No Guts,No Glory: The Influence of Risk-taking on Adolescent Popularity

ABSTRACT

Existing research finds adolescent popularity to be correlated with risk-taking. While a subset of this research uses longitudinal methods to examine whether part of this correlation may reflect the influence of popularity on risk-taking, research has paid insufficient attention to examining the reverse relation. Drawing on literature from a range of disciplines, we argue that a portion of the correlation reflects the positive influence of risk-taking on popularity. Using longitudinal data from a northeastern sample of adolescents, we test this argument. Net of statistical controls, we find that risk-taking among males, but not females, is associated with higher popularity, but that this relation is curvilinear, such that progressively higher levels of risk-taking yield diminishing returns in male popularity. Results provide one explanation for why male adolescents tend to take more risks in the presence of peers. Likewise, they suggest that attempts to prevent adolescent risk-taking, particularly among males, may require practitioners to move beyond conceiving of adolescent risk-taking as purely irrational behavior reflecting an ostensible inability to perceive potential consequences. Instead, results suggest that male risk-taking should be understood in the context of the salient social rewards that may make it rational from an adolescent perspective.     

Multilevel Selection Theory and Major Evolutionary Transitions: Implications for Psychological Science

ABSTRACT— The concept of a group as comparable to a single organism has had a long and turbulent history. Currently, methodological individualism dominates in many areas of psychology and evolution, but natural selection is now known to operate at multiple levels of the biological hierarchy. When between-group selection dominates within-group selection, a major evolutionary transition occurs and the group becomes a new, higher-level organism. It is likely that human evolution represents a major transition, and this has wide-ranging implications for the psychological study of group behavior, cognition, and culture.     

Implied motion language can influence visual spatial memory

How do language and vision interact? Specifically, what impact can language have on visual processing, especially related to spatial memory? What are typically considered errors in visual processing, such as remembering the location of an object to be farther along its motion trajectory than it actually is, can be explained as perceptual achievements that are driven by our ability to anticipate future events. In two experiments, we tested whether the prior presentation of motion language influences visual spatial memory in ways that afford greater perceptual prediction. Experiment 1 showed that motion language influenced judgments for the spatial memory of an object beyond the known effects of implied motion present in the image itself. Experiment 2 replicated this finding. Our findings support a theory of perception as prediction.     

Nicotine trained as a negative feature passes the retardation-of-acquisition and summation tests of a conditioned inhibitor

Nicotine functions as a negative feature in a Pavlovian discriminated goal-tracking task. Whether withholding of responding to the conditional stimulus (CS) reflects nicotine functioning as a conditioned inhibitor is unknown. Accordingly, the present research sought to determine whether nicotine trained as a negative feature passed the retardation-of-acquisition and summation tests, thus characterizing it as a pharmacological (interoceptive) conditioned inhibitor. In the retardation test, rats received either nicotine (0.4 mg/kg) or chlordiazepoxide (5 mg/kg) negative feature training in which the drug state signaled when a 15-sec light CS would not be paired with sucrose; light was paired with sucrose on intermixed saline sessions. Following acquisition of the discrimination, both groups received nicotine CS training in which sucrose was intermittently available on nicotine but not intermixed saline sessions. Acquisition of conditioned responding to the nicotine CS was slower in the nicotine negative feature group than in the chlordiazepoxide negative feature group. In the summation test, rats were assigned to either the nicotine negative feature group or a pseudoconditioning control. In this control, the light CS was paired with sucrose on half the nicotine and half the saline sessions. Both groups also received excitatory training in which a white noise CS was paired with sucrose. The summation test consisted of presenting the white noise in conjunction with nicotine. Conditioned responding evoked by the white noise was decreased in the negative feature but not the pseudoconditioning group. Combined, the results provide the first evidence that an interoceptive stimulus (nicotine) can become a conditioned inhibitor.     

Method of presentation and sex differences when using a revised figural drawing scale to measure body size estimation and dissatisfaction

The present study examined whether a revision of the Gardner, Jappe, and Gardner (2009) BIAS-BD figural drawing scale gave more accurate estimations of body size estimation and body dissatisfaction than a prior version. It also examined whether the order of figure presentation led to differing values for body size estimation and body dissatisfaction. The revised BIAS-BD scale included a continuous line beneath 17 figural drawings ordered in either ascending or descending size. Results were compared with previous studies using the original scale in which the 17 figural drawings were presented in a random order and, additionally, with a method using an adjustable video image by which the participants estimated their perceived body size by adjusting the width of their static image. The scale was presented to 330 undergraduate university students, including 199 women and 131 men. Overall, compared to BMIs calculated from the participants' reports of their height and weight, men and women participants gave less accurate estimations of body size using the revised scale when compared to the original BIAS-BD scale and video methodology. Participants reported significantly less body dissatisfaction than with the original scale. There was no significant difference in body size estimation when the figures were presented in ascending or descending size. Body dissatisfaction was greater for women than men, and when the figures were presented in descending order. Methodological considerations for using figural drawing scales in body image research are discussed.     

Cortical correlates of impaired self-regulation in personality disordered patients with traits of psychopathy

Psychopathic personality disordered patients would, by virtue of a failure to self-regulate, be expected to show diminished amplitudes of feedback-related brain potentials. Among a sample of personality disordered patients detained at different levels of security, those who met a Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) criterion of 25 or above were identified (N = 27). Their event-related brain potentials (ERPs), together with those of their nonpsychopathic counterparts (N = 22) and healthy male controls (N = 20), were measured while they performed a visual Go/No Go task, with feedback given for correct and incorrect performance. Psychopathic patients showed a significantly reduced amplitude of an early frontal negative ERP component maximally evoked by negative feedback, and a high rate of errors of commission. Findings are consistent with the idea that psychopathic patients' unsuccessful attempts to self-regulate reflect a cognitive deficit characterised by a failure to attend and respond to a mismatch between expected and obtained outcomes.     

The "Iowa Way" revisited

This paper attempts to bridge the gap between past and present stuttering therapy approaches. Specifically, the ideas and methods of Wendell Johnson and Dean Williams are compared to current approaches used in treating mental illness and communication disorders in which there is an emphasis on focusing on what is “right” with the individual and spending less time focusing on the “disorder”. There is particular emphasis on tying Johnson's and Williams’ overall philosophy to modern psychological approaches rooted in “Positive Psychology”, to highlight how these early ideas in stuttering therapy may help us to discover the common factors that underlie the success of several different stuttering therapy approaches, independent of the specific techniques employed. It is proposed that future research on clinical efficacy in stuttering should use focused hypotheses techniques to investigate common factors that make therapy effective across individuals and therapy approaches.Educational objectives: The reader will be able to: (1) summarize the basic philosophy of the “Iowa” approach to stuttering as laid out by Wendell Johnson and Dean Williams; (2) describe current therapeutic techniques that incorporate “positive psychology”; (3) discuss possible common factors that influence therapy outcome that are independent of the therapeutic technique employed.     

Mind-operated devices: mental control of a computer using biofeedback.

This study investigated whether people could learn to control a computer using a biofeedback interface that integrated their galvanic skin response (GSR), heart rate, and temperature. Twenty participants played a computer game using the biofeedback device, both individually and in pairs. Results indicated that most people learned to control the game after a single training session. The GSR measure was the most sensitive means of control. Pairs of participants controlled the device more effectively than single individuals did.     

Personality traits as predictors of intentions to seek online information about STDs and HIV/AIDS among junior and senior college students in Taiwan.

The purpose of this cross-sectional study is to examine how personality traits such as sensation- seeking and impulsive decision-making affect Taiwanese college students' intentions to seek online information about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS). Five hundred thirty-five (n = 535) junior and senior college students in Taiwan were recruited and completed self-report questionnaires. This study found high sensation-seekers were more likely to seek information about STDs and HIV/AIDS on the Internet than low sensation-seekers. Impulsive decision-makers were less likely than rational decision-makers to seek information about STDs and HIV/AIDS on the Internet. These findings suggest that personality needs to be considered as an exploratory factor which potentially influences intentions to seek STD and HIV/AIDS information on the Internet among Taiwanese college students.