Patterns of marijuana use and physical health indicators among Canadian youth

We examine how trajectories of marijuana use in Canadian youth (ages 15 to 28) are related to physical health indicators in adolescence and young adulthood. Youth were initially recruited in 2003 (N = 662; 48% male; ages 12 to 18) and followed for six waves. Five trajectories of marijuana use (Abstainers-29%, Occasional users-27%, Decreasers-14%, Increasers-20% and Chronic users-11%) were identified. Chronic users reported more physical symptoms, poorer physical self-concept, less physical activity, poorer eating practices, less sleep, and higher number of sexual partners during adolescence than other classes. Decreasers also reported poorer physical self-concept and poorer eating practices than abstainers. Other trajectory classes showed few significant health problems. Chronic users also reported more acute health problems (i.e. serious injuries, early sexual debut, higher number of sexual partners, greater likelihood of having a STI) in young adulthood than all other classes contributing to costs of healthcare. Youth who engage in early, frequent and continued use of marijuana from adolescence to young adulthood are at-risk of physical health problems in adolescence and young adulthood.     

Bayesian power equivalence in latent growth curve models

Longitudinal studies are the gold standard for research on time-dependent phenomena in the social sciences. However, they often entail high costs due to multiple measurement occasions and a long overall study duration. It is therefore useful to optimize these design factors while maintaining a high informativeness of the design. Von Oertzen and Brandmaier (2013,Psychology and Aging, 28, 414) applied power equivalence to show that Latent Growth Curve Models (LGCMs) with different design factors can have the same power for likelihood-ratio tests on the latent structure. In this paper, we show that the notion of power equivalence can be extended to Bayesian hypothesis tests of the latent structure constants. Specifically, we show that the results of a Bayes factor design analysis (BFDA; Schönbrodt & Wagenmakers (2018,Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 25, 128) of two power equivalent LGCMs are equivalent. This will be useful for researchers who aim to plan for compelling evidence instead of frequentist power and provides a contribution towards more efficient procedures for BFDA.     

Religiosity and Subjective Well-Being of the Central and Eastern European’s Elderly Population

The paper examines the relation between religiosity and cognitive appraisal of the subjective well-being of the Central and Eastern European’s elderly population. The first part of the paper is dedicated to examining of the scientific literature. In the second part, the authors explore the data basis corresponding to the 6th wave of World Value Survey. The authors use the heterogeneous correlation and the multi-linear regression analysis in order to explain the relation between religiosity and subjective well-being of the old aged. Our results suggest that in the case of the Central Eastern European elderly satisfaction with life is mostly influenced by health and income. It is likely that for Central and Eastern European’s elders religious practices do not sufficiently influence their life satisfaction.

     

Compiling Measurement Invariant Short Scales in Cross-Cultural Personality Assessment Using Ant Colony Optimization

Examining the influence of culture on personality and its unbiased assessment is the main subject of cross-cultural personality research. Recent large-scale studies exploring personality differences across cultures share substantial methodological and psychometric shortcomings that render it difficult to differentiate between method and trait variance. One prominent example is the implicit assumption of cross-cultural measurement invariance in personality questionnaires. In the rare instances where measurement invariance across cultures was tested, scalar measurement invariance—which is required for unbiased mean-level comparisons of personality traits—did not hold. In this article, we present an item sampling procedure, ant colony optimization, which can be used to select item sets that satisfy multiple psychometric requirements including model fit, reliability, and measurement invariance. We constructed short scales of the IPIP-NEO-300 for a group of countries that are culturally similar (USA, Australia, Canada, and UK) as well as a group of countries with distinct cultures (USA, India, Singapore, and Sweden). In addition to examining factor mean differences across countries, we provide recommendations for cross-cultural research in general. From a methodological perspective, we demonstrate ant colony optimization's versatility and flexibility as an item sampling procedure to derive measurement invariant scales for cross-cultural research. © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology     

The Differential Influence of Lexical Parameters on Naming Latencies in German. A Study on Noun and Verb Picture Naming

The present study investigates the effects of word category (nouns versus verbs) and their subcategories on naming latencies in German, with a focus on the influence of lexical parameters on naming performance. The experimental material met linguistic construction criteria and was carefully matched for age of spontaneous production, frequency, and name agreement. Additional lexical parameters (objective age-of-acquisition, word length, visual complexity, imageability) were obtained. The results demonstrated a clear effect of word category on naming latencies. This effect was supported by two different observations. First, there was evidence for category and subcategory effects in naming: nouns were named faster than verbs, and intransitive verbs were named faster than transitive verbs. Second, while objective age-of-acquisition (naming age) turned out to be an important predictor of reaction times for both word categories, naming latencies for nouns and verbs were affected differentially by other lexical parameters. The results are discussed with respect to current controversies on the noun-verb-asymmetry.     

Potentiation of latent inhibition

Rats were given exposure either to an odor (almond) or a compound of odor plus taste (almond plus saline), prior to training in which the odor served as the conditioned stimulus. It was found, for both appetitive and aversive procedures, that conditioning was retarded by preexposure (a latent inhibition effect), and the extent of the retardation was greater in rats preexposed to the compound (i.e., latent inhibition to the odor was potentiated by the presence of the taste). In contrast, the presence of the taste during conditioning itself overshadowed learning about the odor. We argue that the presence of the salient taste in compound with the odor enhances the rate of associative learning, producing a rapid loss in the associability of the odor. This loss of associability will generate both overshadowing and the potentiation of latent inhibition that is observed after preexposure to the compound.     

Reassessing the Role of Anxiety in Vote Choice

Much recent political psychology scholarship has examined the role of anxiety in vote choice. This work generally argues that anxiety affects vote choice indirectly by causing citizens to more thoroughly search for and process political information. This indirect effect of anxiety leads citizens to rely less on heuristics, such as party, and more on substantive information, such as policy positions. The most prominent example of this scholarship is the Affective Intelligence (AI) theory of emotions. In this paper, we use cross-sectional and panel survey data to test AI against two simpler alternatives: (1) that emotions directly influence candidate evaluations and (2) that candidate evaluations directly influence emotions. We first show that these simpler alternatives can produce the complex, cross-sectional interactions that provide the principal support for AI. Then, using panel data to better assess causal direction, we find little support for AI, some evidence that emotions directly influence candidate evaluations, and strong evidence that candidate evaluations directly influence emotions. Scholars, we conclude, should be hesitant to abandon these simpler explanations in favor of AI.     

Can societal language amendments change gender representation? The case of Norway

This study investigates the influence of stereotypical information and the grammatical masculine on the representation of gender in Norwegian by applying a sentence evaluation paradigm. In this study participants had to decide whether a second sentence containing explicit information about the gender of one of more of the characters (e.g. . . . one of the women . . . ) was a sensible continuation of a first sentence introducing a role name (e.g. The spies came out . . . ). Participants' representations were biased by the stereotypicality of the role names when reading female (e.g. nurses) and male (e.g. pilots) stereotyped role names (replicating findings from the English sample in a previous publication), but male biased when reading neutral role names (replicating findings from the French and the German samples in a previous publication).     

Au pairs are rarely male: Norms on the gender perception of role names across English,French, and German

A list of role names for future use in research on gender stereotyping was created and evaluated. In two studies, 126 role names were rated with reference to their gender stereotypicality by English-, French-, and German-speaking students of universities in Switzerland (French and German) and in the U.K. (English). Role names were either presented in specific feminine and masculine forms (Study 1) or in the masculine form (generic masculine) only (Study 2). The rankings of the stereotypicality ratings were highly reliable across languages and questionnaire versions, but the overall mean of the ratings was less strongly male if participants were also presented with the female versions of the role names and if the latter were presented on the left side of the questionnaires.