Evaluative ratings and attention across the life span: emotional arousal and gender

This study was designed to investigate the evolution of emotional processing over the whole adult life span as a function of stimulus arousal and participants’ gender. To this end, self-reported affective evaluation and attentional capture prompted by pleasant and unpleasant pictures varying in arousal were measured in a large sample of participants (n?=?211) balanced by gender and equally spread across seven decades from 20 to 90 years. Results showed age differences only for affective evaluation of pleasant stimuli, with opposite patterns depending on stimulus arousal. As age increased, low-arousing pleasant cues (e.g. images of babies) were experienced as more pleasant and arousing by both males and females, whereas high-arousing stimuli (e.g. erotic images) were experienced as less pleasant only by females. In contrast, emotional pictures (both pleasant and unpleasant) were effective at capturing attention in a similar way across participants, regardless of age and gender. Taken together, these findings suggest that specific emotional cues prompt different subjective responses across different age groups, while basic mechanisms involved in attentional engagement towards both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli are preserved in healthy ageing.     

INVESTIGATING THREE EXPLANATIONS OF WOMEN'S RELATIONSHIP AGGRESSION

This study investigated explanations of women's partner aggression in a sample of 358 women. Women completed measures of physical aggression, control, and fear. Three explanations of women's partner aggression were explored: (a) that its use is associated with fear, (b) that it is reciprocal, and (c) that it is coercive. Each explanation received partial support, with multivariate analysis showing that collectively they explained significant proportions of the variance in women's self-reported use of physical aggression toward their male partners. These results indicate that women's physical aggression toward male partners cannot be understood using a unitary explanation.     

Belief bias and figural bias in syllogistic reasoning

Belief bias is the tendency to be influenced by the believability of the conclusion when attempting to solve a syllogistic reasoning problem. Figural bias is the tendency to be influenced by the order in which the information is presented in the premises when attempting to solve a syllogistic reasoning problem. When studied simultaneously they enable an investigation of whether participants' reasoning on the syllogistic reasoning task is guided by the conclusion (backward reasoning) or the premises (forward reasoning). Experiments 1 and 2 found evidence of belief bias but not figural bias on the syllogistic evaluation task paradigm. Experiments 3 and 4 found evidence of figural bias but not belief bias on the syllogistic production task paradigm. The findings highlight that different task characteristics influence performance dependent upon the nature of task presentation. These findings are discussed in the context of current theories of belief bias in syllogistic reasoning.     

Do Demanding Conditions Help or Hurt Self‐Regulation?

Although everyday life is often demanding, it remains unclear how demanding conditions impact self‐regulation. Some theories suggest that demanding conditions impair self‐regulation, by undermining autonomy, interfering with skilled performance and working memory, and depleting energy resources. Other theories, however, suggest that demanding conditions improve self‐regulation by mobilizing super‐ordinate control processes. The present article integrates both kinds of theories by proposing that the self‐regulatory impact of demanding conditions depends on how people adapt to such conditions. When people are action‐oriented, demanding conditions may lead to improved self‐regulation. When people are state‐oriented, demanding conditions may lead to impaired self‐regulation. Consistent with this idea, action versus state orientation strongly moderates the influence of demands on self‐regulatory performance. The impact of demanding conditions on self‐regulation is thus not fixed, but modifiable by psychological processes.     

From over-imitation to super-copying: adults imitate causally irrelevant aspects of tool use with higher fidelity than young children

Recent research has revealed a striking tendency in young children to imitate even causally irrelevant actions, a phenomenon dubbed 'over-imitation'. To investigate whether children develop beyond this, we allowed both adults and children to witness either a child or adult model performing goal-relevant and goal-irrelevant actions to extract a reward from a transparent puzzle box. Surprisingly, copying of irrelevant actions increased with age, with the adults performing the task with less efficiency than the children. Participants of all ages were more likely to perform the irrelevant actions performed by an adult model, than by a child model. These results suggest that people may become more imitative as they mature, whilst selectively copying particular models with a high level of fidelity. We suggest that this combination of faithful copying and selectivity underwrites the powerful social learning necessary for the level of cultural transmission on which our species depends.     

Mental-state attribution drives rapid, reflexive gaze following

When presented with a face stimulus whose gaze is diverted, observers’ attention shifts to locations fixated by the face. Such “gaze following” has been characterized by some previous studies as a consequence of sophisticated theory of mind processes, but by others (particularly those employing the “gaze-cuing” paradigm) as an involuntary response that is triggered directly and reflexively by the physical features of a face. To address this apparent contradiction, we modified the gaze-cuing paradigm using a deception procedure to convince observers that prerecorded videos of an experimenter making head turns and wearing mirrored goggles were a “live” video link to an adjacent room. In two experiments, reflexive gaze following was found when observers believed that the model was wearing transparent goggles and could see, but it was significantly reduced when they believed that the experimenter wore opaque goggles and could not see. These results indicate that the attribution of the mental state “seeing” to a face plays a role in controlling even reflexive gaze following.     

Faculty Members’ Perceptions of How Academic Work is Evaluated: Similarities and Differences by Gender

A questionnaire about how academic performance is evaluated and the importance of teaching and research was completed by 265 faculty at a UK research university. Factor analysis followed by t-tests showed that male faculty had a more realistic understanding of how their research is evaluated, rate the importance of research to their careers more highly, and are more likely than women to work over hours through choice. Women faculty are more likely than men to work over hours because of teaching workload and rate the importance of a teaching qualification more highly, despite giving similar ratings as men to the importance of teaching to their career. The implications for differential rates of promotion are discussed.