How do social fears in adolescence develop? Fear conditioning shapes attention orienting to social threat cues

Social fears emerging in adolescence can have negative effects on emotional well-being. Yet the mechanisms by which these risks occur are unknown. One possibility is that associative learning results in fears to previously neutral social stimuli. Such conditioned responses may alter subsequent processing of social stimuli. We used a novel conditioning task to examine how associative processes influence social fear and attention orienting in adolescents. Neutral photographs were paired with socially rewarding or aversive stimuli during conditioning; a dot-probe task then assessed biases in attention orienting. The social conditioning task modified subjective ratings of the neutral stimuli. Moreover, for the neutral stimulus that was paired with the aversive stimulus, the strength of conditioning showed a relationship with subsequent attentional vigilance. The findings elucidate mechanisms by which negative peer experiences during adolescence may affect emotional processing.     

Experience‐What is it?

The author takes a renewed look at the constitutive aspects of experience, looking at it as process rather than contents. Recently more psychoanalytic voices are discernible that argue for the complexity and multi-leveled nature of inner experience. Yet the predominant and preeminent psychoanalytic voice has traditionally emphasized the linearity and single-factored nature of experience and all that is based on it: development, object relations, psychopathology, and treatment. The author offers an understanding of experience as stemming from the operation of two contiguous, ongoing modalities of processing internal and external input, and reflecting two polarities of the subject-object experience: of separateness and instrumentality, and of oneness and ongoing being. Such a conceptual reframing of experience harbors multiple implications for understanding subjectivity and inter-subjectivity, inter-relatedness as well as single-person psychology, and the all-important role of an experiential 'goodness-of-fit' in the analytic situation and elsewhere.     

Goal pursuit in young adulthood: The role of personality and motivation in goal appraisal trajectories across 6 years

The aim of this longitudinal study was to examine changes in the appraisals of personal goals during young adulthood, and to investigate personality and motivation as predictors of goal appraisals. Israeli young adults (N = 284, 46% female) were assessed four times during ages 23–29 and reported on their goal appraisals (goal investment, goal momentum and goal stress), personality (efficacy and self-criticism) and motivation (autonomous motivation, controlled motivation, amotivation). The results showed mean stability for goal investment and momentum, whereas goal stress declined. Efficacy predicted higher goal investment and momentum 6 years later, while self-criticism accounted for individual differences in goal stress. Autonomous motivation predicted higher goal investment and momentum, while amotivation related to higher goal stress.     

Learning from successful and failed experience: the moderating role of kind of after-event review

The claim that appropriate "after-event review (AER)" may increase the relative value of drawing lessons from successes, as compared with failures, was examined in the present study. The study was a laboratory experiment in which the effect of type of AER (failure-focused, success-focused, failure- and success-focused, and no AER review) on performance improvement and causal attributions was tested under conditions of earlier success and earlier failure. In general, 2 results were demonstrated: (a) Drawing lessons from successful experience is feasible, and its effectiveness is contingent upon the type of AER. More specifically, after successful events, the most effective review is that of wrong actions, whereas after failed events, any kind of event review (correct or wrong actions) is effective. (b) AERs elicit more internal (as opposed to external) and specific (as opposed to general) attributions. These 2 classifications moderate the effect of AERs on task performance.     

Outcome value and early warning indications as determinants of willingness to learn from experience

In this study of willingness to learn from experience, it was hypothesized that managers would show a negative outcomes bias, that is, a stronger tendency to initiate "learning-from-experience" processes after negative outcomes than after positive outcomes. Another aim of the study was to explore the impact of the existence of early warning signals about decision outcomes on the magnitude of the negative outcome bias. Eighty-three managers were asked to read vignettes describing a managerial decision and its outcomes. The outcomes were either positive or negative, and in half of the cases early warning signals existed that made it possible to predict potential negative outcomes while in the other half there were no such signals. The managers were asked to evaluate the need for a learning-from-experience process in general and to rate the degree to which several specific learning processes should be instituted in each of the scenarios. As hypothesized, a negative-outcome bias was found. The more negative the outcomes described, the stronger the managers' inclination to recommend a more intensive learning process. Similarly, a need to ensure control and follow-up procedures was reported mostly after negative outcomes. The existence of early warning signals before the decision was taken did not influence the motivation to learn. Theoretical implications regarding the impact of negative outcomes in general and implications for understanding learning from experience processes in particular are discussed.     

Romantic Contexts, Sexual Behavior, and Depressive Symptoms among Adolescent Males and Females

In order to examine the association between sexual behavior and depressive affect among adolescents, 122 and 219 Israeli adolescents, in two separate studies, reported their romantic and sexual history, the quality of their relationships and level of depressive symptoms. Findings show that a higher level of sexual activity in short-term romantic relationships, which were low in intimacy and authenticity, was related to increased levels of depressive symptoms among females but not among males. In contrast, involvement in stable romantic relationships was not associated with increased depressive affect for either gender. Findings from a 3 month follow-up suggested that it may be that an increased level of depressive symptoms leads adolescent females to become more sexually involved in short romantic encounters.