A Cyber Phenomenon: A Q-Analysis on the Motivation of Computer Hackers

In computer security parlance, a hacker is an individual who actively seeks and takes advantage of flaws and weaknesses of a computer network or system. In recent years, one has seen the rise of hacking, often as a form of protest and retaliation for reasons ranging from political to social, but the question remains as to what really motivates an individual to hack a computer network? Using the Q-method, the study aimed to develop a classification of the motivation of computer hackers. This was done with the use of 43 participants who were subjected to preliminary interviews and the sorting method. The statements from the interviews were categorized that resulted in seven conceptual themes, namely social-positive, social-negative, intellectual gain, self-satisfaction, economic rewards, technological-positive and technological-negative. From these themes, three distinct profiles emerged and were used to describe the motivation of hackers.     

“To‐be‐forgotten” statements become less true: Memory processes involved in selection and forgetting lead to truthfulness changes of ambiguous sentences

What happens when people try to forget something? What are the consequences of instructing people to intentionally forget a sentence? Recent studies employing the item‐method directed forgetting paradigm have shown that to‐be‐forgotten (TBF) items are, in a subsequent task, emotionally devaluated relative to to‐be‐remembered (TBR) items, an aftereffect of memory selection (Vivas, Marful, Panagiotidou & Bajo, 2016). As such, distractor devaluation by attentional selection generalizes to memory selection. In this study, we use the item‐method directed forgetting paradigm to test the effects of memory selection and inhibition on truth judgments of ambiguous sentences. We expected the relative standing of an item in the task (i.e., whether it was instructed to be remembered or forgotten) to affect the truthfulness value of that item, making TBF items less valid/truthful than TBR items. As predicted, ambiguous sentences associated with a “Forget” cue were subsequently judged as less true than sentences associated with a “Remember” cue, suggesting that instructions to intentionally forget a statement can produce changes in the validity/truthfulness of that statement. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show an influence of memory processes involved in selection and forgetting on the perceived truthfulness of sentences.     

Binocular rivalry: a window into emotional processing in aging

Previous binocular rivalry studies with younger adults have shown that emotional stimuli dominate perception over neutral stimuli. Here we investigated the effects of age on patterns of emotional dominance during binocular rivalry. Participants performed a face/house rivalry task where the emotion of the face (happy, angry, neutral) and orientation (upright, inverted) of the face and house stimuli were varied systematically. Age differences were found with younger adults showing a general emotionality effect (happy and angry faces were more dominant than neutral faces) and older adults showing inhibition of anger (neutral faces were more dominant than angry faces) and positivity effects (happy faces were more dominant than both angry and neutral faces). Age differences in dominance patterns were reflected by slower rivalry rates for both happy and angry compared to neutral face/house pairs in younger adults, and slower rivalry rates for happy compared to both angry and neutral face/house pairs in older adults. Importantly, these patterns of emotional dominance and slower rivalry rates for emotional-face/house pairs disappeared when the stimuli were inverted. This suggests that emotional valence, and not low-level image features, were responsible for the emotional bias in both age groups. Given that binocular rivalry has a limited role for voluntary control, the findings imply that anger suppression and positivity effects in older adults may extend to more automatic tasks.     

Models of Sexual and Relational Orientation: A Critical Review and Synthesis

Many frameworks exist to explain and describe the phenomenon of same‐sex sexuality as it applies to human development. This conceptual article provides a critical overview and synthesis of previous models to serve as a theoretical bridge for the suggested multiple continua model of sexual and relational orientations. Recommendations for how counselors can adapt the multiple continua model to improve their work with same‐sex sexual clients are presented, and future directions for research are discussed.     

Cognitive bias modification: induced interpretive biases affect memory

Previous research has shown that it is possible to experimentally induce interpretive biases using ambiguous scenarios. This study extends past findings by examining the effects of cognitive bias modification for interpretation on subsequent scenario recall. Participants were trained to interpret emotionally ambiguous passages in either a positive or negative direction. Transfer of the training to novel scenarios was tested. After training, participants were also asked to recall details from these novel scenarios. The results indicate that the training was effective in inducing the intended group differences in interpretive bias. Importantly, participants exhibited memory biases that corresponded to their training condition. These results suggest that manipulating interpretive biases can result in corresponding changes in memory. Findings from this study highlight the importance of future research on the relation among cognitive biases and on the possibility of modifying cognitive biases in emotional disorders.     

Managing organizational commitment: Insights from longitudinal research

This article summarizes what is known about the active management of affective organizational commitment (AOC) through a review of 58 studies employing longitudinal research designs. The review yields six broad categories of antecedents that have empirically demonstrated effects on AOC: socialization practices, organizational changes, human resource practices, interpersonal relations, employee–organizational relations, and a residual “other” category. Insights from the review include (a) that perceptions of personal attachment to the organization are among the most substantiated (but tenuous) strategies for enhancing AOC, (b) that theorizing and research efforts have focused almost exclusively on achieving high levels of AOC, and (c) organizations have been reticent to address situations when AOC is low. Implications and recommendations for the theoretical, research and practical advancement of AOC are offered.     

Perceptual comparisons with laterally presented pictures and environmental sounds

Two experiments studied perceptual comparisons with cues that vary in one of four ways (picture, sound, spoken word, or printed word) and with targets that are either pictures or environmental sounds. The basic question probed whether modality or differences in format were factors that would influence picture and sound perception. Also of interest were cue effect differences when targets are presented on either the right or left side. Students responded to a same-different reaction time task that entailed matching cue-target pairs to determine whether the successive stimulus events represented features drawn from the same basic item. Cue type influenced reaction times to pictures and environmental sounds, but the effects were qualified by response type and with picture targets by presentation side. These results provide some additional evidence of processing asymmetry when pictures are directed to either the right or left hemisphere, as well as for some asymmetries in cross-modality cuing. Implications of these findings for theories of multisensory processing and models of object recognition are discussed.