Victim and Perpetrator Accounts of Hurtful Messages: An Actor–Partner Interdependence Model

This study examined how message characteristics and relational turbulence correspond with victim and perpetrator experiences of hurtful messages. Romantic partners described 2 events: one where each of them was a victim of the partner's hurtful message. Trained judges evaluated qualities of hurtful messages and participants reported relationship qualities, intensity of hurt experienced as a victim, and the partner's hurt feelings when the respondent was the perpetrator. Third‐party ratings of hurtfulness were associated with victims' intensity of hurt. For females, relational turbulence was associated with their intensity of hurt as victims. For males, relational turbulence was associated with their perception of the female victims' hurt. The authors discuss the implications for the work on hurtful messages and relational turbulence.     

Dressing up with Disney and Make-Believe with Marvel: The Impact of Gendered Costumes on Gender Typing,Prosocial Behavior,and Perseverance during Early Childhood

Wearing costumes is a common experience during early childhood and is often important to sociodramatic play. Costumes tend to be highly gendered for both girls and boys (such as princess and superhero costumes). However, there is very little research on the impact that wearing costumes has on gender-differentiated behavior, such as toy preference, prosocial behavior, or perseverance during early childhood. The current study included 223 U.S. children, aged between 3 and 5 years-old. Children were assigned to wear either a gendered, counter-gendered, or gender-neutral costume, and they then took part in three gender-related tasks. There was no impact of wearing costumes on any task for girls. However, boys preferred feminine toys significantly more when wearing a neutral costume when compared to a masculine-typed one. Additionally, boys were significantly less likely to help when wearing a masculine-typed costume compared to a feminine-typed costume. There are several implications of these findings that are discussed in the paper. Parents may wish to purchase a wide range of costumes for their child for sociodramatic play, particularly for boys. Therapists could also potentially use costumes during play therapy to discuss gender issues. Additionally, costume producers could consider marketing a wide range of costumes for children as opposed to largely focusing on gendered ones.

     

Memory and Counterfactual Simulations for Past Wrongdoings Foster Moral Learning and Improvement

In four studies, we investigated the role of remembering, reflecting on, and mutating personal past moral transgressions to learn from those moral mistakes and to form intentions for moral improvement. Participants reported having ruminated on their past wrongdoings, particularly their more severe transgressions, and they reported having frequently thought about morally better ways in which they could have acted instead (i.e., morally upward counterfactuals; Studies 1–3). The more that participants reported having mentally simulated morally better ways in which they could have acted, the stronger their intentions were to improve in the future (Studies 2 and 3). Implementing an experimental manipulation, we then found that making accessible a morally upward counterfactual after committing a moral transgression strengthened reported intentions for moral improvement—relative to resimulating the remembered event and considering morally worse ways in which they could have acted instead (Study 4). We discuss the implications of these results for competing theoretical views on the relationship between memory and morality and for functional theories of counterfactual thinking.     

Personality Pathology and Substance Misuse in Later Life: Perspectives from Interviewer-, Self-, and Informant-Reports

Research indicates a robust association between personality and substance use and misuse. The high prevalence and pervasive detrimental impacts of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and smoking of tobacco necessitate more studies designed to identify factors closely associated with these outcomes in specific populations. The analyses reported in the present paper concern the relative utilities of five measures of personality and personality pathology rated by three sources (self, informant, and interviewer) in predicting AUD and regular smoking in a representative sample of 987 older adults, an understudied and uniquely vulnerable population. All measures and sources contributed to the predictions, with notable parallels as well as some important differences identified across substances and sources of information. In particular, low agreeableness robustly predicted AUD and smoking across self- and informant-reports. High interviewer-rated borderline personality pathology also strongly predicted AUD. Model fit indices suggested that measures of personality and personality pathology have stronger utility in predicting AUD as compared to regular smoking. These findings have important implications for the assessment of older adults in research and clinical settings and for the understanding of enduring risk factors for substance misuse later in life. Multi-source personality information is valuable for generating a complete picture of the relationship between personality and substance misuse.

     

Perceived Parameters of Christian Pharmacy Students’ Faith-Sharing in Clinical Settings

Journal of Religion and Health - Our interdisciplinary team (which included professionals from nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and psychology) conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with...     

“Doing Good” versus “Being Good”: The interplay between pride appeals and regulatory-focused messages in green advertising

Many consumers feel proud of making green choices, which is of crucial relevance to explaining environmentally responsible behaviors. However, compared to other self-conscious emotions, such as guilt and shame, little research attention has been paid to the role of pride in green consumerism. Through conducting two online experimental surveys, this research examined what features of a message induce the two facets of the emotion pride—authentic and hubristic—and how pride appeals interact with message frames having different regulatory foci. In Study 1, participants revealed more favorable eco-friendly attitudes and intentions when hubristic pride appeals were combined with promotion-focused messages (detailing the positive benefits of using the green product), and when authentic pride appeals were matched with prevention-focused messages (emphasizing the negative consequences averted by using the green product). Study 2 replicated and supported the proposed matching hypotheses while including a control condition. Findings of this research will add to a growing body of literature on pride as a discrete emotion and its carryover effects on persuasion while providing guidelines to help practitioners design green advertising campaigns.     

Adaptive spatial working memory assessments for aging pet dogs

Assessments for spatial working memory (SWM) in pet dogs that can detect age-related cognitive deficits in a single session may aid in diagnosing canine dementia and may facilitate translational research on Alzheimer’s disease in humans. Adaptive testing procedures are widely used in single-session assessments for humans with diverse cognitive abilities. In this study, we designed and deployed two up-down staircase assessments for SWM in which 26 pet dogs were required to recall the location of a treat hidden behind one of two identical boxes following delays of variable length. In the first experiment, performance tended to decline with age but few dogs completed the test (n?=?10). However, all of the dogs that participated in the second experiment (n?=?24) completed the assessment and provided reliable evidence of learning and retaining the task. Delay length and age significantly predicted performance supporting the validity of this assessment. The relationships between age and performance were described by inverted U-shaped functions as both old and young dogs displayed deficits in weighted cumulative-scores and trial-by-trial performance. Thus, SWM in pet dogs may develop until midlife and decline thereafter. Exploratory analyses of non-mnemonic fixation strategies, sustained engagement, inhibitory control, and potential improvements for future SWM assessments which adopt this paradigm are also discussed.