Interventions stimulating prosocial helping behavior: A systematic review

This systematic review of the literature aims to identify, analyze, and synthesize studies assessing the effectiveness of interventions stimulating prosocial behavior. It concentrates on helping behavior and covers experimental and quasi-experimental research concerning interventions carried out in different settings. This review was performed in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines. Of the initial sample of 4,653 publications found in databases, 49 articles met our inclusion criteria and were classified as eligible for data extraction and narrative synthesis. The studies included in the review assessed 63 interventions, most of them targeted at children and adolescents. We distinguished three strategies stimulating prosocial behavior: behavioral, cognitive, and emotional. This review is informative for both researchers and practitioners. It provides researchers with methodological guidelines concerning how to conduct studies on the effectiveness of prosocial interventions, and it provides practitioners with guidelines on empirically tested strategies for stimulating prosocial helping behavior.     

Differential sensitisation to central cardiovascular effects of angiotensin II in rats with a myocardial infarct: relevance to stress and interaction with vasopressin

The purpose of the present study was to elucidate if rats with myocardial infarction manifest altered responsiveness to central cardiovascular effects of low doses of angiotensin II (ANG II), and if ANG II and vasopressin (VP) cooperate in the central regulation of cardiovascular functions at rest and during stress. Conscious Sprague-Dawley rats with myocardial infarction induced by left coronary artery ligation, or sham-ligated (SL) controls were infused intracerebroventricularly with artificial cerebrospinal fluid (aCSF), ANG II, ANG II + VP or ANG II + V1a receptor antagonist (V1ANT) 4 weeks after cardiac surgery. In the infarcted but not in the SL rats, the resting mean arterial blood pressure (MABP) was significantly elevated by infusions of ANG II and ANG II + VP, while infusion of ANG II + V1ANT was not effective. During administration of aCSF, the pressor, and tachycardic responses to an air-jet stressor were significantly greater in the infarcted than in the SL rats. In the SL rats, the pressor responses to the stressor were significantly greater during infusions of ANG II, ANG II + VP and ANG II + V1ANT than during infusion of aCSF. The tachycardic response in the SL rats was enhanced only by the combined infusion of ANG II + VP. In the infarcted rats, the pressor and the tachycardic responses to the stressor were similar in all groups. It is concluded that: (1) under resting conditions the infarcted rats manifest sensitisation to the central pressor effect of ANG II and that this effect depends on concomitant stimulation of V1a VP receptors, (2) central ANG II may enhance the pressor response to an alarming stressor in the SL rats through an action which does not depend on the concomitant stimulation of V1a receptors, (3) the cooperative action of ANG II and VP is required for intensification of the tachycardic response to the alarming stressor in the SL rats and (4) exaggeration of the cardiovascular responses to the alarming stressor in the infarcted rats cannot be further augmented by an additional stimulation of central ANG II receptors or combined stimulation of ANG II and VP receptors.     

Agentic and communal narcissism and satisfaction with life: The mediating role of psychological entitlement and self‐esteem

This study examined the mediational role of self‐esteem (as an enhancement) and psychological entitlement (as a cost) in the relationship between an agentic‐communal model of grandiose narcissism and satisfaction with life. Two hundred and forty‐eight university undergraduate students completed measures of agentic and communal narcissism, self‐esteem, psychological entitlement and satisfaction with life. The findings suggest that there is support for the usefulness of the agentic‐communal model of narcissism, and, consistent with predictions in the wider literature, self‐esteem and psychological entitlement mediated the relationship between agentic‐communal narcissism and life satisfaction.     

Weak Interactions: Asymmetry of Time or Asymmetry in Time?

The paper analyzes the philosophical consequences of the recent discovery of direct violations of the time–reversal symmetry of weak interactions. It shows that although we have here an important case of the time asymmetry of one of the fundamental physical forces which could have had a great impact on the form of our world with an excess of matter over antimatter, this asymmetry cannot be treated as the asymmetry of time itself but rather as an asymmetry of some specific physical process in time. The paper also analyzes the consequences of the new discovery for the general problem of the possible connections between direction (arrow) of time and time-asymmetric laws of nature. These problems are analyzed in the context of Horwich’s Asymmetries in time: problems in the philosophy of science (1987) argumentation, trying to show that existence of a time–asymmetric law of nature is a sufficient condition for time to be anisotropic. Instead of Horwich’s sufficient condition for anisotropy of time, it is stressed that for a theory of asymmetry of time to be acceptable it should explain all fundamental time asymmetries: the asymmetry of traces, the asymmetry of causation (which holds although the electrodynamic, strong and gravitational interactions are invariant under time reversal), and the asymmetry between the fixed past and open future. It is so because the problem of the direction of time has originated from our attempts to understand these asymmetries and every plausible theory of the direction of time should explain them.     

Values Realized in Personal Strivings and Motivation,and Meaning in Life in Polish University Students

The present study was based on two theoretical conceptions—Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory and its characteristic approach to values, and the conception of meaning in life derived from the Logotherapy of Frankl. The aim of the study was to verify the thesis that values realized in personal strivings play a significant role in experiencing meaning in life. The study was also designed to explore the relationships between types of motivation and meaning in life. A semi-open method was used to study values and striving motivations, one based on the Personal Striving Assessment by Emmons and the Purpose in Life Test by Maholick and Crumbaugh. The sample comprised 353 students of Wroc?aw-based universities (159 women and 194 men). The findings of this study demonstrated that meaning in life is related to motivation as well as to certain values that participants reported as realized in their personal strivings. Predictors of meaning in life were the value of financial success for men, and the value of intimacy/friendship for women. Another predictor of meaning for both groups was external motivation. Further interesting results discussed in this paper were obtained by comparing individuals with low and those with high levels of meaning in life. The latter group was found to attribute greater importance to autonomous motivation and to attach greater meaning to their everyday strivings by associating them more closely with both intrinsic and extrinsic values.     

Measurement Invariance of Personal Well-Being Index (PWI-8) Across 26 Countries

This report examines the measurement invariance of the Personal Well-being Index with 8 items (PWI-8). University students (N = 5731) from 26 countries completed the measure either through paper and pencil or electronic mode. We examined uni-dimensional structure of PWI and performed a Multi-group CFA to assess the measurement invariance across the 26 countries, using conventional approach and the alignment procedure. The findings provide evidence of configural and partial metric invariance, as well as partial scalar invariance across samples. The findings suggest that PWI-8 can be used to examine correlates of life satisfaction across all included countries, however it is impossible to compare raw scores across countries.     

The Set of Fear Inducing Pictures (SFIP): Development and validation in fearful and nonfearful individuals

Emotionally charged pictorial materials are frequently used in phobia research, but no existing standardized picture database is dedicated to the study of different phobias. The present work describes the results of two independent studies through which we sought to develop and validate this type of database—a Set of Fear Inducing Pictures (SFIP). In Study 1, 270 fear-relevant and 130 neutral stimuli were rated for fear, arousal, and valence by four groups of participants; small-animal (N = 34), blood/injection (N = 26), social-fearful (N = 35), and nonfearful participants (N = 22). The results from Study 1 were employed to develop the final version of the SFIP, which includes fear-relevant images of social exposure (N = 40), blood/injection (N = 80), spiders/bugs (N = 80), and angry faces (N = 30), as well as 726 neutral photographs. In Study 2, we aimed to validate the SFIP in a sample of spider, blood/injection, social-fearful, and control individuals (N = 66). The fear-relevant images were rated as being more unpleasant and led to greater fear and arousal in fearful than in nonfearful individuals. The fear images differentiated between the three fear groups in the expected directions. Overall, the present findings provide evidence for the high validity of the SFIP and confirm that the set may be successfully used in phobia research.     

Brain activity patterns induced by interrupting the cognitive processes with online advertising

As a result of the increasing role of online advertising and strong competition among advertisers, intrusive techniques are commonly used to attract web users’ attention. Moreover, since marketing content is usually delivered to the target audience when they are performing typical online tasks, like searching for information or reading online content, its delivery interrupts the web user’s current cognitive process. The question posed by many researchers in the field of online advertising is: how should we measure the influence of interruption of cognitive processes on human behavior and emotional state? Much research has been conducted in this field; however, most of this research has focused on monitoring activity in the simulated environment, or processing declarative responses given by users in prepared questionnaires. In this paper, a more direct real-time approach is taken, and the effect of the interruption on a web user is analyzed directly by studying the activity of his brain. This paper presents the results of an experiment that was conducted to find the brain activity patterns associated with interruptions of the cognitive process by showing internet advertisements during a text-reading task. Three specific aspects were addressed in the experiment: individual patterns, the consistency of these patterns across trials, and the intra-subject correlation of the individual patterns. Two main effects were observed for most subjects: a drop in activity in the frontal and prefrontal cortical areas across all frequency bands, and significant changes in the frontal/prefrontal asymmetry index.     

Appraisal of suicidal risk among adolescents and young adults through the Rorschach test

The aims of this study are to investigate suicidal behaviors among adolescents and young adults and to test an index composed using Rorschach test responses related to an increased risk of suicide. Using a cross-sectional design, 4 groups were studied (according to criteria of the Columbia Classification Algorithm of Suicide Assessment [Posner, Oquendo, Gould, Stanley, & Davies, 2007]): A group with suicidal ideation (n = 30), a group with parasuicidal behavior (n = 30), a group with near-lethal suicide attempts (n = 26), and a control group (n = 30). Responses to the Rorschach test yielded 6 potential indicators of suicidal behavior (scored according to Exner's Comprehensive System and the Suicidal Index for Adolescents; Silberg & Armstrong, 1992 ). Rorschach scores including at least 4 of these 6 indicators selected 69% of the people who had committed serious suicide attempts. The Rorschach Suicidal Index reached an acceptable reliability and was related to other criteria of suicide risk, such as the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck, Ward, Mendelsohn, Mock, & Erbaugh, 1961) and Linehan Reasons for Living Inventory (RFL-I; Linehan, Goodstein, Nielsen, & Chiles, 1983). Moreover, the Rorschach Suicidal Index showed incremental validity over the BDI and the RFL-I to predict suicidal behavior. A path analysis additionally showed that low social support was an important mediator between the Rorschach Suicidal Index and the number of suicide attempts committed by participants.