Precariousness and Quality of Life—a Qualitative Perspective on Quality of Life of Households in Precarious Prosperity in Switzerland and Spain

Households’ resources and constraints are key components of quality of life (QOL). QOL also depends on how these are evaluated. In times of crisis one expects subjective wellbeing and quality of life to decline. We argue that the quality of life depends on objective living conditions, their subjective evaluation and the ability to maintain or improve the situation of “embedded individuals”. This ability, in turn, depends on the opportunities provided by the state, labour markets, families and communities. We analyse qualitative interviews (2008–2010) with around 25 households in precarious prosperity in two cities (Pamplona, Spain and Lausanne, Switzerland) to elaborate their QOL. Few sampled Swiss households witnessed a decline in socio-economic status, contrary to the Spanish. Domains important to these households for QOL varied according to the opportunity structures: in the Spanish sample QOL was related to the opportunities for income, work, and security to plan ahead; in the Swiss sample to health, work-life balance and loneliness. In both samples, QOL varied according to scope of agency, people’s position within the life course, the households’ past experiences, current situation and future perspectives. Lack of future perspectives and opportunities lowered QOL; reframing, adaption and accepting the situation sometimes moderated QOL. We conclude that apart from living conditions and/or subjective wellbeing, households’ agency within opportunity structures is a promising direction for further research in QOL.     

Dissonance and abstraction: Cognitive conflict leads to higher level of construal

This study investigated the effects of cognitive conflict on abstract thinking. According to action‐identification theory, an ambiguous and unfamiliar situation might propel an individual to a more abstract mindset. Based on this premise, cognitive conflict was hypothesized to put people in an abstract mindset. The induced compliance paradigm, in which participants are asked to write a counter‐attitudinal essay under either low choice (producing little dissonance) or high choice (producing more dissonance), was employed. Results showed that an abstract mindset was in fact activated in the induced compliance paradigm, and this effect was more pronounced for participants having a more concrete mindset to begin with. The results suggest that the experience of cognitive conflict is closely related to increased abstraction.     

Explaining the ineffable

The 10th Anniversary Conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music was held at Liège, Belgium, on 5-8 April 2002.     

HPV High Risk and Protective Behaviors: The Effects of Religious Affiliation

The majority of Americans identify themselves as belonging to some religious group. There is a mixed body of literature on whether or not religious affiliation has an influence on engaging in risky behaviors among young adults attending college. This study examined associations between religious affiliation, risky sexual practices, substance use, and family structure among a sample of predominantly white college females attending a southeastern university. Given the high risk of acquiring genital human papillomavirus infection as a result of high risk sexual practices, gaining a better understanding of how religious affiliation can be used to promote healthy sexual behaviors is warranted.     

Modulation of the conflict monitoring intensity: The role of aversive reinforcement,cognitive demand,and trait-BIS

According to Botvinick’s (2007) integrative account, conflict monitoring is aversive because individuals anticipate cognitive demand, whereas the revised reinforcement sensitivity theory (rRST) predicts that conflict processing is aversive because individuals anticipate aversive reinforcement of erroneous responses. Because these accounts give different reasons for the aversive aspects of conflict, we manipulated cognitive demand and the aversive reinforcement as a consequence of wrong choices in a go/no-go task. Thereby, we also aimed to investigate whether individual differences in conflict sensitivity (i.e., in trait anxiety, linked to high sensitivity of the behavioral inhibition system [trait-BIS]) represent the effects of aversive reinforcement and cognitive demand in conflict tasks. We expected that these manipulations would have effects on the frontal N2 component representing activity of the anterior cingulate cortex. Moreover, higher-trait-BIS individuals should be more sensitive than lower-trait-BIS individuals to aversive effects in conflict situations, resulting in a more negative frontal N2 for higher-trait-BIS individuals. In Study 1, with N = 104 students, and Study 2, with N = 47 students, aversive reinforcement was manipulated in three levels (within-subjects factor) and cognitive demand in two levels (between-subjects factor). The behavioral findings from the go/no-go task with noncounterbalanced reinforcement levels (Study 1) could be widely replicated in a task with counterbalanced reinforcement levels (Study 2). The frontal mean no-go N2 amplitude and the frontal no-go N2 dipole captured predicted reinforcement-related variations of conflict monitoring, indicating that the anticipation of aversive reinforcement induces variations in conflict monitoring intensity in frontal brain areas. The aversive nature of conflict was underlined by the more pronounced conflict monitoring in higher- than in lower-trait-BIS individuals.     

Intended and Unintended Reverberation of Traditional and Pro‐age Commercials as a Function of Viewer Age

Pro‐age advertising campaigns feature mature models, at least in part to reduce the depiction of unrealistic body ideals associated with the use of young models. The introduction of mature models into advertising campaigns may have hitherto unexamined effects on viewers' self‐esteem. We therefore compared the impact of mature and young models on women's levels of self‐esteem. Young adult and middle‐aged women were subtly exposed to young or pro‐age female models before completing an affective priming task designed to measure self‐esteem. As predicted, exposure influenced only appearance‐based self‐esteem, but not global self‐esteem. Furthermore, age congruency led to decreased self‐esteem, whereas age incongruency led to increased self‐esteem. Specifically, exposure to young models decreased young women's self‐esteem, just as exposure to mature models decreased middle‐aged women's self‐esteem. By contrast, exposure to mature models increased young women's self‐esteem, and exposure to young models increased middle‐aged women's self‐esteem. The implications for marketing campaigns are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Prospective memory in young and older adults: The effects of ongoing-task load

ABSTRACT

Prospective memory involves remembering to perform intended actions in the future. Previous work with the multinomial model of event-based prospective memory indicated that adult age-related differences in prospective-memory performance were due to the prospective (not the retrospective) component of the task (Smith & Bayen, 2006 Smith, R. E. and Bayen, U. J. 2006. The source of age differences in event-based prospective memory: A multinomial modeling approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32: 623–635. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32, 623). However, ongoing-task performance was also lower in older adults in that study. In the current study with young and older adults, the difficulty of the ongoing task was manipulated by varying the number of colors per trial to create easier and harder versions of the ongoing task for each age group. The easier version included 2 colors per trial for older adults and 4 colors for young adults. The harder version included 4 colors for older adults and 6 colors for young adults. By adjusting the ongoing-task difficulty, older adults were able to perform the ongoing task as well or better than the young adults. Analyses with the multinomial model revealed that making the ongoing task easier for older adults (or more difficult for young adults) did not eliminate age-related differences in prospective-memory performance and the underlying prospective component.     

SKAPAR KRISER

The difficulty in differentiating the rules of treatment in psychoanalysis from the general “rules of play” that enclose and shelter the analytic process is discussed. The view is maintained that these “rules of play” constitute an absolute aspect of psychoanalysis. Their function is to create a frame, that protects the two participants on their vulnerable positions, enclosing a room where two persons mutually can listen to their thoughts and partake in feelings and the movements of the unconscious. Alien impingements revive traumatic experiences and break the frame. The traumatic or unthinkable is beyond the frame and is therefore enacted through repetition and acting-out. Through the break-down and restoration of the analytic frame, the possibility opens to incorporate into thoughts and feelings, that which has been rendered inaccessible. Clinical material illustrates the silent frame and the perverted frame.     

Explaining the Decision to Plagiarize: An Empirical Test of the Interplay Between Rationality,Norms, and Opportunity

Plagiarism is a fraudulent behavior that infringes on the rules of universities and intellectual property rights. Rational choice theory provides a theoretical framework for explaining this deviant behavior. Our study increases knowledge of the little analyzed interrelation among the individual determinants of deviant behavior. We use panel data from a large-scale random sample of university students (N = 2,806). The expected utility of plagiarism, internalized social norms, and opportunities to plagiarize can explain the frequency of plagiarism. The significant interaction between utility and opportunity could be interpreted as a form of temptation. Promising strategies to reduce plagiarism are also discussed.