Not just another face in the crowd: Detecting emotional schematic faces during continuous flash suppression

To test whether threatening visual information receives prioritized processing, many studies have examined visual search for emotional schematic faces. Still, it has remained unclear whether negative or positive schematic faces are processed more efficiently. We used continuous flash suppression, a variant of binocular rivalry, to render single emotional schematic faces invisible and measured whether negative or positive faces have an advantage in accessing awareness. Across three experiments, positive faces were detected more quickly than negative faces. A fourth experiment indicated that this positive face advantage was unrelated to the valence of the face stimuli but due to the relative orientation of the mouth curvature and the face contour. These findings demonstrate the impact of configural stimulus properties on perceptual suppression during binocular rivalry and point to a perceptual confound present in emotional schematic faces that might account for some ambiguous results obtained with schematic face stimuli in previous studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Protecting Against Low‐Probability Disasters: The Role of Worry

We carry out a large monetary stakes insurance experiment with very small probabilities of losses and ambiguous as well as exact probabilities. Many individuals do not want to pay anything for insurance whether the probabilities are given exactly or are ambiguous. Many others, however, are willing to pay surprisingly large amounts. With ambiguity, the percentage of those paying nothing is smaller and the willingness to pay (WTP) of the other individuals larger than with exact probabilities. Comparing elasticities with ambiguity, we find that worry is much more important than subjective probability in determining WTP for insurance. Furthermore, when the ambiguous loss probability is increased by a factor of 1000, it has almost no effect on WTP. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fisher transformation based confidence intervals of correlations in fixed- and random-effects meta-analysis

Meta-analyses of correlation coefficients are an important technique to integrate results from many cross-sectional and longitudinal research designs. Uncertainty in pooled estimates is typically assessed with the help of confidence intervals, which can double as hypothesis tests for two-sided hypotheses about the underlying correlation. A standard approach to construct confidence intervals for the main effect is the Hedges-Olkin-Vevea Fisher-z (HOVz) approach, which is based on the Fisher-z transformation. Results from previous studies (Field, 2005, Psychol. Meth., 10, 444; Hafdahl and Williams, 2009, Psychol. Meth., 14, 24), however, indicate that in random-effects models the performance of the HOVz confidence interval can be unsatisfactory. To this end, we propose improvements of the HOVz approach, which are based on enhanced variance estimators for the main effect estimate. In order to study the coverage of the new confidence intervals in both fixed- and random-effects meta-analysis models, we perform an extensive simulation study, comparing them to established approaches. Data were generated via a truncated normal and beta distribution model. The results show that our newly proposed confidence intervals based on a Knapp-Hartung-type variance estimator or robust heteroscedasticity consistent sandwich estimators in combination with the integral z-to-r transformation (Hafdahl, 2009, Br. J. Math. Stat. Psychol., 62, 233) provide more accurate coverage than existing approaches in most scenarios, especially in the more appropriate beta distribution simulation model.     

Crossmodal attention switching: Auditory dominance in temporal discrimination tasks

Visual stimuli are often processed more efficiently than accompanying stimuli in another modality. In line with this “visual dominance”, earlier studies on attentional switching showed a clear benefit for visual stimuli in a bimodal visual–auditory modality-switch paradigm that required spatial stimulus localization in the relevant modality. The present study aimed to examine the generality of this visual dominance effect. The modality appropriateness hypothesis proposes that stimuli in different modalities are differentially effectively processed depending on the task dimension, so that processing of visual stimuli is favored in the dimension of space, whereas processing auditory stimuli is favored in the dimension of time. In the present study, we examined this proposition by using a temporal duration judgment in a bimodal visual–auditory switching paradigm. Two experiments demonstrated that crossmodal interference (i.e., temporal stimulus congruence) was larger for visual stimuli than for auditory stimuli, suggesting auditory dominance when performing temporal judgment tasks. However, attention switch costs were larger for the auditory modality than for visual modality, indicating a dissociation of the mechanisms underlying crossmodal competition in stimulus processing and modality-specific biasing of attentional set.     

Leipzig Affective Norms for German: A reliability study

To facilitate investigations of verbal emotional processing, we introduce the Leipzig Affective Norms for German (LANG), a list of 1,000 German nouns that have been rated for emotional valence, arousal, and concreteness. A critical factor regarding the quality of normative word data is their reliability. We therefore acquired ratings from a sample that was tested twice, with an interval of 2 years, to calculate test—retest reliability. Furthermore, we recruited a second sample to test reliability across independent samples. The results show (1) the typical quadratic relation of valence and arousal, replicating previous data, (2) very high test—retest reliability (>.95), and (3) high correlations between the two samples (>.85). Because the range of ratings was also very high, we provide a comprehensive set of words with reliable affective norms, which makes it possible to select highly controlled subsamples varying in emotional status. The database is available as a supplement for this article at http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

The Renaissance Ethics of Music: Singing,Contemplation and Musica Humana

Abstract

This article considers Calvin's late work, the Harmony of the Pentateuch (1563). It takes account of previous attempts to illuminate Calvin's purpose in this production by De Boer, Blacketer, Thiel, Wright and Balserak. There follows a consideration of Calvin's view of the ceremonial law for Christians, and a distinction is drawn between the Old Testament cult and the Old Testament law concerning that cult. It finally takes soundings from the work itself to argue that for Calvin, the timeless spirit of worship could be understood behind its outward expression. What matters is that God is seen to call believers out of the flow of everyday occurrence into worship.     

The Sensitivity to Mean Intentions (SeMI) Model: Basic Assumptions,Recent Findings,and Potential Avenues for Future Research

A large body of research has demonstrated that people who are habitually sensitive towards victimization tend to behave uncooperatively and immorally in socially uncertain situations. The “Sensitivity to Mean Intentions” (SeMI) model (Gollwitzer & Rothmund 2009) aims at describing social‐cognitive mechanisms that underlie and explain this effect. The model posits that in socially uncertain situations, victim‐sensitive individuals are asymmetrically sensitive to cues of untrustworthiness. When such cues are present, suspicious cognitive and motivational reactions are triggered in victim‐sensitive individuals, and they behave preemptively selfish to avoid being exploited by others. Although functional at times, victim sensitivity does have dysfunctional side effects. The present article reviews recent findings regarding the SeMI model and sketches potential avenues for future research.