Today's misery and yesterday's happiness: Differential effects of current life-events on perceptions of past wellbeing

Negative events – such as romantic disappointment, social rejection or academic failure – influence how we feel and what we think. Either component can influence evaluations of our past life, but in opposite ways: when sad feelings serve as a source of information, they give rise to negative evaluations; when current events serve as a standard of comparison, they give rise to positive evaluations. Because comparison requires applicability of the standard, its benefits should be limited to the domain of the event. Consistent with this rationale, three experiments showed a robust paradoxical effect: people who experienced romantic disappointment (Experiment 1), social exclusion (Experiment 2) or academic failure (Experiment 3) were more satisfied with their past romantic, social, or academic life, but less satisfied with all other domains of their past. The negative influence in unrelated domains was mediated by mood, whereas the positive influence in the event domain was not. Thus, last year's social life looks good compared to today's social rejection, but all other aspects of last year's life suffer.     

More than skin deep: visceral states are not projected onto dissimilar others

What people feel shapes their perceptions of others. In the studies reported here, we examined the assimilative influence of visceral states on social judgment. Replicating prior research, we found that participants who were outside during winter overestimated the extent to which other people were bothered by cold (Study 1), and participants who ate salty snacks without water thought other people were overly bothered by thirst (Study 2). However, in both studies, this effect evaporated when participants believed that the other people under consideration held political views opposing their own. Participants who judged these dissimilar others were unaffected by their own strong visceral-drive states, a finding that highlights the power of dissimilarity in social judgment. Dissimilarity may thus represent a boundary condition for embodied cognition and inhibit an empathic understanding of shared out-group pain. Our findings reveal the need for a better understanding of how people's internal experiences influence their perceptions of the feelings and experiences of those who may hold values different from their own.     

Rejection hurts: The effect of being dumped on subsequent mating efforts

Many of the qualities that people seek in a long-term partner are not directly observable. As a consequence, information gathered through social learning may be important in partner assessment. Here, we tested the hypothesis that finding out potential partners were rejected by their last partner would negatively affect participants' desire to pursue a romantic relationship with them. Results support this hypothesis, and this effect was, as predicted, greater when the target was being evaluated for a potential long-term relationship compared to a sexual relationship. In a more exploratory vein, we tested the effect of the target having rejected their last partner and failing to disclose how their last relationship ended. These scenarios produced intriguing sex differences, such that men's ratings of women fell after learning she had rejected her last partner, but women's ratings of men increased after the same information was introduced. Failing to disclose information about a past relationship was unappealing to both men and women, though particularly so for women.     

Family Functioning in Pediatric Trichotillomania

Little is known about how pediatric trichotillomania (TTM), a clinically significant and functionally impairing disorder, is impacted by, and impacts, family functioning. We explored dimensions of family functioning and parental attitudes in a sample of children and adolescents who participated in an Internet-based survey and satisfied conservative diagnostic criteria for TTM (ages 10–17, n = 133). Analyses reveal trends toward higher levels of dysfunction in families of TTM youth relative to normative samples, although no differences achieved statistical significance. However, scores on the Family Assessment Measure and the Attitudes Toward My Child scales were similar to those in clinical samples of youth with cystic fibrosis, an eating disorder, or an anxiety disorder. While these results indicate that family functioning and parental attitudes in TTM were not generally or extremely problematic, family issues may nevertheless warrant particular clinical evaluation and attention in more severe TTM cases.     

Proud Americans and lucky Japanese: cultural differences in appraisal and corresponding emotion

Appraisal theories of emotion propose that the emotions people experience correspond to their appraisals of their situation. In other words, individual differences in emotional experiences reflect differing interpretations of the situation. We hypothesized that in similar situations, people in individualist and collectivist cultures experience different emotions because of culturally divergent causal attributions for success and failure (i.e., agency appraisals). In a test of this hypothesis, American and Japanese participants recalled a personal experience (Study 1) or imagined themselves to be in a situation (Study 2) in which they succeeded or failed, and then reported their agency appraisals and emotions. Supporting our hypothesis, cultural differences in emotions corresponded to differences in attributions. For example, in success situations, Americans reported stronger self-agency emotions (e.g., proud) than did Japanese, whereas Japanese reported a stronger situation-agency emotion (lucky). Also, cultural differences in attribution and emotion were largely explained by differences in self-enhancing motivation. When Japanese and Americans were induced to make the same attribution (Study 2), cultural differences in emotions became either nonsignificant or were markedly reduced.     

Frontal theta power linked to neuroticism and avoidance

Approach–avoidance conflict is thought to generate negative affective bias, mediated by theta rhythms. This process is distinct from, and adds to, the effects of simple aversive input. We assessed this distinction by holding gain constant and increasing loss value so that conflict and simple aversion peaked in the conflict (gain equals loss) and loss (net loss) conditions, respectively. Right frontal areas showed increases in both conflict- and loss-induced theta power. However, loss, but not conflict, power was correlated with avoidance and neuroticism, showing a Gender x Hemisphere interaction. We concluded that multiple aversive processes converge in lateral frontal networks and that individual differences in theta response in these networks may reflect differences in behavioural and emotional reactivity to aversive events.     

Stopping,goal-conflict,trait anxiety and frontal rhythmic power in the stop-signal task

The medial right frontal cortex is implicated in fast stopping of an initiated motor action in the stop-signal task (SST). To assess whether this region is also involved in the slower behavioural inhibition induced by goal conflict, we tested for effects of goal conflict (when stop and go tendencies are balanced) on low-frequency rhythms in the SST. Stop trials were divided, according to the delays at which the stop signal occurred, into short-, intermediate-, and long-delay trials. Consistent with goal-conflict processing, intermediate-delay trials were associated with greater 7–8 Hz EEG power than short- or long-delay trials at medial right frontal sites (Fz, F4, and F8). At F8, 7–8 Hz power was linked to high trait anxiety and neuroticism. A separate 4–7 Hz power increase was also seen in stop, relative to go, trials, but this was independent of delay, was maximal at the central midline site Cz, and predicted faster stopping. Together with previous data on the SST, these results suggest that the right frontal region could be involved in multiple inhibition mechanisms. We propose a hierarchical model of the control of stopping that integrates the literature on the neural control of fast motor stopping with that on slower, motive-directed behavioural inhibition.     

An Evaluation of the Relative Effectiveness of Function-Based Consequent and Antecedent Interventions in a Preschool Setting

Although there is substantial functional behavioral assessment (FBA) literature suggesting that function-based interventions are effective for improving problem behavior, only a limited number of studies have examined the effectiveness of function-based antecedent versus consequent interventions. Additionally, although there has been a recent increase in the number of studies conducted in the K–12 school setting, only a limited number of studies have included children in the preschool setting. The present study extends existing literature by examining the effectiveness of function-based antecedent versus consequent interventions for reducing problem behavior and increasing appropriately engaged behavior for preschool children without cognitive disabilities. Following an FBA of 4 children, the effectiveness of a function-based antecedent (i.e., noncontingent reinforcement [NCR]) was compared with a function-based consequent (i.e., differential reinforcement of alternative behavior [DRA]) intervention using an alternating treatments design. Results indicated that both function-based NCR and DRA were effective for decreasing problem behavior and increasing appropriately engaged behavior, with function-based NCR being more effective than DRA for 2 of 4 participants.