Assimilation and contrast effects: The role of self‐construal and regulatory focus as moderators in collectivistic cultures of honour

Human judgments are context dependent. When answering a question about one's overall satisfaction with life, a previous question about one's romantic life might pose redundancy problems influencing one's judgment of life satisfaction, something known as item order effects. However, in order to detect such redundancy, one needs to pay attention to the context of the conversation. Any variable that influences the amount of attention given the context of the conversation can determine whether the presumed redundancy is detected or not. In three studies, two experiments and one correlational study, we tested the influence of induced self‐construal (study 1) and self‐regulatory focus (study 2) and self‐regulatory focus measured as an individual difference variable (study 3) as moderators of context effects among college students from Mexico. In study 1, participants induced to have an independent mindset were less likely to detect the redundancy posed by two questions, resulting, as predicted, in a contrast effect. In study 3, participants with lower levels of prevention focus were less likely to detect the redundancy posed by the same two questions as study 1, resulting, as predicted, in an assimilation effect. The implications of the results were discussed within the framework of the inclusion/exclusion model.     

Signal Detection Models with Random Participant and Item Effects

The theory of signal detection is convenient for measuring mnemonic ability in recognition memory paradigms. In these paradigms, randomly selected participants are asked to study randomly selected items. In practice, researchers aggregate data across items or participants or both. The signal detection model is nonlinear; consequently, analysis with aggregated data is not consistent. In fact, mnemonic ability is underestimated, even in the large-sample limit. We present two hierarchical Bayesian models that simultaneously account for participant and item variability. We show how these models provide for accurate estimation of participants’ mnemonic ability as well as the memorability of items. The model is benchmarked with a simulation study and applied to a novel data set. This research is supported by NSF grants SES-0095919 and SES-0351523, NIH grant R01-MH071418, a University of Missouri Research Leave grant and fellowships from the Spanish Ministry of Education and the University of Leuven, Belgium.     

Leader Humor Extends beyond Work: how and when Followers Have Better Family Lives

Although the consequences of leader humor on subordinates have been well documented, the important issues of how and when leader humor affects employees’ attitudes or behaviors beyond the workplace have received limited attention. We integrate the humor literature with spillover-crossover theory to address the gap regarding the implications of leader humor in the nonwork domain. By performing an experiment and two field studies involving employee-spouse dyads, we consistently find 1) a positive association between leader humor and followers’ job satisfaction, 2) a spillover effect of followers’ job satisfaction on subordinates’ work-to-family enrichment (WFE) and a crossover effect of subordinates’ WFE on their spouses’ marital satisfaction, 3) serial mediating effects of followers’ job satisfaction and WFE on the leader humor-spouses’ marital satisfaction link, and 4) a stronger positive indirect effect of leader humor on spouse’ marital satisfaction via followers’ job satisfaction and WFE when followers’ perceived organizational interpersonal harmony is low. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings and suggest practical implications for developing leader humor to enhance employee well-being.

     

Histamine reverses a memory deficit induced in rats by early postnatal maternal deprivation

Early partial maternal deprivation causes long-lasting neurochemical, behavioral and brain structural effects. In rats, it causes a deficit in memory consolidation visible in adult life. Some of these deficits can be reversed by donepezil and galantamine, which suggests that they may result from an impairment of brain cholinergic transmission. One such deficit, representative of all others, is an impairment of memory consolidation, clearly observable in a one-trial inhibitory avoidance task. Recent data suggest a role of brain histaminergic systems in the regulation of behavior, particularly inhibitory avoidance learning. Here we investigate whether histamine itself, its analog SKF-91844, or various receptor-selective histamine agonists and antagonists given into the CA1 region of the hippocampus immediately post-training can affect retention of one-trial inhibitory avoidance in rats submitted to early postnatal maternal deprivation. We found that histamine, SKF-91844 and the H2 receptor agonist, dimaprit enhance consolidation on their own and reverse the consolidation deficit induced by maternal deprivation. The enhancing effect of histamine was blocked by the H2 receptor antagonist, ranitidine, but not by the H1 receptor antagonist pyrilamine or by the H3 antagonist thioperamide given into CA1 at doses known to have other behavioral actions, without altering locomotor and exploratory activity or the anxiety state of the animals. The present results suggest that the memory deficit induced by early postnatal maternal deprivation in rats may in part be due to an impairment of histamine mediated mechanisms in the CA1 region of the rat hippocampus.