Maternal depression and parental distress among families in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project: Risk factors within the family setting

This study examined the influence of risk factors within the family environment (inadequate resources, insufficient caregiving support from child's father, higher family conflict) on maternal well being (depression and parental distress) using a longitudinal panel research design. Participants consisted of 2,040 low‐income mothers of young children enrolled in the Early Head Start (EHS) Research and Evaluation Project. Findings indicated that greater family resources at 14 months had a protective effect on maternal well‐being at 36 months, controlling for demographic variables and maternal well‐being at 14 months. Furthermore, the effect of family resources on maternal well‐being was moderated by father caregiving support, such that family resources were protective, particularly when father caregiving support was lower. Family conflict at 14 months was associated with lower maternal well‐being at 36 months, controlling for demographic variables and maternal well‐being at 14 months. Our findings suggest that low‐income mothers need the support and resources of programs such as EHS to overcome the hurdles and challenges of parenting in high‐risk settings. Implications for clinical practice and EHS are discussed.     

‘Not in our front garden’: Land use conflict,spatial meaning and the politics of naming place

Strategies aimed at reducing land use conflict often stress the need to make planning decisions more democratic. However, this goal is obstructed by overly‐narrow conceptual perspectives that neglect the symbolic significance of place. We illustrate this by examining place names, which function as repositories of socio‐political meaning. Drawing on elements of discursive and rhetorical psychology and subject positioning theory, we investigated the variety of meanings associated with place names in the context of a proposed housing development in Swindon, in the South of England. Thirty interviews with different stakeholders were conducted to gauge their opinions towards the proposal. Noting differences in the way the proposed site was named, we analysed the range of meanings associated with each name in relation to participants' stances towards development. Our results show how, in naming place, spatial meanings are negotiated and contested in ways that support contrasting political objectives. We conclude that planning professionals should exercise greater sensitivity towards existing spatial meanings, especially place names. In addition, socio‐political understandings of subjective spatial relationships can serve as a basis for achieving more productive dialogue and improving development designs. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Metameric intransitivity

There are two kinds of afterimages. In negative afterimages, looking at a blank field after staring at a colored figure gives a figure whose color is complementary to that of the original figure. Less well understood and studied is the phenomenon of induced positive afterimages, in which staring at a colored area surrounding a small white test patch produces an afterimage in which the hue of the surround is transferred into the previously white area. Using these differences between positive and negative afterimages and also simultaneous color contrast, which has an effect on a test patch different from either of the afterimage effects, we describe a new effect, metameric intransitivity, in which perceptually similar images can generate markedly different afterimages, whereas perceptually different images can generate indistinguishable afterimages. Supplemental figures depicting the stimuli, results, and method for generating the intransitive metamers in this study may be downloaded from http://app.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Mortality salience increases adherence to salient norms and values

Four studies indicate that mortality salience increases adherence to social norms and values, but only when cultural norms and values are salient. In Study 1, mortality salience coupled with a reminder about cultural values of egalitarianism reduced prejudice toward Blacks among non-Black participants. In Studies 2 through 4, a mortality salience induction (e.g., walking through a cemetery) increased self-reported and actual helping behavior only when the cultural value of helping was salient. These results suggest that people may adhere to norms and values so as to manage awareness of death.     

Individual differences,rereading, and self-explanation: Concurrent processing and cue validity as constraints on metacomprehension accuracy

The typical finding of metacomprehension studies is that accuracy in monitoring one's own level of understanding is quite poor. In the present experiments, monitoring accuracy was constrained by individual differences in both reading comprehension ability and working memory capacity (WMC), but rereading particularly benefited low-ability and low-WMC readers, effectively eliminating the relationship between monitoring accuracy and these reader characteristics. In addition, introducing a self-explanation reading strategy improved the accuracy of all the readers above mere rereading. The observed interaction between individual differences and rereading is interpreted in terms of concurrent-processing constraints involved in monitoring while text is processed, whereas the more general self-explanation effect is interpreted in terms of accessibility of valid, performance-predicting cues.     

Safety in work vehicles: a multilevel study linking safety values and individual predictors to work-related driving crashes

Although work-related driving is associated with high accident rates, limited research has investigated the factors influencing driving crashes in the work setting. This study explored multilevel influences on self-reported crashes in the workplace by surveying a sample of work-related drivers (n = 380), their workgroup supervisors (n = 88), and fleet managers (n = 47). At the driver level of analysis, safety motivation predicted self-reported crashes. In turn, drivers' perceptions of their fleet managers' safety values (but not drivers' perceptions of their supervisors' safety values), their own attitudes, and their own efficacy beliefs predicted motivation to drive safely. Furthermore, the influence of supervisors and fleet managers interacted such that drivers were more motivated to drive safely if they perceived both their supervisor and fleet manager to value safety. This study also explored the cross-level relationships between supervisors' and fleet managers' perceptions of organizational safety values and drivers' perceptions of managerial safety values and found a relationship between fleet managers' perceptions of organizational safety values and drivers' perceptions of fleet managers' safety values. These results illustrate that perceptions of workplace safety values are transmitted across levels of the organization.     

Information Regarding Social‐Sexual Behavior as an Antecedent to Perceptions of Ineffectiveness in the Workplace1

Three experimental studies investigated whether information implying social‐sexual behavior (any non‐work‐related behavior containing a sexual component) by employees would influence judgments of their effectiveness. In managerial and entry‐level positions, both male and female employees depicted as engaging in social‐sexual behaviors at work were perceived as less effective and less desirable as bosses, compared to identically described managers for whom no social‐sexual behavior information was provided. However, these negative evaluations were mitigated when information was provided indicating that these managers were always on‐task and effectively using their time at work (Study 3), suggesting that the effectiveness of employees who engage in social‐sexual behavior at work is devalued because others believe that these behaviors detract from productive time in the office.     

Exploring the cold-to-hot empathy gap in smokers

Many decisions related to cigarette smoking require people in an affectively neutral, or "cold," state to predict how they will feel or behave when in a craving, or "hot," state. Research in other domains has revealed that individuals in cold states often underestimate the impact of being in a hot state on their own future behavior. In a study testing whether this is true of cigarette craving, 98 smokers were assigned to one of three conditions: hot (during a high-craving first session, they made predictions about a high-craving state in a second session), cold (during a low-craving first session, they made predictions about a high-craving state in a second session), and comparison (they experienced a high-craving session only). As predicted, in contrast to smokers in the hot group, smokers in the cold group underpredicted the value they would place on smoking during the second session. Results support the existence of a cold-to-hot empathy gap in smokers and help to explain diverse aspects of tobacco addiction.     

Effects of warned and unwarned demand transitions on vigilance performance and stress

The present study was designed to explore the effects of warned and unwarned demand transitions in vigilance on performance and self-reported stress. Twenty observers (10 women and 10 men) were assigned at random to each of six conditions resulting from the factorial combination of signal salience (high and low salience signals) and switching (no switch, switch with warning, and switch without warning). Performance metrics and self-reported stress state (Task Engagement, Distress, and Worry) were collected. While demand transitions did destabilize subsequent performance, increasing intra-individual variability, overall performance efficiency was uninfluenced by either switching or warning. Demand transitions, whether warned or not, increased self-reported distress. A dynamic model of performance stress may be necessary and research employing vigilance tasks in the future may be useful for developing this performance-stress model.     

The price of deceptive behavior: Disliking and lying to people who lie to us

We hypothesized that frequency and quality of deception influences how people perceive those who lie to them and that people subsequently increase deceptive behavior as a consequence of being lied to. In Study 1, participants were covertly videotaped conversing with a partner. Following the conversation, participants evaluated partners, and partners reviewed the videotape, identifying deceptions that they told. Findings indicated that partner’s frequency of deception was inversely related to likeability. In Study 2, participants watched a videotape of a confederate who appeared to produce one or four exaggerated or minimized lies, and then evaluated the confederate. Participants and confederates subsequently engaged in a conversation. When participants witnessed either one exaggerated lie, one or four minimal lies, or no lies they trusted and liked the confederate more than when witnessing four exaggerated lies. Moreover, participants increased their own use of deception as a function of the severity and quantity of confederate’s lies.