ‘Freedom and Resentment’, and suggests one way of understanding the claim that naïve realism is immune to falsification.     

The typology of parricide and the role of mental illness: Data-driven approach

Parricide is a rare type of homicide in which mental illness is often an important factor. The aims of this study were (a) to describe the characteristics of parricide offenders with a focus on mental illness and clinical care and (b) to examine Heide's widely used typology of parricide through a data-driven approach. We analyzed all homicides in England and Wales between 1997 and 2014. Parricide offenders in our sample were most often male, unmarried, and unemployed, with a third of offenders diagnosed with schizophrenia; 28% had been in contact with mental health services before the offense. The latent class analysis resulted in three types of parricide offenders: middle-aged with affective disorder, previously abused, and seriously mentally Ill, which confirmed, to an extent, Heide's typology. Health and social care services should actively engage with carers of people with mental illness and support to those caring for older relatives and victims of abuse.     

Psychometric and Validity Issues in Machine Learning Approaches to Personality Assessment: A Focus on Social Media Text Mining

In the age of big data, substantial research is now moving toward using digital footprints like social media text data to assess personality. Nevertheless, there are concerns and questions regarding the psychometric and validity evidence of such approaches. We seek to address this issue by focusing on social media text data and (i) conducting a review of psychometric validation efforts in social media text mining (SMTM) for personality assessment and discussing additional work that needs to be done; (ii) considering additional validity issues from the standpoint of reference (i.e. ‘ground truth’) and causality (i.e. how personality determines variations in scores derived from SMTM); and (iii) discussing the unique issues of generalizability when validating SMTM for personality assessment across different social media platforms and populations. In doing so, we explicate the key validity and validation issues that need to be considered as a field to advance SMTM for personality assessment, and, more generally, machine learning personality assessment methods. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Naloxone administration impairs autoshaped learning

Effects of naloxone on acquisition of autoshaped behavior were investigated. Rats deprived to 85% of free-feeding weights were trained to touch a retractable lever; delivery of a food pellet occurred on every trial following lever retraction. The lever was retracted immediately if a touch occurred within 15 s, or automatically after 15 s. Analyses were conducted on number and latencies of touches of the extended lever, nose-pokes (touches) directed at the retracted lever during intertrial intervals (a measure less constrained by ceiling effects than extended lever touches), and unconditioned exploratory rearing activity, measured as touches of a metal strip mounted above the grid floor of the apparatus. In an initial experiment, male Sprague-Dawley rats were given saline or naloxone (2.0 mg/kg, ip) 5 min before a training session of 12 trials. Two days later they were tested, in the absence of drug, in a session of 36 (three blocks of 12) trials. Naloxone depressed training levels of lever responding, in addition to slowing acquisition rate. No effect of naloxone was observed on rearing activity. Previous work showed that injection of saline 5 min before behavioral testing increases the rate of autoshaping compared to injections 30 min before (Messing & Sparber, 1984). Thus, effects of naloxone on acquisition of lever-directed behaviors may have been confounded by behavioral depressant effects and/or by an injection effect such a short time before testing. In a second experiment naloxone (0.5 or 2.0 mg/kg) was injected after five of seven training sessions (12 trials each) to male and female rats. A 6-s delay of reinforcement was inserted between lever retraction and food delivery, slowing acquisition rates and providing the opportunity to test the effects of naloxone throughout a multiple-session task. The low dose retarded acquisition of extended lever touching in both sexes; both doses retarded acquisition of interim lever touching in males. Thus, in some circumstances, post-training naloxone administration may impair learning. The results support the notion that low doses of naloxone may have agonist activity.