Domestic violence and mental health in a Dutch community sample: The adverse role of loneliness

The present study explored whether the adverse mental health consequences of domestic violence victimization vary by type of loneliness (i.e., emotional and social loneliness). Participants were drawn from the Dutch city of Rotterdam (N = 7072). Domestic violence victimization, emotional loneliness and social loneliness were associated with self‐reported mental health. In addition, interaction effects were observed between domestic violence victimization and each type of loneliness. Implications for policy practice as well as strengths and limitations of the study were discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Attentional bias to brief threat-related faces revealed by saccadic eye movements

According to theories of emotion and attention, we are predisposed to orient rapidly toward threat. However, previous examination of attentional cueing by threat showed no enhanced capture at brief durations, a finding that may be related to the sensitivity of the manual response measure used. Here we investigated the time course of orienting attention toward fearful faces in the exogenous cueing task. Cue duration (20 ms or 100 ms) and response mode (saccadic or manual) were manipulated. In the saccade mode, both enhanced attentional capture and impaired disengagement from fearful faces were evident and limited to 20 ms, suggesting that saccadic cueing effects emerge rapidly and are short lived. In the manual mode, fearful faces impacted only upon the disengagement component of attention at 100 ms, suggesting that manual cueing effects emerge over longer periods of time. Importantly, saccades could reveal threat biases at brief cue durations consistent with current theories of emotion and attention.     

Materialistic Values and Well‐Being Among Business Students: Further Evidence of Their Detrimental Effect1

According to an environmental‐match perspective regarding the content of values ( Sagiv & Schwartz, 2000 ), extrinsic or materialistic values should positively predict well‐being in populations in which extrinsic values match the environmentally promoted values (e.g., among business students). However, other value researchers ( Kasser & Ahuvia, 2002 ) disagree with these claims. Although the present study shows that business students ascribe higher importance to extrinsic values than do education students, the negative relation of extrinsic values with well‐being and the positive relation with internal distress and substance use was not moderated by the department to which students belonged. Finally, mediational analyses revealed that value orientations could account for the fact that business students report lower well‐being and higher substance use in comparison to education students.     

A Note on the Structural Change Test in Highly Parameterized Psychometric Models

Psychometrika - Equal parameter estimates across subgroups is a substantial requirement of statistical tests. Ignoring subgroup differences poses a threat to study replicability, model...     

Perceived influence in groups over time: How associations with personality and cognitive ability can change over time

The ability of personality and cognitive ability to predict perceptions of group influence in small work groups are assessed both in initial and advanced stages of group formation. Extraversion is found important to initial perceptions of intra-group influence, which is partially mediated by peer-perceived social-emotional usefulness. After a few months, reputations are established and everyone has met; now work needs to get done efficiently and accurately and cognitive ability predicts increases in perceived group influence, which is partially mediated by perceived intelligence. After even more time, other Big Five personality traits become important to changes in perceived group influence, with positive associations with openness to experience, and negative associations with neuroticism and conscientiousness. The study findings and implications are discussed.     

Cast shadows in wide perspective

We investigated the apparent spatial layout of cast shadows up to very wide fields of view. We presented up to 130 degrees wide images in which two 'flat poles' were standing on a green lawn under a cloudless blue sky on a sunny day. The poles threw sharp cast shadows on the green, of which one was fixed. The observer's task was to adjust the azimuth of the shadow of the other pole such that it fitted the scene. The source elevation was kept constant. The two cast shadows are, of course, parallel in physical space, but generically not in the picture plane because of the wide perspective. We found that observers made huge systematic errors, indicating that, generically, they fail to account for these perspective effects. The systematic deviations could be well described by a weighted linear combination of the directions in the picture plane and in the physical space, with weights that depended on the positions of, and distance between, the poles.     

The best of both worlds: Integrating conscious and unconscious thought best solves complex decisions

Two studies address the debate over whether conscious or unconscious mental processes best handle complex decisions. According to Unconscious Thought Theory (Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2006) both modes of thinking have particular advantages: conscious thought can follow strict rules, whereas unconscious thought is better suited for integrating numerous decision attributes. Because most complex decisions require both adherence to precise rules and the aggregation of information, we hypothesized that complex decisions can best be made by engaging in periods of both conscious and unconscious thought. In both studies we found that the sequential integration of conscious and unconscious thought solved complex choices better than conscious or unconscious thought alone. In Study 2 we examined whether the sequential order of the integration condition matters. In line with our prediction, we found that integration worked best when unconscious thought followed conscious thought.     

Evaluative conditioning can be modulated by memory of the CS–US pairings at the time of testing

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is the valence change of a (typically neutral) stimulus (CS) that is due to the previous pairing with another (typically valent) stimulus (US). It has been repeatedly shown that EC effects are stronger or existent only if participants know which US was paired with which CS. Knowledge of the CS–US pairings is usually measured temporally close to both the conditioning phase and the CS valence measurement phase. Hence, the relation between EC and knowledge about the pairings could indicate either that participants need to become aware of the pairings at some point or that they need to remember them during the CS valence test. We isolated the impact of memory during the CS valence test in a study that encompassed two sessions. During the first session, participants were presented with CS–US pairings. The valence of the CSs was measured in a second session several days later using both a rating scale and an affective priming procedure. Memory for the pairings was measured both during the first and the second session. Using item-based multilevel analysis, we found that EC in the second session was related to memory for the pairings during the second session, but not to the memory for the pairings measured immediately after the learning phase. For the pairs that were remembered during the first session, but not during the second session, no EC effect was found. These results suggest that memory for CS–US pairings during valence measurement can be relevant for EC effects to occur.     

Survival processing in times of stress

Recent studies have found that processing information according to an evolutionary relevant (i.e., survival) scenario improves its subsequent memorability, potentially as a result of fitness advantages gained in the ancestral past. So far, research has not revealed much about any proximate mechanisms that might underlie this so-called survival processing advantage in memory. Intriguingly, research has shown that the memorability of stressful situations is enhanced via the release of stress hormones acting on brain regions involved in memory. Since survival situations habitually involve some degree of stress, in the present study, we investigated whether stress serves as a proximate mechanism to promote survival processing. Participants rated words for their relevance to either a survival or a neutral (moving) scenario after they had been exposed to a psychosocial stressor or a no-stress control condition. Surprise retention tests immediately following the rating task revealed that survival processing and acute stress independently boosted memory performance. These results therefore suggest that stress does not serve as a proximate mechanism of the survival processing advantage in memory.