Tonic Activity Level in the Right Prefrontal Cortex Predicts Individuals' Risk Taking

ABSTRACT— Human risk taking is characterized by a large amount of individual heterogeneity. In this study, we applied resting-state electroencephalography, which captures stable individual differences in neural activity, before subjects performed a risk-taking task. Using a source-localization technique, we found that the baseline cortical activity in the right prefrontal cortex predicts individual risk-taking behavior. Individuals with higher baseline cortical activity in this brain area display more risk aversion than do other individuals. This finding demonstrates that neural characteristics that are stable over time can predict a highly complex behavior such as risk-taking behavior and furthermore suggests that hypoactivity in the right prefrontal cortex might serve as a dispositional indicator of lower regulatory abilities, which is expressed in greater risk-taking behavior.     

Subliminal priming of motivational orientation in educational settings: Effect on academic performance moderated by mindfulness

Recent literature indicates that a motivational orientation can be unconsciously primed. This study examined whether motivational priming influences students’ academic performance within an educational setting and whether this effect is moderated by students’ degree of mindfulness. Two randomly assigned groups of students received an identical lesson. However, the teacher’s slideshow contained different subliminal words according to the condition (autonomous vs. controlled motivation). Results demonstrated an interaction between students’ dispositional mindfulness and priming conditions. The more mindful students were immune to the manipulation whereas the less mindful students were affected by the priming: those primed with autonomous motivation obtained better results than those primed with controlled motivation. These findings contribute to priming research specifying individual differences of priming responsiveness.     

The emergence of a social representation of human rights via interpersonal communication: empirical evidence for the convergence of two theories

To test the common assumption that social representations originate in ordinary communication, ten 24-person groups of American college students exchanged messages for 2 1/2 weeks about six specific issues drawn from a 21-item questionnaire previously used by Clémence, Doise, & Lorenzi-Cioldi (1994) in a cross-cultural investigation on human rights. As expected, interpersonal communication led to increased spatial clustering (neighbors in social space became more similar) and enhanced correlations among these issues, leading to a more coherent factor structure of human rights conceptions. Clustering and correlation simultaneously illustrate the emergence of self-organization in social systems and are taken as evidence for the social origin of social representations. These findings show how Latané's Dynamic Social Impact Theory complements Moscovici's Social Representation Theory, providing a mechanism for understanding how and criteria for knowing when social representations arise from communication. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Competing for a desired reward in the Stroop task: when attentional control is unconscious but effective versus conscious but ineffective.

Recent studies using Stroop's paradigm have shown that word recognition processes can be controlled when the local context of the task is manipulated. In the present study, factors related to the participants' broader context (i.e., presence vs. absence of a competitor and of a desired reward) were manipulated. The results (1) support the conclusion that control of semantic-level activation can be unconscious but effective versus conscious but ineffective, (2) suggest that unconscious control alone operates on line (i.e., when the participant is responding), and (3) clarify the impact of socio-contextual factors that have been confounded in past research. Taken together, these findings strengthen the view that word recognition processes are controllable and offer new reasons to pay constant attention to the social environment of cognition.     

Self-confrontation interview with suicide attempters

Psychiatric and psychological assessment after parasuicide is characterized by a number of difficulties. The interview is a strategically complex task for the patients trying to accommodate the wishes of the psychiatrist/psychologist and their own goals. The psychiatrist/ psychologist on the other hand needs to gain information about the event and the patient's mental state, has to assess the risk of further suicidal behaviour, and has to motivate the patient for treatment. In our experience a routine video prompted recall or self-confrontation interview, can be a helpful means of talking with the patient about his or her feelings and cognitions during the interview. Furthermore, it allows clarification of the processes leading to parasuicide. The procedure of administering a self confrontation interview is described, the theoretical background for interpreting the results is outlined and some examples of patient interviews are presented. It is demonstrated that this method allows access to additional information on the patients' thinking and emotions during the interview and that it also provides more details of the suicidal process.     

Can societal language amendments change gender representation? The case of Norway

This study investigates the influence of stereotypical information and the grammatical masculine on the representation of gender in Norwegian by applying a sentence evaluation paradigm. In this study participants had to decide whether a second sentence containing explicit information about the gender of one of more of the characters (e.g. . . . one of the women . . . ) was a sensible continuation of a first sentence introducing a role name (e.g. The spies came out . . . ). Participants' representations were biased by the stereotypicality of the role names when reading female (e.g. nurses) and male (e.g. pilots) stereotyped role names (replicating findings from the English sample in a previous publication), but male biased when reading neutral role names (replicating findings from the French and the German samples in a previous publication).     

Au pairs are rarely male: Norms on the gender perception of role names across English,French, and German

A list of role names for future use in research on gender stereotyping was created and evaluated. In two studies, 126 role names were rated with reference to their gender stereotypicality by English-, French-, and German-speaking students of universities in Switzerland (French and German) and in the U.K. (English). Role names were either presented in specific feminine and masculine forms (Study 1) or in the masculine form (generic masculine) only (Study 2). The rankings of the stereotypicality ratings were highly reliable across languages and questionnaire versions, but the overall mean of the ratings was less strongly male if participants were also presented with the female versions of the role names and if the latter were presented on the left side of the questionnaires.