A Longitudinal Test of the Model of Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition

Using data from a longitudinal study of college students, this study assessed the relationships among the threat perceptions of realistic threat and intergroup anxiety, the ideological motives of system justification and social dominance orientation (SDO), and political conservatism. Those who had higher perceptions of realistic threat and intergroup anxiety at the end of their first year of college showed higher levels of system justification and SDO at the end of their second and third years of college, controlling for precollege expressions of each variable. Higher levels of these two ideological motives at the end of students' second and third years of college were associated with more politically conservative attitudes at the end of students' fourth year of college, again controlling for precollege expressions. These longitudinal results are discussed in terms of a model of political conservatism as motivated social cognition.     

Engaged Lifestyle, Personality, and Mental Status Among Centenarians

This study assessed engaged lifestyle activities (e.g., volunteering, traveling, and public speaking) for centenarians of the Georgia Centenarian Study. A total of 285 centenarians and near-centenarians (i.e., 98 years and older) and their proxy informants participated in this study. The Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE) was assessed for all centenarians, and proxy informants reported on lifestyle activities and personality traits of the centenarians. Results suggested that participants who had volunteered, traveled, and those who had given public talks and balanced their checkbooks were more likely to show relatively high mental status scores (i.e., MMSE > 17). Personality traits were found to be moderators in the relationship between engaged lifestyle and mental status: Participants with high levels of Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Openness, and Conscientiousness and with high levels of engaged lifestyle were more likely to show relatively high mental status scores (i.e., MMSE > 17), whereas participants with low levels of Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness and with low levels of engaged lifestyle were more likely to show relatively low mental status scores (i.e., MMSE < 18). The results suggest that engaged lifestyle, particularly in combination with personality traits, plays an important role in the level of cognitive functioning among oldest old adults.     

Cue-task associations in task switching

Cognitive flexibility can be studied using the task-switching paradigm. This paradigm requires subjects to adapt behaviour to changing contexts as indicated by a cue. In our study, we addressed the question of how cue-based implementation of mental “task sets” occurs. We assumed that cues build up associations to the tasks that they indicate. These associations lead to retrieval of the associated task set once the cue shows up again. In three experiments, we tested this assumption using a negative transfer paradigm. First participants were exposed to one cue-task mapping. After a training phase, the cue-task mapping changed in either of two ways. Whereas one group of participants got new cues, the other experienced a reversal of the learnt cue-task mapping. Our results show that participants build up cue-task associations and that these formerly learnt associations can hamper the implementation of new cue-task mappings (particular with mapping reversal). Prolonged preparation time decreased the cost of changing the cue-task mapping but did not change the overall pattern of results.     

Religious orientation and coping with cancer

In this study we investigated the role of religious orientation in coping with stresses associated with cancer. A measure of daily coping and the Religious Orientation scale were administered to forty hematology-oncology patients in order to examine frequency of eight coping responses across religious orientations. It was found that proreligious and intrinsic participants used religion significantly more often than nonreligious and extrinsic types to cope with stresses associated with their cancer. We concluded that religious orientation and commitment influence the coping process, and suggest that religious commitment be included in studies of coping with cancer.     

The roleof availabilityinthe estimationof nationalpopulations

In two parallel experiments, conducted 17 months apart, we examined the relations among population estimates, availability, and media coverage of the 100 countries with populations of 4 million or more. The results were consistent with the main hypothesis, that availability influences population estimates. Specifically, we found that (1) rated knowledge of each country (our measure of availability) was strongly correlated with estimated population for that country; (2) rated knowledge was more strongly correlated with estimated population than were other plausible predictors, such as land area; (3) a strong partial correlation between rated knowledge and estimated population remained even after true population and true land area were partialed out; and (4) longitudinal changes in rated knowledge predicted longitudinal changes in estimated population. Also as hypothesized, media coverage was positively related to availability and to population estimates. Further, we found that population estimates, rated knowledge, and amount of media coverage that each country received were very stable over the year-and-a-half period. These results led us to consider when availability is most likely to be relied upon heavily in quantitative estimation and how it may be integrated with other knowledge to derive quantitative estimates.     

Like a bee on a windowpane: Heyting's reflections on solipsism

This paper presents the content of the unpublished notes that the Dutch mathematician Arend Heyting wrote in different periods of his life on solipsism and that are preserved in Heyting's archive at the University of Amsterdam. Most of the notes are quoted here and translated into English. Their study shows the originality of Heyting's reflections on a subject that was typical of his master, L. E. J. Brouwer, the father of intuitionism.     

The questions lay interviewers ask

Two studies were conducted to determine the kinds of questions people formulate for testing a hypothesis about another's personality. One group of subjects tested the hypothesis that the interviewee was an extrovert; another group tested the hypothesis that the interviewee was an introvert. Still another group was not provided with a hypothesis; instead, this group was asked to discriminate between an extroverted and an introverted interviewee. All subjects were free to formulate any kind of questions they wished. Analysis of the content of the questions performed by independent judges revealed that the great majority of the questions formulated by all of the groups either presented a choice between extroverted and introverted features or were open-ended. The percentage of questions about features that were consistent with the hypothesis was not significantly greater than the percentage of questions about features that were inconsistent with the hypothesis. Furthermore, in all of the groups there were virtually no biased questions–questions that already assume that the hypothesis is true. Finally, the questions asked by subjects who entertained either the extrovert hypothesis or the introvert hypothesis were as diagnostic (as rated by independent judges) as were the questions asked by subjects whose task was to discriminate between extroverts and introverts. The results were shown to be consistent with the diagnosing strategy but not with the confirmatory strategy of information-gathering.     

Effects of practice, instructions, and modeling on components of assertive behavior

Unassertive psychiatric patients matched on age, years of education, diagnosis, and self-reported assertiveness were assigned to one of five conditions, with 10 subjects in each group: (1) Test-Retest, (2) Practice-Control, (3) Instructions, (4) Modeling, (5) Modeling plus Instructions. All subjects were videotaped (Pre- and Post-Test) while responding to five interpersonal situations requiring assertive responses. Pre- and Post-Test responses for all subjects were rated independently by judges on seven verbal and non-verbal components of assertiveness. Analyses of variance for difference scores followed by multiple t-test comparisons indicated that the Modeling plus Instructions group was superior or equal to the Instructions alone or Modeling alone groups on five of the seven components. Instructions alone and Modeling alone led to greatest improvement in the remaining two components. No differences were found between the Practice-Control and Test-Retest groups on any of the seven components of assertiveness. No differences (Post-Pretest) were found among the groups on a self-report measure of assertiveness.     

Private self-consciousness, canned laughter, and responses to humorous stimuli

Sefl-focused attention is hypothesized to (a) intensify emotional responses; (b) diminish susceptibility to suggestion; and (c) increase the consistency of self-report and behavior. These hypotheses were tested by having 82 undergraduates varying in private self-consciousness (PrSC) listen to humorous stimuli presented either with (laugh track group) or without (no laugh track group) canned laughter. Subjects' funniness ratings and overt laughter served as dependent measures. Regression analyses revealed that PrSC and funniness ratings were negatively correlated in the laugh track group, but uncorrelated in the no laugh track group. In contrast, PrSC and overt laughter were positively correlated in both groups. The association between funniness and laughter appeared stronger in high than in low PrSC subjects. Interpreted in light of research indicating that funniness ratings represent affect-free evaluations of humor stimuli, whereas laughter represents amusement, these results suggest that self-focus (a) intensified subjects' amusement; (b) decreased the extent to which their evaluations of the stimuli were biased by canned laughter; and (c) increased the consistency between their (self-reported) cognitive and (overt behavioral) affective responses (although this finding was equivocal).