Pilot Study of Psychopathology Among Roman Catholic Secular Clergy

This pilot study gathered information regarding overall levels of psychopathology in a nationally selected, random sample of U.S. Roman Catholic secular (i.e., diocesan) priests using the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R; Derogatis, 2004). The study yielded a response rate of 45%. One-half of the participants reported marked psychological problems, with interpersonal sensitivity, anxiety, and depression most strongly correlated with the instrument’s overall index of psychopathology. Four dimensional scales were elevated (i.e., obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, psychoticism), as were two indices (i.e., GSI, PST). Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Flattery may get you somewhere: The strategic implications of providing positive vs. negative feedback about ability vs. ethicality in negotiation

Two studies were conducted to examine the strategic implications of providing positive vs. negative feedback about ability vs. ethicality to one’s negotiating partner. Results indicate that negotiators were least competitive and achieved the worst individual performance when they received negative-ability feedback, were most honest when they received negative-ethicality feedback, and were most cooperative when they received positive-ethicality feedback. Causal modeling revealed that the effects of feedback on recipients’ cooperativeness and individual performance were mediated by recipients’ self-perceptions.     

A review of the worst performance rule: Evidence, theory, and alternative hypotheses

This paper reviews evidence, theory, and alternative hypotheses for the worst performance rule (WPR), which states that on multitrial cognitive tasks, worst performance trials predict general intelligence (g) better than best performance trials. A review of the relevant evidence indicates that the WPR has been found for a variety of participants, tasks, and measures. A review of relevant theories reveals that the WPR appears to be related to cognitive factors (e.g., lapses in working memory) as well as biological factors (e.g., individual differences in neural oscillations). A review of alternative hypotheses shows that the WPR cannot be attributed to statistical or data artifacts such as outliers, unreliable measurement, or variance compression. The preponderance of evidence supports the hypothesis that the WPR holds for cognitive tasks high in g saturation but not for cognitive tasks low in g saturation. The paper ends with a call for research on the causes of the WPR and for research on the correlates of best performance.     

Emotional intelligence: A meta-analytic investigation of predictive validity and nomological net

This study used meta-analytic techniques to examine the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and performance outcomes. A total of 69 independent studies were located that reported correlations between EI and performance or other variables such as general mental ability (GMA) and the Big Five factors of personality. Results indicated that, across criteria, EI had an operational validity of .23 (k=59, N=9522). Various moderating influences such as the EI measure used, dimensions of EI, scoring method and criterion were evaluated. EI correlated .22 with general mental ability (k=19, N=4158) and .23 (Agreeableness and Openness to Experience; k=14, N=3306) to .34 (Extraversion; k=19, N=3718) with the Big Five factors of personality. Results of various subgroup analyses are presented and implications and future directions are provided.     

Activating a mental simulation mind-set through generation of alternatives: Implications for debiasing in related and unrelated domains

Encouraging people to consider multiple alternatives appears to be a useful debiasing technique for reducing many biases (explanation, hindsight, and overconfidence), if the generation of alternatives is experienced as easy. The present research tests whether these alternative generation procedures induce a mental simulation mind-set (cf. Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000), such that debiasing in one domain transfers to debias judgments in unrelated domains. The results indeed demonstrated that easy alternative generation tasks not only debiased judgments in the same domain but also generalized to debias judgments in unrelated domains, provided that participants were low in the need for structure. The alternative generation tasks (even when they were easy to perform) showed no evidence of activating a mental simulation mind-set in individuals high in need for structure, as these individuals displayed no transfer effects. Implications of the results for understanding the role of the need for structure, ease of generation, and mental simulation mind-set activation for debiasing are discussed.     

Mental architectures with selectively influenced but stochastically interdependent components

The way external factors influence distribution functions for the overall time required to perform a mental task (such as responding to a stimulus, or solving a problem) may be informative as to the underlying mental architecture, the hypothetical network of interconnected processes some of which are selectively influenced by some of the external factors. Under the assumption that all processes contributing to the overall performance time are stochastically independent, several basic results have been previously established. These results relate patterns of response time distribution functions produced by manipulating external factors to such questions as whether the hypothetical constituent processes in the mental architecture enter AND gates or OR gates, and whether pairs of processes are sequential or concurrent. The present study shows that all these results are also valid for stochastically interdependent component times, provided the selective dependence of these components upon external factors is understood within the framework of a recently proposed theory of selective influence. According to this theory each component is representable as a function of three arguments: the factor set selectively influencing it, a component-specific source of randomness, and a source of randomness shared by all the components.     

Self-esteem, dispositional optimism, and health: Evidence from cross-lagged data on employees

The aims of this one-year follow-up study among Finnish employees (n=426) were twofold: first, to investigate the relationship between self-esteem and optimism and, second, to examine the prospective relationships between these two personality constructs, mental distress and physical symptoms. The results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) showed that the latent variables of optimism and self-esteem were highly interrelated (Time 1, r=.90, Time 2, r=.87), forming the core construct of personal resilience, which turned out to be stable (stability coefficient .86) over the one-year period. The results of Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) indicated that high personal resilience measured at Time 1 reduced mental distress at Time 2. Furthermore, a high level of physical symptoms at Time 1 seemed to predict a high level of mental distress at Time 2.     

The concurrent validity and test–retest reliability of a visuospatial working memory task

To determine whether the visuospatial n-back working memory task is a reliable and valid measure of cognitive processes believed to underlie intelligence, this study compared the reaction times and accuracy of performance of 70 participants, with performance on the Multidimensional Aptitude Battery (MAB). Testing was conducted over two sessions separated by 1 week. Participants completed the MAB during the second test session. Moderate test–retest reliability for percentage accuracy scores was found across the four levels of the n-back task, whilst reaction times were highly reliable. Furthermore, participants' performance on the MAB was negatively correlated with accuracy of performance at the easier levels of the n-back task and positively correlated with accuracy of performance at the harder task levels. These findings confirm previous research examining the cognitive basis of intelligence, and suggest that intelligence is the product of faster speed of information processing, as well as superior working memory capacity.     

Fantasy proneness, mental imagery and reality monitoring

Individual differences in fantasy proneness and vividness of mental imagery have been suggested to be related to source memory confusions. To test this hypothesis, two groups scoring either high or low on a measure of fantasy proneness (selected from a group of 231 subjects) were compared on measures of self report vividness of mental imagery, objective imagery ability and reality monitoring performance. The two groups differed significantly on ratings of imagery vividness (p<0.01), but not on the imagery performance tasks, nor on reality monitoring performance. Our results indicate that, although fantasy proneness is associated with experiences of vivid mental imagery, it does not necessarily lead to reality monitoring errors.