Subtly offending feedback

Providing acceptable negative feedback is difficult because it may threaten the receiver's self‐esteem. Studies have established that destructive feedback elicits stronger negative reactions than constructive feedback. However, these destructive conditions were quite strong, implying a clear threat to the self. Because of the importance of protecting one's self‐concept, negative evaluations might be provoked by more subtle cues. Such cues should also be detected by observers. We developed three variants of subtly offending feedback in which mistakes appeared disproportionately serious. In an experimental pilot study, 132 student observers judged the fairness of feedback given to another student. The subtly offending conditions were evaluated as less fair than constructive feedback but as more fair than destructive feedback.     

Recurrence quantification analysis of eye movements

Recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) has been successfully used for describing dynamic systems that are too complex to be characterized adequately by standard methods in time series analysis. More recently, RQA has been used for analyzing the coordination of gaze patterns between cooperating individuals. Here, we extend RQA to the characterization of fixation sequences, and we show that the global and local temporal characteristics of fixation sequences can be captured by a small number of RQA measures that have a clear interpretation in this context. We applied RQA to the analysis of a study in which observers looked at different scenes under natural or gaze-contingent viewing conditions, and we found large differences in the RQA measures between the viewing conditions, indicating that RQA is a powerful new tool for the analysis of the temporal patterns of eye movement behavior.     

Psychotherapierichtlinien: seit 40 Jahren Bewährung in der Praxis

Looking back at 40 years application of psychotherapy guidelines, a positive balance can be drawn. Benchmarks of the guidelines are the biopsychosocial conception of psychic disturbances requiring treatment and the congruent expertise procedure. The latter is considered by many psychotherapists as unreasonable and by the health insurances as not effective enough because of a rejection quota of only 5%. Nevertheless, it proved to be useful in historical, therapeutic and textual aspects. The biopsychosocial conception of psychic disturbances according to the psychotherapy guidelines is an important counterbalance to the objectifying view and evaluation of psychic processes. This concept implies also a complementary view of the ill compared to somatic medicine which allows a better comprehension and understanding of the individual suffering. The most important modification in the psychotherapy guidelines was the inclusion of behavior therapy as the guideline therapy. It succeeded in surpassing the hallmark of (higher) effectivity by offering shorter therapies and objectifiable verification, as an important complementary object-view into psychic processes. Meanwhile, however, this object-view threatens to displace the ?subject-view“ of the psychotherapy guidelines, especially supported by new developments in evidence-based medicine.     

Social attention and real-world scenes: the roles of action, competition and social content

The present study examined how social attention is influenced by social content and the presence of items that are available for attention. We monitored observers' eye movements while they freely viewed real-world social scenes containing either 1 or 3 people situated among a variety of objects. Building from the work of Yarbus (1965/1967) we hypothesized that observers would demonstrate a preferential bias to fixate the eyes of the people in the scene, although other items would also receive attention. In addition, we hypothesized that fixations to the eyes would increase as the social content (i.e., number of people) increased. Both hypotheses were supported by the data, and we also found that the level of activity in the scene influenced attention to eyes when social content was high. The present results provide support for the notion that the eyes are selected by others in order to extract social information. Our study also suggests a simple and surreptitious methodology for studying social attention to real-world stimuli in a range of populations, such as those with autism spectrum disorders.     

Gender Typed Advertisements and Impression Formation: The Role of Chronic and Temporary Accessibility

In this research, we tested the effects of chronic and temporary sources of accessibility on impression formation. Although some research suggests that chronicity amplifies temporary effects because of greater susceptibility to external primes, other research suggests that chronicity masks temporary effects because of redundance. We demonstrate in a thought listing study that in the domain of gender stereotypes, trait stereotypes may be routinely applied by those with a medium or high tendency to stereotype women, making external primes redundant. Based on this redundancy, we proposed that gender stereotypical primes will have little influence on subsequent judgments of those with a medium or high tendency to gender stereotype. In contrast, gender stereotypical primes will result in the classic assimilation effect for those with a low tendency to gender stereotype. We tested these propositions in the domain of female role portrayals in advertising and examined the effect of advertisements that feature women as homemakers (vs. do not feature women) on trait judgments of a target woman whose behaviors are ambiguously described. Results from 2 experiments show that, as predicted by the redundancy hypothesis, judgments of medium and high tendency to stereotype participants are not affected by advertisements portraying homemakers. Also as expected, judgments of low tendency to stereotype participants are assimilated to the homemaker prime. These results hold across tendency to trait stereotype (Experiment 1) and tendency to role stereotype (Experiment 2) and for trait judgments as well as gift choice. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Detoxification at Home: A Brief Solution-Oriented Family Systems Approach

The authors propose an outpatient, solution-oriented, family systems approach to detoxification from alcohol and/or drugs. Research indicates that outpatient detoxification is a viable option, one that will likely be utilized even more frequently as health care costs continue to rise. Nontraditional assumptions about the process of detoxification are suggested that challenge traditional notions about detoxification being only a biomedical, pretreatment event. Criteria are provided for determining the appropriateness of clients for outpatient detoxification and offer information about typical withdrawal symptoms and guidelines for the detoxification environment at home. A case example illustrates the application of this approach in a community mental health program. Suggestions for adapting this approach to various settings are also offered.     

Detection of visual-tactile contingency in the first year after birth

It is well documented that in the first year after birth, infants are able to identify self-performed actions. This ability has been regarded as the basis of conscious self-perception. However, it is not yet known whether infants are also sensitive to aspects of the self when they cannot control the sensory feedback by means of self-performed actions. Therefore, we investigated the contribution of visual–tactile contingency to self-perception in infants. In Experiment 1, 7- and 10-month-olds were presented with two video displays of lifelike baby doll legs. The infant’s left leg was stroked contingently with only one of the video displays. The results showed that 7- and 10-month-olds looked significantly longer at the contingent display than at the non-contingent display. Experiment 2 was conducted to investigate the role of morphological characteristics in contingency detection. Ten-month-olds were presented with video displays of two neutral objects (i.e., oblong wooden blocks of approximately the same size as the doll legs) being stroked in the same way as in Experiment 1. No preference was found for either the contingent or the non-contingent display but our results confirm a significant decrease in looking time to the contingent display compared to Experiment 1. These results indicate that detection of visual–tactile contingency as one important aspect of self-perception is present very early in ontogeny. Furthermore, this ability appears to be limited to the perception of objects that strongly resemble the infant’s body, suggesting an early sensitivity to the morphology of one’s own body.     

The Impact of Election Outcome on the Display of Political Posters: A Field Study During Communal Elections in Flanders

The present field study was designed to test the relationship between the election outcomes of political parties and the post-election display of posters in favor of those parties. Two days before the Flemish communal elections on 8 October 2000, addresses of private houses in the community of Zele were registered that displayed at least one poster in support of a political party (N = 388). On the day after the elections, two observers checked whether the registered houses still displayed their poster(s). A strongly and positively linear relation was found between the proportional win/loss of each political party (compared with the previous elections) and the percentage of houses that continued to exhibit poster(s) in support of that party: The better the election result, the higher the proportion of houses that still displayed their poster(s).