The Wished‐For Always Wins Until the Winner Was Inevitable All Along: Motivated Reasoning and Belief Bias Regulate Emotion During Elections

How do biases affect political information processing? A variant of the Wason selection task, which tests for confirmation bias, was used to characterize how the dynamics of the recent U.S. presidential election affected how people reasoned about political information. Participants were asked to evaluate pundit‐style conditional claims like “The incumbent always wins in a year when unemployment drops” either immediately before or immediately after the 2012 presidential election. A three‐way interaction between ideology, predicted winner (whether the proposition predicted that Obama or Romney would win), and the time of test indicated complex effects of bias on reasoning. Before the election, there was partial evidence of motivated reasoning—liberals performed especially well at looking for falsifying information when the pundit's claim predicted Romney would win. After the election, once the outcome was known, there was evidence of a belief bias—people sought to falsify claims that were inconsistent with the real‐world outcome rather than their ideology. These results suggest that people seek to implicitly regulate emotion when reasoning about political predictions. Before elections, people like to think their preferred candidate will win. After elections, people like to think the winner was inevitable all along.     

The Relations Between Patterning,Executive Function,and Mathematics

Patterning, or the ability to understand patterns, is a skill commonly taught to young children as part of school mathematics curricula. It seems likely that some aspects of executive function, such as cognitive flexibility, inhibition, and working memory, may be expressed in the patterning abilities of children. The primary objective of the present study was to examine the relationship between patterning and executive functioning for first grade children. In addition, the relations between patterning, executive functioning, mathematics, and reading were examined. The results showed that patterning was significantly related to cognitive flexibility and working memory, but not to inhibition. Patterning, cognitive flexibility, and working memory were significantly related to mathematical skills. Only patterning and working memory were significantly related to reading. Regression analyses and structural equation modeling both showed that patterning had effects on both reading and mathematics measures, and that the effects of cognitive flexibility were entirely mediated by patterning. Working memory had independent effects on reading and mathematics, and also effects moderated by patterning. In sum, these findings suggest that cognitive flexibility and working memory are related to patterning and express their effects on reading and mathematics in whole or in part through patterning.     

Perceived control effects on religiosity and quality of life among young adults

The study investigated the mediating role of perceived control in the association between religiosity and quality of life among young adults in south-west Nigeria. Data were collected from a sample of 1 050 young adults (mean age = 29.8, SD = 4.61; female = 38.7%). Regression analysis was utilised to predict quality of life from religiosity, partialling out perceived control. Findings suggest internal religiosity to predict an environmental domain of quality of life through perceived control. Perceived constraints appear to explain the association between internal religiosity and the environmental domain of quality of life.     

Therapeutic response to Cognitive Processing Therapy in White and Black female veterans with military sexual trauma-related PTSD

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) is an evidence-based treatment (EBT) for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which has been validated for female veterans with military-related PTSD. Existing trials have enrolled predominantly White veterans with some studies documenting higher rates of early termination from EBTs among Black females when compared to White females. Data from a previously published randomized clinical trial were used to evaluate the effectiveness of CPT for Black female veterans with military sexual trauma (MST)-related PTSD. Reductions in PTSD symptom severity, number of sessions attended, and early termination rates were compared between Black (n = 20) and White (n = 16) female veterans. A hierarchical linear modeling approach was used, with PTSD symptom severity over the course of treatment and follow-up entered as a level-1 variable and race (Black or White) entered as a level-2 predictor. Piecewise growth curves analyses revealed that both Black and White female veterans experienced significant reductions in PTSD symptom severity over the course of treatment and gains were maintained up to 6 months post-treatment. Race was not found to be a significant predictor of change in the slope of PTSD symptom severity over the course of CPT treatment. Additionally, number of sessions attended and rates of early termination did not significantly differ based on race. Results suggest that CPT was a well-tolerated and effective psychotherapeutic treatment for this sample regardless of racial self-identification.     

A Cantorian Argument Against Infinitesimals

In 1887 Georg Cantor gave an influential but cryptic proof of theimpossibility of infinitesimals. I first give a reconstruction ofCantor's argument which relies mainly on traditional assumptions fromEuclidean geometry, together with elementary results of Cantor's ownset theory. I then apply the reconstructed argument to theinfinitesimals of Abraham Robinson's nonstandard analysis. Thisbrings out the importance for the argument of an assumption I call theChain Thesis. Doubts about the Chain Thesis are seen to render thereconstructed argument inconclusive as an attack on the infinitelysmall.     

"Mindless" decision making as a failure of contextual reasoning

People often make decisions without reference to vital information, even when such information is readily available. In the present research, the authors addressed the possibility that this tendency may derive from failure to have pertinent information immediately available in the decision context. Participants rated the utility of decisions in either the presence or absence of simple pertinent information. The information provided required no training and was relatively obvious (e.g., if money is spent on a given item, that money will not be available for other expenditures). Presentation of such information in the immediate context of decisions significantly improved participants' abilities to understand their negative consequences. These results indicate that the presentation of pertinent information in immediate decision contexts, even information that is already available through participants' long-term memory, can improve the understanding of decision situations and reduce "mindlessness" in decision processes.     

Carryover effects associated with the single-trial passive avoidance learning task in the young chick

The single-trial passive avoidance task is a useful procedure for examining learning and memory in the young chick. However, it has recently been suggested that discrepant results reported by different laboratories are due to differences in training procedure. The present study investigated a number of parameters surrounding the passive avoidance task, using day-old White Leghorn, Black Australorp cockerels. The results suggested that presentation of a water-dipped bead immediately after the aversive bead significantly altered retention levels. In addition, when the water-dipped bead was presented after the aversive bead, chicks failed to discriminate between beads for a period of 10 min following exposure to the aversant experience. A novel variant of the passive avoidance procedure, involving pretraining with a water-dipped red bead, training with an aversant-coated red bead, and testing with a dry red bead, was evaluated. A measure of avoidance was calculated using all three trials. It is suggested that the use of a single bead, measured both before and after the training experience and using both aversant- and water-trained controls, results in the most concise characterization of memory-related phenomena in the chick which is not contaminated by a carryover effect from the aversive training experience to the nonaversive bead.