Dispositional Optimism in Chinese People: What Does the Life Orientation Test Measure?

The Life Orientation Test was back-translated to Chinese and administered to a sample of college students (N = 314) and a sample of normal adults (N = 306) along with measures of personality and symptoms. When subject to factor analysis, the positive items (representing optimism) and the negative items (representing pessimism) emerged as two separate factors. Empirically, optimism and pessimism were moderately correlated and had unique contributions to the explanation of personality and symptom measures, so that the total score of C-LOT was a better predictor of criterion measures than either optimism or pessimism alone. However, C-LOT's relationship with symptoms was eliminated after negative affectivity was controlled in the student sample, but not in the adult sample, thus suggesting some confounding with negative affectivity. Further research is required to improve the measurement of optimism in Chinese people and to clarify the relationship between optimism and pessimism.     

The Place of Poetry in Gerontological Social Work Education

This essay focuses on poetry as a means to enhance the education and training of social workers and allied health care professionals working with the elderly. The poetry examined includes published popular poetry and poetry created by the elderly in community and residential programs. Finally, I discuss the poetry and narrative of four social workers as an integrative device for dealing with personal and professional issues relating to aging and identity.     

Microworlds for experimental research: Having your (control and collection) cake, and realism too

Microworlds (MWs) are dynamic computer-generated environments that subjects interact with in the laboratory and that simulate conditions encountered in the field. Precise levels of experimental control and improved accuracy and efficiency of data collection procedures are characteristic of MWs. It is proposed that these benefits are achieved with concomitant gains in internal validity (afforded by high levels of experimental realism) and external validity (afforded by the replication of the temporal-interactive nature of most field phenomena). To illustrate these ideas, three sets of MW studies are described that investigated rumor and behavior in the stock market (Broker), escalation behavior (Inve$tment Choice$), and the application of foraging theory to internet shopping (Cybershopper).     

Spatial selection via feature-driven inhibition of distractor locations

The allocation of spatial attention was measured with detection probes at different locations. Response times were faster for probes at the location of the target digit, which subjects reported, than at the locations of distractor digits, which they ignored. Probes at blank locations between stimuli produced fast responses, indicating that selection was accomplished by inhibiting distractor locations but not other areas. Unlike earlier studies using location cuing with simpler stimuli, these experiments showed no attentional differences across horizontal or vertical midlines. Attention varied little with distance from the target, although blank locations far from the target were somewhat less attended than were those near the target, and attention was only slightly affected by expectations for stimulus location. This task demonstrates a form of feature-driven spatial attention, in which locations with objects lacking target features are inhibited.     

Effects of high-pass and low-pass spatial filtering on face identification

If face images are degraded by block averaging, there is a nonlinear decline in recognition accuracy as block size increases, suggesting that identification requires a critical minimum range of object spatial frequencies. The identification of faces was measured with equivalent Fourier low-pass filtering and block averaging preserving the same information and with high-pass transformations. In Experiment 1, accuracy declined and response time increased in a significant nonlinear manner in all cases as the spatial-frequency range was reduced. However, it did so at a faster rate for the quantized and high-passed images. A second experiment controlled for the differences in the contrast of the high-pass faces and found a reduced but significant and nonlinear decline in performance as the spatial-frequency range was reduced. These data suggest that face identification is preferentially supported by a band of spatial frequencies of approximately 8-16 cycles per face; contrast or line-based explanations were found to be inadequate. The data are discussed in terms of current models of face identification.     

Work and Family Variables, Entrepreneurial Career Success, and Psychological Well-Being

The study examines the influence of work and family variables on the career success and psychological well-being of 111 men and women entrepreneurs. The results show that work-domain variables account for significant variation in time commitment to work, whereas family-domain variables explain substantial variation in time commitment to family. Time commitment to work and time commitment to family play an important role in mediating the effects of gender, work and family characteristics, and role demands on work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict. These two types of work–family conflict in turn mediate the effects of time commitment to work and family and selected work and family variables on entrepreneurs’ career success and life stress. Implications of the findings and directions for further research are discussed.     

GENDER, JEALOUSY, AND REASON

Abstract— Research has suggested that men are especially bothered by evidence of their partner's sexual infidelity, whereas women are troubled more by evidence of emotional infidelity. One evolutionary account (Buss, Larsen, Westen, & Semmelroth, 1992) argues that this is an innate difference, arising from men's need for paternity certainty and women's need for male investment in their offspring. We suggest that the difference may instead be based on reasonable differences between the sexes in how they interpret evidence of infidelity. A man, thinking that women have sex only when in love, has reason to believe that if his mate has sex with another man, she is in love with that other. A woman, thinking that men can have sex without love, should still be bothered by sexual infidelity, but less so because it does not imply that her mate has fallen in love as well. A survey of 137 subjects confirmed that men and women do differ in the predicted direction in how much they think each form of infidelity implies the other, proposing innate emotional differences may, therefore, be gratuitous.     

Laughter and Stress in Daily Life: Relation to Positive and Negative Affect

The present study investigated the proposal that increased laughter can serve to moderate the affective impact of negative life events. Community participants kept a record of their actual frequency of laughter for a 3-day period, and completed a measure of stressful life events each evening. Current levels of positive and negative affect were also obtained in the morning and evening of each day. A series of simple correlations, computed on a daily basis, provided little evidence for any direct relationships between amount of daily laughter and either positive or negative affect. Instead, more complex moderator analyses revealed that greater negative affect was clearly associated with a higher number of stressful life events, but only for those individuals with a lower frequency of actual laughter. In contrast, and in support of a stress buffering hypothesis, it was found that individuals with a higher frequency of laughter did not show greater levels of negative affect as stressful life events increased. When considering positive affect, it was found that only males showed a significant moderating effect of laughter. For males who laughed more frequently, a greater number of stressful life events was associated with higher levels of positive affect. These findings are discussed in terms of several possible mechanisms which may account for the moderating effects of laughter on affect, including the use of cognitive appraisals and emotion-focused coping strategies.     

Women and the Social Movements of the 1960s: Activists, Engaged Observers, and Nonparticipants

Many women in the generation that attended college during the 1960s have reported that they were influenced by the social movements of that era, even women who did not participate in them. In addition to political activists, social movements also appear to include "engaged observers"—individuals who are attentive to movement writings and activities, and express moral and even financial support for them, but who take no other action. Although activism in a movement may be the best predictor of future political action, engaged observation may be related to other indicators of political socialization, such as a powerful felt impact of the movement and well-developed political attitudes. Evidence to support this notion is drawn from studies of three samples of college-educated white and black women.