The Impact of the Antitobacco Norm on the Selected Mode of Cognitive Dissonance Reduction

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that when behavior violates an antismoking injunctive norm, dissonance is aroused, but the injunctive norm constrains how people reduce their discomfort. In Experiment 1, participants with positive or negative attitudes toward public smoking wrote an essay for or against a ban on public smoking. Whereas attitude change occurred for those whose counter‐attitudinal essay supported the antismoking norm, those whose counter‐attitudinal essay violated the antismoking norm did not change their attitudes to reduce dissonance. In Experiment 2, participants who wrote against the ban on public smoking eschewed attitude change in favor of reducing dissonance through trivialization and act rationalization. The discussion focuses on how maintaining social connections makes cognitions resistant to change when dissonance is aroused.     

Social Desirability Scales as Indicators of Self-Enhancement and Impression Management

This article presents 2 studies testing Paulhus's (2002) assumption that unconscious self-enhancement and conscious impression management represent separate processes of socially desirable responding (SDR) that can be observed within 2 content domains (egoistic and moralistic bias). In Study 1, we devised egoistic and moralistic SDR scales intended to measure self-enhancement in honest responding and impression management under demands for positive self-presentation. In Study 2, we correlated scores on these scales with external indicators of self-enhancement and impression management. In honest responding, both SDR scales most strongly correlated with self-enhancement indicators, whereas under demands for positive self-presentation they correlated more strongly with external measures of impression management.     

Marxism as Spinozism? One episode in the history of Soviet philosophy

Studies in East European Thought - This paper seeks to reconstruct philosopher Aleksandr Bogdanov’s approach to the philosophy of Spinoza in the context of the debate against Plekhanov. I...     

From Teachers’ Work Engagement to Pupils’ Positive Affect: a Weekly Diary Study on the Role of Pupils’ Autonomous Motivation

Applied Research in Quality of Life - The main purpose of the present study was to investigate whether there is a crossover effect from teacher’s general (trait-level) work engagement to...     

Taking Our Own Medicine: On an Experiment in Science Communication

In 2007 a social scientist and a designer created a spatial installation to communicate social science research about the regulation of emerging science and technology. The rationale behind the experiment was to improve scientific knowledge production by making the researcher sensitive to new forms of reactions and objections. Based on an account of the conceptual background to the installation and the way it was designed, the paper discusses the nature of the engagement enacted through the experiment. It is argued that experimentation is a crucial way of making social science about science communication and engagement more robust.     

How do loss- and restoration-oriented coping change across time? A prospective study on adjustment following spousal bereavement

Background and objectives: According to the Dual Process Model (DPM), shifting between loss-oriented (LO) and restoration-oriented (RO) coping is essential for adjustment following bereavement. Knowledge about how LO and RO coping change over time and how such changes are related to adjustment is missing. With a prospective design this study investigated (1) relations between levels of LO/RO coping and selected outcomes and (2) changes in LO/RO coping across time and their relations to adjustment.

Methods: A sample of 145 spousal bereaved individuals completed questionnaires measuring LO and RO coping, grief symptoms, positive affect, and attachment orientation approximately 2–3 months (baseline) and 7 months (follow-up) post-loss.

Results: High usage of LO coping was associated with poorer outcomes and high usage of RO coping was associated with better outcomes at both baseline and follow-up. Individuals generally shifted towards more RO coping across time and those who exhibited this shift showed lower levels of grief at follow-up compared to individuals who changed towards more LO coping across time.

Conclusions: Individuals showing more RO coping reported better adjustment both early and later in the bereavement process. Changes in coping orientation over time might be useful for understanding complicated grief reactions following loss.     

Listening comprehension in preschoolers: The role of memory

The current study analyzed the relationship between text comprehension and memory skills in preschoolers. We were interested in verifying the hypothesis that memory is a specific contributor to listening comprehension in preschool children after controlling for verbal abilities. We were also interested in analyzing the developmental path of the relationship between memory skills and listening comprehension in the age range considered. Forty‐four, 4‐year‐olds (mean age = 4 years and 6 months, SD =4 months) and 40, 5‐year‐olds (mean age = 5 years and 4 months, SD =5 months) participated in the study. The children were administered measures to evaluate listening comprehension ability (story comprehension), short‐term and working memory skills (forward and backward word span), verbal intelligence and receptive vocabulary. Results showed that both short‐term and working memory predicted unique and independent variance in listening comprehension after controlling for verbal abilities, with working memory explaining additional variance over and above short‐term memory. The predictive power of memory skills was stable in the age range considered. Results also confirm a strong relation between verbal abilities and listening comprehension in 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children.     

Demystifying the role of emotion in behaviour: toward a goal-directed account

ABSTRACT

The paper sketches the historical development from emotion as a mysterious entity and the source of maladaptive behaviour, to emotion as a collection of ingredients and the source of also adaptive behaviour. We argue, however, that the underlying mechanism proposed to take care of this adaptive behaviour is not entirely up for its task. We outline an alternative view that explains so-called emotional behaviour with the same mechanism as non-emotional behaviour, but that is at the same time more likely to produce adaptive behaviour. The phenomena that were initially seen as requiring a separate emotional mechanism to influence and cause behaviour can also be explained by a goal-directed mechanism provided that more goals and other complexities inherent in the goal-directed process are taken into account.