The relation between emotion regulation choice and posttraumatic growth

ABSTRACT

Previous research has examined emotion regulation (ER) and trauma in the context of psychopathology, yet little research has examined ER in posttraumatic growth (PTG), the experience of positive psychological change following a traumatic event. ER typically involves decreasing negative affect by engaging (e.g. reappraisal) or disengaging (e.g. distraction) with emotional content. To investigate how ER may support PTG, participants who experienced a traumatic event in the past 6 months completed a PTG questionnaire and an ER choice task in which they down regulated their negative emotion in response to negative pictures of varying intensity by choosing to distract or reappraise. Latent growth curve analyses revealed that an increase in reappraisal choice from low to high subjective stimulus intensity predicted higher PTG, suggesting that individuals who chose reappraisal more as intensity increased reported higher PTG. Findings suggest that reappraisal of negative stimuli following a traumatic event may be a key component of PTG.     

School readiness in children living in non-parental care: Impacts of Head Start

The current study examines the effects of Head Start on the development of school readiness outcomes for children living in non-parental care. Data were obtained from the Head Start Impact Study, a randomized controlled trial of Head Start conducted with a nationally representative sample of Head Start programs and families. The sample included 253 children living in non-parental care (defined as a primary caregiver who self-identified as someone other than a biological, adoptive, or step-parent), who experienced elevated rates of child and family risk factors. Results revealed modest direct short-term and indirect longer-term impacts of Head Start on school readiness outcomes (increased pre-academic skills, more positive teacher–child relationships, and reductions in behavior problems) for children living in non-parental care. Limitations of this study and directions for future research are discussed.     

Concordance Between Measures of Anxiety and Physiological Arousal Following Treatment of Panic Disorder in Adolescence

This study examined the concordance (or synchrony/desynchrony) between adolescents' self-reports of anxiety and physiological measures of arousal (heart rate) both prior to and after treatment for panic disorder. Results indicated a decline in reported subjective units of distress (SUDS) for the treatment group only at the post-treatment measurement for two of three tasks. Within the treatment group, heart rate changes during the Behavioral Approach Test (BAT) were observed following treatment for one task only. Implications of this apparent desynchrony between self-report and physiological measures in adolescent panic disorder are discussed, with cognitive changes in participants' perception of anxiety after treatment suggested as an important factor in recovery.     

Perceptions of visible piercings: a pilot study

49 undergraduates were shown pictures of a man and a woman with piercings and with no piercings. The pierced model was judged to be less attractive and less normal than the nonpierced model. The pierced model was perceived as less intelligent, caring, generous, honest, and religious but more artistic and mysterious.     

A Test of the Agency Hypothesis in Women��s Cosmetic Surgery Usage

Women??s agency??their ability to make conscious choices and to act on them??is a central consideration in feminist theories of cosmetic surgery. Several key issues in this longstanding debate are how much external or coercive influence women experience (or acknowledge) in their choice to pursue surgery, whether they are aware of sexist ideology more so than non-recipients, and whether their choice to pursue surgery exemplifies a strong sense of self worth. To test this agency hypothesis, we draw on survey data from a volunteer sample of 202 adult women ages 19?C86 years from the southern California region in the U.S. to compare cosmetic surgery recipients to non-recipients across these key socio-cultural and personal domains. Results reveal that cosmetic surgery recipients were more likely to have friends who had undergone cosmetic surgery, endorsed more covert sexist beliefs, exhibited greater media usage, and had higher household incomes, than non-recipients. Recipients also evidenced lower ratings in global self-esteem than non-recipients. These findings challenge some of the notions attendant to agency claims, and engage with conceptions of autonomy introduced in the feminist philosophical literature.     

Personality and counterproductive work behaviour: Using conservation of resources theory to narrow the profile of deviant employees

We leverage conservation of resources (COR) theory to explain how conscientiousness and emotional stability (ES) are associated with resource management strategies that may reflect instrumentally driven counterproductive work behaviour (CWB). Specifically, we investigated how the relationship between conscientiousness and CWB varies as a function of the level of available personal (i.e., ES) and organizationally provided (i.e., experienced job constraints) resources. Results from two surveys administered 4 weeks apart to US employees indicate that the negative relationship between conscientiousness and CWB is positive among employees who are low in ES.     

Inhibitory control interacts with core knowledge in toddlers’ manual search for an occluded object

Core knowledge theories advocate the primacy of fundamental principles that constrain cognitive development from early infancy. However, there is concern that core knowledge of object properties does not constrain older preschoolers’ reasoning during manual search. Here we address in detail both failure and success on two well-established search measures that require reasoning about solidity. We show that poor performance arises from an inability to engage the appropriate search strategy rather than a simple failure of core knowledge. Moreover, we demonstrate that successful search is positively correlated with inhibitory control. We believe that toddlers’ manual search for an occluded object reflects a general capacity to deploy inhibition so that search behaviour can be guided by core knowledge.     

Expertise and gambling: using type 2 signal detection theory to investigate differences between regular gamblers and nongamblers

This paper presents an experimental investigation into how individuals make decisions under uncertainty when faced with different payout structures in the context of gambling. Type 2 signal detection theory was utilized to compare sensitivity to bias manipulations between regular nonproblem gamblers and nongamblers in a novel probability-based gambling task. The results indicated that both regular gamblers and nongamblers responded to the changes of rewards for correct responses (Experiment 1) and penalties for errors (Experiment 2) in setting their gambling criteria, but that regular gamblers were more sensitive to these manipulations of bias. Regular gamblers also set gambling criteria that were more optimal. The results are discussed in terms of an expertise-transference hypothesis.