Warding off the evil eye: when the fear of being envied increases prosocial behavior

The fear of being envied makes people act prosocially, in an attempt to ward off the potentially destructive effects of envy. In three experiments, people who were in a superior position and could be envied were more likely than control participants to give time-consuming advice to a potentially envious person or to help a potentially envious person pick up erasers she had accidentally scattered. However, helping behavior increased only if envy was likely to be malicious rather than benign. People who were better off did not increase their helping behavior toward people in general, but increased their helping only toward the potentially envious. This finding is consistent with the idea that the better off act more prosocially as an appeasement strategy. The fear of being envied serves useful group functions, because it triggers prosocial behavior that is likely to dampen the potentially destructive effects of envy and simultaneously helps to improve the situation of people who are worse off.     

Differential attrition in health behaviour change trials: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective: Attrition is a common problem in health behaviour change (HBC) trials. When the degree of attrition differs between treatment conditions, then this is called differential attrition and is regarded as a major threat to internal validity. The primary research question of this study was: how often and to what degree does differential attrition occur in HBC trials?

Design: A systematic review and meta-analysis of a random selection of HBC trials (k = 60). We meta-analysed the relative attrition rates using a random-effects model and examined the relationship between the relative attrition rates and the potential moderators: the amount of human contact in delivery and the intensity of the intervention/control condition, the type of control condition, and the follow-up intensity and duration.

Main outcome measures: Relative attrition rates.

Results: The average attrition rate was 18% (SD = .15; M = .15) in the intervention and 17% (SD = .13; M = .13) in the control conditions. The estimated average relative attrition rate was 1.10 (95% CI: 1.01–1.20, p = .02), suggesting an overall higher attrition rate of 10% in the intervention conditions. This relative attrition rate was not related to any of the potential moderators.

Conclusion: There is indication of a slightly higher amount of attrition on average in the intervention conditions of HBC trials.     

Believing at Will is Possible

There are convincing counter-examples to the widely accepted thesis that we cannot believe at will. For it seems possible that the truth of a proposition depend on whether or not one believes it. I call such scenarios cases of Truth Depends on Belief (TDB) and I argue that they meet the main criteria for believing at will that we find in the literature. I reply to five objections that one might level against the thesis that TDB cases show that believing at will is possible, namely that (1) mind-reading is impossible, (2) in TDB cases, one's belief is caused by one's desire, (3) in TDB scenarios, one chooses not a belief but something else, (4) TDB cases are reducible to Feldman cases, and that (5) if truth depends on belief, we are on the road to a regress. Of course, TDB scenarios hardly, if ever, occur in real life. For three reasons, they are nonetheless important. First, they show that the thesis that it is conceptually impossible to believe at will is simply false. Second, they provide us with an important constraint on any version of the thesis that it is psychologically impossible to believe at will. Third, they show us that, contrary to what several philosophers claim or imply, believing at will should not be identified with believing irrespective of—what one considers to be—the truth, nor should believing irrespective of the truth be considered a necessary condition for believing at will.     

Evidence for covert attention switching from eye-movements. Reply to commentaries on Liechty et al., 2003

We argue that our research objectives in Liechty, Pieters, and Wedel (2003) are to provide generalizable insights into covert visual attention to complex, multimodal stimuli in their natural context, through inverse inference from eye-movement data. We discuss the most important issues raised by Feng (2003) and Reichle and Nelson (2003), in particular the task definition, inclusion of ad features, object-based versus space-based attention and the evidence for the where and what streams.Author names are in reverse alphabetical order.     

Ignorance is Lack of True Belief: A Rejoinder to Le Morvan

In this paper, I respond to Pierre Le Morvan’s critique of my thesis that ignorance is lack of true belief rather than absence of knowledge. I argue that the distinction between dispositional and non-dispositional accounts of belief, as I made it in a previous paper, is correct as it stands. Also, I criticize the viability and the importance of Le Morvan’s distinction between propositional and factive ignorance. Finally, I provide two arguments in favor of the thesis that ignorance is lack of true belief rather than absence of knowledge.     

Why envy outperforms admiration

Four studies tested the hypothesis that the emotion of benign envy, but not the emotions of admiration or malicious envy, motivates people to improve themselves. Studies 1 to 3 found that only benign envy was related to the motivation to study more (Study 1) and to actual performance on the Remote Associates Task (which measures intelligence and creativity; Studies 2 and 3). Study 4 found that an upward social comparison triggered benign envy and subsequent better performance only when people thought self-improvement was attainable. When participants thought self-improvement was hard, an upward social comparison led to more admiration and no motivation to do better. Implications of these findings for theories of social emotions such as envy, social comparisons, and for understanding the influence of role models are discussed.     

Spiritual distress at life's end: finding meaning in the maelstrom

Recent trends in social research indicate a decline in church attendance and a corresponding increased interest in spirituality. With the aging of the population, attention to end of life care, with its corresponding spiritual concerns and distress, has become a prominent issue. Spiritual distress can be difficult to distinguish from psychological and physical distress and indicates the need for differential diagnostic markers to distinguish between genuine spiritual experience and psychosis related to the physical death process. Further, for hospice patients who are in genuine need of amelioration through pharmacologic suppression, the question of when and how to medicate becomes paramount as the distinction between spiritual process and physchosis becomes less evident. This article is an exploratory attempt to encourage dialogue across interdisciplinary lines and foster participation from alternative therapies representing the spiritual context of the patient. Anecdotal data from hospice professionals representing a variety of disciplines are presented to illustrate and emphasize the need for continued dialogue and research in this important area.     

Heinz L. Ansbacher (1904-2006)

Heinz Ludwig Ansbacher was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on October 21, 1904. He died at his home in Burlington, Vermont, on June 22, 2006, at the age of 101 years. Alfred Adler's influence led Ansbacher to the field of psychology, where he began a lifelong scholarship on the psychology of Alfred Adler. Among Heinz's distinctions and honors were being named a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Kiel, Germany, and serving as president of the North American Society of Adlerian Psychology. Many of us will remember Professor Ansbacher as a person who lived by Adlerian principles: encouraging others while helping them to find a goal in life.