Enter your e-mail address: how German Internet users manage their e-mail addresses.

Writing E-mail is the most popular Internet activity. Meanwhile, many people have more than one E-mail address. The question how people manage their E-mail addresses, more specifically, whether they use them deliberately for different purposes, is the central question of this paper. E-mail addresses vary in the amount of identifying information they convey (e.g., name, gender, status). It is proposed that the amount of identifying information an email address contains is a predictor of usage for a specific purpose. However, it is assumed that not all people choose email addresses in a rational way, according to the optimal fit between amount of identifying information and purpose of the E-mail. Thus, the role of other factors is tested as well. An online survey on German Internet users showed that it is common to have more than one E-mail address. Especially free webmail addresses (freemail) are extremely popular. People used more anonymous E-mail addresses when they expected spam or were concerned about privacy. However, there were also interindividual differences in the management of E-mail addresses.     

Self-activation is a two-edged sword: The effects of I primes on cooperation

Two studies examined the influence of I primes on cooperative behavior. Two contrasting hypotheses were tested, using prosocial allocations (Experiment 1) and behavior in a give-some dilemma (Experiment 2) as dependent variables and assessing subjects’ social value orientation. The self-activation hypothesis (Verplanken & Holland, 2002) predicts that social value orientation influences behavior to a stronger degree when activated. That is, proselfs should behave less cooperatively, whereas prosocials should behave even more cooperatively in an I prime condition. The independent self-construal hypothesis (e.g., Gardner, Gabriel, & Lee, 1999) predicts a stronger concern for one’s own outcome and less cooperative behavior for individuals with an activated independent self-construal. In both studies an interaction between priming and social value orientation occurred, supporting the self-activation hypothesis. Implications for the importance of social cognitive processes underlying cooperative behavior, as well as, implications for research on independent vs interdependent self-construals are discussed.     

Dynamic Epistemic Logics of Diffusion and Prediction in Social Networks

Studia Logica - We take a logical approach to threshold models, used to study the diffusion of opinions, new technologies, infections, or behaviors in social networks. Threshold models consist of a...     

Supervision of Psychosocial Skills in Genetic Counseling

Little has been written about how genetic counseling supervisors can help students develop psychosocial skills in their clinical rotations. The authors describe several approaches supervisors can use, ranging from preventive measures (e.g., normalizing anxiety), to skill-enhancing interventions (e.g., modeling and thinking aloud), to more direct approaches (e.g., immediacy, confrontation) that may be necessary for students who are reluctant, or even resistant, to using psychosocial skills with their clients.     

Online Module for Carrier Screening in Ashkenazi Jewish Individuals Compared with In-Person Genetics Education: A Randomized Controlled Trial

To increase accessibility to genetics services for low-urgency patients seeking Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) carrier screening, we designed an interactive computer (IC) module that provides pre-test genetics education and allows genetics professionals to order the test without meeting the patients beforehand. We compared this module with in-person genetic counseling (GC) using a randomized trial. AJ individuals were randomized to undergo genetics education via the IC module (n = 26) or GC (n = 28). We compared post-interventional genetics knowledge, perceived genetic risk, and anxiety between the two groups, after accounting for pre-interventional scores, using ANCOVA. Wilcoxon Rank-Sum test was used to compare post-interventional satisfaction. Post-interventional genetics knowledge, risk perception, or anxiety were not significantly different between the two groups after accounting for baseline scores (p = 0.50–0.54), although the data are inconclusive regarding the module’s non-inferiority at a 5% margin. Post-intervention satisfaction scores were generally higher in the GC group than the IC module group. Our IC module has the potential to improve access to clinical genetics services for patients and staff, but it is not suitable for all AJ patients and cannot completely replace the benefits of in-person consultations.     

Characterisation of music-evoked autobiographical memories

Despite music's prominence in Western society and its importance to individuals in their daily lives, very little is known about the memories and emotions that are often evoked when hearing a piece of music from one's past. We examined the content of music-evoked autobiographical memories (MEAMs) using a novel approach for selecting stimuli from a large corpus of popular music, in both laboratory and online settings. A set of questionnaires probed the cognitive and affective properties of the evoked memories. On average, 30% of the song presentations evoked autobiographical memories, and the majority of songs also evoked various emotions, primarily positive, that were often felt strongly. The third most common emotion was nostalgia. Analyses of written memory reports found both general and specific levels of autobiographical knowledge to be represented, and several social and situational contexts for memory formation were common across many memories. The findings indicate that excerpts of popular music serve as potent stimuli for studying the structure of autobiographical memories.     

The primacy of perceiving: emotion recognition buffers negative effects of emotional labor

There is ample empirical evidence for negative effects of emotional labor (surface acting and deep acting) on workers' well-being. This study analyzed to what extent workers' ability to recognize others' emotions may buffer these effects. In a 4-week study with 85 nurses and police officers, emotion recognition moderated the relationship between emotional labor and work engagement: Workers with high emotion recognition engaging in emotional labor did not report lower work engagement after 4 weeks, whereas those with low emotion recognition did. These effects pertained to both surface and deep acting. The results suggest that emotional labor be not necessarily detrimental to workers' engagement. Instead, the impact of emotional labor hinges upon workers' ability to correctly identify interaction partners' emotions.     

Ethical Issues in Cancer Genetics: 1) Whose Information Is It?

This article presents and discusses four clinical cases that exemplify the complexity of ethical dilemmas concerning the provider's obligation to disclose or withhold genetic information from patients. Case 1: What is the responsibility of the cancer genetics provider to ensure that a positive test results is shared with distant relatives? Case 2: To ensure that results go to at-risk relatives, do we have the right to ignore the wishes of the designated next-of-kin? Case 3: Do we have the right to reveal a familial BRCA1 mutation to a patient's relative, who is at 50% risk? Case 4: Do we have an obligation to reveal that a patient is not a blood relative and therefore, not at risk to have inherited a familial mutation? These cases form the basis for discussing the provider's dual obligations to keeping patient confidentiality and informing patients and families about risk (i.e. duty to warn). We also provide a summary of consensus points and additional discussion questions for each case.