Predicting the Presence and Search for Life Meaning: Test of an Attachment Theory-Driven Model

To date, little is known about how perceptions of life meaning are formed, although recent evidence suggests that “basic attitudes about the meaning of existence are commonly rooted in evolved biological factors and conjointly influenced through people’s experiences with life” (Steger et al. in J Posit Psychol 6:181–191, 2011a). In line with this view, we proposed that multidimensional aspects of adult attachment security and trait authenticity would independently predict perceptions regarding the presence and search for life meaning. Correlational findings largely supported hypothesized relationships among these variables. Regression findings further demonstrated that adult attachment orientations and trait authenticity uniquely predicted the presence of life meaning, and made more modest contributions to the search for meaning. In both predictions, experiences of self-alienation appeared to function as a mediator of the relationship between attachment security and meaning in life perceptions. Implications of our findings for advancing understanding of the formation of these perceptions are discussed.     

Does early-career underemployment impact future career success? A path dependency perspective

Whereas many studies have shown that underemployed people experience lower objective career success and lower subjective career success while being underemployed, little research has been done on the lasting effects of underemployment. This study addresses the role of time in career success research by examining the impact of level underemployment, content underemployment and contingent employment on subsequent objective (i.e. salary) and subjective career success (i.e. job satisfaction). Our 10-year longitudinal dataset of 335 Dutch university graduates permits us to examine the impact of preceding underemployment as well as the specific timing of the underemployment in one's career. The multilevel analysis results illustrate that level and contingent underemployment have a negative impact on future pay, whereas content underemployment negatively affects job satisfaction five years later. In addition, for level underemployment also the timing turns out to matter, suggesting that the signal that it sends to employers may differ depending on when in one's career it happened. Taken together, these findings point to the importance of using a path-dependency perspective when trying to understand people's career success.     

Preference for opening lines: Comparing ratings by men and women

Opening lines were conceptualized as a method for expanding one's marketplace for dating and marriage partners. In Study 1, university students and employees rated opening lines used by men for meeting women. Respondents (n=600) in one survey rated opening lines for general situations. Respondents (n=431) in a second survey rated opening lines for specific situations, including bars, restaurants, supermarkets, laundromats, and beaches. In Study 2, university students and employees (n=831) rated opening lines used by women for meeting men in general situations. Factor analyses identified three categories of opening lines: cute-flippant, innocuous, and direct. Overall, respondents agreed that cute-flippant opening lines were the least desirable and that innocuous and direct opening lines were the most desirable. Within this general consensus, there was a consistent tendency for women to dislike cute-flippant opening lines more than men and to prefer innocuous opening lines more than men. These differences were related to sex role socialization. Discussion focused on reasons people persist in using cute-flippant opening lines and on an attributional analysis of responses to opening lines.     

Report on UNIX|STAT release 5.1: Data analysis programs for UNIX and MSDOS

UNIX|STAT is a statistical package developed at the University of California, San Diego, and at the Wang Institute of Graduate Studies. Over 20 programs allow the manipulation and analysis of data and are complemented by a detailed tutorial, a manual entry for each program, and a quick reference sheet. The package was first introduced as 4 programs (Perlman, 1980). Since then, many programs have been added, and since 1980, the package has been distributed to over 400 UNIX sites. The portability of the package, written in C, was demonstrated when it was ported from UNIX to MSDOS at Cornell University on an IBM PC using the Lattice C compiler. The added capabilities of the package, combined with the availability on the popular MSDOS, used on IBM, AT&T, Wang, and other personal computers, make the programs even more useful for psychological research and instruction.     

The contributions of parental attachment bonds to college student development and adjustment: a meta-analytic review

We report findings from a meta-analysis of 156 studies conducted between 1987 and 2009 (N = 32,969) that examined the relationship between self-reported parental attachment and multiple adjustment outcomes and developmental advances during the college years. Overall, a small-to-medium relationship was found between indicators of parental attachment quality and favorable adjustment outcomes (r = .23). Effect sizes were of similar magnitude for mother and father attachment relationships, for male and female students, and across ethnicity and nationality of the sample. The attachment-adjustment relationship varied somewhat according to the developmental task being investigated in the study, showing the strongest association for the task of separation-individuation. Additionally, we found stronger attachment-adjustment links for students residing away from their parents when compared with students living at home during college.     

Proactive motor control reduces monetary risk taking in gambling

Less supervision by the executive system after disruption of the right prefrontal cortex leads to increased risk taking in gambling because superficially attractive-but risky-choices are not suppressed. Similarly, people might gamble more in multitask situations than in single-task situations because concurrent executive processes usually interfere with each other. In the study reported here, we used a novel monetary decision-making paradigm to investigate whether multitasking could reduce rather than increase risk taking in gambling. We found that performing a task that induced cautious motor responding reduced gambling in a multitask situation (Experiment 1). We then found that a short period of inhibitory training lessened risk taking in gambling at least 2 hr later (Experiments 2 and 3). Our findings indicate that proactive motor control strongly affects monetary risk taking in gambling. The link between control systems at different cognitive levels might be exploited to develop new methods for rehabilitation of addiction and impulse-control disorders.     

Another View of G. H. von Wright

This Note is a response to Thomas Wallgren’s “Georg Henrik von Wright: a Memorial Notice” (Philosophical Investigations, January, 2005). I contend that Wallgren gave an account of von Wright’s work that is sometimes erroneous and generally off‐key. I offer a more accurate account and defend it against those who view his work with suspicion: analytical philosophers, Wittgensteinians and intellectuals who hoped for a more engaged participation in public life. Wallgren also wrote that von Wright probably had no close friends, which I show to be absurd.     

Correlates of malingering

The author presented anonymous questionnaires to 172 patients and 160 medical students to assess the frequency and correlates of malingering in various groups in a medical center on a V.A. campus. The results indicate that sociopaths, drug abusers, and alcoholics are more prone to malinger than other individuals, supporting previous assertions that mental health professionals should have a higher index of suspicion for malingering in these diagnostic groups. Race and age were found to have small but significant correlations with malingering, but at present, this finding must be viewed cautiously. No association was found between somatization disorder and malingering.