Social anxiety, reasons for drinking, and college students

Recent research suggests that social anxiety may be associated with higher rates of alcohol problems in women, yet may be associated with lower levels of drinking in men. The current study investigated putative mechanisms that may underlie potential gender differences in the social anxiety-alcohol relationship. One hundred and eighteen college students (61.0% women) completed an interview assessing drinking behaviors and questionnaires measuring social anxiety, drinking motives, and drinking situations. Although college men and women both reported similar frequencies of drinking in positive situations and to enhance positive emotions, women reported drinking more often in negative situations and to cope with aversive emotions than men. Mediated moderation analyses suggested that women with social anxiety may be at greater risk of encountering adverse consequences because of their likelihood to drink to conform or to cope with the aversive affect they experience in negative situations. Conversely, when men experience high rates of adverse consequences, it may be due to drinking greater quantities of alcohol in positive situations. Highly socially anxious college men may drink less alcohol and experience fewer adverse consequences than their nonanxious or mildly anxious counterparts because they may find themselves in positive situations and drinking to enhance positive feelings less often, potentially due to avoidant behavior. These findings may help to explain why social anxiety serves as a potential risk factor for alcohol-related problems for college women, but a protective factor for college men.     

La Liberté Dans la Perception Chez Husserl et Fichte<Superscript>1</Superscript>

In spite of their opposite methods, Fichte's deductive process and Husserl's reduction cope with the same challenge: they aim to explain how the sensible world is dependent on reflixivity. As perception is generally linked with natural existence, and pure passivity, the deepest significance of transcendental thought in those philosophies consists in equalizing phenomenon and reflexion. In the heart of bodily life, some spiritual theme has to be found. Fichte defines action as the quantification of freedom, and freedom is effectively achieved in the sensible world. Human perception reveals freedom altogether in corporal movements as in the surrounding world (Umwelt). The Fichtean theory of acknowledgment assumes this goal. In the same way, Husserl's reduction explains how significance proceeds from the body (Leib). The Husserlian analysis of kinesthesis and the radical experience of the hand touching the other hand both introduce to the status of pre-reflection. However the complete resolution of the question is given by Fichte: Intelligibility may exist in the sensible world as the metaphysical concept of phenomenon (Erscheinung) in the last Fichtean philosophy expresses the idea of the Absolute pervading the sensible.

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La Liberté Dans la Perception Chez Husserl et Fichte¹

     

Complementarity cannot resolve the emergence–reduction debate: Reply to Harré

Rom Harré thinks that the Emergence–Reduction debate, conceived as a vertical problem, is partly ill posed. Even if he doesn’t wholly reject the traditional definition of an emergent property as a property of a collection but not of its components, his point is that this definition doesn’t exhaust all the dimensions of emergence. According to Harré there is another kind (or dimension) of emergence, which we may call—somewhat paradoxically—“horizontal emergence”: two properties of a substance are horizontally emergent relative to each other if they cannot be displayed in the same conditions. Contrary to vertical emergence, horizontal emergence is a symmetrical relation. Harré endorses horizontal emergentism. I argue that this position faces a principled difficulty: it makes it impossible to bind different horizontally emergent discourses in an interesting way. Physics and biology for example become “island” discourses, each speaking of a distinct kind of entities. The only way to ensure that two different discourses can relate to the same entity is to reintroduce verticality into the picture.     

Personality traits modulate skin conductance response to emotional pictures: An investigation with Cloninger’s model of personality

Several studies found strong relationships between main personality dimensions and emotions, and more particularly between neuroticism and negative emotions, as well as between extraversion and positive ones. In these studies, personality was mainly assessed with respect to the big five model, and emotions were evaluated with subjective rating scales. To extend the exploration of the associations between personality and emotion, the aim of the present study was to investigate the relationships between Cloninger’s dimensions of personality and emotional reactivity assessed by skin conductance response (SCR). In 55 normal subjects, SCR was recorded while they were presented pictures selected as positive, negative and neutral from the International Affective Picture System. The results showed no influence of personality on response magnitude, but subjects with higher harm avoidance scores showed longer half-recovery times for negative relative to neutral pictures. This result is consistent with the dispositional bias of harm avoidance to respond intensely to signals of aversive stimuli.     

Strategic value-directed learning and memory in Alzheimer's disease and behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia

In healthy adults, the ability to prioritize learning of highly valued information is supported by executive functions and enhances subsequent memory retrieval for this information. In Alzheimer's disease (AD) and behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), marked deficits are evident in learning and memory, presenting in the context of executive dysfunction. It is unclear whether these patients show a typical memory bias for higher valued stimuli. We administered a value-directed word-list learning task to AD (n = 10) and bvFTD (n = 21) patients and age-matched healthy controls (n = 22). Each word was assigned a low, medium or high point value, and participants were instructed to maximize the number of points earned across three learning trials. Participants’ memory for the words was assessed on a delayed recall trial, followed by a recognition test for the words and corresponding point values. Relative to controls, both patient groups showed poorer overall learning, delayed recall and recognition. Despite these impairments, patients with AD preferentially recalled high-value words on learning trials and showed significant value-directed enhancement of recognition memory for the words and points. Conversely, bvFTD patients did not prioritize recall of high-value words during learning trials, and this reduced selectivity was related to inhibitory dysfunction. Nonetheless, bvFTD patients showed value-directed enhancement of recognition memory for the point values, suggesting a mismatch between memory of high-value information and the ability to apply this in a motivationally salient context. Our findings demonstrate that value-directed enhancement of memory may persist to some degree in patients with dementia, despite pronounced deficits in learning and memory.     

Perceived motivational climate and unit cohesion: The case of French soldiers in training

Using a correlational design, this exploratory research investigates the relationships between soldiers’ perceptions of the motivational climate created by platoon leaders and unit cohesion in a French military sample. Conducted among 257 soldiers, the findings indicate that new recruits perceive motivational climate as significantly more task- than ego-involved. Moreover, multiple regressions show that a task-involving motivational climate predicts higher measures of cohesion than does an ego-involving motivational climate. Implications for the professionalization of military forces and exercising command in training are discussed.     

Using career counselling with group life design principles to improve the employability of disadvantaged young adults

This article explores the effects of group life design counselling on unemployed young adults’ career adaptability skills. Purposive and criterion sampling were used to select 62 participants involved in a skills programme (mean age = 24.86 years, SD = 6.38 years). A quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test comparison group-design, embedded in an intervention framework, was used to gather data. Intervention occurred in the quasi-experimental group. Paired t-tests were used to compare the difference between the pre- and post-test scores obtained on the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS). The scores on career concern and career control, as well as the total score on the CAAS, of the quasi-experimental group increased after the intervention. The results suggest that group career counselling interventions with life design principles enhanced the career adaptability in participants as a core element of employability. Future research should focus on more longitudinal research and tracing the long-term progress of participants to establish the value of the approach for diverse clients in (individual and) group contexts.     

Multilevel analysis of matching behavior

Multilevel modeling has been considered a promising statistical tool in the field of the experimental analysis of behavior and may serve as a convenient statistical analysis for matching behavior because it structures data in groups (or levels) to account simultaneously for the within‐subject and between‐subject variances. Heretofore, researchers have sometimes pooled data erroneously from different subjects in a single analysis by using average ratios, average response and reinforcer rates, aggregation of subjects, etc. Unfortunately, this leads to loss of information and biased estimations, which can severely undermine generalization of the results. Instead, a multilevel approach is advocated to combine several subjects' matching behavior. A reanalysis of previous data on matching behavior is provided to illustrate the method and point out its advantages. It illustrates that multilevel regression leads to better estimations, is more convenient, and offers more behavioral information. We hope this paper will encourage the use of multilevel modeling in the statistical practices of behavior analysts.     

How self‐compassion moderates the effect of body surveillance on subjective happiness and depression among women

According to objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997), being treated as an object leads women to engage in self‐objectification, which in turn increases body surveillance and body shame as well as impairs mental health. However, very little is known about what factors could act as buffers against the detrimental consequences of self‐objectification. This paper seeks to understand the role of self‐compassion (the ability to kindly accept oneself or show self‐directed kindness while suffering) in the perception that women have of their own bodies. Results indicate that self‐compassion moderated the effect of body surveillance on depression and happiness separately among women. More specifically, for women low in self‐compassion, body surveillance was negatively associated with happiness, which was explained by increased depression. In sum, our results indicate that self‐compassion protects against the detrimental consequences of body surveillance.