The cognitive representation of intending not to act: Evidence for specific non-action-effect binding

The question how we represent voluntary action on a cognitive level has recently become of increasing interest to researchers studying motor control. However, so far it has been neglected how we represent the voluntary omission of an action. In our attempt to investigate the representation of voluntary non-actions we demonstrated binding effects between voluntary non-actions and subsequent action effects (Kühn, Elsner, Prinz, & Brass, 2009). That study, however, only distinguished between acting or not acting, and did not address the question of whether non-actions are coded as general omissions or whether they can be encoded specifically as the actual negation of the action in question (“not-right” or “not-left”). Our current study provides first evidence for the specificity of representations of intentional non-actions. Additionally, we compare two ways in which the specific non-actions might be represented: an ironic representation account implying that negations are prone to be omitted and a reformulated representation account assuming that the negated action is suppressed and/or the alternative action is facilitated. Our results suggest that the representation of non-actions contains a facilitation of the alternative action rather than a suppression of the action in question.     

Pain-related anxiety and marijuana use motives: a pilot test among active marijuana-using young adults

The present investigation examined pain-related anxiety in regard to marijuana use motives among a sample of young adult marijuana users (N = 180; 45% women; M(age) = 21.11 years, SD = 6.41). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to determine the relations between pain-related anxiety and marijuana use motives. After controlling for current marijuana use frequency (past 30 days), daily cigarette smoking rate, current rate of alcohol consumption, level of bodily pain (current), and other marijuana use motives, pain-related anxiety was significantly and uniquely associated with coping and conformity motives for marijuana use. Pain-related anxiety was not significantly related to other marijuana use motives. These results offer novel empirical insight pertaining to a relation between pain-related anxiety and coping as well as conformity motives for marijuana use among active users.     

On the psychology of ‘if only’: Regret and the comparison between factual and counterfactual outcomes

People experience regret when they realize that they would have been better off had they decided differently. Hence, a central element in regret is the comparability of a decision outcome with the outcomes forgone. Up to now, however, the comparison process that is so essential to the experience of regret has not been the subject of psychological research. In this article, we tune in on the comparison dependency of regret. We argue that factors that reduce the tendency to compare attenuate regret, and demonstrate that uncertainty about counterfactual outcomes (Experiment 1), and incomparability of counterfactual and factual outcomes (Experiments 2 and 3) produce such effects.     

Being Young and Strictly Religious: A Review of the Literature on the Religious Identity Development of Strictly Religious Adolescents

Strictly religious adolescents grow up in highly religious contexts with orthodox beliefs and practices that usually contrast with those of pluralist and secularized societies that can be perceived as promoting unhealthy religious identity development. For these adolescents, religious identity development may be a challenge; however, there seems to be a lack of theoretical and empirical understanding of how these adolescents develop their religious identities. To address this, a literature review was conducted, and 15 studies were selected after the application of selection criteria. This review focuses on the characteristics of these studies to understand the religious identity development of strictly religious adolescents. Implications for theory development and further empirical research are discussed.     

Single‐item big five ratings in a social network design

To develop and validate an ultra‐short measure to assess the Big Five in social network designs, the unipolar items of the Ten‐Item Personality Inventory were adapted to create a bipolar single‐item scale (TIPI‐r), including a new Openness item. Reliability was examined in terms of the internal consistency and test–retest stability of self‐ratings and peer‐rating composites (trait reputations). Validity was examined by means of convergence between TIPI‐r and Big Five Inventory (BFI) scores, self‐peer agreement and projection (intra‐ individual correlation between self‐ and peer‐ratings). The psychometric quality of the TIPI‐r differed somewhat between scales and the different reliability and validity criteria. The high reliability of the peer‐rating composites motivates to use the TIPI‐r in future studies employing social network designs. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multiple options in the past and the present: The impact on inaction inertia

Inaction inertia is the effect that people do not act on an attractive opportunity only because they previously missed a more attractive opportunity. We investigated the effect of the presence of alternative options on the occurrence of this effect. We hypothesized and found that the likelihood to act on a current opportunity increases when evaluated in the context of another current option compared to when it is presented separately (Experiments 1 and 2). Likelihood of action decreases when the missed opportunity is presented next to another missed opportunity (Experiment 3). We conclude that when multiple options are currently present, the impact of the missed opportunity as a point of reference decreases, and that when multiple options are missed, the impact of these missed opportunities as a point of reference increases. These results are discussed in light of the literatures about inaction inertia and multiple options. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The processing of English regular inflections: Phonological cues to morphological structure

Previous studies suggest that different neural and functional mechanisms are involved in the analysis of irregular (caught) and regular (filled) past tense forms in English. In particular, the comprehension and production of regular forms is argued to require processes of morpho-phonological assembly and disassembly, analysing these forms into a stem plus an inflectional affix (e.g., {fill}+{-ed}), as opposed to irregular forms, which do not have an overt stem+affix structure and must be analysed as full forms [Marslen-Wilson, W. D., & Tyler, L. K. (1997). Dissociating types of mental computation. Nature, 387, 592-594; Marslen-Wilson, W. D., & Tyler, L. K. (1998). Rules, representations, and the English past tense. Trends in Cognitive Science, 2, 428-435]. On this account, any incoming string that shows the critical diagnostic properties of an inflected form - a final coronal consonant (/t/, /d/, /s/, /z/) that agrees in voicing with the preceding segment as in filled, mild, or nilled - will automatically trigger an attempt at segmentation. We report an auditory speeded judgment experiment which explored the contribution of these critical morpho-phonological properties (labelled as the English inflectional rhyme pattern) to the processing of English regular inflections. The results show that any stimulus that can be interpreted as ending in a regular inflection, whether it is a real inflection (filled-fill), a pseudo-inflection (mild-mile) or a phonologically matched nonword (nilled-nill), is responded to more slowly than an unambiguously monomorphemic stimulus pair (e.g., belt-bell). This morpho-phonological effect was independent of phonological effects of voicing and syllabicity. The findings are interpreted as evidence for a basic morpho-phonological parsing process that applies to all items with the criterial phonological properties.     

Development and validation of a Dutch translation of the Big Five Inventory (BFI)

In this article, we describe the translation and validation of the Dutch Big Five Inventory (BFI; John & Srivastava, 1999), a short instrument designed to measure the Big Five factors of personality. We obtained evidence of the instrument's good psychometric properties in terms of factorial equivalence to the English original and other BFI translations and the relative independence and internal consistency of the five scales. The findings suggest that the instrument can be used in diverse age groups without substantial changes in factor structure. The Dutch BFI scales showed similar demographic correlates as the English original, with higher Agreeableness and Conscientiousness and lower Neuroticism values in older participants, higher Neuroticism values in women, and higher Openness and Conscientiousness values in better educated participants. Use of the Dutch BFI will allow researchers to integrate their findings with the extant Big Five research literature. The brevity of the instrument will be appealing to researchers who are concerned about taxing the time and motivation of their participants.     

Not so ugly after all: when shame acts as a commitment device

Most psychological theories and research on shame focus on the ugly aspects and negative consequences of this emotion. Theories on moral emotions, however, assume that shame acts as a commitment device motivating prosocial behavior. To solve this apparent paradox, the authors studied the effects of shame on prosocial behavior. Shame was hypothesized to motivate prosocial behavior when it was relevant for the decision at hand (endogenous). In contrast, shame that was not relevant for the decision at hand (exogenous) was hypothesized to have no such effects. Four experiments with three different shame inductions and two different measures of prosocial behavior confirmed that endogenous shame motivated prosocial behavior for proselfs but that exogenous shame did not. Shame is shown to have a clear interpersonal function in the sense that it acts as a commitment device.     

The Effect of Education on Nationalism and Ethnic Exclusionism: An International Comparison

In most studies on ethnic attitudes, a rather strong negative relationship has been found between educational attainment and positive ingroup attitudes (or negative outgroup attitudes). However, it is not well known to what extent this educational effect varies across different national contexts. This study investigated the effect of education on different dimensions of nationalism and ethnic exclusionism with the use of 1995 survey data gathered in 22 countries. Notions from socialization theory were used to test whether the educational effect varies according to the length of liberal-democratic tradition and the degree of religious heterogeneity within a country. Results indicate that educational attainment is strongly related to ethnic exclusionism as well as chauvinism, but not to patriotism. Moreover, the effect of education on ethnic exclusionism is smaller in recently established democracies. The hypothesis regarding stronger educational effects in societies with more religious heterogeneity was not supported.