Covariation neglect among novice investors

In 4 experiments, undergraduates made hypothetical investment choices. In Experiment 1, participants paid more attention to the volatility of individual assets than to the volatility of aggregated portfolios. The results of Experiment 2 show that most participants diversified even when this increased risk because of covariation between the returns of individual assets. In Experiment 3, nearly half of those who seemingly attempted to minimize risk diversified even when this increased risk. These results indicate that novice investors neglect covariation when diversifying across investment alternatives. Experiment 4 established that naive diversification follows from motivation to minimize risk and showed that covariation neglect was not significantly reduced by informing participants about how covariation affects portfolio risk but was reduced by making participants systematically calculate aggregate returns for diversified portfolios. In order to counteract naive diversification, novice investors need to be better informed about the rationale underlying recommendations to diversify.     

The Budapest meeting 2005 intensified networking on ethics of science

This paper reports on the meeting of the Sounding Board of the EU Reprogenetics Project that was held in Budapest, Hungary, 6-9 November 2005. The Reprogenetics Project runs from 2004 until 2007 and has a brief to study the ethical aspects of human reproductive cloning and germline gene therapy. Discussions during The Budapest Meeting are reported in depth in this paper as well as the initiatives to involve the participating groups and others in ongoing collaborations with the goal of forming an integrated network of European resources in the fields of ethics of science.     

Awareness of faces is modulated by their emotional meaning

A central question in perception is how stimuli are selected for access to awareness. This study investigated the impact of emotional meaning on detection of faces using the attention blink paradigm. Experiment 1 showed that fearful faces were detected more frequently than neutral faces, and Experiment 2 revealed preferential detection of fearful faces compared with happy faces. To rule out image artifacts as a cause for these results, Experiment 3 manipulated the emotional meaning of neutral faces through fear conditioning and showed a selective increase in detection of conditioned faces. These results extend previous reports of preferential detection of emotional words or schematic objects and suggest that fear conditioning can modulate detection of formerly neutral stimuli.     

A comparative study of the use of visual communicative signals in interactions between dogs (Canis familiaris) and humans and cats (Felis catus) and humans

Dogs' (Canis familiaris) and cats' (Felis catus) interspecific communicative behavior toward humans was investigated. In Experiment 1, the ability of dogs and cats to use human pointing gestures in an object-choice task was compared using 4 types of pointing cues differing in distance between the signaled object and the end of the fingertip and in visibility duration of the given signal. Using these gestures, both dogs and cats were able to find the hidden food; there was no significant difference in their performance. In Experiment 2, the hidden food was made inaccessible to the subjects to determine whether they could indicate the place of the hidden food to a naive owner. Cats lacked some components of attention-getting behavior compared with dogs. The results suggest that individual familiarization with pointing gestures ensures high-level performance in the presence of such gestures; however, species-specific differences could cause differences in signaling toward the human.     

The Importance of Perceived Care and Connectedness with Friends and Parents for Adolescent Social Anxiety

Nonclinical social anxiety in adolescence can be highly problematic, as it likely affects current and especially new social interactions. Relationships with significant others, such as close friends, mothers, and fathers, could aid socially anxious adolescents’ participation in social situations, thereby helping reduce feelings of social anxiety. We examined whether making friends as well as high friendship quality help reduce social anxiety over time, and whether friends’, mothers’, and fathers’ care interact in reducing social anxiety. Using longitudinal data from 2,194 participants in a social network (48% girls; M_age = 13.58) followed for 3 years, we estimated friendship selection and influence processes via a continuous time‐modeling approach using SIENA. We controlled for the effects of depressive symptoms, self‐esteem, gender, age, and family structure. Our findings suggest that perceived care by friends mediated the effect of making friends on social anxiety. Perceptions of mother and father, as well as friend care and connectedness, respectively, did not interact in decreasing social anxiety. Nonetheless, care and connectedness with mothers, fathers, and friends jointly predicted decreases in social anxiety. Caring relationships with friends and parents each play a role in mutually protecting early adolescents against increasing in social anxiety over time.     

Psychopathology Symptoms,Rumination and Autobiographical Memory Specificity: Do Associations Hold After Bereavement?

Symptoms of psychopathology are associated with overgeneral memory retrieval. Overgeneral memory is hypothesized to be the result of an emotion regulatory process, dampening emotional reactions associated with retrieval of distressing specific memories. However, higher post‐loss symptom severity has been related to higher specificity of loss‐related memories recalled on the Autobiographical Memory Test. This may imply that such memories are ‘immune’ to the reduced specificity effect. We aimed to test this idea by investigating, for the first time, associations of depressive and complicated grief symptoms and depressive and grief rumination with autobiographical memory specificity on a sentence‐completion task (SCEPT) in a bereaved sample. One hundred ninety‐one adult mourners (89% women) filled out questionnaires and the SCEPT. A main finding was that higher depressive and complicated grief symptom and grief rumination levels were associated with reduced specificity of non‐loss‐related memories but not with specificity of loss‐related memories. Implications of these results are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Depressive Symptoms Are Associated with the Phenomenal Characteristics of Imagined Positive and Negative Future Events

Depressive symptoms are often found to be associated with the number of imagined positive and negative future episodes. Whereas most previous studies investigated the number of imagined events within a limited time period, our study focused on the phenomenal nature of future episodes and their relationships to depressive symptoms, as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Nonclinical participants (n = 183) rated the phenomenal qualities (vividness, contextual/sensory details, felt, importance, accessibility, and certainty) of future episodes generated in response to negative and positive cue words. We found that lower ratings on the phenomenal characteristics of the positive events were associated with higher BDI scores, while an opposite pattern was observed for the negative events. However, there was no relationship between the proportion of imagined episodes that were specific and the BDI scores. Altogether, these results suggest that depressive symptom severity is associated with a wide range of phenomenal characteristics of imagined future episodes.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.