Fully Committed: Suicide Bombers' Motivation and the Quest for Personal Significance

A motivational analysis of suicidal terrorism is outlined, anchored in the notion of significance quest . It is suggested that heterogeneous factors identified as personal causes of suicidal terrorism (e.g. trauma, humiliation, social exclusion), the various ideological reasons assumed to justify it (e.g. liberation from foreign occupation, defense of one's nation or religion), and the social pressures brought upon candidates for suicidal terrorism may be profitably subsumed within an integrative framework that explains diverse instances of suicidal terrorism as attempts at significance restoration , significance gain , and prevention of significance loss . Research and policy implications of the present analysis are considered.     

To prove or to improve? Which motive distorts perceptions of personality controllability?

This research extends past work on positive illusions and self-goals by examining motivated perceptions of how much control people think they have over changing their personality traits. A self-validation motivation should cause individuals to view their personality weaknesses as uncontrollable (to avoid blame for having them) and their personality strengths as controllable (to take credit for having them). A self-growth motivation should cause individuals to view their weaknesses as controllable (to view them as improvable) and their strengths as uncontrollable (to view them as unchanging). Studies 1 and 2 find evidence for self-validation in perceptions of trait controllability. Study 3 finds this pattern to be stronger for validation-seeking individuals but weaker for growth-seeking individuals. Studies 3 and 4 find that being primed with one's successful self-improvements or one's future self can attenuate the self-validation. The potential implications of distorted perceptions of trait controllability for both well-being and self-change are discussed.     

Misrecollection prevents older adults from benefitting from semantic relatedness of the memoranda in associative memory

Memory for episodic associations declines in aging, ostensibly due to decreased recollection abilities. Accordingly, associative unitization - the encoding of associated items as one integrated entity - may potentially attenuate age-related associative deficits by enabling familiarity-based retrieval, which is relatively preserved in aging. To test this hypothesis, we induced bottom-up unitization by manipulating semantic relatedness between memoranda. Twenty-four young and 24 older adults studied pairs of object pictures that were either semantically related or unrelated. Participants subsequently discriminated between intact, recombined and new pairs. We found that semantic relatedness increased the contributions of both familiarity and recollection in young adults, but did not improve older adults' performance. Instead, they showed associative deficits, driven by increased recollection-based false recognition. This may reflect a “misrecollection” phenomenon, in which older adults make more false alarms to recombined pairs with particularly high confidence, due to poorer retrieval monitoring regarding semantically-related associative probes.     

Reciprocal within-day associations between incidental affect and exercise: An EMA study

Previous research suggests that how people feel throughout the course of a day (i.e. incidental affect) is predictive of exercise behaviour. A mostly separate literature suggests that exercise can lead to more positive incidental affect.

Objective: This study examines the potential reciprocal effects of incidental affect and exercise behaviour within the same day.

Design: Fifty-nine low-active (exercise <60 min/week), overweight (BMI: 25.0–39.9) adults (ages 18–65) participated in a six-month print-based exercise promotion programme.

Main outcome measures: Ecological momentary assessment was used to record self-reported exercise sessions in real time and incidental affective valence (feeling good/bad) as assessed by the 11-point Feeling Scale at random times throughout the day.

Results: Use of a within-subjects cross-lagged, autoregressive model showed that participants were more likely to exercise on days when they experienced more positive incidental affect earlier in the day (b = .58, SE = .10, p < .01), and participants were more likely to experience more positive incidental affect on days when they had exercised (b = .26, SE = .03, p < .01), with the former association significantly stronger than the latter (t = 23.54, p < .01).

Conclusion: The findings suggest a positive feedback loop whereby feeling good and exercising are reciprocally influential within the course of a day.     

Healing from Moral Injury: A Qualitative Evaluation of the Impact of Killing Treatment for Combat Veterans

This paper evaluates the Impact of Killing (IOK) treatment—a psychological intervention designed to address moral injury and trauma associated with killing in war. Using qualitative data from interviews with 28 combat veterans, we examine IOK’s impact, how it differs from other trauma-focused treatments, and how it can be improved to better meet veterans’ needs. We found that many veterans processed their killing experiences for the first time in IOK, even though all had previously completed evidence-based treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder. Several described killing in war as the most distressing and transformative trauma of their lives, and all affirmed the value of an intervention focused directly and explicitly on moral injury and killing. IOK helped veterans to acknowledge their grief, shame, and distress; gently but critically examine their thoughts and beliefs about killing in war; and make strides toward acceptance, reconciliation, and forgiveness.     

Pathways to intercultural accuracy: Social projection processes and core cultural values

The present research examines intercultural accuracy—people's ability to make accurate judgments about outgroup values—and the role of social projection processes. Across four studies, U.S. and British participants showed low overall levels of intercultural accuracy for Chinese students’ individualistic and collectivistic values. In line with recent changes toward individualism in China, we observed different levels of intercultural accuracy, hinging on whether the criterion values of Chinese were assessed before (2001) or after (2015) this shift. Important for the study of social projection, we observed that U.S./British participants projected their values onto the outgroup. Social projection tendency (measured in Study 2 and manipulated in Study 3) was associated with greater intercultural accuracy. The relationship between projection and accuracy also depended on the shifts in individualistic values of Chinese. Important for the study of intergroup relations, accuracy was positively associated with interest in future relationships with the Chinese.