Studying the Motivated Agent Through Time: Personal Goal Development During the Adult Life Span

This research examined the rank‐order and mean‐level consistency of personal goals at two periods in the adult life span. Personal goal continuity was considered among a group of young adults (N = 145) who reported their goals three times over a 3‐year period and among a group of midlife adults (N = 163) who specified their goals annually over a 4‐year period. Goals were coded for a series of motive‐based (viz., achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power) and domain‐based (viz., finance, generativity, health, travel) categories. In both samples, we noted a moderate degree of rank‐order consistency across assessment periods. In addition, the majority of goal categories exhibited a high degree of mean‐level consistency. The results of this research suggest that (a) the content of goals exhibits a modest degree of rank‐order consistency and a substantial degree of mean‐level consistency over time, and (b) considering personality continuity and development as manifest via goals represents a viable strategy for personality psychologists.     

In‐group relevance facilitates learning across existing and new associations

Studies have shown that attention prioritizes stimuli associated with the in‐group. However, the extent to which this so‐called in‐group favoritism is driven by relevance is not clear. Here, we investigated this issue in a group of university rowers using a novel perceptual matching task based on the team label–color associations. Across three experiments, participants showed enhanced performance for the in‐group stimulus regardless of its familiarity level. These findings confirmed the role of relevance in in‐group favoritism. In a further control study, the advantage for certain stimuli was not found in an independent sample of participants who were not identified with the teams but were familiar with the label–color associations, indicating that in‐group relevance was necessary for the in‐group favoritism. Together, these findings suggest that in‐group relevance facilitates learning across existing and new associations. The consequences of these findings for understanding in‐group effects on perceptual processing are discussed.     

Religion,Religiosity, and Happiness

The effect of religion on happiness in the United States is examined. Particular attention is given to the direct effect of religion on attending religious services and the indirect effect on happiness. The key results include Catholic, Jewish, and no religion having negative effects on happiness relative to Protestants. Data from the National Opinion Research Center’s “General Social Survey” are used.     

Comparing Self-Regulation-Associated Event Related Potentials in Preschool Children with and without High Levels of Disruptive Behavior

Deficient self-regulation plays a key role in the etiology of early onset disruptive behavior disorders and signals risk for chronic psychopathology. However, to date, there has been no research comparing preschool children with and without high levels of disruptive behavior using Event Related Potentials (ERPs) associated with specific self-regulation sub-processes. We examined 15 preschool children with high levels of disruptive behavior (35 % female) and 20 peers with low disruptive behavior (50 % female) who completed a Go/No-go task that provided emotionally valenced feedback. We tested whether 4 ERP components: the Error Related Negativity, the Error Positivity, the Feedback Related Negativity, and the No-go N2, differed in preschool children with and without high levels of disruptive behavior. Preschoolers with high levels of disruptive behavior showed less differentiation between the Error Positivity and corresponding waveforms following correct responses at posterior sites. Preschoolers with high and low disruptive behavior also showed differences in Go/No-go N2 waveform amplitudes across electrodes. These findings suggest that preschool children with high levels of disruptive behavior may show abnormal brain activity during certain self-regulation sub-processes, informing potential advances in conceptualizing and treating early disruptive behavior.     

“We Fight against Wrong Doers”: Law Enforcement Rangers’ Roles,Responsibilities, and Patrol Operations in Uganda

Research examining wildlife law enforcement has steadily grown within recent years. Few studies, however, are based outside of the United States. Furthermore, studies that have examined wildlife law enforcement in other settings, including African countries, have primarily focused on quantifying the effectiveness of patrol activities, but little is known about actual patrol activities. Based on interviews and participant observation, this research attempts to contribute to both the criminal justice and conservation science literature by providing an in-depth qualitative investigation of law enforcement rangers’ roles, responsibilities, and patrol operations in a protected area in Uganda.     

Perceptions of Perfection: The Influence of Social Media on Interpersonal Evaluations

Through social network sites such as Facebook, people gain information about acquaintances that they would not gain from everyday life. This information typically highlights the most positive aspects of people’s personalities and lives. The goal of this investigation was to determine whether looking at another user’s Facebook profile influences perceptions of that individual’s socially desirable characteristics (e.g., intelligence, attractiveness). One group of participants viewed an acquaintance’s Facebook profile before providing evaluations, and the other evaluated the person without viewing Facebook. Results revealed that participants who viewed another person’s Facebook profile evaluated that person more favorably than those who completed a control task (Study 1) or wrote about the person from memory (Study 2). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Pseudocontingencies in Consumer Choice: Preference for Prevalent Product Categories Decreases with Decreasing Set Quality

Building on theorizing about contingency inferences, the present research deals with the impact of product category prevalence on consumer choice. We argue that a category's prevalence in the choice set can signal high quality, but the validity depends on the aggregate quality of the choice set. With ever more low‐quality products in the set, high prevalence should increasingly signal poor rather than high quality. When choosing from a poor‐quality set, choices should thus favor products from the rare category. In four experiments, we show that poor‐quality sets increase the proportion of consumers choosing products from a rare category. Furthermore, we show that these effects increase when base rates of a category and quality become more extreme. Finally, Experiment 4 shows that contingency inferences partly mediate the effect of set quality on choice. The results extend previous research on contingency inferences, indicating the adaptive use of base‐rate information in consumer decision making. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Androgyny in Liking and in Being Liked Are Antecedent to Well-Being in Pre-Adolescent Boys and Girls

The present study is a two-wave longitudinal study of the concurrent and prospective associations between patterns of same- and other-gender liking and well-being in a sample of 403 fifth and sixth-grade girls and boys from Montréal Québec, Canada that was used to examine Sandra Bem’s perspective that androgyny is related to well-being. In our study androgyny was operationally defined as (a) the combination of liking for same- and other-gender peers and (b) the combination of being liked by same- and other-gender peers. Well-being was indexed with a measure of the self-concept. Findings drawn from analyses conducted with structural equation modeling showed that androgynous liking was an antecedent and a consequence of well-being. Specifically (a) Time 1 (T1) well-being was a predictor of how much girls and boys liked same-gender and other-gender peers at Time 2 (T2) whereas T2 well-being was predicted by how much girls and boys liked same- and other-gender peers at T1 and (b) T2 well-being was predicted by how much girls and boys were liked by same-gender and other-gender peers. These findings are discussed according to the dynamics of experiences with peers from one’s own gender and the other-gender.