Studies of the Startle Pattern: II. Bodily Pattern

The effects of two different faking instructions on Orientation Inventory scores were investigated in five groups of university students. The faking sets tended to produce increased scores on task orientation and decreased scores on self orientation. Changes in interaction orientation scores were inconsistent. Results were compared with those obtained earlier by Bass.     

Player–Spectator Discrepancies on Risk Preference during Decision Making

Risk preference during decision making depends not only on the potential risk and profits but also on the roles taken in the current task. Those who perform tasks are more risk-seeking than those who only watch. Given the prominent effect of experiencing the task, the player–spectator discrepancies are supposed to arise in the experiencing phase instead of the choosing phase. In the present study, the authors separated the experiencing role and the choosing role through a stylus maze task in which participants first performed in pairs—one as the player and the other as the spectator—and then chose from two rewarding options for themselves or their partners. The findings show that the experience as players induced a risk-seeking tendency in decision making, which suggests that it was the experiencing role, rather than the choosing role, that caused the difference of risk preference, at least for financially motivated groups and under similar task conditions.     

Using PPT to Analyze Suboptimal Human–Automation Performance

Diagnostic automation aids are designed to improve human performance by increasing accuracy in event detection tasks. However, human–automation performance has frequently fallen short of expectations, particularly when the aid is highly reliable. In those cases, human–automation performance is often suboptimal, in that a human being augmented with a diagnostic aid does more poorly than the automation itself. Previously, there have been only ambiguous explanations for why this occurs, with few suggestions on how to effectively eliminate suboptimal performance. Fortunately, with the advent of a new general theory of task performance, termed Potential Performance Theory (PPT) by D. Trafimow and S. Rice (2008 Trafimow, D. and Rice, S. 2008. Potential Performance Theory: A general theory of task performance applied to morality. Psychological Review, 115(2): 447–462. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; 2009), one can now determine exactly why suboptimal performance occurs. Results from the present study reveal that inconsistency is the culprit, rather than just poor strategy selection. Furthermore, PPT allows one to determine exactly how much of the performance decrement is because of inconsistency.     

Threatened masculinity and muscularity: An experimental examination of multiple aspects of muscularity in men

Two studies examined the threatened masculinity theory of male body dissatisfaction, which posits that threats to masculinity result in increased muscle dissatisfaction. In Study 1, a masculinity threat was followed by tasks examining confidence in physical ability and perceptions of current and ideal body shapes. Results showed that men who experienced a masculinity threat reported lower confidence in their physical ability and perceived themselves as less muscular than men who experienced an affirmation of their masculinity. In Study 2, men were asked to report their intention to increase muscularity and their appearance anxiety following a threat to masculinity. Results showed that men reported lower appearance anxiety and drive for muscularity when their masculinity was threatened than when their masculinity was affirmed. This apparent contradiction can be explained by noting that men may be motivated to deny appearance concerns following a threat to masculinity, as such concerns are equated with femininity.     

组织成员地位的形成及影响机制

组织成员地位通常是指组织内个体受组织其他成员尊重和钦佩的程度,是近些年备受关注的一个心理学构念。虽然组织成员地位与权力、阶层、面子、基于组织的自尊等概念具有一定的关联性,但它们之间存在着明显的界限。组织成员地位主要受到外在显性因素(形体特征、人口统计特征)、内在心理因素(人格、认知、情绪、行为)以及神经生理因素(睾酮激素、皮质醇激素)的影响,并能够对组织成员的认知、情绪、行为和绩效产生显著的影响。未来研究应当进一步区分组织成员地位的维度,探索组织成员地位的生物学基础和文化差异,关注组织成员地位的动态演化及其后果,并检验团队和组织层面地位分布的作用机制。     

A Systematic Review of the Psychometric Properties of Trait Cognitive Self-Report Measures in Social Anxiety

Cognitive factors, including beliefs, thoughts and assumptions have been found to play an important role in the development and maintenance of Social Anxiety Disorder. Trait cognitive self-report measures of social anxiety are widely used in research and clinical settings. It is imperative that only measures with good psychometric properties are used in order to interpret assessment scores accurately, and to make valid and reliable conclusions. The present systematic review evaluated the psychometric properties of trait cognitive self-report measures of social anxiety. Relevant studies were identified via a comprehensive and systematic search of academic databases. The reported psychometric properties of included studies were analysed by applying an appraisal of adequacy tool developed by Terwee et al. (2007). Of the 3091 studies identified, 50 studies met the inclusion criteria, and they included 21 measures. Included studies demonstrated that a number of measures had some adequate psychometric properties, however, no measure fulfilled criteria for all psychometric properties according to the appraisal tool. Findings highlight the need to further establish the psychometric properties of cognitive self-report measures of social anxiety in clinical and research settings through additional empirical studies.     

Whatever Gave You That Idea? False Memories Following Equivalence Training: A Behavioral Account of the Misinformation Effect

The misinformation effect is a term used in the cognitive psychological literature to describe both experimental and real-world instances in which misleading information is incorporated into an account of an historical event. In many real-world situations, it is not possible to identify a distinct source of misinformation, and it appears that the witness may have inferred a false memory by integrating information from a variety of sources. In a stimulus equivalence task, a small number of trained relations between some members of a class of arbitrary stimuli result in a large number of untrained, or emergent relations, between all members of the class. Misleading information was introduced into a simple memory task between a learning phase and a recognition test by means of a match-to-sample stimulus equivalence task that included both stimuli from the original learning task and novel stimuli. At the recognition test, participants given equivalence training were more likely to misidentify patterns than those who were not given such training. The misinformation effect was distinct from the effects of prior stimulus exposure, or partial stimulus control. In summary, stimulus equivalence processes may underlie some real-world manifestations of the misinformation effect.     

Motor knowledge is one dimension for concept organization: Further evidence from a Chinese semantic dementia case

Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies have indicated that motor knowledge is one potential dimension along which concepts are organized. Here we present further direct evidence for the effects of motor knowledge in accounting for categorical patterns across object domains (living vs. nonliving) and grammatical domains (nouns vs. verbs), as well as the integrity of other modality-specific knowledge (e.g., visual). We present a Chinese case, XRK, who suffered from semantic dementia with left temporal lobe atrophy. In naming and comprehension tasks, he performed better at nonliving items than at living items, and better at verbs than at nouns. Critically, multiple regression method revealed that these two categorical effects could be both accounted for by the charade rating, a continuous measurement of the significance of motor knowledge for a concept or a semantic feature. Furthermore, charade rating also predicted his performances on the generation frequency of semantic features of various modalities. These findings consolidate the significance of motor knowledge in conceptual organization and further highlights the interactions between different types of semantic knowledge.     

Bias versus bias: Harnessing hindsight to reveal paranormal belief change beyond demand characteristics

Psychological change is difficult to assess, in part because self-reported beliefs and attitudes may be biased or distorted. The present study probed belief change, in an educational context, by using the hindsight bias to counter another bias that generally plagues assessment of subjective change. Although research has indicated that skepticism courses reduce paranormal beliefs, those findings may reflect demand characteristics (biases toward desired, skeptical responses). Our hindsight-bias procedure circumvented demand by asking students, following semester-long skepticism (and control) courses, to recall their precourse levels of paranormal belief. People typically remember themselves as previously thinking, believing, and acting as they do now, so current skepticism should provoke false recollections of previous skepticism. Given true belief change, therefore, skepticism students should have remembered themselves as having been more skeptical than they were. They did, at least about paranormal topics that were covered most extensively in the course. Our findings thus show hindsight to be useful in evaluating cognitive change beyond demand characteristics.