Changing Identities to Change the World: Identity Motives in Lifestyle Politics and Its Link to Collective Action

In this article, we assume an interdisciplinary approach to the study of why and how people transpose political considerations to their lifestyles. Our aims are threefold: to understand the meanings and perceptions of people engaged in lifestyle politics and collective action; to examine the motives guiding individual change; and to explore the linkage processes between lifestyle politics and collective action. Identity process theory is considered as a lens to examine the processes and the motives of identity via a thematic analysis of 22 interviews. This study combined interviews with people seeking social change through their lifestyles with interviews with members of action groups and social movements. We found that each participant's identity is guided by identity motives such as distinctiveness, continuity, and psychological coherence. Besides, lifestyle politics is evaluated as an effective way to bring about social change, depending on the individual experience of perceived power to bring about change through collective action. Overall, lifestyle politics states the way in which the participants decided to live, to construct their identities, and to represent their beliefs about the right thing to do. Lifestyle politics complements collective action as a strategy to increase the potential of bringing about social change. The implications of this research are discussed in relation to the importance of understanding the processes of identity and lifestyle change in the context of social, environmental, and political change.     

Validation of the Visual Analogue Scale for Anxiety-Revised and school refusal across anxiety profiles

Background/Objectives

This paper aimed to validate the Spanish version of scores of the Visual Analogue Scale for Anxiety-Revised (VAA-R) in child population, and to verify the existence of anxiety profiles and to relate them to school refusal.

Confidence in masked orientation judgments is informed by both evidence and visibility

How do human observers determine their degree of belief that they are correct in a decision about a visual stimulus—that is, their confidence? According to prominent theories of confidence, the quality of stimulation should be positively related to confidence in correct decisions, and negatively to confidence in incorrect decisions. However, in a backward-masked orientation task with a varying stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), we observed that confidence in incorrect decisions also increased with stimulus quality. Model fitting to our decision and confidence data revealed that the best explanation for the present data was the new weighted evidence-and-visibility model, according to which confidence is determined by evidence about the orientation as well as by the general visibility of the stimulus. Signal detection models, postdecisional accumulation models, two-channel models, and decision-time-based models were all unable to explain the pattern of confidence as a function of SOA and decision correctness. We suggest that the metacognitive system combines several cues related to the correctness of a decision about a visual stimulus in order to calculate decision confidence.     

Attentional bias during emotional processing: evidence from an emotional flanker task using IAPS

Attention is biased towards threat-related stimuli. In three experiments, we investigated the mechanisms, processes, and time course of this processing bias. An emotional flanker task simultaneously presented affective or neutral pictures from the international affective picture system database either as central response-relevant stimuli or surrounding response-uninformative flankers. Participants’ response times to central stimuli was measured. The attentional bias was observed when stimuli were presented either for 1500?ms (Experiment 1) or 500?ms (Experiment 2). The threat-related attentional bias held regardless of the stimuli competing for attention even when presentation time was further reduced to 200?ms (Experiment 3). The results indicate that automatic and controlled mechanisms may interact to modulate the orientation of attention to threat. The data presented here shed new light on the mechanisms, processes, and time course of this long investigated by still largely unknown processing bias.     

Motivated attention to fear-related stimuli: Evidence for the enhanced processing of fear in the late positive potential

Differences in the processing of emotions like fear and sadness have important implications for our understanding of many psychological phenomena (e.g., attentional biases, psychopathology). The late positive potential (LPP) is an established event-related potential that reflects motivated attention to emotional stimuli at the neural level with excellent temporal resolution, but has been infrequently used to study differences across emotions. Drawing on functional theories of emotion suggesting that the quick processing of fear-inducing stimuli increases chances of survival, we hypothesized that fear-inducing pictures would produce larger LPP amplitudes compared to other emotions (happy and sad) in the early time windows of the LPP (e.g., 400–700, 700–1000 ms). The results supported our hypothesis, offering new, albeit preliminary, evidence of the differential processing of threat-related stimuli on the LPP.     

The Importance of Emotional Intelligence and Cognitive Style in Institutionalized Older Adults' Quality of Life

Despite previous evidence showing a positive relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and quality of life (QoL), associating older adults' emotional processing with several health indicators, few studies have explored both the IE and the a mechanisms through which they affect QoL. This cross-sectional study analyzes the mediator role of optimistic and pessimistic cognitive styles in the relationship between perceived EI (PEI) and QoL in 115 institutionalized older adults from Southern Spain. Regression analyses showed, after controlling for cognitive style, that PEI predicted a significant percentage of variance in: Health (β = .25, p < .01), Functional abilities (β = .20, p < .05), Activity and leisure (β = .17, p < .05) and Life satisfaction (β = .21, p < .05). Additionally, multiple mediation analysis revealed that cognitive style partially mediated the relationship between PEI and Health, Activity and leisure and Life satisfaction. Thus, PEI could promote personal but not external or environmental QoL aspects, highlighting the importance of developing emotional skills for healthy aging.     

In the name of democracy: The value of democracy explains leniency towards wrongdoings as a function of group political organization

According to the “democracy‐as‐value” hypothesis, democracy has become an ideological belief system providing social value to democratic individuals, groups and institutions, granting legitimacy to their actions (even if dishonest or violent), and protecting them from consecutive punishments. The present research investigates the extent to which this legitimizing process is based on the individual endorsement of democratic principles. Across four experiments, following the misdeed of a (few) group member(s), respondents who valued democratic group organization and democracy in general expressed more lenient retributive justice judgments towards democratic (as compared with nondemocratic) offender groups. These findings shed light on the ways in which democratic ideology infuses justice judgments. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emotional intelligence and health‐related quality of life in institutionalised Spanish older adults

This study explores the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and health‐related quality of life (HRQoL) in a sample of Spanish older adults who are institutionalised in long‐term care (LTC) facilities. One hundred fifteen institutionalised individuals (47.82% women; 88.3 ± 7.9 years) from southern Spain completed a set of questionnaires that included measures of EI, health and personality. Data were analysed via hierarchical regression. After controlling for personality and sociodemographic variables, the EI dimensions, emotional comprehension and emotional facilitation, accounted for part of the variance in several HRQoL facets. These dimensions could have an important role in the HRQoL of residents in LTC. Moreover, the use of a performance measure addresses the limitations of previous studies that have relied on self‐report measures. These aspects underscore the importance of the results of this study.