Self‐report measures,facial feedback,and personality differences (BEES) in cooperative vs. noncooperative situations: Contribution of the mimic system to the sense of empathy

The present study integrated three different measures of emotional empathic behavior in a social context: verbal self‐report measures (empathic response, emotional involvement, emotional significance, and valence), facial mimicry (activity of corrugator and zygomaticus muscles), and personal response to the Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale (BEES). Participants were presented with different interpersonal scene types (cooperation, noncooperation, conflict, indifference). Firstly, self‐rating on empathy, emotional involvement, and valence varied as a function of interpersonal context. Secondly, corrugator activity increased in response to conflictual and noncooperative situations; zygomatic activity increased in response to cooperative situations. Third, high‐ and low‐BEES subjects showed different empathic behavior: High‐empathic subjects were more responsive to empathy‐related situations than low‐empathic subjects. The convergence and divergence of these multidimensional measures was discussed.     

Philosophy of Science A Personal Peek into the Future

In this opinion piece, the authors offer their personal and idiosyncratic views of the future of the philosophy of science, focusing on its relationship with the history of science and metaphysics, respectively. With regard to the former, they suggest that the Kantian tradition might be drawn upon both to render the history and philosophy of science more relevant to philosophy as a whole and to overcome the challenges posed by naturalism. When it comes to the latter, they suggest both that metaphysics has much to learn from the philosophy of science and that it offers an array of tools that philosophers of science can themselves appropriate.     

Exaggeration is harder than understatement, but practice makes perfect!

Previous research on the fakeability of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) yielded inconsistent results. The present study simultaneously analyses several relevant factors: faking direction, type of instructions, and practice. Furthermore, it takes baseline individual differences into account. After a baseline assessment in a self-esteem IAT without faking instructions (t0), participants in the faking conditions then (t1) faked high or low scores without being provided with recommended strategies on how to do so (i.e., individual strategies). At t2 and t3, they were asked to fake the IAT after having received information on recommended faking strategies. At t4, faking direction was reversed. Without the recommended strategies, faking high scores was not possible, but faking low scores was. With the recommended strategies, participants needed additional practice to fake high scores. When faking directions were reversed, participants were successful without additional practice, suggesting a transfer in faking skills. In most of the faking attempts, faking success was moderated by individual differences in baseline implicit self-esteem. This suggests that the complex interplay of factors influencing faking success should be taken into account when considering the issue of fakeability of the IAT.     

Influence of training on maintenance of equilibrium on a tilting platform

To assess the influence of training on the maintenance of equilibrium on a tilting platform, 13 young healthy male athletes aged 19 to 33 years were randomly divided into experimental (n=7) and control (n=6) groups. Two experimental sessions were performed before and after a specific 4-wk. training by the experimental group. Subjects stood upright on a tilting platform. The athletes were asked to maintain the platform as horizontal as possible during a 30-sec. test. The three-dimensional movements of the platform versus the ground were recorded by using a computerized optoelectronic digitiser. The platform plane was calculated and its directrix computed. The area of oscillation and instantaneous angular velocity of the directrix at standardized height were calculated. In both groups the area of oscillation and the angular velocity were reduced in Session 2, but the reduction was significant only in the experimental group. Specific training can significantly improve skill at maintaining equilibrium in young healthy sport performers.     

Artificial organisms as tools for the development of psychological theory: Tolman’s lesson

In the 1930s and 1940s, Edward Tolman developed a psychological theory of spatial orientation in rats and humans. He expressed his theory as an automaton (the "schematic sowbug") or what today we would call an "artificial organism." With the technology of the day, he could not implement his model. Nonetheless, he used it to develop empirical predictions which tested with animals in the laboratory. This way of proceeding was in line with scientific practice dating back to Galileo. The way psychologists use artificial organisms in their work today breaks with this tradition. Modern "artificial organisms" are constructed a posteriori, working from experimental or ethological observations. As a result, researchers can use them to confirm a theoretical model or to simulate its operation. But they make no contribution to the actual building of models. In this paper, we try to return to Tolman's original strategy: implementing his theory of "vicarious trial and error" in a simulated robot, forecasting the robot's behavior and conducting experiments that verify or falsify these predictions.     

Self‐esteem discrepancies and defensive reactions to social feedback

Recent research has provided increasing evidence that discrepancies between implicit and explicit self‐esteem (SE) are related to defensiveness. However, only one pattern, called fragile SE (a combination of high explicit and low implicit SE), has been the focus of research so far. Relatively little attention has been paid to the second possible SE discrepancy (low explicit/high implicit). We propose that both types of discrepancies are maladaptive, because they indicate a lack of integration in self‐representation. We conducted two studies on the correlates of discrepant SE in the sphere of defensiveness. We hypothesized that persons with discrepant SE exhibit more defensive behaviour than individuals with congruent SE. In two student samples, explicit SE was measured by means of the Multidimensional Self‐Esteem Scale. Implicit SE was measured with the Name Letter Technique (Study 1) and an Implicit Association Test (Study 2). In Study 1 (N = 102) we examined effects of implicit and explicit SE on defensive reactions to ambiguous statements. For this purpose, we adapted the Ambiguous Statements Task (AST, Tafarodi, 1998 ), a procedure that measures participants' tendency to interpret ambiguous expressions in a positive vs negative manner. We found that the combination of low explicit SE and high implicit SE was associated with a more positive interpretation of the ambiguous statements. Study 2 (N = 87) investigated the effects of discrepant SE on reactions to SE threat in an experimental setting. The time participants spent reading positive or negative social feedback was used as an unobtrusive measure of defensiveness. We found that people with discrepant SE went through the negative feedback faster than people with congruent SE. In sum, the studies provide converging evidence that both kinds of discrepancies between implicit and explicit SE are related to defensive behaviour.     

Does Hub‐and‐Spoke organization of healthcare system promote workers' satisfaction?

The healthcare services network is a recent organizational structure of healthcare services that are interdependent and organized as a network on the basis of the Hub‐and‐Spoke model. This questionnaire‐based study analyzed socio‐psychological well‐being of health workers both in terms of team‐related experience and individual satisfaction and engagement with one's work in a Hub‐and‐Spoke healthcare service in comparison to non‐network healthcare service. Workers from two different public healthcare services involved in the treatment of the same skeletal rare diseases participated in the Study. We expected that working under a Hub‐and‐Spoke healthcare service—involving teamwork and cooperation among different healthcare services within the units, as well as among workers belonging to different units—would lead to greater psychological team‐related and individual benefits. In line with predictions, the findings showed that under a Hub‐and‐Spoke healthcare service, health workers felt highly interdependent by their team fellows and developed shared cognitions (i.e., team mental models) about their integration and their tasks to a higher extent than non‐network ones. They were also individually more satisfied of their job and displayed higher work engagement than non‐network workers. Beneficial team‐related dynamics, such as perceived interdependence, were responsible for the differences between the Hub‐and‐Spoke workers and non‐network ones. The implications of the present findings were discussed in terms of promotion of health workers' satisfaction and well‐being.     

Depressive personality styles, dysphoria, and social comparisons in everyday life

"Sociotropic" people are supposedly vulnerable to dysphoria after negative interpersonal events, whereas "autonomous" people are supposedly vulnerable to achievement-related failures. The present study examined whether these personality styles are borne out in social comparison processes. For 3 weeks, 27 sociotropic and 35 autonomous undergraduates completed records of their social comparisons. Depressive personality style moderated comparison frequency and the affective consequences of comparisons, especially for dysphoric individuals: Dysphoric respondents were especially likely to make comparisons in domains that were congruent with their personalities, and comparisons in congruent domains were associated with greater mood change than comparisons in other domains, perhaps especially for dysphoric respondents. These results have implications for the literatures on social comparison and on depressive personality styles.