Innovative problem-solving in a threatened gull species,the Olrog’s Gull (Larus atlanticus)

Animal Cognition - Innovation, a process that plays an important role in the ecology and evolution of species, is considered an expression of behavioral flexibility in animals. Here we analyzed...     

Self‐regulation predicts risk‐taking through people's time horizon

In the context of decision‐making research, people's regulatory orientation mode (i.e., assessment and locomotion modes) has been included among the most prominent individual difference variables, which may potentially account for choice behaviour. Thus, the main objective of our experiment was to investigate the relations between habitual use of regulatory mode and risk‐taking through people's time horizon. Risk‐taking was appraised using a behavioural measure (i.e., BART) 1 month following evaluation of habitual use of regulatory mode. The findings revealed a significant negative association between the assessment mode and risk‐taking through individual differences in time horizon.     

Factor Validity of the Beck Hopelessness Scale in Italian Medical Patients

The aim of the present study was to assess the factor structure of the Italian version of the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) in a large sample of patients with medical conditions, comparing four different models proposed previously in the literature. Participants were 514 Italian adult patients with diagnoses of chronic daily headache, type 1 (insulin-dependent) or type 2 diabetes mellitus, epilepsy, open-angle glaucoma, human immunodeficiency virus infection, and women admitted for childbirth to a Department of Fetal–Maternal Medicine. All the patients were administered the BHS during routine visits. Confirmatory factor analyses were used to compare four models using several fit indices. The one-construct two-method model (i.e., the BHS measures one substantive hopelessness construct plus artifacts due to negative–positive item polarity) had the best fit indices and was more parsimonious than other models. The BHS seems to be a unidimensional measure of hopelessness, although there may be artifacts due to item polarity (i.e., positively and negatively worded items). Hopelessness scores differed in patients with particular medical diseases, with higher scores in conditions such as chronic daily headache and diabetes, and lower scores in patients positive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and with open-angle glaucoma or epilepsy.     

An Evolutionary Life History Framework for Psychopathology

In this article, I outline a general framework for the evolutionary analysis of mental disorders based on the concepts of life history theory. I synthesize and extend a large body of work showing that individual differences in life history strategy set the stage for the development of psychopathology. My analysis centers on the novel distinction between fast spectrum and slow spectrum disorders. I describe four main causal pathways from life history strategies to psychopathology, argue that psychopathology can arise at both ends of the fast–slow continuum of life history variation, and provide heuristic criteria for classifying disorders as fast or slow spectrum pathologies. I then apply the fast–slow distinction to a diverse sample of common mental disorders: externalizing disorders, schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, eating disorders, and depression. The framework integrates previously disconnected models of psychopathology within a common frame of reference and has far-reaching implications for the classification of mental disorders.     

Ends Over Means: Self-Affirmation Strengthens Attitudinal and Weakens Perceived Control Effects on Behavioral Intention

ABSTRACT

Self-affirmation research suggests that allowing people to affirm important values can improve acceptance of health messages. However, how self-affirmation improves message acceptance is not fully understood. Integrating construal level theory and reasoned action theory, this research tested two hypotheses: first, self-affirmation affects the abstractness of how people construe behavioral choices, and second, self-affirmation influences the associations between intention and its key determinants. Data were obtained from two studies on sunscreen use and flossing (n = 123 college students, and n = 294 adults). Our findings confirmed that self-affirmation induced abstract, high level construals of behaviors in terms of ends rather than means, and that self-affirmation strengthened the impact of attitude on intention and weakened the impact of perceived control.     

The child's sense of existence and the fatal attraction of identification

This paper gives special emphasis to the widening and modification of the sense of existence in relation to the unconscious processes of identification. In our ‘post‐modern’ society there are some parents who, while taking care of their children, use subtle projective identification against them, so as to produce in them a sort of pathological introjective identification, which denies their Self. Ferenczi's thought, which deals with the sense of ‘not‐existing’ in some children, helps us to go into depth in understanding their difficulties and pathologies.     

A moderated mediation model of e-mentoring

Based on a longitudinal sample of 1381, this study develops and tests a moderated mediation model of electronic mentoring (e-mentoring). Results show evidence that frequency of interaction between protégés and mentors mediates the relationships between program antecedents (the protégé’s previous internet experience and initial motivation to participate) and program outcomes of general self-efficacy and task-efficacy. In addition, the protégé’s general self-efficacy prior to starting the program was found to moderate the relationships between protégé and mentor interaction frequency and program outcomes of task and general self-efficacy. Unexpectedly, having mentors in the past was not significantly related to program outcomes. Practical implications and future areas of research are identified and discussed.