When Is Dominance Related to Smiling? Assigned Dominance, Dominance Preference, Trait Dominance, and Gender as Moderators

We investigated gender and different types of dominance measures as potential moderators of the relation between dominance and smiling. We asked participants about their preference for either a dominant or a subordinate role (dominance preference), randomly assigned one of these roles to them (assigned dominance), and assessed trait dominance, felt dominance, and perceived dominance. Participants had two 8-min dyadic interactions in same-gender groups (33 all-women dyads, 36 all-men dyads), in which one was assigned to be the owner of an art gallery and the other was assigned to be the assistant to the owner. Interactions were videotaped, and smiling and perceived dominance were assessed on the basis of the videotapes. Both the particular dominance measure and gender moderated the relation between dominance and smiling. Results showed that for women in subordinate positions, those who wanted to be in a subordinate position smiled more than those who wanted to be in a dominant position. No such effect occurred for men and for participants in assigned dominant positions.     

Revelation effects in remembering,forecasting, and perspective taking

The revelation effect is a robust phenomenon in episodic memory whereby stimuli that immediately follow a simple cognitive task are more likely to garner positive responses on a variety of memory tests, including autobiographical memory judgments. Six experiments investigated the revelation effect for judgments of past and future events as well as judgments made from others’ perspectives. The purpose of this work was to determine whether these subjectively distinct judgments are subject to the same decision-making biases, as might be expected if they are governed by similar processes (e.g., Schacter, Addis, & Buckner 2007). College-aged participants were asked to rate a variety of life events according to whether the events had occurred during their childhoods or would occur during the next 10 years. Events that followed an anagram task were judged as more likely to have happened in the past and more likely to occur in the future. We also showed a revelation effect when participants were asked to adopt the perspective of others when making judgments about past and future events. When the task was reworded to be non-episodic (participants judged how common the events were during childhood and adulthood), no revelation effect was found for either past or future time frames, which suggests common boundary conditions for both types of judgments. The results are consistent with studies showing strong parallels between remembering and other forms of self-projection but not with semantic memory judgments.     

Effects of a Strengths Intervention on General and Work-Related Well-Being: The Mediating Role of Positive Affect

In this article, we explore the use of strengths interventions, defined as activities and processes that target the identification, development, and use of individual strengths, as an organizational tool to increase employee well-being. Engaging with one’s strengths is assumed to be a pleasant activity that elicits positive emotions like joy, pride, and gratitude, which, in turn, contribute to feelings of overall well-being and satisfaction. Building on this assumption, we hypothesized that participating in a strengths intervention leads to increases in general (i.e., psychological capital and satisfaction with life), and work-related well-being (i.e., increased work engagement and decreased burnout), and that positive affect mediates these effects. To test these hypotheses, we conducted a field experiment with a sample of N = 116 Dutch working people who were assigned to either an experimental group (participating in a strengths intervention) or a waitlist control group. All participants filled in a pre-intervention, post-intervention, and 1 month follow-up questionnaire. Results indicate that participating in a strengths intervention creates short-term increases in employee positive affect and short- and long-term increases in psychological capital. We did not find evidence for a positive, direct effect of the strengths intervention on satisfaction with life, work engagement, and burnout respectively, but we did find support for indirect effects via the mediator positive affect.     

Deceptive-like behaviour in dogs (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Canis familiaris</Emphasis>)

Deception, the use of false signals to modify the behaviour of the receiver, occurs in low frequencies even in stable signalling systems. For example, it can be advantageous for subordinate individuals to deceive in competitive situations. We investigated in a three-way choice task whether dogs are able to mislead a human competitor, i.e. if they are capable of tactical deception. During training, dogs experienced the role of their owner, as always being cooperative, and two unfamiliar humans, one acting ‘cooperatively’ by giving food and the other being ‘competitive’ and keeping the food for themselves. During the test, the dog had the options to lead one of these partners to one of the three potential food locations: one contained a favoured food item, the other a non-preferred food item and the third remained empty. After having led one of the partners, the dog always had the possibility of leading its cooperative owner to one of the food locations. Therefore, a dog would have a direct benefit from misleading the competitive partner since it would then get another chance to receive the preferred food from the owner. On the first test day, the dogs led the cooperative partner to the preferred food box more often than expected by chance and more often than the competitive partner. On the second day, they even led the competitive partner less often to the preferred food than expected by chance and more often to the empty box than the cooperative partner. These results show that dogs distinguished between the cooperative and the competitive partner, and indicate the flexibility of dogs to adjust their behaviour and that they are able to use tactical deception.     

The Glasgow Voice Memory Test: Assessing the ability to memorize and recognize unfamiliar voices

One thousand one hundred and twenty subjects as well as a developmental phonagnosic subject (KH) along with age-matched controls performed the Glasgow Voice Memory Test, which assesses the ability to encode and immediately recognize, through an old/new judgment, both unfamiliar voices (delivered as vowels, making language requirements minimal) and bell sounds. The inclusion of non-vocal stimuli allows the detection of significant dissociations between the two categories (vocal vs. non-vocal stimuli). The distributions of accuracy and sensitivity scores (d’) reflected a wide range of individual differences in voice recognition performance in the population. As expected, KH showed a dissociation between the recognition of voices and bell sounds, her performance being significantly poorer than matched controls for voices but not for bells. By providing normative data of a large sample and by testing a developmental phonagnosic subject, we demonstrated that the Glasgow Voice Memory Test, available online and accessible from all over the world, can be a valid screening tool (~5 min) for a preliminary detection of potential cases of phonagnosia and of “super recognizers” for voices.     

Punitive Reactions to Completed Crimes Versus Accidentally Uncompleted Crimes1

Previous studies have shown that the harm caused by crime affects punitive reactions even if differences in the degree of harm are merely accidental. However, it remains unclear whether the effect is direct or whether it is mediated by attributed responsibility or blame. Participants were 303 university students who listened to 4 case vignettes (between‐subjects design). Half received information about a completed crime and half about an accidentally uncompleted crime. Crime type was either fraud or rape. The results suggest that individuals consider the actual harm to a significantly greater extent than attribution theory would predict. Moreover, the link between harm and punishment was virtually not mediated by attributed blame and not moderated by individual differences in morality. Future studies should investigate whether the harm‐punishment link is a result of an automatic act of retaliation or a desire to compensate for the harm done to the victim (restorative justice).     

Changing Meanings Through Art: A Systematization of a Psychosocial Intervention with Chilean Women in Urban Poverty Situation

This study explores the experiences that women in urban poverty situation have about their participation in a psychosocial group intervention mediated by artistic techniques. An investigation was done using a qualitative methodology. Participants were ten women older than 21 years old who live in Santiago de Chile in poverty situation. Two group evaluations were performed during the intervention process and once it was completed, ten individual semi-structure interviews. The information was analyzed following the proposals of Grounded Theory, identifying negative experience about tiredness and sacrifice related to the circumstances they live in. It was possible, at the same time, to describe the benefits of an artistic activity including a psychosocial work over the individual well-being. The artistic creation was revealed as a way of expression, of re-viewing oneself and the environment, and relaxation. Transformation is discussed concerning self-affirmation, reparation and transference of this experience in their lives, as a preventive and protective resource to overcome their problems.     

Motor sequence learning performance in Parkinson's disease patients depends on the stage of disease

It is still unclear, whether patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) are impaired in the incidental learning of different motor sequences in short succession, although such a deficit might greatly impact their daily life. The aim of this study was thus to clarify the relation between disease parameters of PD and incidental motor learning of two different sequences in short succession. Results revealed that the PD patients were able to acquire two sequences in short succession but needed more time than healthy subjects. However, both the severity of axial manifestations, as assessed on a subsection of the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale III (UPDRS III) and the Hoehn and Yahr score, and the levodopa-equivalent dose (LED) were negatively correlated with the sequence learning performance. These findings indicate that, although PD patients are able to learn two sequences in short succession, they need more time and their overall sequence learning performance is strongly correlated with the stage of disease.     

Which preventive interventions effectively enhance depressed mothers' sensitivity? A meta‐analysis

Improving depressed mothers' sensitivity is assumed to be a key element in preventing adverse outcomes for children of such mothers. This meta‐analysis examines the short‐term effectiveness of preventive interventions in terms of enhancing depressed mothers' sensitivity toward their child and investigates what type of intervention is most effective. Thirteen interventions, reported in 10 controlled outcome studies, met the inclusion criteria (N = 918). Meta‐analytic results showed a small to medium, significant mean effect size (g = 0.32) with large variation in individual effect sizes (?0.56–1.76). Interventions including baby massage were highly effective in improving maternal sensitivity (g = 0.85). In contrast, individual therapy for the mother proved ineffective in terms of improving maternal sensitivity (g = ?0.00). Two other significant predictors of greater effect sizes were the inclusion of a support group and the use of a higher number of intervention methods; however, the significance of these results was largely accounted for by one single study. Our meta‐analysis confirms that depressed mothers' sensitivity can be improved by preventive intervention and suggests that baby massage may be an effective intervention method to evoke short‐term changes in maternal sensitivity. It is unclear whether these changes are maintained over time.