The anxiety buffering function of close relationships: mortality salience effects on the readiness to compromise mate selection standards

This research examines the utility of a terror management approach to understanding the motivations and emotional consequences of compromise in mate selection. One hundred and sixty‐eight undergraduates completed a self‐esteem scale and a scale tapping ideal mate characteristics, and were then assigned either to a mortality salience, physical pain salience, or neutral condition. Half of the participants rated their readiness to compromise ideal mate standards and the remaining half completed a neutral scale. Then, participants completed a scale tapping their emotional state. Mortality salience led participants to significantly compromise their mate requirements. This effect seemed to be most pronounced among high self‐esteem participants who also experienced the greatest amount of guilt when compromising under mortality salient conditions. Low self‐esteem participants who compromised under mortality salient conditions reacted with higher levels of shame. The results are discussed in terms of the anxiety buffering functions of close relationships. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Axiomatizations of Hyperbolic Geometry: A Comparison Based on Language and Quantifier Type Complexity

Hyperbolic geometry can be axiomatized using the notions of order andcongruence (as in Euclidean geometry) or using the notion of incidencealone (as in projective geometry). Although the incidence-based axiomatizationmay be considered simpler because it uses the single binary point-linerelation of incidence as a primitive notion, we show that it issyntactically more complex. The incidence-based formulation requires some axioms of the quantifier-type \forall\exists\forall, while the axiom system based on congruence and order can beformulated using only \forall\exists-axioms.     

Why Young Men Drive Dangerously: Implications for Injury Prevention

Why is risk consistently underestimated, and why do young men in particular take exceptionally high risks and think of themselves as invulnerable? Two explanatory paths are proposed. The first is that risk taking in young males has been shaped by evolutionary forces to provide a fitness value. The second pathway is through myth and the other narrative forms that affirm the ego's immortality and invulnerability. Because of its evolutionary base, risk taking is emotionally driven: Emotions are preverbal and irrational, which means that persuasive prevention cannot be more than weakly successful. Three prevention challenges emerge from this analysis: to determine what it is that young drivers fear, to attach affectively experienced fears to defined driving behaviors, and to devise injury-prevention programs that acknowledge that young males' risk taking is not "stupid," but driven by adaptive needs that are as significant to today's young adults as they were to our distant ancestors.     

Empathic accuracy and accommodative behavior among newly married couples

An established method for assessing empathic accuracy was used to examine the consequences of accurate understanding during the early years of marriage. Structural equation modeling analyses simultaneously examined within–individual and across–partner associations among variables (actor effects and partner effects). During the first year of marriage, actor effects and partner effects were observed for two presumed consequences of empathic accuracy—accommodative behavior and couple well–being. Actor effects, partner effects, or both were observed for three possible determinants of empathic accuracy—commitment level, partner perspective–taking, and psychological femininity. Levels of empathic accuracy reliably declined following the first year of marriage, as did the strength of the above–noted associations with empathic accuracy.     

How Do I Treat My Hungry Lion: A Model for Violence Management in Prison

This theoretical model for the management of violence relies on the notion that there are fundamentally only two kinds of prison violence—provoked and unprovoked—and that all violence is caused by the influence of some fear-causing agent which triggers the autonomic nervous system's Fight or Flight Response (FFR) which in turn causes the release of FFR chemicals to create and enable an action potential for violence in the actor. Provoked violence is an act of violence which occurs in response to an FFR instigated by some external, independent contemporaneous, real or imagined fear causing agent. Treating provoked violence must include suppressing the production of an excess of FFR stimulant chemicals, which at the same time employing psychodynamic therapy to modify the negative behavior learned from a lifetime of excessive responses to FFR chemical releases. Unprovoked violence is the result of an actor's addiction to FFR chemicals. This addiction leads the actor to experience an apperceptive compulsion to engage in thrill seeking as a method of exposing himself to fear causing agents that are calculated to cause the release of FFR chemicals. In order to treat unprovoked violence you must treat both the chemical addiction and the negative pattern of behavior which was learned to support the habit of self-triggering an FFR. Thus any successful treatment of violence must employ both energetic and psychodynamic models for development of fear management strategies.     

Metaphor and Persuasive Communication: A Multifunctional Approach

Metaphors are pervasive in both mass communication and interpersonal exchanges and can play an important role in persuasion. Metaphor serves multiple functions in persuasive communication, and the effect of metaphor on persuasion is potentially mediated by multiple psychological process mechanisms. Nevertheless, we propose that past and future research in this area can be organized or grouped into three simple categories. First, metaphorical statements can activate information that is directly applied to the communication topic and thereby influence attitudes toward the communication topic. Second, metaphorical language may influence impressions of the communication source and thereby impact attitudes toward the communication topic. Third, metaphors may affect attitudes toward the communication topic by influencing the direction or amount of elaboration that takes place when recipients process literal statements contained in the communication. A review of past research is organized into these three categories, and proposals for future research in each category are introduced. It is concluded that future research within each of these domains should focus on two related questions: under what conditions does metaphor elicit a given psychological process in the receiver (e.g., attribute mapping, valence transfer), and under what conditions will a given process result in an increase versus decrease in persuasion?     

Do conflict management styles affect group decision making? Evidence from a longitudinal field study

This study examined the relationship between group conflict management styles and effectiveness of group decision making in 11 ongoing, naturally occurring workgroups from 2 large U.S. organizations. The major postulate of the study was that groups develop norms regarding how they will manage conflicts that carry over to affect other activities, such as decision making, even when these activities do not involve open conflict. To determine the impact of conflict management style on decision effectiveness, a longitudinal design was used that identified conflict management styles in the initial portion of each team's series of meetings and then analyzed a group decision taken in a meeting near the end of that series. Group conflict management styles were determined using observational methods, and decision effectiveness was measured using multiple indices that tapped member, facilitator, and external observer viewpoints. Task complexity also was considered as a possible moderating variable. The findings suggest that groups that developed integrative conflict management styles made more effective decisions than groups that utilized confrontation and avoidance styles. Groups that never developed a stable style were also less effective than groups with integrative styles.