Emotional states and physical health

Positive emotional states may promote healthy perceptions, beliefs, and physical well-being itself. To explore potential mechanisms linking pleasant feelings and good health, the authors consider several lines of research, including (a) direct effects of positive affect on physiology, especially the immune system, (b) the information value of emotional experiences, (c) the psychological resources engendered by positive feeling states, (d) the ways in which mood can motivate health-relevant behaviors, and (e) the elicitation of social support. As anticipated by the Greek physician Hippocrates, positive emotions and healthy outcomes may be linked through multiple pathways.     

Wisdom. A metaheuristic (pragmatic) to orchestrate mind and virtue toward excellence

The primary focus of this article is on the presentation of wisdom research conducted under the heading of the Berlin wisdom paradigm. Informed by a cultural-historical analysis, wisdom in this paradigm is defined as an expert knowledge system concerning the fundamental pragmatics of life. These include knowledge and judgment about the meaning and conduct of life and the orchestration of human development toward excellence while attending conjointly to personal and collective well-being. Measurement includes think-aloud protocols concerning various problems of life associated with life planning, life management, and life review. Responses are evaluated with reference to a family of 5 criteria: rich factual and procedural knowledge, lifespan contextualism, relativism of values and life priorities, and recognition and management of uncertainty. A series of studies is reported that aim to describe, explain, and optimize wisdom. The authors conclude with a new theoretical perspective that characterizes wisdom as a cognitive and motivational metaheuristic (pragmatic) that organizes and orchestrates knowledge toward human excellence in mind and virtue, both individually and collectively.     

When reviews attack: ethics, free speech, and the peer review process.

The peer review process, whether formally applied in publication and grant review, or informally, such as exchange of ideas in scientific and professional newsgroups, has sparked controversy. Writers in this area agree that scholarly reviews that are inappropriate in tone are not uncommon. Indeed, commentators have suggested rules and guidelines that can be used to improve the review process and to make reviewers more accountable. In this paper, we examine the relevance and impact of ethical codes on the conduct of peer review. It is our contention that the peer review process can be improved, not by a new set of rules but through closer attention to the ethical principles to which we, as psychologists, already subscribe.     

The role of inhibition in the regulation of sequential action

We investigated the regulation of sequential action using a new paradigm. Participants learned a sequence of seven stimulus categories and then monitored for them during successive displays. All displays were instances of these categories, presented in pseudorandom order. On each trial, participants monitored for an instance of Category 1, pressed a key on a computer keyboard, then monitored for an instance of Category 2, pressed a key on the keyboard, and so on for all seven categories. Thus, a perfect trial contained exactly seven responses. Intrusion errors were classified as a function of ordinal distance from the current serial position ( n ). Fewer intrusion errors were made at near serial positions than at far ones, suggesting a gradient of lateral inhibition. In addition, more intrusions were made on n + 1 categories than n − 1 categories, suggesting greater availability of intended than completed goals. In accord with current models of sequential action, the results indicate lateral and self-inhibition as important mechanisms in regulation of sequential action.     

Responsibility attitudes and interpretations are characteristic of obsessive compulsive disorder

The cognitive-behavioural theory of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) proposes that a key factor influencing obsessional behaviour is the way in which the intrusive cognitions are interpreted. The present paper reports an investigation of links between clinical symptoms (of anxiety, depression and obsessionality) and responsibility beliefs. These beliefs include not only measures of general responsibility attitudes (assumptions) but also more specific responsibility appraisals consequent on intrusive cognitions. The characteristics of two new questionnaires specifically designed to measure these beliefs were assessed in patients suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, in patients suffering from other anxiety disorders and in non-clinical controls. The scales measuring negative beliefs about responsibility were found to have good reliability and internal consistency. Comparisons between criterion groups indicate considerable specificity for both assumptions and appraisals with respect to OCD. There was also good evidence of specificity in the association between responsibility cognitions and obsessional symptoms across groups, and that this association was not a consequence of links with anxiety or depressive symptoms. Although the two measures were correlated, they each made unique contributions to the prediction of obsessional symptoms. Overall, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that responsibility beliefs are important in the experience of obsessional problems.     

Organization and components of psychomotor ability

We investigated the organization and components of psychomotor abilities by administering a diverse set of cognitive and psychomotor tasks to a group of recent high school graduates (N = 161). Confirmatory factor analyses identified two psychomotor factors: a general factor associated with all psychomotor tests and an orthogonal psychomotor learning factor associated exclusively with practiced psychomotor tests. Path analyses suggested that the general psychomotor factor could be largely accounted for by two cognitive factors, general working-memory capacity (r = .67) and an orthogonal time estimation factor (r = .32). Most of the psychomotor learning factor variance was unique, but psychomotor learning was somewhat related to processing speed (r = .49). We conclude that initial psychomotor performance is constrained by working-memory limits and the ability to keep track of time. Practiced psychomotor skill is additionally limited by processing speed, consistent with the literature on the development of process automaticity. The Discussion addresses (a) the small dimensionality of the psychomotor abilities space, (b) our discovery of the importance of time estimation and other cognitive factors in psychomotor learning, and (c) the changing nature of psychomotor skill with practice.     

Stress and alcohol use: a daily process examination of the stressor-vulnerability model

The authors used a daily diary methodology to examine over 60 days how the within-person associations among event stress, alcohol consumption, and desire to drink varied as a function of gender, positive and negative alcohol-outcome expectancies, and avoidant coping in a sample of 88 regular drinkers. Multilevel regression analyses indicated that men who more strongly anticipated positive outcomes or a sense of carelessness from drinking drank relatively more on stressful days compared with low-stress days. Similar results were found predicting desire to drink. Men who anticipated greater impairment from drinking drank relatively less on stressful days. In general, these effects did not hold for women. Little evidence was found for the predicted effects for avoidant coping style, and some results showed that avoidant coping style buffered the exacerbating effects of careless unconcern expectancies.