Shall we continue or stop disapproving of self-presentation? Evidence on impression management and faking in a selection context and their relation to job performance

The self-presentation tactics of candidates during job interviews and on personality inventories have been a focal topic in selection research. The current study investigated self-presentation across these two selection devices. Specifically, we examined whether candidates who use impression management (IM) tactics during an interview show more faking on a personality inventory and whether the relation to job performance is similar for both forms of self-presentation. Data were collected in a simulated selection process with an interview under applicant conditions and a personality inventory that was administered under applicant conditions and thereafter for research purposes. Because all participants were employed, we were also able to collect job performance ratings from their supervisors. Candidates who used IM in the interview also showed more faking in a personality inventory. Importantly, faking was positively related to supervisors’ job performance ratings, but IM was unrelated. Hence, this study gives rise to arguments for a more balanced view of self-presentation.     

Behavioral Genetics, Health, and Aging

A recurring observation from studies of health in the elderly is the pervasiveness of individual differences. For many health-related endpoints, total variation appears to increase across age group; however, few longitudinal studies have reported whether these age differences reflect true age-related changes. There are a growing number of twin studies of aging that provide some insight, at least cross-sectionally, into the nature of individual differences in health. Increases in total variance most often reflect increases in environmental sources of variance. Covariation among traits reflects both genetic and environmental mediation, dependent on the sex of the sample and the measures of interest. Co-twin control approaches have been successful in exploring the role of environmental influences as risk factors for poor health. The most serious limitation to these studies is the lack of longitudinal information to disentangle survival and selection effects from aging.     

Support for collective action against refugees: The role of national,European, and global identifications,and autochthony beliefs

To understand recent anti-refugee protests in Europe, we examined how different levels of inclusiveness of group identities (national, European, and global) are related to intentions to protest among native Europeans. We focused on the mediating role of autochthony (a belief that the first inhabitants of a territory are more entitled) and the moderating role of threat. Survey data from 11 European countries (N = 1,909) showed that national identification was positively associated with autochthony, and therefore, with the intention to protest against refugees. In contrast, global identification was related to lower protest intentions via lower autochthony. These paths were found only among Europeans who perceived refugees as a threat. European identification was not related to the endorsement of autochthony or to collective action. These findings indicate why and when majority members are willing to participate in collective action against refugees, and underscore the importance of global identification in the acceptance of refugees.     

Domain-dependent activation during spatial and nonspatial auditory working memory

Visual system has been proposed to be divided into two, the ventral and dorsal, processing streams. The ventral pathway is thought to be involved in object identification whereas the dorsal pathway processes information regarding the spatial locations of objects and the spatial relationships among objects. Several studies on working memory (WM) processing have further suggested that there is a dissociable domain-dependent functional organization within the prefrontal cortex for processing of spatial and nonspatial visual information. Also the auditory system is proposed to be organized into two domain-specific processing streams, similar to that seen in the visual system. Recent studies on auditory WM have further suggested that maintenance of nonspatial and spatial auditory information activates a distributed neural network including temporal, parietal, and frontal regions but the magnitude of activation within these activated areas shows a different functional topography depending on the type of information being maintained. The dorsal prefrontal cortex, specifically an area of the superior frontal sulcus (SFS), has been shown to exhibit greater activity for spatial than for nonspatial auditory tasks. Conversely, ventral frontal regions have been shown to be more recruited by nonspatial than by spatial auditory tasks. It has also been shown that the magnitude of this dissociation is dependent on the cognitive operations required during WM processing. Moreover, there is evidence that within the nonspatial domain in the ventral prefrontal cortex, there is an across-modality dissociation during maintenance of visual and auditory information. Taken together, human neuroimaging results on both visual and auditory sensory systems support the idea that the prefrontal cortex is organized according to the type of information being maintained in WM.     

Automatic guidance of attention from working memory

Recent research has shown interactions between the process of keeping information 'online' in working memory, and the processes that select relevant information for a response. In particular, our ability to select stimuli in the environment can be modulated by whether the stimuli match the current contents of working memory. Guidance of selection from working memory occurs automatically, even when it is detrimental to performance. Neurophysiological data, from functional brain imaging, indicate that the interaction between working memory and attention is based on neuronal mechanisms distinct from the processes mediating 'bottom-up' priming effects from implicit memory. We discuss the importance of 'top-down' influences from working memory on the 'early' deployment of attention and on the processes that gate visual information into awareness.     

Different mechanisms for role relations versus verb–action congruence effects: Evidence from ERPs in picture–sentence verification

Extant accounts of visually situated language processing do make general predictions about visual context effects on incremental sentence comprehension; these, however, are not sufficiently detailed to accommodate potentially different visual context effects (such as a scene–sentence mismatch based on actions versus thematic role relations, e.g., (Altmann & Kamide, 2007; Knoeferle & Crocker, 2007; Taylor & Zwaan, 2008; Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998)). To provide additional data for theory testing and development, we collected event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as participants read a subject–verb–object sentence (500 ms SOA in Experiment 1 and 300 ms SOA in Experiment 2), and post-sentence verification times indicating whether or not the verb and/or the thematic role relations matched a preceding picture (depicting two participants engaged in an action). Though incrementally processed, these two types of mismatch yielded different ERP effects. Role–relation mismatch effects emerged at the subject noun as anterior negativities to the mismatching noun, preceding action mismatch effects manifest as centro-parietal N400s greater to the mismatching verb, regardless of SOAs. These two types of mismatch manipulations also yielded different effects post-verbally, correlated differently with a participant's mean accuracy, verbal working memory and visual-spatial scores, and differed in their interactions with SOA. Taken together these results clearly implicate more than a single mismatch mechanism for extant accounts of picture–sentence processing to accommodate.     

Mental number line disruption in a right-neglect patient after a left-hemisphere stroke

A right-neglect patient with focal left-hemisphere damage to the posterior superior parietal lobe was assessed for numerical knowledge and tested on the bisection of numerical intervals and visual lines. The semantic and verbal knowledge of numbers was preserved, whereas the performance in numerical tasks that strongly emphasize the visuo-spatial layout of numbers (e.g. number bisection) was impaired. The behavioral pattern of error in the two bisection tasks mirrored the one previously described in left-neglect patients. In other words, our patient misplaced the subjective midpoint (numerical or visual) to the left as function of the interval size. These data, paired with the patient's lesion site are strictly consistent with the tripartite organization of number-related processes in the parietal lobes as proposed by Dehaene and colleagues. According to these authors, the posterior superior parietal lobe on both hemispheres underpins the attentional orientation on the putative mental number line, the horizontal segment of the intraparietal sulcus is bilaterally related to the semantic of the numerical domain, whereas the left angular gyrus subserves the verbal knowledge of numbers. In summary, our results suggest that the processes involved in the navigation along the mental number line, which are related to the parietal mechanisms for spatial attention, and the processes involved in the semantic and verbal knowledge of numbers, are dissociable.     

Development of the Weight- and Body-Related Shame and Guilt scale (WEB-SG) in a nonclinical sample of obese individuals

In this article, we present the evaluation of the psychometric properties of a new self-report measure of Weight- and Body-Related Shame and Guilt (WEB-SG). The main purpose of the study was to measure shame and guilt feelings separately in obese individuals and investigate differing behavioral and emotional correlates of these emotions. Altogether, 331 obese participants completed the WEB-SG and other established self-report measures. A subset of the participants completed a 6-month follow-up. The WEB-SG proved to be internally consistent and temporally stable over a 6-month period. Regarding the factorial structure, a two-factor conceptualization was supported. The construct validity of the WEB-SG subscales was evidenced by a substantial overlap of common variance with related measures. The subscales Shame and Guilt showed differential correlation patterns to other scales. The WEB-SG is a brief, psychometrically sound measure for assessing body shame and guilt concerning weight control in obese individuals.     

Metacognitive therapy in recurrent depression: A case replication series in Denmark

Metacognitive therapy (MCT) for depression is derived from the Wells and Matthews (1994) self‐regulatory model, in which a Cognitive‐Attentional Syndrome (CAS) is the cause of psychological disorders. MCT for depression focuses on identifying patients' CAS and helps them to stop it. The CAS consists of worry, rumination and dysfunctional coping strategies. The focus in MCT is on removing the CAS by challenging positive and negative metacognitive beliefs and eliminating dysfunctional behaviors. In this case series, MCT was delivered to four depressed Danes and treatment was evaluated in 5–11 sessions of up to one hour each. An A‐B design with follow‐up at 3 and 6 months was conducted and the primary outcome was Beck's Depression Inventory II (BDI‐II). We measured CAS processes with the Major depressive Disorder Scale (MDD‐S). The results of the case series showed clinically significant improvements in depressive symptoms, rumination and metacognitive beliefs and the effects were still present at follow‐up for all patients. The small number of patients and decreasing baselines observed in some cases limits the conclusions. However, the results suggest that this treatment is feasible and was associated with large improvements in symptoms when delivered away from its point of origin and in a Danish help‐seeking sample.