Opposing effects of income inequality on health: The role of perceived competitiveness and avoidance/approach motivation

Income inequality is commonly posited to elevate concerns about social status that undermine psychological health, but the empirical evidence is inconsistent. Here we propose that these inconsistencies conceal opposing processes: Income inequality prompts perceived competitiveness, which can both negatively predict psychological health via avoidance motivation and positively predict psychological health via approach motivation. First, we conducted a two-year longitudinal study (1,700+ participants from 500+ county identifiers) and provided support for our opposing processes model. Second, we conducted three pre-preregistered studies using an experimental-causal-chain design. We sequentially showed that induced income inequality increased perceived competitiveness (Study 2a; 444 participants), induced perceived competitiveness increased avoidance and approach motivation (Study 2b; 1,018 participants), and induced avoidance/approach motivation decreased/increased psychological health (Study 2c; 562 participants). These findings suggest that scholars should shift from studying the main effects of income inequality on psychological health to studying the psychological processes involved in the inequality-health relation.     

Vocalisations et communication chez le nourrisson de 6 à 15 mois

Cette recherche s'inspire à la fois des travaux portant sur l'émergence de la communication intentionnelle et des études phonologiques des vocalisations prélangagières. Elle vise à cerner la valeur communicative des vocalisations au cours de leur développement, ainsi qu'à vérifier si le nourrisson utilise un type particulier de vocalisations (prélangagier ou non langagier) pour communiquer avec autrui. Vingt-quatre nourrissons ont été observés à 6, 9, 12, et 15 mois, dans le cadre de tâches de demande. Les résultats révèlent que le nourrisson utilise davantage son canal vocal avec l'âge, et qu'il dirige de plus en plus ses vocalisations vers autrui. Il ne semble toutefois pas employer préférentiellement un type particulier de vocalisations selon qu'il communique avec autrui ou non.     

Shaun Gallagher: The Inordinance of Time

Continental Philosophy Review -     

Wundt's laboratory at Leipzig in 1891

This article describes Wundt's laboratory at Leipzig in 1891 as viewed by a Belgian psychologist, J.J. Van Biervliet (1859-1945). Although few French-speaking psychologists worked in Wundt's laboratory, several of those who did reports wrote on how students were trained there. Van Biervliet decided to visit Wundt's laboratory at Leipzig in order to strengthen the foundation of his own laboratory at the University of Ghent and to become familiar with Wundt's experimental techniques. A translation of J.J. Van Biervliet's (1892) article "Experimental Psychology. Wundt's Institute at Leipzig" is presented here as one of the first and most complete articles in French describing the functioning of Wundt's laboratory.     

Modernizing the philosophy of mathematics

The distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions, and with that the distinction between a priori and a posteriori truth, is being abandoned in much of analytic philosophy and the philosophy of most of the sciences. These distinctions should also be abandoned in the philosophy of mathematics. In particular, we must recognize the strong empirical component in our mathematical knowledge. The traditional distinction between logic and mathematics, on the one hand, and the natural sciences, on the other, should be dropped. Abstract mathematical objects, like transcendental numbers or Hilbert spaces, are theoretical entities on a par with electromagnetic fields or quarks. Mathematical theories are not primarily logical deductions from axioms obtained by reflection on concepts but, rather, are constructions chosen to solve some collection of problems while fitting smoothly into the other theoretical commitments of the mathematician who formulates them. In other words, a mathematical theory is a scientific theory like any other, no more certain but also no more devoid of content.     

Cross-modality priming for individual words in memory for coherent texts

This study explores implicit memory within the domain of text processing. Three experiments were designed to study cross-modality priming in a word-stem completion test following presentation of target words in the context of a coherent text. Four main results emerged. First, we found a significant priming effect for words previously studied in a text, this priming is higher with low-frequency words than with high-frequency words. Second, subjects demonstrated more repetition priming when study and test modalities matched than when they were different. Third, the magnitude of the priming effect in the visual condition varied with the perceptual processing of the text read. Fourth, priming effects did not depend on subjects' remembering of the words of text read as measured by a yes/no recognition test since no modality effect was found in this latter memory test. These results challenge Levy's (1993) view and are discussed in the framework of the transfer-appropriate processing view proposed by Roediger, Weldon and Challis (1989).     

Comprehensive stereotype content dictionaries using a semi‐automated method

Advances in natural language processing provide accessible approaches to analyze psychological open‐ended data. However, comprehensive instruments for text analysis of stereotype content are missing. We developed stereotype content dictionaries using a semi‐automated method based on WordNet and word embeddings. These stereotype content dictionaries covered over 80% of open‐ended stereotypes about salient American social groups, compared to 20% coverage from words extracted directly from the stereotype content literature. The dictionaries showed high levels of internal consistency and validity, predicting stereotype scale ratings and human judgments of online text. We developed the R package Semi‐Automated Dictionary Creation for Analyzing Text (SADCAT; https://github.com/gandalfnicolas/SADCAT ) for access to the stereotype content dictionaries and the creation of novel dictionaries for constructs of interest. Potential applications of the dictionaries range from advancing person perception theories through laboratory studies and analysis of online data to identifying social biases in artificial intelligence, social media, and other ubiquitous text sources.