“This story is right on”: The impact of regulatory fit on narrative engagement and persuasion

When people read a story, feelings of rightness from regulatory fit (consistency between regulatory state and strategic means) could suggest that the story is “right on” relative to feelings of wrongness from regulatory nonfit. Under these conditions, individuals who are experiencing feelings of rightness should engage more with the narrative and be more persuaded by its implicit messages. Results from two experiments supported these hypotheses. Participants in Experiment 1 were more mentally engaged (transported) by the story when they experienced regulatory fit. We replicated this effect in Experiment 2 and extended it to endorsement of story‐consistent beliefs, an indicator of persuasion via narratives. Additionally, we found that drawing participants' attention to an earlier event as a source of feelings of rightness eliminated the regulatory fit effects on transportation and persuasion, suggesting attribution of feelings of regulatory fit/nonfit to the plausibility of the narrative world. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Perception and recognition memory of words and werds: Two-way mirror effects

We examined associative priming of words (e.g., TOAD) and pseudohomophones of those words (e.g., TODE) in lexical decision. In addition to word frequency effects, reliable base-word frequency effects were observed for pseudohomophones: Those based on high-frequency words elicited faster and more accurate correct rejections. Associative priming had disparate effects on high- and low-frequency items. Whereas priming improved performance to high-frequency pseudohomophones, it impaired performance to low-frequency pseudohomophones. The results suggested a resonance process, wherein phonologic identity and semantic priming combine to undermine the veridical perception of infrequent items. We tested this hypothesis in another experiment by administering a surprise recognition memory test after lexical decision. When asked to identify words that were spelled correctly during lexical decision, the participants often misremembered pseudohomophones as correctly spelled items. Patterns of false memory, however, were jointly affected by base-word frequencies and their original responses during lexical decision. Taken together, the results are consistent with resonance accounts of word recognition, wherein bottom-up and top-down information sources coalesce into correct, and sometimes illusory, perception. The results are also consistent with a recent lexical decision model, REM-LD, that emphasizes memory retrieval and top-down matching processes in lexical decision.     

Concentrating on beauty: sexual selection and sociospatial memory

In three experiments, location memory for faces was examined using a computer version of the matching game Concentration. Findings suggested that physical attractiveness led to more efficient matching for female faces but not for male faces. Study 3 revealed this interaction despite allowing participants to initially see, attend to, and match the attractive male faces in the first few turns. Analysis of matching errors suggested that, compared to other targets, attractive women were less confusable with one another. Results are discussed in terms of the different functions that attractiveness serves for men and women.     

Exploring the association between the 2-repeat allele of the MAOA gene promoter polymorphism and psychopathic personality traits,arrests, incarceration,and lifetime antisocial behavior

A line of research has revealed that a polymorphism in the promoter region of the MAOA gene is related to antisocial phenotypes. Most of these studies examine the effects of low MAOA activity alleles (2-repeat and 3-repeat alleles) against the effects of high MAOA activity alleles (3.5-repeat, 4-repeat, and sometimes 5-repeat alleles), with research indicating that the low MAOA activity alleles confer an increased risk to antisocial phenotypes. The current study examined whether the 2-repeat allele, which has been shown to be functionally different from the 3-repeat allele, was associated with a range of antisocial phenotypes in a sample of males drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Analyses revealed that African-American males who carried the 2-repeat allele were, in comparison with other African-American male genotypes, significantly more likely to be arrested and incarcerated. Additional analyses revealed that African-American male carriers of the 2-repeat allele scored significantly higher on an antisocial phenotype index and on measures assessing involvement in violent behaviors over the life course. There was not any association between the 2-repeat allele and a continuously measured psychopathic personality traits scale. The effects of the 2-repeat allele could not be examined in Caucasian males because only 0.1% carried it.     

Kelly and the concept of developmental stages

Abstract

Although personal construct theory (PCT; Kelly, 1955) shares with developmental-stage theories an emphasis on process and qualitative change, the concept of developmental stages is incompatible with PCT in several ways. Building on biological analogies of maturation and evolution, developmental-stage theories posit an inevitability of content or structure in the occurrence of stages and a directionality of the developmental process toward extraspective (as opposed to introspective) definitions of psychological maturity. PCT, in contrast, lacks these features of inevitability and directionality. Kelly intended an introspective view of development based on personal choice, conceived in psychological rather than biological terms. Implications of the Choice, Fragmentation, Commonality, Dichotomy, Modulation, and Experience Corollaries for the concept of stages are discussed. Kelly's PCT is compared with the theories of Piaget, Kegan, and Erikson to illustrate these points.     

Children's Repetition Choices in an Intellectual Achievement Situation following Success and Failure

(Ausubel, David P. Theory and Problems of Adolescent Development. New York: Grune &; Stratton, 1954. Pp. 580.) Reviewed By W. Drayton Lewis.     

Reversing presentation order of semantically related words reverses memory

In the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm, words (e.g., sour, candy, sugar,…) related to one critical word (e.g., sweet) typically are encoded in descending order of their association with the critical word. When recognition is tested, memory is greater for related words than for critical words, as predicted by extant memory models. Surprisingly, however, memory is not greater for unrelated words (presented in other encoding lists) than for related words, in contrast with predictions from these same models. In two experiments, we tested whether intralist presentation order is responsible for the unexplained results. Word lists were studied in standard or reversed order (ascending order of association to critical words). Subsequent recognition for related words was high when lists were presented in the standard order but very low when lists were presented in reverse. Results indicate that presentation order affects related-word false alarms, providing important new constraints for memory models.     

Caution or Warning? A Validity Study of the MAYSI‐2 with Juvenile Offenders

Given the high prevalence of mental health and substance use disorders in the juvenile justice system and the emphasis on efficient screening and referrals, the current study sought to further validate the use of the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument version 2 (MAYSI‐2). Using data from institutionalized delinquents (N = 836) committed to the California Youth Authority, finite mixture modeling was employed to identify distinct latent classes based on MAYSI‐2 scale scores. Identified classes were then compared across a range of covariates, including prior offenses, official records of misconduct, and multiple measures of mental health and psychological well‐being. Findings revealed a three‐class, gradient‐based structure: low distress (n = 380), moderate distress (n = 327), and high distress (n = 129). Overall, the MAYSI‐2 identified juvenile offenders with mental health and substance use issues, but it did not differentiate youths with respect to offending patterns. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Writing on the (Facebook) Wall: The Use of Social Networking Sites in Hiring Decisions

The popular media has reported an increase in the use of social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook by hiring managers and human resource professionals attempting to find more detailed information about job applicants. Within the peer-reviewed literature, cursory empirical evidence exists indicating that others’ judgments of characteristics or attributes of an individual based on information obtained from SNSs may be accurate. Although this predictor method provides a potentially promising source of applicant information on predictor constructs of interest, it is also fraught with potential limitations and legal challenges. The level of publicly available data obtainable by employers is highly unstandardized across applicants, as some applicants will choose not to use SNSs at all while those choosing to use SNSs customize the degree to which information they share is made public to those outside of their network. It is also unclear how decision makers are currently utilizing the available information. Potential discrimination may result through employer’s access to publicly available pictures, videos, biographical information, or other shared information that often allows easy identification of applicant membership to a protected class. For the practice to progress in a positive direction, evidence for the validity and job-relevance of information obtained from SNSs needs to be established. Organizational researchers and practitioners also need to promote awareness and attempt to create safeguards against the potential negative outcomes related to misuse of SNSs by employers.     

Assessing the external correlates of alternative factor models of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-short form across three samples

This study investigated various theoretically relevant correlates of a short form of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI; Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996) using archival data from large undergraduate, foster care, and juvenile offender samples. External correlates of the 2 primary scales (PPI-I and PPI-II) and the Coldheartedness subscale were for the most part consistent with prior findings. Analyses for an alternate factor model in which the Fearlessness subscale loaded onto PPI-II (rather than PPI-I) resulted in relatively few substantial changes to the pattern of correlations with criterion measures, but a third factor that included the Coldheartedness and Carefree Nonplanfulness subscales functioned differently than Coldheartedness alone in these data.