Life Satisfaction and Positive Adjustment as Predictors of Emotional Distress in Men With Coronary Heart Disease

This two-wave longitudinal study examines the ability of life satisfaction and adjustment strategies to predict anxious and depressive symptoms in coronary heart disease male patients. Studies have shown that most heart attack survivors report these symptoms, which may worsen the prognosis of the disease. At Time 1, immediately after the first cardiac episode, eighty-eight men reported their life satisfaction levels, adjustment strategies used, and anxious and depressive symptoms experienced. At Time 2, six months later, sixty-three of those patients reported only their anxious and depressive symptoms again. The results showed that, after controlling for demographic variables, anxious and depressive symptoms at Time 1 were predicted by positive adjustment and life satisfaction. At Time 2, after controlling for both demographic variables and Time 1-emotional symptoms, none of the psychological variables predicted anxious symptoms, while depressive symptoms were only predicted by life satisfaction. It is concluded that an adequate level of life satisfaction may help to decrease emotional distress, both short and long term, while the use of positive adjustment strategies is especially important immediately after diagnosis.     

Moderating effects in consumers' perceptions of price unfairness

This study explores the moderating effects of various consumer features – such as price insensitivity and recency of last purchase – on the relationships among perceived value, inferred vendor profit, and perceived price fairness. A proposed model is developed and an empirical study is then conducted among consumers in four contexts: (i) two tangible goods; and (ii) two intangible services. The proposed model and hypotheses are tested using Partial Least Squares (PLS) software SmartPLS 2.0.M3, which provides a component‐based approach for estimation purposes. The influence of these moderating variables (price insensitivity and recency of the last purchase) depends on the context and the nature of the offering. This is a pioneering study of perceived price fairness in a framework of distributive justice utilizing a variety of contexts, products, and services. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effect of ingroup membership on organizational meta-representation

The present study considers the importance of analyzing what very powerful or influential people think about their employees. We assumed that belonging to a specific category has a differential effect on the perception of others' thoughts in the organization ("meta-representation"). Therefore, experts in organization and human resources from diverse organizations and institutions assessed seven dimensions which structure the organizational image (context, structure, organizational processes, working climate, culture, satisfaction and efficacy). The results showed that belonging to a group (managers or leaders, academicians, consultants, technicians or employees' representatives) modulated the meta-representation, as the experts' opinion about what they think that the employees consider important was related to their group. This was specifically the case for the managers' and leaders' representations, which differed from the other groups and especially from that of the technicians and employees' representatives. The implications of the present findings are discussed.     

Age-related changes in recognition and response criterion

Recognition performance does not usually change along the lifespan, but the response criterion usually does, and in general, it changes from being conservative during youth to being liberal, in old age. The focus of the present study is to analyze the changes that take place, both in discrimination and response criterion, as a result of aging in two recognition tasks: one with neutral images, and the other with faces showing positive and negative emotional expressions. Two groups of participants performed both tasks: young (N = 21; age range, 17-33 years), older (N = 21; age range, 65-91 years). The analyses of several discrimination parameters (d' and probability of recognition) and the response criterion yielded significant age differences. Thus, results indicated that the ability to discriminate of older participants was better than that of younger participants when having to recognize neutral images, and faces with negative emotional expressions. The response criterion of younger participants was always conservative, whereas older participants only showed liberal criteria in front of faces with emotional expressions. In relation to the neutral images, the response criterion of older participants was optimum, because it led to more hits, without increasing the false alarms. The results are partially explained by the tasks differential difficulty, and are discussed within the frame of Simulation theory.     

Therapists' verbal behavior category system

This paper presents the theoretical and methodological basis of a therapist's verbal behavior category system that allows us to study clinical psychologists' language from a functional-analytic framework and with a rigorous observation method. The procedure to develop the coding system is explained in detail from a very early stage of exploratory observation, to the systematic observation through the use of The Observer XT software. An analysis of intra- and inter-rater reliability using the kappa coefficient and taking into account the factors that affect the values of Cohen's index was carried out. Results show high levels of observer accuracy (between approximately 87% and 93%) that justify the application of this category system to study therapists' verbal behavior in session.     

Social valuation and punishment assignment in transgressions of environment protection laws

The of breaches of environmental law is not always evident. This characteristic contributes to making the study of people's evaluation of anti-ecological behaviour of special interest for the understanding of environmental law compliance. In this study, 573 participants evaluated seven transgressions of environmental law, on seven scales. The results show that participants differentially evaluate the transgressions; that Indignation and the Severity of the consequences are the scales that best predict the punishment that participants think should be assigned to these transgressions; that women are stricter in evaluating; and that there are marginal differences related to area of residence and age.     

Absence of hardly pursued updating in a running memory task

In a running memory span task, the participants are presented with a list of items (e.g. numbers or words) of an unknown length, because this length varies from trial to trial. In one variation of the procedure the participants must report a certain fixed number of items (e.g. four) from the end of the list. According to Morris and Jones (British Journal of Psychology, 81, 111-121, 1990), the recalled items must be updated in memory as the presentation of the list progresses. Ruiz, Elosúa and Lechuga (The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 5, 887-905, 2005) noted that an active strategy implies an inhibition in memory of the final discarded items, and did not find results which supported this hypothesis. The aim of this study is to check whether or not participants adopt an active processing strategy in extreme conditions. Experiment 1 uses catch trials, which induce the participants not to discard the first items of the lists, and also short lists (of 4, 7, 8, 9 and 10 items); these could be considered optimal conditions for updating. However, it should also be pointed out that with an upper limit of 10 items per list, participants could try to memorise the whole list in most of the trials. One way to discourage this strategy is including lists well over span (e.g. 14-26 items). The purpose of Experiment 2 was to analyse the 10-item lists in two conditions: within a context of much longer lists (well over span) in most of the trials and within a context of shorter lists (data of Experiment 1). Results in both experiments, from the analysis of location errors, indicate that even in these conditions the participants do not seem to carry out the supposed active updating of the memory set.     

For Better and Worse: Social Influences on Coronary Heart Disease Risk

From the neighborhoods we live in to those we marry, other people are a part of our everyday lives. Mounting evidence suggests that these social factors constitute risk and resilience influences for coronary heart disease (CHD). The current aim is to summarize the literature into four representative categories relating to CHD risk: social environments, social roles, social resources, and close relationships. The argument is made that these factors moderate and mediate stress and associated physiological responses constituting a psychosomatic pathway to disease.     

Taxometric analyses of borderline personality features in a large-scale male and female offender sample

Few studies to date have examined the extent to which borderline personality features are best construed as representing an underlying dimension or a discrete class or taxon. The authors conducted taxometric analyses using a large-scale sample of male (n=787) and female (n=368) prison inmates who had completed the Personality Assessment Inventory (L. C. Morey, 2007). Analyses based on the 4 subscales of the Borderline Features Scale offered compelling support for a dimensional structure in both the full sample and the female subsample--even after controlling for the potentially confounding effects of negative response distortion. Theoretical and pragmatic implications of these findings are reviewed.     

Influence of articulation rate on two memory tasks in young and older adults

This study investigated the relation between phonological loop functioning and age. Phonological loop is a time-based subsystem of the Working Memory Model of Baddeley and Wilson, which uses rehearsal of information as an active process to avoid phonological decay. Performance differences were examined between young and older adults in two speech-based memory tasks, such as the immediate serial recall of words and the Digit Ordering Task. Analysis showed that performance on both tasks was lower for the older group. Articulation rate was also measured to test the hypothesis that the impairment of some cognitive functions in adults can be associated to their slowness or the greater time needed by older adults for the rehearsal process. A significant negative correlation was found for articulation rate with age. When the effect of articulation rate on Serial Recall and Digit Ordering Tasks was partialled out, the difference between the two groups was eliminated.