Emotional intelligence, personality, and task-induced stress

Emotional intelligence (EI) may predict stress responses and coping strategies in a variety of applied settings. This study compares EI and the personality factors of the Five Factor Model (FFM) as predictors of task-induced stress responses. Participants (N = 200) were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 task conditions, 3 of which were designed to be stressful. Results confirmed that low EI was related to worry states and avoidance coping, even with the FFM statistically controlled. However, EI was not specifically related to task-induced changes in stress state. Results also confirmed that Neuroticism related to distress, worry, and emotion-focused coping, and Conscientiousness predicted use of task-focused coping. The applied utility of EI and personality measures is discussed.     

On the risk of being a cultural chameleon: variations in collective self-esteem across social interactions

In the present study the authors used an event-contingent daily recording strategy, the Rochester Interaction Record, to examine the relation of perceived evaluations of a multicultural person's heritage group to the nature and quality of his or her social interactions. Hierarchical linear modeling showed that having an interaction partner who positively evaluated one's heritage culture was associated with significantly enhanced interaction intimacy, disclosure, and quality, as well as with feelings of personal acceptance. Moderator analyses revealed that individuals who possessed a chameleon-like cultural identity and those who had low public collective self-esteem were particularly reactive to how their heritage group was being evaluated.     

Cognitive abnormalities in post-traumatic stress disorder

Characteristically arising in response to overwhelmingly terrifying events, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a disorder of memory: sufferers seemingly relive their trauma in the form of involuntary recollection. Prominent cognitive abnormalities, especially in memory functioning, have motivated research designed to elucidate the mediating mechanisms that produce PTSD symptoms, especially those involving involuntary recollection. Recent developments suggest a pathophysiological model of PTSD which includes hyporesponsive prefrontal cortical regions and/or a hyper-responsive amygdala. Other work has also identified above-average cognitive ability as a protective factor and below-average hippocampal volume as a vulnerability factor for PTSD among the trauma-exposed. These attempts to elucidate the mediating mechanisms of PTSD have been both cognitive and, more recently, cognitive-neuroscientific in emphasis.     

"In the storminess": multi-disciplinary approaches to scriptural images representing ethical challenges in the pastor-congregant relationship

In this qualitative study the authors examine the Scriptural images that 10 Lutheran pastors employed in describing the ethical challenges in the pastor-congregant relationship. The analysis of Scriptural images is part of a larger study on pastors' experiences of a mandatory workshop, "Crossing the Boundaries (CTB),"which is required of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) seminarians. The pastors' images were analyzed from the four perspectives of depth psychology, theology, social ethics, and sociology. In commenting on tensions in the pastors' Scriptural images the authors note commonalities among the four theoretical perspectives and discuss implications for practice and future research.     

Proximity coefficients as a measure of interrelationships in sequences of behavior

Although a range of methods allow investigators to measure the local dependencies among behaviors in a sequence, only indirect methods are available for measuring the interrelationships among behaviors across an entire sequence. This article introduces a new “proximity” coefficient that measures interrelationships among behaviors as a direct function of their intrinsic organization within a sequence. The coefficient does not depend on a user-defined “window” of analysis and provides an efficient use of data that facilitates comparisons across actors, over time periods, and between single cases. An analysis of artificial data shows further properties of the coefficient, including a diagonal value that reflects the degree to which a behavior is reciprocated, and an asymmetry in values that depicts the relative precedence among behaviors. Extensions of the coefficient to the multivariate case, and its relation to existing methods of analyzing sequences, are discussed.     

The interference effect of men's handling of muscular action figures on a lexical decision task

It has been shown in previous work [Action figures and men. Sex Roles 53, 877–885] that male participants who handled extremely muscular action figures had lower body esteem than those who did not handle action figures or a Ken doll. However, the internal mechanisms that dictated this effect are unclear. Therefore, the current study extended this previous work by having male participants handle action figures of varying muscularity and completing a lexical decision task with target words that consisted of both positive and negative body words and feeling words in order to determine if males would be primed to think negatively about their bodies and self or if positive thoughts about their bodies and self would be interfered with. The results show that those participants who handled the extremely muscular action figures responded significantly more slowly to feeling positive words (e.g., content, confident) and marginally more slowly to body positive words (e.g., muscle, bicep) than those who did not handle any action figures. Overall, this suggests that the interference of positive words, not the priming of negative words, is the internal mechanism that produces the decreased body image satisfaction after exposure to muscular stimuli. Implications and future research are discussed.     

Preference reversals are diminished when gambles are presented as relative frequencies

Preference reversals are a well-documented example of suboptimal decision making. Typical preference reversals experiments have involved monetary bets presented in probability format. Research on other examples of decision making have shown that irrational or suboptimal choices are diminished or eliminated entirely when the probabilities are presented as relative frequencies (e.g., Gigerenzer & Hoffrage, 1995). The aim of the present experiment was to determine if the way in which information is presented to participants affects participants' preferences. When the options were presented in the standard probability format 59% of participants' preferences were reversed. However, reversals were significantly decreased in the frequency format group, with only 40% of participants' responses being inconsistent. Although preference reversals were not eliminated when the gambles were presented as frequencies they were significantly diminished and may not be such a robust example of irrational decision making after all.