Maladaptive perfectionism as an intervening variable between psychological control and adolescent depressive symptoms: a three-wave longitudinal study.

Maladaptive perfectionism has been postulated as an intervening variable between psychologically controlling parenting and adolescent internalizing problems. Although this hypothesis has been confirmed in a number of cross-sectional studies, it has not yet been examined from a longitudinal perspective. Findings from this 3-wave longitudinal study show that parental psychological control (as indexed by parent and adolescent reports) at age 15 years predicted increased levels of maladaptive perfectionism 1 year later. Maladaptive perfectionism, in turn, predicted increased levels of adolescent depressive symptoms again 1 year later and acted as a significant intervening variable between parental psychological control at Time 1 and depressive symptoms at Time 3. Multigroup analyses show that the model tested was consistent across gender for paternal psychological control but not for maternal psychological control. Suggestions for future research are outlined.     

When bonuses backfire: an inaction inertia analysis of procrastination induced by a missed opportunity

An inaction inertia analysis of procrastination was used to generate the prediction that using bonuses to encourage early task completion will have two opposing effects, encouraging early task completion by some but also inducing procrastination for those who miss the bonus. Study 1 showed that the addition of bonuses for early completion produced both of these effects and also led to overall task completion rates that were either equal to (large bonus) or actually less than (medium and small bonuses) those obtained by simply establishing a completion deadline with no bonus. In Study 2, a lottery methodology was used to manipulate the size of a missed bonus for all participants. Even under these conditions of reduced personal responsibility the larger missed bonus led to increased procrastination as predicted by the inaction inertia analysis. Possible mediating processes based on anticipated regret and perceived fairness were discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pi on Earth, or Mathematics in the Real World

We explore aspects of an experimental approach to mathematical proof, most notably number crunching, or the verification of subsequent particular cases of universal propositions. Since the rise of the computer age, this technique has indeed conquered practice, although it implies the abandonment of the ideal of absolute certainty. It seems that also in mathematical research, the qualitative criterion of effectiveness, i.e. to reach one’s goals, gets increasingly balanced against the quantitative one of efficiency, i.e. to minimize one’s means/ends ratio. Our story will lead to the consideration of some limit cases, opening up the possibility of proofs of infinite length being surveyed in a finite time. By means of example, this should show that mathematical practice in vital aspects depends upon what the actual world is like.

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The intergenerational transmission of authoritarianism: The mediating role of parental goal promotion

This study examined the intergenerational transmission of adolescent authoritarian submission (Right-Wing Authoritarianism or RWA) and authoritarian dominance (Social Dominance Orientation or SDO). It was hypothesized that the type of goals that parents promote (i.e., conservation versus openness to change and extrinsic versus intrinsic goal promotion) would mediate any direct association between parents’ and adolescents’ authoritarian attitudes. This hypothesis was examined in a sample of middle adolescents and their parents. First, a significant parent–child concordance was found for RWA and SDO. Second, whereas parental RWA predicted parental promotion of conservation goals (rather than openness to change goals) as well as the promotion of extrinsic goals (rather than intrinsic goals), parental SDO predicted parental promotion of extrinsic goals only. Third, process analyses showed that, whereas parental conservation goal promotion mediates the relationship between parent and child RWA, parental extrinsic goal promotion mediates the relationship between parent and child SDO.     

Inaction Inertia in the Stock Market1

Based on the inaction inertia effect, it was hypothesized that investors who missed an opportunity to leave a “bear market” will be less likely to sell the stock at a later opportunity when facing a grave loss. Participants in a stock‐market computer game were given an opportunity to sell their stock for a moderate gain. Having missed this initial opportunity and now facing a grave loss, these participants were less likely to sell their stock compared to participants whose potential loss was not as grave, or compared to participants facing the same magnitude of loss who had no previous opportunity to leave the market. Analysis of the time spent by participants on reading relevant information concerning the stock market suggests that this tendency toward continued inaction was not the result of careful deliberation over market trends. The results are discussed in terms of counterfac‐tual thinking and anticipated regret.     

Group Therapy with Terror-Injured Persons in Israel: Societal Impediments to Successful Working Through

This paper describes a group intervention with terror-injured people in Israel to show the parallels between developments in the group and Israeli society's difficulties in working through and mourning its experiences of terror. Despite the development of group cohesion and a sense of empowerment, the group members remained unable to deal with the powerful emotions stemming from the experience of terror and continued to cling to their shared identity as terror victims, irrevocably helpless and isolated from others. Without excluding other explanations, we suggest that these difficulties reflect the defense mechanisms employed by Israeli society in dealing with the threat to its survival that is implicit in the terror to which it is exposed.     

Contaminants and the Path to Salvation: A Study of the Sarvāstivāda Hṛdaya Treatises

The Sa?gītiparyāya is the earliest Sarvāstivāda philosophical text that enumerates a series of contaminants (anu?aya), i.e. innate proclivities, inherited from former births, to do something of usually evil nature. This early list comprises seven such contaminants. As it is the contaminants that lead a worldling (p?thagjana) to doing volitional actions and thus to forming a karmic result (karmavipāka), these contaminants naturally also bear on the path to salvation. The gradual development of the peculiar Sarvāstivādin path to salvation necessitated a gradual refinement and reinterpretation of the original list of seven contaminants. Apart from a mere technical aspect, this reinterpretation also reflects the viewpoint of the Sautrāntika school of Buddhist philosophy on the nature of contaminants, i.e. their acceptance of a latent and an active state of the defilements, vis-à-vis the Vaibhā?ika viewpoint according to whom no such difference exists. Within Sarvāstivāda literature, the H?daya treatises illustrate this philosophical development.     

Geometric analogue of holographic reduced representation

Holographic reduced representations (HRRs) are distributed representations of cognitive structures based on superpositions of convolution-bound n-tuples. Restricting HRRs to n-tuples consisting of ±1, one reinterprets the variable binding as a representation of the additive group of binary n-tuples with addition modulo 2. Since convolutions are not defined for vectors, the HRRs cannot be directly associated with geometric structures. Geometric analogues of HRRs are obtained if one considers a projective representation of the same group in the space of blades (geometric products of basis vectors) associated with an arbitrary n-dimensional Euclidean (or pseudo-Euclidean) space. Switching to matrix representations of Clifford algebras, one can always turn a geometric analogue of an HRR into a form of matrix distributed representation. In typical applications the resulting matrices are sparse, so that the matrix representation is less efficient than the representation directly employing the rules of geometric algebra. A yet more efficient procedure is based on ‘projected products’, a hierarchy of geometrically meaningful n-tuple multiplication rules obtained by combining geometric products with projections on relevant multivector subspaces. In terms of dimensionality the geometric analogues of HRRs are in between holographic and tensor-product representations.     

Subtle Bias Against Muslim Job Applicants in Personnel Decisions1

Contemporary theories of prejudice suggest that racism still exists in society, but is expressed in subtle and justifiable manners. Employing such theoretical frameworks, the present study examined subtle ways in which social category information is used differentially in personnel decisions. Participants (managers or undergraduates) were presented with background information and a résumé (with a typical Muslim or European American name) for a hypothetical job applicant. After reviewing the résumés, participants judged the applicant on hirability, salary assignment, and other job‐related characteristics. Results showed that the Muslim applicant, relative to the American, was unfavorably judged in salary assignment and job‐related characteristics in the presence of negative information. Both managers and undergraduates exhibited the same bias. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

The importance of being expert: Top-down attentional control in visual search with photographs

Two observers looking at the same picture may not see the same thing. To avoid sensory overload, visual information is actively selected for further processing by bottom-up processes, originating within the visual image, and top-down processes, reflecting the motivation and past experiences of the observer. The latter processes could grant categories of significance to the observer a permanent attentional advantage. Nevertheless, evidence for a generalized top-down advantage for specific categories has been limited. In this study, bird and car experts searched for face, car, or bird photographs in a heterogeneous display of photographs of real objects. Bottom-up influences were ruled out by presenting both groups of experts with identical displays. Faces and targets of expertise had a clear advantage over novice targets, indicating a permanent top-down preference for favored categories. A novel type of analysis of reaction times over the visual field suggests that the advantage for expert objects is achieved by broader detection windows, allowing observers to scan greater parts of the visual field for the presence of favored targets during each fixation.