What is the Right Thing to Say? Agreement among Perceivers on the Supportiveness of Statements

Most social support theory implies that there are objectively supportive people and statements. Yet there is little agreement among perceivers that some people are more supportive than others. Nonetheless, there might be better agreement regarding supportive statements. In three studies, children, college students, and members of a clinical training program rated the supportiveness of specific statements presented by text or video. Agreement among perceivers accounted for only 11% of the variance (range = 8%–12%). Perceivers disagreed because of their traitlike perceptual biases, as well as perceivers’ idiosyncratic tastes. Implications for social support theory were discussed.     

Finding everland: Flight fantasies and the desire to transcend mortality

Fantasies and dreams of flight are ubiquitous across cultures and throughout history and often linked to immortality. A perspective derived from terror management theory holds that flight fantasies are appealing because they suggest transcendence of the limitations of creatureliness and mortality. Five studies established the link between mortality concerns and flight fantasy. In Study 1, participants showed greater desire to fly after contemplating death compared to a control topic. In Study 2, participants showed greater desire to fly, but not to engage in other supernatural acts, after contemplating death compared to a control topic. In Studies 3 and 4, participants who engaged in flight fantasy did not subsequently demonstrate defensive reactions to a death reminder observed in nonflight conditions. Study 5 showed that flight fantasy, but not other pleasurable or empowering fantasies, decreased death thought accessibility after mortality salience, and this effect was uniquely mediated by a feeling of freedom from bodily limits.     

Organ Procurement and Health Care Chaplaincy in Australia

As part of an Australian national project, quantitative data via a survey were retrospectively obtained from 327 Australian health care chaplains (staff and volunteer chaplains) to initially identify chaplaincy participation in various bioethical issues—including organ procurement. Over a third of surveyed staff chaplains (38%) and almost a fifth of volunteer chaplains (19.2%) indicted that they had, in some way, been involved in organ procurement issues with patients and/or their families. Nearly one-fifth of staff chaplains (19%) and 12% of volunteer chaplains had also assisted clinical staff concerning various organ procurement issues. One hundred of the surveyed chaplains volunteered to an interview. Qualitative data were subsequently coded from 42 of the chaplains who had been involved in organ procurement requests. These data were thematically coded using the World Health Organization ‘Pastoral Intervention Codings’ (WHO-PICs). The qualitative data revealed that through a variety of pastoral interventions a number of chaplains (the majority being staff chaplains) were engaged in the critical and sensitive issues of organ procurement. It is argued that while such involvement can help to ensure a holistic and ethically appropriate practice, it is suggested that chaplains could be better utilized not only in the organ procurement process but also for the training of other chaplains and clinicians.     

Auditory and visual memory in musicians and nonmusicians

Numerous studies have shown that musicians outperform nonmusicians on a variety of tasks. Here we provide the first evidence that musicians have superior auditory recognition memory for both musical and nonmusical stimuli, compared to nonmusicians. However, this advantage did not generalize to the visual domain. Previously, we showed that auditory recognition memory is inferior to visual recognition memory. Would this be true even for trained musicians? We compared auditory and visual memory in musicians and nonmusicians using familiar music, spoken English, and visual objects. For both groups, memory for the auditory stimuli was inferior to memory for the visual objects. Thus, although considerable musical training is associated with better musical and nonmusical auditory memory, it does not increase the ability to remember sounds to the levels found with visual stimuli. This suggests a fundamental capacity difference between auditory and visual recognition memory, with a persistent advantage for the visual domain.     

Prospective and retrospective effects in human motor control: planning grasps for object rotation and translation

People pick up objects in ways that reflect prospective as well as retrospective control. Prospective control is indicated by planning for end-state comfort such that people grasp a cylinder to be rotated or translated with a hand orientation or at a height that affords a comfortable final posture. Retrospective control is indicated when people reuse a remembered grasp rather than using a new grasp that would ensure end-state comfort. Here, we asked whether these manifestations of prospective and retrospective control co-occur. We did so by having healthy young-adult participants grasp a cylinder to rotate and translate it between a horizontal position and a vertical position at each of five heights. We found that participants planned for comfortable final hand orientations for first moves but relied on recall for subsequent hand orientations. The results suggest that motor planning is sensitive to computational as well as physical demands and that object rotation and translation are not dissociable features of motor control, at least as reflected in their contributions to grasp selection. The latter result is consistent with the hypothesis that movements constitute holistic body changes between successive goal postures.     

Growing up in the shadow of terrorism: youth in America after 9/11

Research conducted in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks (9/11) suggests that, except for those who directly witnessed or suffered loss from the attacks, for most children the emotional impact was relatively transitory. We review this literature as well as consider other ways in which the attacks may have played a role in the development of adolescents and young adults as they came of age in the shadow of 9/11 in the United States. Specifically, we discuss the potential impact of the collective trauma of 9/11 on children's coping and emotional regulation, their sociopolitical attitudes, and their general beliefs about the world. Developmental issues and the role of parents in shaping their children's responses to 9/11 are also addressed. Researchers interested in children's social, emotional, and psychological development have much to learn about children's reactions to events like 9/11 and factors that might mitigate the negative consequences of such events on children's development.     

A Step‐by‐Step Guide to Using Secondary Data for Psychological Research

The purpose of this paper is to serve as a primer for those who have never used, or even considered using, secondary data as a resource for psychological research. Secondary data (SD) can provide a unique methodological tool with which to examine psychological issues and can serve as a valuable contribution to a program of research. However, this important resource may often be overlooked because its use can sometimes appear daunting and time‐consuming. We seek to assist new users of SD by describing the process in a step‐by‐step manner. We address both benefits and challenges to anticipate when using SD, and discuss identifying and acquiring potential datasets, creating a personalized dataset, variable creation, statistical considerations, and the potential problem of conflicting findings when large datasets are used by multiple researchers. Our goal is to encourage researchers who are novices to the approach to consider using SD as an adjunct to their program of research.     

Personally-significant information affects performance only within the focus of attention: a direct manipulation of attention

It has been suggested that personally significant (PS) information interferes with performance only when presented within the focus of attention. However, this claim was never tested by a systematic manipulation of attention, but only by using correlative measures of its locus. We addressed this issue in two experiments, utilizing a cued visual search paradigm that allowed us to directly manipulate attention and to measure behavioral and physiological responses. One of the stimuli in the search display had a higher luminance value (i.e., was cued), and, orthogonally, one of the stimuli could be a PS or neutral name. When the cue did not predict target location, PS distractors mildly interfered with task performance, regardless of the cue's location. However, when the cue predicted target location, responses were facilitated for cued targets, indicating that attention was shifted to the cue. Importantly, PS distractors interfered with task performance and elicited enhanced orienting responses only when they were cued. This implies that PS information affects performance only when presented within but not outside the focus of attention.     

Values and Commitment: A Test of Schwartz's Human Values Theory Among Arab Teachers in Israel

This study examines the relationship between individual‐level values, using Schwartz's theory, and organizational and occupational commitment among Israeli Arabs. The sample includes 369 Arab teachers working in 14 schools in Arab communities in the north of Israel, with a response rate of 65%. The findings show a significant effect of 2 values—benevolence and conformity—on most organizational and occupational commitment dimensions, above and beyond the effect of demographic variables. The specific relationships found here are attributed to the characteristics of the sample. Implications of the findings for continuing research on this issue are emphasized.