Framing COVID-19 as an existential threat predicts prejudice towards Chinese people via anxious arousal

We tested the hypothesis that perceived existential threat stemming from COVID-19 elicits anxious arousal, which can manifest in prejudice toward the perceived source of the threat (Chinese people). Americans (n = 474) were randomly assigned to a condition in which COVID-19 was framed as a high existential threat to the United States or to a condition in which COVID-19 was framed as a low existential threat to the United States. They then completed self-report measures of anxious arousal as well as subtle and blatant prejudice towards Chinese people. As expected, participants in the high threat (vs. low threat) condition reported greater anxious arousal which, in turn, predicted greater subtle and blatant prejudice. The high threat (vs. low threat) condition also indirectly predicted greater subtle and blatant prejudice via greater anxious arousal. Results advance knowledge on the reactions people had to perceiving COVID-19 as an existential threat during the early phase of the pandemic.     

Creativity: Celebrations and tensions

In 1950, the President of the American Psychological Association emphasised the economic and political importance of creativity for US society. His account of creativity exhibits a number of tensions that can be identified in other psychologists' theories and conceptualisations of creativity. This paper considers the tensions from the perspective of critical discursive psychology. In the terms of that approach, the tensions derive from multiple non-academic discourses around creativity, including popular discourses of creativity and art. The paper argues that conceptualisations of creativity from academic psychology have in turn entered wider discourses, invoked, for example, in recent celebrations of the global sector of the creative and cultural industries (CCI). The tensions within psychology's conceptualisations are significant, however, because they raise questions about the extent to which the psychology of creativity has a common reference and coheres around the study of a single phenomenon.     

A BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTION FOR IMPROVING VERBAL BEHAVIORS OF HEROIN ADDICTS IN A TREATMENT CLINIC

Positively reinforcing appropriate behaviors improved verbal behaviors of opioid-dependent patients in a buprenorphine treatment clinic. During B phases of an ABAB design, clients received stickers for engaging in appropriate verbal or nonverbal behaviors. Each sticker provided a chance of winning $25. No reinforcement was provided during the A phases. Appropriate verbal behaviors increased during reinforcement periods, and inappropriate verbal behaviors decreased.     

Within-Session Patterns of Pigeons'' General Activity

The study investigates the idea that within-session changes in responding are produced by arousal and satiation. General activity, measured by the displacement of floor panels, was used as an index of these variables. In Experiment 1, pigeons pecked a key on a simple variable-interval schedule and general activity was also recorded. In Experiment 2, pigeons received response-independent reinforcers. In Experiment 3, the pigeons' general activity was reinforced on a variable-interval schedule. Although significant within-session changes in operant key pecking were observed in Experiment 1, within-session changes in general activity were seldom observed in either Experiment 1 or Experiment 2. Significant within-session changes in general activity were observed in Experiment 3, when activity was the operant. The present results can potentially be explained by arousal and satiation. However, the predictive power of this explanation is severely limited. Regardless of whether one accepts arousal and satiation as the theoretical explanation for within-session changes in responding, the present results suggest that aspects of the response–reinforcer relation may determine the within-session pattern of responding.     

Within-Session Changes in Adjunctive and Instrumental Responding

Rats pressed levers for food delivered by several fixed interval schedules. A drinking spout or running wheel was also available during some conditions, but not during others. The rate of lever pressing, drinking and running often changed within experimental sessions. The within-session patterns of lever pressing did not differ when drinking or running was available and when it was not. The correlation between the amount of lever pressing and the amount of drinking or running at a particular time in the session was inconsistently positive or negative. Finding within-session changes in responding for adjunctive behaviors implies that the factors that produce these changes are present for both adjunctive and instrumental behavior. Finding inconsistent correlations between instrumental responding and adjunctive behaviors questions arousal and interference from adjunctive behaviors as explanations for within-session changes in instrumental responding.     

Positive Illusions and Coping with Adversity

ABSTRACT We review the literature showing that positive illusions (i.e., self-aggrandizement, unrealistic optimism, and exaggerated perceptions of control) are common and associated with successful adjustment to stressful events, including conditions of extreme adversity. Using theory and recent data, we offer a basis for integrating positive illusions with the constraints of reality. We explicitly contrast the social psychological model of positive illusions with a personality viewpoint that addresses the question “Do higher levels of positive illusions predict higher levels of adjustment?” These issues are explored in the context of people coping with an array of normal stressful events, as well as those coping with more extreme stressful events, including cancer, heart disease, and HIV infection. Life is seldom as unendurable as, to judge by the facts, it ought to be. —Brooks Atkinson

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The Presence of Psychiatric Disorders in HIV-Infected Women

Many women of low socioeconomic status who have contracted HIV qualify for individual, dual, and multiple psychiatric diagnoses that predate their knowledge of their HIV infection. Two case studies of HIV-infected women are presented. Psychoactive substance use disorders are the most common Axis I diagnoses, followed by depression. The most frequently diagnosed Axis II disorders are borderline and antisocial personality disorders. These women reported histories that often included alcohol and other drug use, childhood sexual abuse, violent interpersonal relationships, depression, and learning disabilities. Earlier intervention addressing these problems might have prevented the onset of psychiatric disorders as well as high-risk behaviors that lead to HIV infection.     

Reinforcer value may change within experimental sessions

Large and systematic changes in response rates often occur within sessions during operant conditioning procedures. In the present experiment, we asked whether the value of the reinforcer that supports responding also changes within sessions. Pigeons pecked a key for mixed grain available throughout the session. Occasionally, wheat was also provided for pecking a second key. The ratio of the rates of responding for mixed grain and wheat, a frequently used measure of relative reinforcer value, changed significantly within sessions when mixed grain was provided at high, but not at low, rates. Habituation to the reinforcer provides the most likely explanation for these changes in reinforcer value. Eventually, habituation may provide a unified explanation for the within-session changes in behavior that occur when many species of subjects respond on a wide variety of tasks.