Psychodynamic focal group treatment for psychosomatic inpatients--with an emphasis on work-related conflicts

Conflicts arising from the work setting have remained a neglected issue in psychotherapy. To address this, the present study investigated the effectiveness of a manualized focal group treatment for psychotherapeutic inpatients suffering from vocational strains and conflicts and identified predictors of outcome. Cohorts of patients were assigned either to a treatment (N=144) or control condition (N=135). The group therapy intervention was found to be highly accepted by participants who were also more optimistic about returning to work and more favorable in their evaluations of treatment than patients in the treatment-as-usual condition. Group climate was found to be a predictor of favorable outcome. The findings suggest that a group therapy intervention with a strong emphasis on motivations and attitudes about work may be particularly suitable to deal with vocational conflicts and strains.     

Motivated information processing, strategic choice, and the quality of negotiated agreement

The authors tested a motivated information-processing model of negotiation: To reach high joint outcomes, negotiators need a deep understanding of the task, which requires them to exchange information and to process new information systematically. All this depends on social motivation, epistemic motivation (EM), and their interaction. Indeed, when EM (manipulated by holding negotiators process accountability or not) was high rather than low and prosocial rather than proself, negotiators recall more cooperative than competitive tactics (Experiment 1), had more trust, and reached higher joint outcomes (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 showed that under high EM, negotiators who received cooperative, rather than competitive, tactics reached higher joint outcomes because they engaged in more problem solving. Under low EM, negotiators made more concessions and reached low joint outcomes. Implications for negotiation theory and for future work in this area are discussed.     

A novel view of between-categories contrast and within-category assimilation

This research manipulated the portion of a category distribution that is misclassified by the optimal classifier and investigated the impact on assessments of category attributes. Three separate studies manipulated the direction of overlap, the extent of overlap, and the relative base rate of the comparison category. All 3 studies produced large between-categories contrast and within-category assimilation. As expected, these effects were enhanced in conditions in which the optimal classifier misclassified a larger portion of the target category. Study 4 demonstrated that intercategory overlap in the absence of overt classification does not produce contrast and assimilation. Ironically, optimizing categorization accuracy can produce highly inaccurate beliefs about category attributes.     

Unpriming: the deactivation of thoughts through expression

Unpriming is a decrease in the influence of primed knowledge following a behavior expressing that knowledge. The authors investigated strategies for unpriming the knowledge of an answer that is activated when people are asked to consider a simple question. Experiment 1 found that prior correct answering eliminated the bias people normally show toward correct responding when asked to answer yes-no questions randomly. Experiment 2 revealed that prior answering intended to be random did not unprime knowledge on subsequent attempts to answer randomly. Experiment 3 found that exposure to the correct answer did not influence the knowledge bias but that exposure to the incorrect answer increased bias. Experiment 4 revealed that merely expressing the answer for oneself was sufficient to unprime knowledge. Experiment 5 found that each item of activated knowledge needs to be unprimed specifically, in that correctly answering 1 question does not reduce the knowledge bias in randomly answering another.     

Evidence for strong dissociation between emotion and facial displays: the case of surprise

Eight experiments examined facial expressions of surprise in adults. Surprise was induced by disconfirming a previously established schema or expectancy. Self-reports and behavioral measures indicated the presence of surprise in most participants, but surprise expressions were observed only in 4%-25%, and most displays consisted of eyebrow raising only; the full, 3-component display was never seen. Experimental variations of surprise intensity, sociality, and duration/complexity of the surprising event did not change these results. Electromyographic measurement failed to detect notably more brow raisings and, in one study, revealed a decrease of frontalis muscle activity in the majority of the participants. Nonetheless, most participants believed that they had shown a strong surprise expression.     

Associative and propositional processes in evaluation: an integrative review of implicit and explicit attitude change

A central theme in recent research on attitudes is the distinction between deliberate, "explicit" attitudes and automatic, "implicit" attitudes. The present article provides an integrative review of the available evidence on implicit and explicit attitude change that is guided by a distinction between associative and propositional processes. Whereas associative processes are characterized by mere activation independent of subjective truth or falsity, propositional reasoning is concerned with the validation of evaluations and beliefs. The proposed associative-propositional evaluation (APE) model makes specific assumptions about the mutual interplay of the 2 processes, implying several mechanisms that lead to symmetric or asymmetric changes in implicit and explicit attitudes. The model integrates a broad range of empirical evidence and implies several new predictions for implicit and explicit attitude change.     

Prefrontal cortex dysfunction and income: a study in neuroeconomics

In four samples of adults, individual income was negatively associated with a measure of prefrontal cortex dysfunction even after implementing controls for age, sex, and education. The small association was stronger for men than for women. These results provide support for a neuroeconomic approach to the study of micro-economic variables.     

Digital access and national character

A digital access index was associated with measures of national character (such as extraversion and individualism) for 18 industrialized nations, but statistical controls for gross domestic product per capita eliminated these associations.