Who’s bringing the donuts: The role of affective patterns in group decision making

Two studies examined how intragroup affective patterns influence groups’ pervasive tendency to ignore the unique expertise of their members. Using a hidden profile task, Study 1 provided evidence that groups with at least one member experiencing positive affect shared more unique information than groups composed entirely of members experiencing neutral affect. This occurred because group members experiencing positive affect were more likely to initiate unique information sharing, as well as information seeking. Study 2 built upon this base by showing that confidence mediates the relationship between positive affect and the initiation of unique information sharing. Additionally, Study 2 investigated the role of negative affect in group decision making and how negative and positive affect concurrently influence decision making when groups are composed of members experiencing each. The results are discussed in terms of the role affect plays in influencing group behavior and the resultant importance of investigating specific affective patterns.     

Choice‐making,Expectations, and Treatment Positivity: How and When Choosing Shapes Aversive Experiences

Every day we use products and treatments with unknown but expected effects, such as using medication to manage pain. In many cases, we have a choice over which products or treatments to use; however, in other cases, people choose for us or choices are unavailable. Does choosing (versus not choosing) have implications for how a product or treatment is experienced? The current experiments examined the role of choice‐making in facilitating so‐called expectation assimilation effects—or situations in which a person's experiences (e.g., discomfort and pain) are evaluated in a manner consistent with their expectations. In Experiment 1, participants were initially exposed to a baseline set of aversive stimuli (i.e., sounds). Next, some participants were given expectations for two “treatments” (i.e., changes in screen display) that could ostensibly reduce discomfort. Critically, participants were either given a choice or not about which of the two treatments they preferred. Participants in a control condition were not provided with treatment expectations. Results revealed that discomfort experiences assimilated to expectations only when participants were provided with choice. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and provided evidence against the idea that demand characteristics and choice‐making unrelated to the core task (i.e., choices without associated expectations) could account for the results. Further, Experiment 2 showed that choosing reduced discomfort because of increased positivity about the treatment. Results are discussed in the context of extant research on choice‐making and expectation effects. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

中文版一般自我效能量表的信度和效度检验

该研究以山东省610名高中生为被试,检验了中文版一般自我效能量表（GSES）的信度和效度.结果表明：（1）中文版GSES的有些项目,区分度不高;（2）中文版GSES具有较高的内部一致性信度与分半信度,但重测信度不高;（3）中文版GSES的单维度性没有得到证实;（4）中文版GSES不具有很好的预测效度.     

Relationship quality,divorce, and well-being: Findings from a three-year longitudinal study

Recent studies indicate that divorce sometimes is positive for subjective well-being, but we lack knowledge about the circumstances under which this is the case. Further, we lack knowledge about the possible different associations between divorce and life satisfaction (LS) vs. positive affect (PA). The current study is based on the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa). Change in LS and PA over a three-year period was examined in women who divorced and women who did not divorce (N > 37,000). Relationship quality and relationship status at follow-up were included in the models. The results indicated that divorce predicted higher LS and PA when initial relationship quality was poor. Furthermore, divorce predicted higher PA for women who, after divorce, reported being in a new romantic relationship. The associations between relationship quality and LS and PA were stronger among not-divorced than divorced women, indicating that relationship quality affects LS and PA.     

The hidden cost of value-seeking: People do not accurately forecast the economic benefits of experiential purchases

In spite of the experiential advantage, people consume material items in the pursuit of happiness. We conducted three studies to determine if people commit forecasting errors when deciding between purchasing life experiences and material items. Study 1a showed that people expect life experiences to result in more well-being, whereas material items are forecasted to be a better use of money. However, Study 1b demonstrated that people enjoy greater well-being from life experiences and consider them to be a better use of money. Study 2, a four-week longitudinal study, corroborated this economic misforecast. Study 3 demonstrated that seeking to make good use of one’s money, compared to prioritizing happiness, is more important during material consumption, and when people attempt to maximize economic value, instead of their happiness, they are more likely to consume material items. We suggest that prioritizing value may encourage people to prefer material items instead of life experiences.     

Making space for India in post-apartheid South Africa: Narrating diasporic subjectivities through classical song and dance

Background/purposeDiasporic associations and hometown groups fuel transnational exchanges and circulations. Their role has mostly been understood in terms of broader calculative agendas related to ethnic and national cultural politics. In South Africa, classical Indian singers, dancers and instrumentalists are an important part of these transnational landscapes. This paper focuses on the individual actors giving shape to these flows, and explores how a range of subjectivities is entangled with the materialities and forces present in classical performance spaces.Methods and resultsDrawing on fieldwork in Durban, South Africa, it explores how, and why organising actors assemble the matter of classical performance spaces. The paper also explores interconnections to Bollywood as another emergent diasporic site both in tension and accord with classical Indian performances.ConclusionDrawing from a feminist social practice approach, this paper argues that diaspora associational life is assembled through agents negotiating different gaps and discrepancies arising from the material and affective inhabitation of diasporic worlds.     

Catholicism,Protestantism, and Mexicanness on the US–Mexico border: discourses,narrative identities,habits, and affect

ABSTRACT

In Mexico, Catholicism and national identity are deeply intertwined through what we call a process of articulation. Thus, not surprisingly, despite the recent impressive growth of Protestantism in the nation, most people still believe that being Mexican and being Catholic are almost synonymous. Additionally, because the two identifications do not ‘cross each other’ (as the metaphor of intersectionality posits) but, instead, enter a very complex process of articulation in which each modifies the other, there is a particular way in which many Mexicans experience and perform their Catholicism, in the same vein that there is a particular way in which Catholics experience and perform their Mexicanness. Simultaneously, because neither nationality nor religion is narrated and/or performed in isolation to other forms of identification (e.g. race, ethnicity, region, gender) other possible identifications are also articulated or co-inform (in different ways) nationality and religion in the identitarian encounters that occur on the border. In the way people build their identifications around religion, narratives, practices, habits, affect, and emotions are continuously interrelated. We show that having an altar outside one’s house or making the sign of the cross on one’s body is both (depending on the unfolding of the social interactions and their patterns of relations) a non-linguistic discourse and a habit. We also show that their mere presence (in the case of altars) or performance (in the case of the sign of the cross) affect the people around the site or the performance, triggering complex emotions. That altar and sign of the cross can potentially be all these things simultaneously highlights their importance as ‘affective conductors’—stressing their significance as central objects in the intensification of relations that give new capacities to the entities involved in the patterns of relationship at play in the identitarian encounter at stake.