I felt low and my purse feels light: depleting mood regulation attempts affect risk decision making

We propose that negative affect can induce people to engage in risky decisions. We test two alternative hypotheses as to how this effect may emerge. The mood repair hypothesis states that risky choices in risk decision making serve as a means to repair one's negative affect. The depletion hypothesis, in contrast, states that risky choices in risk decision making are the mere consequence of a state of depletion resulting from engagement in active mood regulation attempts. The results of a first laboratory study establish a link between risky choices in risk decision making and negative affect. Subsequent experiments provide evidence that depletion due to active mood regulation attempts, rather than mood repair, is the underlying process for this link. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Power and Type I errors for pairwise comparisons of means in the unequal variances case

A Monte Carlo simulation was conducted to compare pairwise multiple comparison procedures. The number of means varied from 4 to 8 and the sample sizes varied from 2 to 500. Procedures were evaluated on the basis of Type I errors, any‐pair power and all‐pairs power. Two modifications of the Games and Howell procedure were shown to make it conservative. No procedure was found to be uniformly most powerful. For any pair power the Games and Howell procedure was found to be generally most powerful even when applied at more stringent levels to control Type I errors. For all pairs power the Peritz procedure applied with modified Brown–Forsythe tests was found to be most powerful in most conditions.     

The Influence of Work Personality on Job Satisfaction: Incremental Validity and Mediation Effects

ABSTRACT Drawing from recent developments regarding the contextual nature of personality (e.g., D. Wood & B. W. Roberts, 2006 ), we conducted 2 studies (1 cross-sectional and 1 longitudinal over 1 year) to examine the validity of work personality in predicting job satisfaction and its mediation of the effect of global personality on job satisfaction. Study 1 showed that (a) individuals vary systematically in their personality between roles— they were significantly more conscientious and open to experience and less extraverted at work compared to at home; (b) work personality was a better predictor of job satisfaction than both global personality and home personality; and (c) work personality demonstrated incremental validity above and beyond the other two personality measures. Study 2 further showed that each of the work personality dimensions fully mediated the association between its corresponding global personality trait and job satisfaction. Evidence for the discriminant validity of the findings is also presented.     

Sosa on scepticism

 In my remarks, I discuss Sosa's attempt to deal with the sceptical threat posed by dreaming. Sosa explores two replies to the problem of dreaming scepticism. First, he argues that, on the imagination model of dreaming, dreaming does not threaten the safety of our beliefs. Second, he argues that knowledge does not require safety, but a weaker condition which is not threatened by dreaming skepticism. I raise questions about both elements of his reply.

Indirect perceptual realism and demonstratives

I defend indirect perceptual realism against two recent and related charges to it offered by A. D. Smith and P. Snowdon, both stemming from demonstrative reference involving indirect perception. The needed aspects of the theory of demonstratives are not terribly new, but their connection to these objections has not been discussed. The groundwork for my solution emerges from considering normal cases of indirect perception (e.g., seeing something depicted on a television) and examining the role this indirectness plays in demonstrative assertions. I argue that indirectness routinely if not typically plays a justificatory role in such judgements, and not a semantic one, and that the same can be said of such judgements when considered within the indirect realist framework. The denial of this, on my analysis, is essential to the criticisms of Snowdon and Smith. The discussion is extended to include scenarios involving the sorts of misconceptions Smith employs.

Introduction to Three Diagnoses of God

This brief article introduces the three articles diagnosing God by Helsel, Capps, and Carlin as examples of a skeptical strain that has been present throughout Judeo–Christian history, suggesting that psychology as an “interrogative” mode is a necessary counterpoint to theology’s dogmatic mode. The three articles are recommended on the basis of their heuristic value for instruction about mental illness, their playfulness and humor, and their potential for reshaping traditional images of God that have been harmful.     

Loneliness,Interpersonal Distrust,and Alexithymia in University Students1

Loneliness has been linked to emotional knowledge and interpersonal distrust, but it is unknown whether it is mediated or moderated by these variables. Using self‐report measures, the relationship between loneliness, interpersonal distrust, and alexithymia was investigated in undergraduate students (N = 224). Analyses showed a direct relationship between alexithymia and social, family, and romantic loneliness. We also found that interpersonal distrust partly mediates this relationship, and that alexithymia and interpersonal distrust interacted to predict social and family loneliness. These findings suggest that links between the different facets of alexithymia, interpersonal distrust, and loneliness are complex and multifaceted, and they are discussed with regard to interventions for young adults.     

Platform and prophecy: the rise and fall of Rabbi Stuart E. Rosenberg as foreshadowed in his early Toronto sermons on leadership

Stuart Rosenberg, who served from 1956 to 1976 as rabbi of Beth Tzedec Synagogue in Toronto, enjoyed a meteoric rise and suffered as precipitate a fall. A charismatic speaker with a powerful personality, Rosenberg presided over Beth Tzedec as if he were the chief executive of a corporation. The activities he initiated in the synagogue and his high profile in the Jewish and general communities put Beth Tzedec “on the map,” making it, for a time at least, Canada’s premier Jewish religious institution. During his early years at Beth Tzedec, Rabbi Rosenberg published two books of sermons: Man Is Free: Sermons and Addresses and A Time to Speak: Of Man, Faith and Society. Both were widely distributed to colleagues and congregants. His only collections of sermons can be viewed as his written testament. Read from the perspective of a half-century later, the sermons are clearly documents of their time and place. They reflect the well-known, mostly sociological literature on religion, Toronto, and the Conservative Movement written during the 1950s and earlier, as well as the history and mood of the congregation itself. Read in the light of Rabbi Rosenberg’s rise and fall at Beth Tzedec, these sermons appear to be both his platform for early success and a prophecy of his sudden downfall.