Diehard singles: Bachelorhood as a terror management strategy among avoidant men

This research examines the motivational underpinnings of late bachelorhood through the lens of terror management and attachment theory. It was hypothesized that, although close relationships reduce existential concerns for most people, for avoidantly attached singles, thoughts of marriage may increase existential concerns. These hypotheses were tested in two studies among Israeli men. In Study 1, thoughts about getting married increased death thought accessibility (DTA) among avoidant singles compared to thoughts about being alone or a neutral control condition. For nonavoidant singles, thinking about future marriage reduced DTA. In Study 2, mortality salience reduced motivations for being in a relationship among avoidant singles and increased such motivation among those low in avoidant attachment. Results suggest that marriage may cause angst among avoidant single men.     

An evaluation of story grammars

We evaluate the “story grammar” approach to story understanding from three perspectives. We first examine the formal properties of the grammars and find only one to be formally adequate. We next evaluate the grammars empirically by asking whether they generate all simple stories and whether they generate only stories. We find many stories that they do not generate and one major class of nonstory that they do generate. We also evaluate the grammars' potential as comprehension models and find that they would add nothing to semantic models that focus on the story content. Hence we advocate a story content oriented approach to studying story understanding instead of the structural story grammar approach.     

Stroop effect in words that differ from color words in one letter only

In two experiments, participants named the color of a colored word, which was a Hebrew color word or a word in Hebrew that was different from a color word in one letter only. The magnitude of the Stroop effect increased with the location of the changed letter. It was smallest when the first letter of the color word was replaced, resulting in a noncolor word, and it was largest when the last letter was replaced. These results challenge the assumption that automatic reading, as indicated by the Stroop effect, can be explained exclusively by memory retrieval accounts of automaticity. The results also have implications for the sources of facilitation and inhibition in the Stroop effect.     

Empowering chronic headache sufferers

Chronic headache pain affects sufferers and their families. Many headache sufferers lack self-discipline in controlling their headache pains. Although preventive medication is a must, medical treatment which excludes psychotherapeutic intervention reduces its effectiveness. Sufferers report increased tensions and stress with members of their families. This article reports on a program which includes headache sufferers' involvement in both family and individual therapy activities in a clinical setting. The role of the family therapist is primarily to encourage and empower sufferers to become involved in activities which can promote and increase communication, trust and self-confidence, leading toward a development of skills which can enable sufferers to utilize positive coping strategies in their effort to control headaches.     

Brief consultation with headache sufferers

Abstract

This paper describes the author's efforts at involving chronic headache sufferers in brief consultations with individual, family, and group therapy programs in an inpatient medical treatment facility. A variety of difficult issues facing chronic headache sufferers are presented, including the rationale for utilizing each therapeutic modality and the role and strategies that the therapist undertakes in each program. The author provides some case vignettes and discusses the importance of communication between the therapist, the primary physician, and the medical staff members.     

False-positive psychology: undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant

In this article, we accomplish two things. First, we show that despite empirical psychologists' nominal endorsement of a low rate of false-positive findings (≤ .05), flexibility in data collection, analysis, and reporting dramatically increases actual false-positive rates. In many cases, a researcher is more likely to falsely find evidence that an effect exists than to correctly find evidence that it does not. We present computer simulations and a pair of actual experiments that demonstrate how unacceptably easy it is to accumulate (and report) statistically significant evidence for a false hypothesis. Second, we suggest a simple, low-cost, and straightforwardly effective disclosure-based solution to this problem. The solution involves six concrete requirements for authors and four guidelines for reviewers, all of which impose a minimal burden on the publication process.     

Spurious? Name similarity effects (implicit egotism) in marriage, job, and moving decisions

Three articles published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology have shown that a disproportionate share of people choose spouses, places to live, and occupations with names similar to their own. These findings, interpreted as evidence of implicit egotism, are included in most modern social psychology textbooks and many university courses. The current article successfully replicates the original findings but shows that they are most likely caused by a combination of cohort, geographic, and ethnic confounds as well as reverse causality.