Type A behavior, achievement striving, and a dysfunctional self-evaluation system

We conducted two experiments to examine the relations among characteristics of how Type A individuals strive for achievement, including goal achievement, self-evaluation, and psychological distress. We evaluated these relations as subjects performed two sequential general information tests. Experiment 1 indicated that achievement striving associated with the Type A behavior pattern is characterized by a tendency to set personal goals in excess of performance and is associated with a low probability of achieving goals. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that the achievement strategy Type A individuals adopted was associated with low self-evaluation of their actual performance. Furthermore, a pre- and postexperiment self-report questionnaire of psychological state suggested that failure to achieve personal goals was related to increased psychological distress. The results of our study suggest that unrealistically high performance standards and failure to achieve personal goals may be a mechanism that triggers the negative psychological states and performance dissatisfaction associated with the Type A behavior pattern. Our study also supports theoretical conceptualizations that excessive achievement striving can act as a potential motivational mechanism but can also have potential pathogenic consequences through misregulation of achievement expectancy and evaluation.     

Eyewitness performance in different psychological types

A study of 112 subjects examined the performance on a complex memory task by various Jungian psychological types. Although differences did not emerge in terms of overall accuracy, they did emerge in terms of susceptibility to postevent information. Introverts and intuitives, alone and in combination, were found to be more prone to accept both misleading and consistent postevent information, rendering them more likely to be inaccurate in the first case and more likely to be accurate in the second case. A variety of explanations are considered.     

Disclosure on Campus: Students’ Decisions to Tell Others About Unwanted Sexual Experiences,Intimate Partner Violence,and Stalking

The scope of student victimization occurring on college campuses is problematic, drawing the attention of researchers and campus officials. While most researchers of the disclosure of these unwanted experiences tend to examine just 1 form of victimization, a direct comparison of the disclosure of different types of campus victimization within a singular study is missing in the literature. The current study aimed to address this issue by examining 4 types of victimization experiences (unwanted sexual contact, unwanted sexual intercourse, intimate partner violence, and stalking) in a college population. A common set of possible predictors of disclosure were examined, including both demographic (e.g., gender, race, age) and situational factors (e.g., alcohol use, level of fear, relationship with perpetrator). While patterns of similarity across all victimization experiences emerged, the impact of gender, race, age, and alcohol use on disclosure decisions varied substantially by victimization type. The findings of this study address the gap in the current literature by providing a comparison and contrast of the influence of predictors across different types of victimization. Furthermore, the findings provide needed information that could help colleges and universities develop ways to encourage support-seeking and reporting among students.     

The relationships between religiosity,stress, and mental health for Muslim immigrant youth

Acculturation, or the process of change that takes place as a result of intercultural contact, can cause a range of stressors. The task of managing this acculturative stress is particularly difficult for Muslim immigrants in Western contexts due to the global rise of Islamophobia. Research investigating the experiences of young migrant Muslims has found inconsistent results regarding the moderating influences of religious identity and religious practices on the relationship between stress and mental health. The current study examined whether levels of religiosity interacted with distinct forms of acculturative stress in the prediction of depression and well-being for Muslim youth in New Zealand. Results painted a complex picture of the relationships between religiosity and mental health, finding that greater religiosity is generally positive for youth outcomes, but it also carries the risk lowering levels of mental health through its interactions with acculturative stress.     

Skill-based differences in option generation in a complex task: a verbal protocol analysis

In recent models of decision-making, cognitive scientists have examined the relationship between option generation and successful performance. These models suggest that those who are successful at decision-making generate few courses of action and typically choose the first, often best, option. Scientists working in the area of expert performance, on the other hand, have demonstrated that the ability to generate and prioritize task-relevant options during situation assessment is associated with successful performance. In the current study, we measured law enforcement officers’ performance and thinking in a simulated task environment to examine the option generation strategies used during decision-making in a complex domain. The number of options generated during assessment (i.e., making decisions about events in the environment) and intervention (i.e., making decisions about personal courses of action) phases of decision-making interact to produce a successful outcome. The data are explained with respect to the development of a situational representation and long-term working memory skills capable of supporting both option generation processes.     

Visuo-spatial representations of the alphabet in synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes

Visuo-spatial representations of the alphabet (so-called 'alphabet forms') may be as common as other types of sequence-space synaesthesia, but little is known about them or the way they relate to implicit spatial associations in the general population. In the first study, we describe the characteristics of a large sample of alphabet forms visualized by synaesthetes. They most often run from left to right and have salient features (e.g., bends, breaks) at particular points in the sequence that correspond to chunks in the 'Alphabet Song' and at the alphabet mid-point. The Alphabet Song chunking suggests that the visuo-spatial characteristics are derived, at least in part, from those of the verbal sequence learned earlier in life. However, these synaesthetes are no faster at locating points in the sequence (e.g., what comes before/after letter X?) than controls. They tend to be more spatially consistent (measured by eye tracking) and letters can act as attentional cues to left/right space in synaesthetes with alphabet forms (measured by saccades), but not in non-synaesthetes. This attentional cueing suggests dissociation between numbers (which reliably act as attentional cues in synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes) and letters (which act as attentional cues in synaesthetes only).