老化刻板印象研究现状及展望

老化刻板印象是人们对老年人所持有的观念与预期,它能显著影响老化刻板印象持有者的生理功能、认知功能和行为结果。现有研究主要集中在老化刻板印象的机制、影响因素和中介变量方面。研究发现,老化刻板印象是通过内化形成的,刻板印象威胁理论和自我刻板化是解释老化刻板印象的两种作用机制。认知加工过程中的抑制能力、情境和文化差异是影响老化刻板印象的主要因素,而老化自我知觉和刻板期望则是老化刻板印象影响效果变量的中介因素。未来研究除了要继续探讨意识水平、情境因素、个体特征对老化刻板印象的影响以及老化刻板印象对不同年龄群体影响的特点以外,还应关注中介和干预研究,并进一步加强跨文化研究。     

自我不确定感对程序公正效应的调节作用:回顾与展望

自我不确定感是指个体怀疑“自我”,并且对其看法不稳定而产生的内隐与外显的主观感受及反应.其研究方法主要有自我报告法与情境实验法.自DeCremer和Sedikides首先通过实证研究验证了自我不确定感对程序公正效应的调节作用后,研究者们通过将自我不确定感分解为情绪自我不确定、地位不确定和归属不确定以及探讨程序公正认知机制,不断扩展了此领域的研究成果.未来可以通过自我不确定感调节效应的本土化研究,自我不确定感特质与情境成分交互作用的探讨,自我不确定感与自我肯定、信息不确定感等相关变量的关系研究,进一步深化此领域的研究.     

动物和人类的利他本性:共情的进化

共情指个体感知或想象其他个体的情感,并部分体验到其他个体感受的心理过程.利他指以增加其他个体的福利为最终目标的动机.共情起源于动物的亲代养育行为,其神经基础来源于古老的情感系统.共情从动物低水平的情绪感染逐渐进化到同情关注以及观点采择共情.另外,共情具有良好的环境适应性.未来可以进一步研究动物与人类的共情和利他行为的异同,加大研究动物的高级共情能力和利他行为以及深入研究共情受社会因素的调节机制.     

Victim-Defendants in Mandated Treatment: An Ethical Quandary

Battered women are being arrested and convicted of domestic violence-related crimes in higher numbers than ever before. In addition, battered women are being sentenced to treatment as primary perpetrators even though their aggression was in response to the violence perpetrated against them. Many service providers are presently ill-equipped to offer treatment and/or other services that will effectively serve these women in a manner that will truly reduce violence and is not re-victimizing. This article will present key issues surrounding the problem, and provide suggestions for effective advocacy and intervention approaches.     

Greater priming for previously distracting information in young than older adults when suppression is ruled out

The use of previously distracting information on memory tests with indirect instructions is usually age-equivalent, while young adults typically show greater explicit memory for such information. This could reflect qualitatively distinct initial processing (encoding) of distracting information by younger and older adults, but could also be caused by greater suppression of such information by younger adults on tasks with indirect instructions. In Experiment 1, young and older adults read stories containing distracting words, which they ignored, before studying a list of words containing previously distracting items for a free recall task. Half the participants were informed of the presence of previously distracting items in the study list prior to recall (direct instruction), and half were not (indirect instruction). Recall of previously distracting words was age-equivalent in the indirect condition, but young adults recalled more distracting words in the direct condition. In Experiment 2, participants performed the continuous identification with recognition task, which captures a measure of perceptual priming and recognition on each trial, and is immune to suppression. Priming and recognition of previously distracting words was greater in younger than older adults, suggesting that the young engage in more successful suppression of previously distracting information on tasks in which its relevance is not overtly signaled.     

Exploring the Causes of Subjective Well-Being: A Content Analysis of Peoples’ Recipes for Long-Term Happiness

This study set out to explore conceptions of the elements or ingredients that lead to long-lasting happiness. A content analysis (Smith in Handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000; Weber 1990) coded 201 respondents’ (18–84 years old) written happiness recipes for the mention of a priori (pre-defined from a literature review) and empirical (from a pilot study) content analysis categories. These were organized into six dimensions (i.e. Personality, Circumstances, Social Relationships, Behavioral Activities, Cognitive Activities and Volitional Activities) based on a model of the causes of long-term happiness (Lyubomirsky et al. in Rev Gen Psychol 9(2):111–131, 2005b). Participants were happy and mentally healthy. An overwhelming majority of responses referred to Social Relationships such as with Family, Friends and Partners, supporting the assertion that relationships are necessary for happiness (Diener and Oishi in Psychol Inquiry 16(4):162–167, 2005; Diener and Seligman in Psychol Sci Public Interest 5(1):1–32, 2002). Participants frequently mentioned Circumstances such as Health despite the fact these have been found to have a minimal influence over long-term happiness (Argyle in The foundations of hedonic psychology. Russel Sage Foundation, New York, 1999). Respondents mentioned a variety of New Behavioral Activities (e.g. time in Nature) that could offer a list of active leisure pursuits for use in happiness interventions. Finally, participants spoke of the importance of Social Values and having a Philosophy of Life (New Cognitive Activities). A recipe for long-term happiness is proposed based on past and current findings.     

Generating Relations Elicits a Relational Mindset in Children

Relational reasoning is a hallmark of human higher cognition and creativity, yet it is notoriously difficult to encourage in abstract tasks, even in adults. Generally, young children initially focus more on objects, but with age become more focused on relations. While prerequisite knowledge and cognitive resource maturation partially explains this pattern, here we propose a new facet important for children's relational reasoning development: a general orientation to relational information, or a relational mindset. We demonstrate that a relational mindset can be elicited, even in 4‐year‐old children, yielding greater than expected spontaneous attention to relations. Children either generated or listened to an experimenter state the relationships between objects in a set of formal analogy problems, and then in a second task, selected object or relational matches according to their preference. Children tended to make object mappings, but those who generated relations on the first task selected relational matches more often on the second task, signaling that relational attention is malleable even in young children.     

Looking Back on Self‐Poisoning: The Relationship between Depressed Mood and Reporting of Suicidal Intent in People Who Deliberately Self‐Poison

Lifetime worst‐point suicidality is associated with risk of subsequent death by suicide. Yet little is known about how people who deliberately self‐poison (DSP) change their appraisal of suicidal intent of a single DSP episode over time. We assessed whether suicidal intent for a single index episode of DSP changed over time and factors associated with such change. We studied 202 patients admitted for DSP (66.3% female, all Caucasian), 18–85 years old (M = 37.8, SD = 14.8), using a longitudinal design (0, 3, and 12 months). The primary outcome measure was change in suicidal intent for a single index DSP episode, analyzed using multilevel modeling. Wish to die and whether the episode was considered a suicide attempt increased significantly with depressed mood. Wish to die associated with the index episode also increased over time independently of depressed mood. No association with time or depressed mood was found for perceived likelihood of dying. Depressed mood was strongly associated with appraisal of suicidal intent associated with a DSP episode. In suicide risk assessment, reports of the nature and severity of past DSP should be interpreted in light of current mood.