Expressive writing buffers against maladaptive rumination

This study examined whether ruminative style moderated the effects of expressive writing. Sixty-nine participants were assessed for ruminative style and depression symptoms at the beginning of their 1st college semester. Participants were then randomized to either an expressive writing or a control writing condition. Changes in depression symptoms were assessed 2, 4, and 6 months later. Results showed that a brooding ruminative style moderated the effects of expressive writing such that among those assigned to the expressive writing condition, individuals with greater brooding scores reported significantly fewer depression symptoms at all of the follow-up assessments relative to individuals with lower brooding scores. In contrast, reflective pondering ruminative style did not moderate the effects of expressive writing on depression symptoms. These findings suggest that expressive writing could be used as a means of reducing depression symptoms among those with a maladaptive ruminative tendency to brood.     

Implicit stereotypes, gender identification, and math-related outcomes: a prospective study of female college students

This study examined the effects of gender identification and implicit and explicit gender stereotyping among undergraduate women enrolled in college-level calculus courses. Women's gender identification and gender stereotyping regarding math aptitude were assessed after the course's first midterm exam. Implicit, but not explicit, stereotyping interacted with gender identification to affect women's performance on their final exams and their desire to pursue math-related careers. Women who showed low gender identification and low implicit gender stereotyping performed best on the final exam, and women with high scores on both factors were the least inclined to pursue math-based careers. Implications for the underrepresentation of women in math and the hard sciences are discussed.     

Effects of pain acceptance and pain control strategies on physical impairment in individuals with chronic low back pain

Psychosocial treatments for chronic pain are effective. There is a need, however, to understand the processes involved in determining how these treatments contribute to behavior change. Control and acceptance strategies represent two potentially important processes involved in treatment, although they differ significantly in approach. Results from laboratory-based studies suggest that acceptance-oriented strategies significantly enhance pain tolerance and behavioral persistence, compared with control-oriented strategies. There is a need, however, to investigate processes of acceptance and control directly in clinical settings. The present study investigated the effects of three brief instructional sets (pain control, pain acceptance, continued practice) on demonstrated physical impairment in 74 individuals with chronic low back pain using an analogue experimental design. After controlling for baseline performance, the pain acceptance group demonstrated greater overall functioning on a set of 7 standardized physical tasks relative to the other two groups, which did not differ from one another. Further, the acceptance group exhibited a 16.3% improvement in impairment, whereas the pain control group worsened by 8.3% and the continued practice group improved by 2.5%. These results suggest that acceptance may be a key process involved in behavior change in individuals with chronic pain.     

How, When, and Why to Use Digital Experimental Virtual Environments to Study Social Behavior

Over the last decade, researchers have begun using immersive virtual environment technology (IVET; commonly known as virtual reality) to create digital experimental virtual environments (DEVEs) to investigate social psychological processes. Researchers increasingly recognize that IVET provides powerful and cost-effective ways to manipulate theoretical variables and to measure a host of outcome variables, while providing a remarkable level of experimental control and ecological realism. In this article, we discuss IVET, the nature of social influence within DEVEs, and the use of DEVEs to study social behavior.     

Abusive supervision, intentions to quit, and employees’ workplace deviance: A power/dependence analysis

We conducted a two-study examination of relationships between abusive supervision and subordinates’ workplace deviance. Consistent with predictions derived from power/dependence theory, the results of a cross-sectional study with employees from three organizations suggest that abusive supervision is more strongly associated with subordinates’ organization deviance and supervisor-directed deviance when subordinates’ intention to quit is higher. The results also support the prediction that when intention to quit is higher, abusive supervision is more strongly associated with supervisor-directed deviance than with organization-directed deviance. These results were replicated in a second study, a two-wave investigation of people employed in a variety of industries and occupations.     

Fear-Related Chemosignals Modulate Recognition of Fear in Ambiguous Facial Expressions

ABSTRACT— Integrating emotional cues from different senses is critical for adaptive behavior. Much of the evidence on cross-modal perception of emotions has come from studies of vision and audition. This research has shown that an emotion signaled by one sense modulates how the same emotion is perceived in another sense, especially when the input to the latter sense is ambiguous. We tested whether olfaction causes similar sensory modulation of emotion perception. In two experiments, the chemosignal of fearful sweat biased women toward interpreting ambiguous expressions as more fearful, but had no effect when the facial emotion was more discernible. Our findings provide direct behavioral evidence that social chemosignals can communicate emotions and demonstrate that fear-related chemosignals modulate humans' visual emotion perception in an emotion-specific way—an effect that has been hitherto unsuspected.