Controlling for Response Bias in Self-Ratings of Personality: A Comparison of Impression Management Scales and the Overclaiming Technique

Self-serving response distortions pose a threat to the validity of personality scales. A common approach to deal with this issue is to rely on impression management (IM) scales. More recently, the overclaiming technique (OCT) has been proposed as an alternative and arguably superior measure of such biases. In this study (N = 162), we tested these approaches in the context of self- and other-ratings using the HEXACO personality inventory. To the extent that the OCT and IM scales can be considered valid measures of response distortions, they are expected to account for inflated self-ratings in particular for those personality dimensions that are prone to socially desirable responding. However, the results show that neither the OCT nor IM account for overly favorable self-ratings. The validity of IM as a measure of response biases was further scrutinized by a substantial correlation with other-rated honesty-humility. As such, this study questions the use of both the OCT and IM to assess self-serving response distortions.     

Matching between oral inward–outward movements of object names and oral movements associated with denoted objects

In eight experiments, we explored matching effects between oral approach–avoidance movements triggered by word articulation and meaning of the objects the words denoted. Participants (total N?=?1264) rated their liking for words that featured consonantal muscle stricture spots either wandering inwards (e.g., BODIKA, resembling ingestion movements) or outwards (e.g., KODIBA, resembling expectoration movements). These words were labelled as names for various objects. For objects the use of which entails ingestive oral actions (lemonade and mouthwash) inward words were preferred over outward words. For objects that trigger expectorative oral actions (toxical chemical, pill, and bubble gum) this preference was attenuated or even reversed (outward words were liked more than inward). Valence of the denoted object did not play a role in these modulations. Thus, the sagittal direction of mouth movements during silent reading meaningfully interacted with direction of oral actions associated with the denoted objects.     

Thoughts from a Safe Harbor: Commentary on The Problem of Thinking by Yvette Esprey

Yvette Esprey’s claim that race has the capacity to disrupt thinking in the analytic situation accords with my own experience. In this discussion I take up the question as to why ruptures that occur around race may have a special capacity to disrupt and disable analytic thinking. I look in detail at Esprey’s instructive clinical experience as it gives us a template, something to fall back on, in those moments when anxiety overwhelms us around a racial disruption. Such a template can settle us until we can restore a sense of self that is both raced and analytically focused on the rupture at hand with all its personal and social/historical resonances.     

Heidegger on the Struggle for Belongingness and Being at Home

In 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville coined the term “individualism” to refer to the tendency for Americans to withdraw into their own desires and interests, thus weakening and diminishing the “habits of the heart” that bind a generation to the customs of their forebears and contemporaries. A problem, though, is that modern individualism undermines the very ideals—i.e. autonomy, equality, and freedom—that motivated it in the first place. Understood as a way of life, liberal individualism is permeated by alienation, estrangement, and thoughtless patterns of conformism. In what follows, I hope to show that hermeneutic phenomenology as developed by Martin Heidegger marks an important break from the modern liberal individualistic outlook. The point is to undercut the contrived interpretations of our current historical tradition in order to demonstrate that belonging to and sharing in the struggles of a generation are conditions for being human at all. This critique does not provide a panoptic or definitive account of the basis of a genuine community, but does give us a richer sense of place and purpose, beyond even what the current polis/political community designates (though it certainly includes it).     

Cultural intersections: a qualitative inquiry into the experience of Asian Indian-White interracial couples

The purpose of this study was to examine the "lived experience" of Asian Indian (AI)-White couples in interracial marriages. Ten highly educated AI-White professional couples were individually interviewed about their subjective experience of being in an interracial marriage, the challenges and strengths of this marriage, and the potential role of culture in their marriages. Data were analyzed using the Consensual Qualitative Research methodology. Results indicated that the couples' marital experiences were influenced by a complex intersection of ecosystemic factors with significant psychological impacts. These findings highlight shortcomings in drawing simplistic conclusions regarding the success or failure of an interracial marriage and have important implications for theory, research, and clinical practice.     

Erlebnisbasierte und verfälschte Erinnerungen im EEG: Eine Pilotstudie

The present study aims to discriminate true and false memory by examining the EEG activity in a setting as applied as possible to the context of credibility assessment. To achieve this, 19 participants saw a short film about a robbery and had to answer 35 yes-no-questions, 25 of them contained misleading information. In order to distort the participants’ memories suggestive techniques were implemented, e. g. repeated questioning. The comparison of event-related potentials (ERP) of true and false memories reveals a parieto-occipital effect between 350 and 500 ms. This effect is consistent with the parietal old/new effect, which is associated with recollection. At the same time, this finding is in agreement with research associating a transient negativity (N400) with processing of semantic incongruent information.     

Who will win Wimbledon? The recognition heuristic in predicting sports events

Goldstein and Gigerenzer ( 2002 ) described the recognition heuristic as a fast, frugal, and effective decision strategy. However, most studies concerning the recognition heuristic have been conducted in static domains, that is, in domains where it could plausibly be argued that relevant variables stay relatively constant. Yet the question is whether the heuristic would also work in dynamic environments where the quality of the actors rises and falls, such as in sports. We tested performance of the recognition heuristic in a dynamic environment and used it to predict the outcomes of tennis matches in Wimbledon 2003. Recognition data of amateur tennis players and laypeople was used to build recognition rankings. These rankings correlated with official rankings and led to at least as good predictions. Simulations of individual choices showed high recognition validities of both amateurs (0.73) and laypeople (0.67). In a second study the recognition heuristic correctly predicted 90% of actual individual choices. Overall, the recognition heuristic may be effectively generalized to dynamic environments. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Diagnostic Discrimination of Patients with Different OCD Main Symptom Domains from each Other and from Anxious and Depressive Controls

The extent to which the subscales of multidimensional OCD measures accurately distinguish patients with specific OCD main symptom domains from controls at different cutscores has not yet been examined. Diagnostic accuracy of OCD measures usually is determined by comparing the total scores of heterogeneous OCD samples and controls and therefore may underestimate the measures’ discrimination potential. In the current study, subtype-specific diagnostic accuracy and criterion-related validity of the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revised (OCI-R) subscales were examined in 327 patients with OCD, anxiety, and/or depressive disorders. All subscales demonstrated good to excellent criterion-related validity and diagnostic accuracy for distinguishing patients with specific OCD main symptom domains from controls. As expected, the single OCI-R subscales lead to more accurate diagnostic decisions than the total scale. Thus, the subscale-specific cutscores significantly improve the OCI-R’s utility for subtype-specific treatment planning and outcome measurement. Furthermore, an alternative classification algorithm distinguishing patients with OCD from controls based on subscale cutscores leads to a better sensitivity, but also to a lower specificity than discrimination based on the total scale cutscore.