Evaluation of Two New Scales Assessing Driving Anger: The Driving Anger Expression Inventory and the Driver's Angry Thoughts Questionnaire

This study assessed the validity of the Driving Anger Expression Inventory (DAX) and Driver's Angry Thoughts Questionnaire (DATQ). Scales within the DAX and DATQ appeared to assess separate, correlated constructs. Aggressive forms of thinking and anger expression correlated positively with each other, trait driving anger, aggressive and risky behavior, some crash-related conditions, general trait anger, and general forms of anger expression. Positive, constructive forms of thinking and anger expression correlated positively with each other, but minimally or negatively with other variables. Specific aggressive forms of thinking and anger expression formed stronger links with each other than other forms of expression, supporting the discriminant validity of the DATQ and DAX. Hierarchical regressions with DATQ and DAX scales entered after other variables showed that they added explained variance above and beyond other measures, supporting the discriminant and incremental validity of these scales. It was concluded that the DAX and DATQ have utility for researchers and clinicians interested in angry drivers.     

Irrational Beliefs and the Experience and Expression of Anger

The present study assessed rational-emotive theories of anger by examining the interrelationships of irrational beliefs and the experience and expression of anger. An audiotaped anger-provoking scenario was used to determine whether irrational beliefs predicted state anger and hostile thoughts following provocation. After completing measures of irrational beliefs, trait anger, and anger expression and control, 161 college students were exposed to the provoking stimulus, which was followed by measures of state anger and hostile thoughts. Findings showed both low frustration tolerance and awfulizing were related to trait anger, anger suppression, and outward anger expression. Only low frustration tolerance was related to state anger following provocation. However, awfulizing was associated with all hostile thoughts, and both self-directed shoulds and self-worth were associated with derogatory thoughts about others. Only awfulizing had incremental validity over trait anger, and then, only in the prediction of derogatory thoughts.     

Will the Real Moral Judgment Please Stand Up?

The recent, influential Social Intuitionist Model of moral judgment (Haidt, Psychological Review 108, 814–834, 2001) proposes a primary role for fast, automatic and affectively charged moral intuitions in the formation of moral judgments. Haidt’s research challenges our normative conception of ourselves as agents capable of grasping and responding to reasons. We argue that there can be no ‘real’ moral judgments in the absence of a capacity for reflective shaping and endorsement of moral judgments. However, we suggest that the empirical literature indicates a complex interplay between automatic and deliberative mental processes in moral judgment formation, with the latter constraining the expression and influence of moral intuitions. We therefore conclude that the psychological literature supports a normative conception of agency.

做一个大写的人:我们在阅读中与《孟子》相逢

如果我们愿意在阅读中与《孟子》相逢,我们就应该立志去做一个大写的人。从道德理想主义层面看,《孟子》要求我们“证性善”,确立人之为人的性善之本;期盼我们“恶乡愿”,拒斥八面玲珑的伪善之方。从文化守成主义层面看,《孟子》呼唤我们“友古人”,经由对优秀文化传统的回想而求证本根之源;促使我们“辟邪说”,通过对异端邪说的批驳而澄清智慧之旅。有理想有文化的人,才会是一个大写的人。无论对于针砭欲望横流的当下世态,还是对于建构人皆尧舜的未来愿景,这种人格的理论意义和现实作用都是不可低估的。     

Intrusive thoughts mediate the association between neuroticism and cognitive function

Although research has established a negative association between trait neuroticism and cognition, little is known about the mechanisms that underlie this relationship. We examined the tendency to experience intrusive thoughts and negative affect as potential mediators of the relationship between neuroticism and cognitive performance. We hypothesized that the tendency to experience intrusive thoughts reflects ineffective attentional control and would account for the relationship between neuroticism and cognitive performance over and above the mediating effect of negative affect. Three hundred seventeen adults (M_age = 49.43) completed a series of attention-demanding cognitive tasks as well as self-report measures of intrusive thoughts, negative affect, and neuroticism. Intrusive thoughts mediated the association between trait neuroticism and cognitive performance beyond negative affect. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the tendency to experience intrusive thoughts is a mechanism through which trait neuroticism influences cognitive performance.     

Event-related potentials as brain correlates of item specific proportion congruent effects

The item-specific proportion congruency (ISPC) effect is consistent with the idea that control processes can be applied rapidly in accord with previously experienced conflict for a particular category. An alternative account of this effect is that it reflects item-specific learning processes unrelated to control at the level of the category. The accounts predict the same behaviour but differ in terms of electrophysiological predictions. Two experiments examined the ISPC effect with a particular focus on neural correlates that might reveal whether, and how early in processing, high and low proportion congruent items are treated as distinct classes of stimuli. For both tasks, the proportion congruency category was distinguished prior to the congruence of the specific stimulus, as early as 100 ms post-stimulus onset for the global/local identification task (Experiment 1) and 150 ms for the Stroop task (Experiment 2). The results support an on-line control account of ISPC effects.     

Can Perfectionism Affect Career Development? Exploring Career Thoughts and Self‐Efficacy

This study identified relationships among career‐specific barriers (i.e., perfectionism, negative career thoughts, career decision‐making self‐efficacy) in a sample of 300 college students. The authors found relationships among the constructs of interest, prediction of variance in career decision‐making self‐efficacy, and differences among groups of perfectionists on endorsements of negative career thoughts and career decision‐making self‐efficacy. The findings suggest that interventions addressing maladaptive perfectionism and dysfunctional career thinking may enhance clients’ confidence in decision making.     

Resolving conflicting views: Gaze and arrow cues do not trigger rapid reflexive shifts of attention

It has become widely accepted that the direction of another individual's eye gaze induces rapid, automatic, attentional orienting, due to it being such a vital cue as to where in our environment we should attend. This automatic orienting has also been associated with the directional-arrow cues used in studies of spatial attention. Here, we present evidence that the response-time cueing effects reported for spatially nonpredictive gaze and arrow cues are not the result of rapid, automatic shifts of attention. For both cue types, response-time effects were observed only for long-duration cue and target stimuli that overlapped temporally, were largest when the cues were presented simultaneously with the response-relevant target, and were driven by a slowing of responses for invalidly cued targets rather than speeding for validly cued ones. These results argue against automatic attention-orienting accounts and support a novel spatial-incongruency explanation for a whole class of rapid behavioural cueing effects.     

When the method makes a difference: Antagonistic effects on “automatic evaluations” as a function of task characteristics of the measure

Researchers often employ implicit measures as dependent variables to investigate processes of attitude formation and change. In such studies, experimentally induced differences are typically interpreted as reflecting change in automatic evaluations. We argue that experimentally induced effects on implicit measures may not always reflect genuine changes in evaluative responses, but can be driven by the mechanisms underlying the measurement procedure. In line with this assumption, the present research shows that these mechanisms can produce opposite effects of the same experimental manipulation for otherwise equivalent implicit measures. These results indicate that merely observing experimental effects on implicit measures does not allow direct inferences regarding changes in automatic evaluations. Instead, psychological interpretations of such effects hinge upon the mechanics of how a given measurement procedure responds to variations in the context. Implications for research using implicit measures are discussed.     

Multinomial process tree models of control and automaticity in weapon misidentification

When primed with a Black face, people are more likely to misidentify a non-weapon as a weapon. Weapon misidentification may hinge on the distinction between controlled and automatic processes. Various relationships between controlled and automatic processes are cast in the form of five multinomial process models, which are illustrated and compared. It is shown that variants of the traditional Process Dissociation model and the Stroop model are nested within the Quad-Model. Across four different studies, various complexity corrected model performance measures converged to support the Process Dissociation account. This account suggests that the automatic association between race and weapons is subordinate to controlled processing. More generally, these results suggest that the weapon-bias might be alleviated without interventions that directly target stereotypes.