Marital satisfaction of Chinese under stress: Moderating effects of personal control and social support

Stressful life events, personal control, and social support were examined relative to marital satisfaction among 1749 participants in seven Chinese cities. Stressful life events were categorized as life crises and life transitions. Life crises, rather than transitions, negatively predicted the marital satisfaction of Chinese. The moderating effects of personal control were found among women, but not men, and occurred only in the relationship between marital satisfaction and life crises, not life transitions. Social support buffers the negative effects of life crises on marital satisfaction. The results extend family stress‐coping theory in specifying two coping resources for Chinese marriages under stress.     

I'm feeling lucky: the relationship between affect and risk-seeking in the framing effect

Engagement in risky behavior has traditionally been attributed to an underestimation of the associated risks, but recent perspectives suggest that affective reactions toward a risky option may better explain risk-seeking than risk perception. However, the precise relationship between emotion and risk-seeking remains unclear. The current set of studies elucidates the relationship between emotion and risk-seeking in risky choice framing, using a gambling task. In Study 1, reliance on emotion was related to risk-seeking, but goals to regulate emotion mitigated these effects. In Study 2, positive affect was associated with risk-seeking in loss frames, but unrelated to risk aversion in gain frames. Collectively, these findings indicate a general role for emotion reliance on risk-seeking and a specific role of positive affect on risk-seeking in the loss trials of the framing effect.     

Do scientific theories affect men's evaluations of sex crimes?

Evolutionary psychology accounts of gender differences in sexual behaviors in general and men's sexual aggression, in particular, has been criticized for legitimizing males' sexual misconduct. To empirically assess such critiques, two studies examined how men's judgments of male sex crimes (solicitation of sex from a prostitute; rape) are influenced by exposure to (a) evolutionary psychological theories and (b) social‐constructivist theories. Across two studies, a consistent pattern emerged compared with a control condition (a) exposure to evolutionary psychology theories had no observable impact on male judgments of men's criminal sexual behavior, whereas (b) exposure to social‐constructivist theories did affect judgments, leading men to evaluate sex crimes more harshly. Additional results (from Study 2) indicate that this effect is mediated by perceptions of male control over sexual urges. These results have implications for journalists, educators, and scientists. Aggr. Behav. 37:440–449, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Attitudes toward cosmetic surgery patients: the role of culture and social contact

Cosmetic surgery is increasingly popular globally, but how cosmetic surgery patients are socially evaluated is largely unknown. The present research documents attitudes toward these patients in multiple cultures (Hong Kong, Japan, and the United States). Across these cultures, attitudes toward cosmetic surgery patients were predominantly negative: Participants ascribed more negative attributes to cosmetic surgery patients and found cosmetic surgery not acceptable. Also, participants in Hong Kong and Japan were not willing to form social relationships, particularly intimate ones, with these patients. These attitudes were less negative in the United States than in Hong Kong and Japan, partly because social contact, which reduced negativity in attitudes toward cosmetic surgery patients, was more prevalent in the United States. These findings bear important implications for the subjective well-being of cosmetic surgery patients, who very often expect improvement in their social relationships through the surgery.     

A Guide to Conducting a Meta-Analysis with Non-Independent Effect Sizes

Neuropsychology Review - Conventional meta-analytic procedures assume that effect sizes are independent. When effect sizes are not independent, conclusions based on these conventional procedures...     

Preventing Suicide at Suicide Hotspots: A Case Study from Australia

The Gap Park Self‐Harm Minimisation Masterplan project is a collaborative attempt to address jumping suicides at Sydney's Gap Park through means restriction, encouraging help‐seeking, and increasing the likelihood of third‐party intervention. We used various data sources to describe the Masterplan project's processes, impacts, and outcomes. There have been reductions in reported jumps and confirmed suicides, although the trends are not statistically significant. There has been a significant increase in police call‐outs to intervene with suicidal people who have not yet reached the cliff's edge. The collaborative nature of the Masterplan project and its multifaceted approach appear to be reaping benefits.     

Mental Rotation in False Belief Understanding

This study examines the spontaneous use of embodied egocentric transformation (EET) in understanding false beliefs in the minds of others. EET involves the participants mentally transforming or rotating themselves into the orientation of an agent when trying to adopt his or her visuospatial perspective. We argue that psychological perspective taking such as false belief reasoning may also involve EET because of what has been widely reported in the embodied cognition literature, showing that our processing of abstract, propositional information is often grounded in concrete bodily sensations which are not apparently linked to higher cognition. In Experiment 1, an agent placed a ball into one of two boxes and left. The ball then rolled out and moved either into the other box (new box) or back into the original one (old box). The participants were to decide from which box they themselves or the agent would try to recover the ball. Results showed that false belief performance was affected by increased orientation disparity between the participants and the agent, suggesting involvement of embodied transformation. In Experiment 2, false belief was similarly induced and the participants were to decide if the agent would try to recover the ball in one specific box. Orientation disparity was again found to affect false belief performance. The present results extend previous findings on EET in visuospatial perspective taking and suggest that false belief reasoning, which is a kind of psychological perspective taking, can also involve embodied rotation, consistent with the embodied cognition view.