"Isn't it fun to get the respect that we're going to deserve?" Narcissism, social rejection, and aggression

Across four studies, narcissists were more angry and aggressive after experiencing a social rejection than were nonnarcissists. In Study 1, narcissism was positively correlated with feelings of anger and negatively correlated with more internalized negative emotions in a self-reported, past episode of social rejection. Study 2 replicated this effect for a concurrent lab manipulation of social rejection. In Study 3, narcissists aggressed more against someone who rejected them (i.e., direct aggression). In Study 4, narcissists were also more aggressive toward an innocent third party after experiencing social rejection (i.e., displaced aggression). Narcissists were not more aggressive after social acceptance. Self-esteem plays little role in predicting aggression in response to rejection. These results suggest that the combination of narcissism and social rejection is a powerful predictor of aggressive behavior.     

Lateralized impairment of the emotional enhancement of verbal memory in patients with amygdala-hippocampus lesion

This study investigated amygdala-hippocampus's functional asymmetry in the emotional modulation of memory for stories. Thirty-nine, right-handed, drug-resistant epilepsy patients who had been submitted to unilateral temporal lobectomy (19 left and 20 right) watched either an arousing or neutral version of a story presented audio-visually. The slide sequence was the same in the neutral and arousing version, the narratives were matched for structure and comprehensibility. The set and order of the 11 slide sequence were identical in both conditions. Free recall and recognition measures were taken 2h after story presentation. Subjects in the TLE group who watched the arousing version recalled more details than the subjects who watched the neutral version (t(37)=3.4,p<.001). The group who watched the arousing version recalled more details of the phase 2 of the story (t(37)=6.76,p<.001). Scores in both conditions did not differ between control subjects and temporal lobectomy patients. When the right and left lesioned groups' results were analyzed separately, it was observed that the two groups did not differ in their recall of the neutral version. The right lesioned group recalled more items of the arousal than the neutral version (Z=-3.55,p<.001). However the left lesioned group did not show the memory enhancement for the emotional version, in this group it was only found an enhanced recall of the more pictorial emotional segment of the narrative (Z=-3.11,p<.001). This illustrates that the right amygdala can influence retention of complex emotional stimuli with verbal and pictorial arousing properties. We concluded that an intact left amygdala-hippocampus is important for enhancement of memory related to emotionally arousing verbal material.     

Providing social support may be more beneficial than receiving it: results from a prospective study of mortality

This study examines the relative contributions of giving versus receiving support to longevity in a sample of older married adults. Baseline indicators of giving and receiving support were used to predict mortality status over a 5-year period in the Changing Lives of Older Couples sample. Results from logistic regression analyses indicated that mortality was significantly reduced for individuals who reported providing instrumental support to friends, relatives, and neighbors, and individuals who reported providing emotional support to their spouse. Receiving support had no effect on mortality once giving support was taken into consideration. This pattern of findings was obtained after controlling for demographic, personality, health, mental health, and marital-relationship variables. These results have implications for understanding how social contact influences health and longevity.     

Building syntactic structures in speaking: a bilingual exploration

In a series of three experiments we investigated syntactic priming using a sentence recall task. Participants read and memorized a target sentence for later recall. After reading a prime sentence and engaging in a distraction task, they were asked to produce the target sentence aloud. Earlier investigations have shown that this task is sensitive to a syntactic priming effect. That is, the syntactic form of the prime sentence sometimes influences the syntactic form of the recalled target. In this paper we report on a variation on this task, using Spanish-English bilingual participants. In the first two experiments we replicated the prepositional phrase priming effect using English target sentences and Spanish prime sentences. In the final experiment we investigated two additional syntactic forms, using Spanish target sentences and English prime sentences. Implications for models of syntax generation and bilingual speech production are discussed.     

Listeners' uses ofum anduh in speech comprehension

Despite their frequency in conversational talk, little is known about how ums and uhs affect listeners' on-line processing of spontaneous speech. Two studies of ums and uhs in English and Dutch reveal that hearing an uh has a beneficial effect on listeners' ability to recognize words in upcoming speech, but that hearing an um has neither a beneficial nor a detrimental effect. The results suggest that um and uh are different from one another and support the hypothesis that uh is a signal of short upcoming delay and um is a signal of a long upcoming delay.     

Assessing Religious Faith in Medical Patients: Cross-Validation of the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire

Growing attention has focused on the relationship between religiosity and health outcomes. However, research has been constrained by the limited availability of measures suitable for use with medical patients. This study examined the psychometric properties of the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire (SCSORF) in two well-defined samples of medical patients, representing a range of illness severity: 1) 175 women seen at a gynecology clinic; and 2) 104 cancer patients treated at a bone marrow transplantation program. Evidence for convergent validity was demonstrated by moderately high correlations with other measures of religious involvement. Divergent validity was demonstrated by small associations with social desirability. The measure was not strongly associated with demographic background or medical variables. Modest correlations with conceptually-related measures commonly used in health research (e.g., social support, optimism, existential meaning, purpose in life) further supported the divergent validity of the instrument. Results suggest that this may be a useful, concise measure for assessing religious involvement in medical patients.     

Building Syntactic Structure in Speaking

We investigated how people produce simple and complex phrases in speaking using a newly developed immediate recall task. People read and tried to memorize a target sentence, then read a prime sentence, then did a distractor task involving the prime sentence. Despite the delay and activity between memory and recall, people could still recall the target sentence although the syntactic form of the recalled sentence was influenced by the syntactic form of the prime sentence. This result replicates the syntactic priming effect found with other experimental paradigms. Using this task, we tested how people used abstract syntactic plans to produce simple and complex noun phrases. We found syntactic priming both when targets and prime sentences matched in complexity and when they did not match, suggesting that simple and complex noun phrases are built by the same syntactic routines during speech production.