Relationship of Inglehart's and Schwartz's value dimensions revisited

This study examines the relationship between Inglehart's and Schwartz's value dimensions—both at the individual and the country levels. By rotating one set of items towards the other, we show that these value dimensions have more in common than previously reported. The ranking of countries (N = 47) based on Schwartz's Embeddedness—Autonomy and the Survival—Self‐Expression dimensions reached a maximum of similarity, r = .82, after rotating Inglehart's factor scores 27 degrees clockwise. The correlation between the other pair of dimensions (Schwartz's Hierarchy‐Mastery—Egalitarianism‐Harmony and Inglehart's Traditional—Secular‐Rational values) was near zero before and after rotation. At the individual level (N = 46,444), positive correlations were found for Schwartz's Conservation—Openness dimension with both of Inglehart's dimensions (Survival—Self‐Expression and Traditional—Secular‐Rational values). The highest correlation with this Schwartz dimension was obtained at the Secular‐Rational/Self‐Expression diagonal, r = .24, after rotating the factor scores 45 degrees clockwise. We conclude that Schwartz's and Inglehart's originally proposed two‐dimensional value structures share one dimension at the country level and some commonality at the individual level, whereas the respective other pair of dimensions seem to be more or less unrelated.     

Propositional discourse logic

A novel normal form for propositional theories underlies the logic pdl, which captures some essential features of natural discourse, independent from any particular subject matter and related only to its referential structure. In particular, pdlallows to distinguish vicious circularity from the innocent one, and to reason in the presence of inconsistency using a minimal number of extraneous assumptions, beyond the classical ones. Several, formally equivalent decision problems are identified as potential applications: non-paradoxical character of discourses, admissibility of arguments in argumentation networks, propositional satisfiability, and the existence of kernels of directed graphs. Directed graphs provide the basis for the semantics of pdl and the paper concludes by an overview of relevant graph-theoretical results and their applications in diagnosing paradoxical character of natural discourses.     

Reflexivity in Teams: A Review and New Perspectives

Team reflexivity posits that the extent to which teams reflect upon and adapt their functioning is positively related to team performance. While remarkable progress has been made to provide evidence of this relationship, the underlying framework is missing elements of current theoretical streams for analyzing and describing teamwork, leaving the diversity of effects of team reflexivity often untouched. In this article, we present an update for this framework, by reviewing previous research on reflexivity, addressing gaps in the literature, and revising the original model by integrating feedback and dynamic team effectiveness frameworks for describing temporal developments of reflexivity. We furthermore propose a new dimensional structure for reflexivity, relying on prior work conceptualizing teams as information-processing systems that learn and advance through social-cognitive elements. Our model is therefore not only suitable for explaining the diverse set of relationships between team reflexivity on outcomes, but also provides valuable directions for viewing reflexivity as process that takes place during both transition and action phases of teamwork. We conclude with implications for managers, identify limitations, and propose an agenda for further research into this area. This article contributes an extended perspective relevant for further theory development and for effectively managing reflexivity in teams.     

Reluctance to Use Host Social Services by Ethnic Minorities: The Role of Consensual Separation,Threat to Heritage Culture and Misunderstanding of the Host Society Language

The main goal of this study was to examine the relationships between two types of separation orientations, namely forced and consensual separation, and the use of French social service community centers. Participants were two groups of young women, both members of ethnic minorities: Turkish (n?=?42) and North African (n?=?41). The results showed that young Turkish women were more oriented towards consensual separation than young North African women. Preference for a separation strategy was positively associated with both the perception of a threat to heritage culture and difficulties in understanding the language of the social workers. The more participants perceived social workers as a source of threat to their heritage culture and as speaking a language they had difficulty understanding, the less frequently they made use of the services offered at the community centers. Socio-demographic variables such as education level and marital status were found to play a significant role in these findings.     

Conflict detection during moral decision-making: evidence for deontic reasoners’ utilitarian sensitivity

Moral dilemmas often force us to decide between deontological (harming others is wrong) and utilitarian (harming others can be acceptable depending on the consequences) considerations. Cognitive scientists have shown that utilitarian responders typically engage demanding deliberate thinking to override a conflicting intuitive deontological response. A key question is whether deontic responders also take utilitarian considerations into account and detect that there are conflicting responses at play. The present study addressed this issue by contrasting people's processing of moral dilemmas in which utilitarian and deontological considerations cued conflicting or non-conflicting decisions. Results showed that deontic responders were slower and less confident about their decision when solving the conflict (vs. no-conflict) dilemmas. This suggests that they are considering both deontic and utilitarian aspects of their decision and indicates that a deontic decision is more informed and less oblivious than it might appear.     

Collective regret versus collective guilt: Different emotional reactions to historical atrocities

A distinction between guilt and regret in reactions to in‐group atrocities is proposed. Four studies (total N = 1249) support the notion that guilt and regret are distinct emotional reactions. Whereas guilt is a self‐focused, aversive emotional reaction following from appraisals of responsibility and associated with the intention to make amends, regret follows from an empathic victim perspective, is less aversive, and is more strongly associated with positive attitudes towards the victim groups and the intention to engage in intergroup contact. These findings suggest that less aversive emotions like regret are more likely to improve intergroup attitudes after a common history of conflict, but the aversive experience of guilt might be more potent in motivating reparations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The direction of masked auditory category priming correlates with participants' prime discrimination ability

Semantic priming refers to the phenomenon that participants typically respond faster to targets following semantically related primes as compared to semantically unrelated primes. In contrast, Wentura and Frings (2005) found a negatively signed priming effect (i.e., faster responses to semantically unrelated as compared to semantically related targets) when they used (a) a special masking technique for the primes and (b) categorically related prime-target-pairs (e.g., fruit-apple). The negatively signed priming effect was most pronounced for participants with random prime discrimination performance, whereas participants with high prime discrimination performance showed a positive effect. In the present study we analyzed the after-effects of masked category primes in audition. A comparable pattern of results as in the visual modality emerged: The poorer the individual prime discrimination, the more negative is the semantic priming effect. This result is interpreted as evidence for a common mechanism causing the semantic priming effect in vision as well as in audition instead of a perceptual mechanism only working in the visual domain.     

Belastungen von Bachelor- und Diplom-Studierenden

Background

The restructuring of the European educational system in line with the Bologna process forms a source of complaints in German universities because of the rigid structure of the curricula and higher pressure to perform. By comparison of students in the former diploma system with students in the bachelor master system during the period of restructuring it was analyzed if the changes in the educational system affect psychological distress in a negative way.

Methods

The analysis of 535 datasets from the psychotherapeutic outpatient department for students of the university Göttingen in the years between 2006 and 2010 was carried out to clarify if students in the bachelor master system suffered more from severe psychological distress than students of the former German diploma system. Dependent variables are a questionnaire comprising current problems and the global severity index (GSI) from the symptom checklist (SCL)-90-R. The confounding factors resulting from course of study and stud -time in the period of the restructuring have been controlled.

Results

The bachelor master students who sought help were not generally suffering from more psychological distress than diploma students. However, in comparison to students from the former diploma system they suffered more from psychological distress and problems resulting from the study situation and organization in the first semesters.

Conclusions

Psychotherapeutic university outpatient departments have to be aware of the changing demand. The study organization has to be changed to be more student friendly, especially in the beginning. An adequate infrastructure for psychotherapeutic university outpatients has to be provided.     

The face of fluency: Semantic coherence automatically elicits a specific pattern of facial muscle reactions

This study shows that high conceptual fluency induced by hidden semantic coherence automatically triggers a specific pattern of facial expressions. In the present study, word triads that either had or had not a common remote associate were read by individuals while automatic facial responses were recorded. Although participants were ignorant about the underlying semantic structure, participants’ faces showed an activation of the smiling muscle zygomaticus major (indicating increased positive affect), a relaxation of the frowning muscle corrugator supercilii (indicating decreased negative affect and mental effort), and a relaxation of the forehead muscle frontalis (indicating increased familiarity) after reading coherent compared to incoherent word triads. Implications for intuitive judgements of semantic coherence are discussed.