Priming the ant or the grasshopper in people's mind: How regulatory mode affects inter‐temporal choices

The present study examined the influence of two regulatory mode concerns—a locomotion concern with movement from state to state and an assessment concern with making comparisons—on choices between immediate and delayed (from 2 to 6 weeks) money rewards. Regulatory mode orientation was induced by means of a priming procedure. We predicted that the choices in the assessment condition would be less impulsive and more far‐sighted than those in the locomotion condition. After taking into account the effects of amount of early reward, length of delay and increase in delayed reward—all of which were in the direction of previous studies—this regulatory mode prediction was supported. Our findings suggest that it might be possible to induce more far‐sighted (or economically rational) inter‐temporal choices by means of instructions that induce an assessment orientation independent of stable inter‐individual differences in discount rate. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The morphosyntactic decomposition and semantic composition of German compound words investigated by ERPs

In two experiments, we investigated the morphosyntactic decomposition and semantic composition of acoustically presented German compound words. A left-anterior negativity (LAN) was found in the ERP for gender incongruent, initial compound constituents although these constituents are syntactically irrelevant in German. This LAN provides online evidence for morphosyntactic decomposition. Experiment 1 showed also preliminary evidence for semantic composition, which was further investigated in Experiment 2 by comparing semantically transparent and opaque compounds. Transparent compounds elicited an increased negativity with a centroparietal maximum that occurred during the presentation of the head constituent. This negativity is suggested to reflect the semantic integration of compound constituents that is necessary after the constituents have been accessed separately.     

The Developmental Perspective in Integral Counseling

The process of making meaning is a core determinant of human experience. Understanding this process, developmentally, is a vital part of integral counseling. In this article, the authors introduce the concept of ego development stages as increasingly complex and flexible systems of meaning making. An understanding of ego development stages can help counselors to assist clients in a way that recognizes that people not only come in different “types” but also differ significantly in the level of their meaning‐making capacity.     

The Effects of Nonverbal Immediacy and Verbal Person Centeredness in the Emotional Support Process

This study explores the combined influence of nonverbal immediacy and verbal person centeredness in the emotional support process. Three complementary models were tested in an experiment with 216 participants who disclosed an emotionally upsetting event to a confederate trained to display different levels of nonverbal immediacy and person centeredness. Participants subsequently completed a set of instruments measuring the perceived comforting quality of the confederate. Results suggested that nonverbal immediacy and person centeredness influence perceptions of what makes for good comforting. The data supported 2 of the advanced models but failed to provide support for a nonverbal primacy effect on perceived comforting quality.     

Perceived Risk of AIDS: Assessing the Behavioral and Psychosocial Consequences in a Cohort of Gay Men1

Longitudinal analyses reported here explored the relationship between a perceived sense of being at risk for AIDS and a variety of behavioral, social, and psychological consequences. Data were obtained from a cohort of 637 homosexual men living in Chicago, who are participating in a psychosocial study and have completed two waves of data collection. Their perceptions of risk were quantified using both an absolute and a comparative measure; these were combined into a risk index, scored from one to nine (x?= 3.91; SD= 1.64). Univariate analyses demonstrated that level of risk was related to several measures of subsequent behavioral risk reduction. However, after adjustment for sociodemographic variables, initial behavior, and other components of a model predicting behavior change, this was no longer true. Of the 12 behavioral outcomes assessed, only one was related to risk after appropriate adjustment, and this relationship was negative. Other longitudinal analyses examined the impact of a sense of risk on measures of psychosocial functioning which have been theoretically linked to health behaviors and to measures of psychological/ social distress. These demonstrated a range of potentially adverse consequences for those who perceived themselves to be at greater risk for AIDS, including increased barriers to behavioral change, obsessive/compulsive behavior, social role impairment, and more intrusive worries and concerns about AIDS. Taken together, these results suggest that there is little or no observable benefit to an increased sense of risk, but that such a sense subsequently leads to distress and dysfunction in a variety of realms. The implications of these findings for development of policy concerning antibody testing of at-risk populations is discussed.     

Worldly Reasons: An Ontological Inquiry into Motivating Considerations and Normative Reasons

In this article I advocate a worldly account of normative reasons according to which there is an ontological gap between these and the premises of practical thought, i.e. motivating considerations. While motivating considerations are individuated fine‐grainedly, normative reasons should be classified as coarse‐grained entities, e.g. as states of affairs, in order to explain certain necessary truths about them and to make sense of how we count and weigh them. As I briefly sketch, acting for normative reasons is nonetheless possible if the connection between normative reasons and motivating considerations is a competence‐based correspondence.     

Über das Verhalten farbiger Formen bei Helligkeitsgleichhe von Figur und Grund

Ohne Zusammenfassung Mit 29 Abbildungen im Text.     

Assessing Violence Risk Among Female IPV Perpetrators: An Examination of the B-SAFER

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global problem and one in which frontline assessment and management falls primarily to police. Although IPV is often conceptualized as a male-perpetrated crime, evidence substantiates female IPV perpetration and increased arrest rates, raising important issues for police. This article examines police use of the Brief Spousal Assault Form for the Evaluation of Risk (B-SAFER; Kropp, Hart, & Belfrage, 2005, 2010), a violence risk assessment tool for IPV. The B-SAFER was used to assess and manage 52 women arrested for IPV. When compared to Belfrage and Strand (2008), who examined men arrested for IPV in the same sample, women possessed fewer risk factors. Risk factors were related to summary risk judgments, although differences existed between genders and risk judgments were not related to management recommendations. Results suggest that risk factors, in addition to those in the B-SAFER, are required to assess risk for female IPV.     

Working Together with God: Religious Coping,Perceived Discrimination,and Hypertension

This study examined the relationships of perceived discrimination and religious coping with hypertension in a sample of Black and White Seventh-day Adventists. Data come from a community-based sample of 6128 White American, 2253 African American and 927 Caribbean American adults (67% women; mean age = 62.9 years). Results indicate lifetime unfair treatment was significantly associated with hypertension regardless of race/ethnicity. Positive religious coping was associated with lower odds of hypertension and did not interact with unfair treatment. Both positive and negative religious coping were indirectly associated with increased hypertension risk through an increase in perceived discrimination.