Adolescents' responses to online peer conflict: How self‐evaluation and ethnicity matter

For parents, online platforms where their children interact with others often feel like a “black box” in terms of what exactly is happening. In this study, we developed an ecologically valid online computer game in which a (computer‐generated) peer teammate tried to provoke frustration, in order to examine (a) adolescents' responses and (b) how indices of self‐evaluation (i.e., sense of coherence and self‐esteem) and demographic variables (i.e., gender and ethnicity) matter to these responses. Like gender, being a member of a minority or majority group may influence how provocations by peers are interpreted, influencing how one responds. Fifteen‐year‐old Dutch and Moroccan‐Dutch adolescents (N = 167) completed self‐reports and played the online computer game. The game indeed elicited frustration, with increased self‐reported anger. Moreover, expressions of displeasure were much more common during and after provocation than before provocation. Crucially, perceived self‐evaluation mattered; higher levels of sense of coherence but lower levels of self‐esteem (only in Moroccan‐Dutch group) contributed to fewer expressions of displeasure. Gender did not play a moderating role. Our findings provide initial insights into individual differences in adolescents' responses in an online peer‐conflict situation.

Highlights

• We studied Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch adolescents' responses during online peer provocation and how self-evaluation and demographic variables matter.
• Provocation by the (computer-generated) peer teammate increased expressions of displeasure.
• More sense of coherence but less self-esteem was associated with fewer expressions of displeasure, but ethnicity moderated the effect with self-esteem.

     

Belief,Credence, and the Preface Paradox

Many discussions of the ‘preface paradox’ assume that it is more troubling for deductive closure constraints on rational belief if outright belief is reducible to credence. I show that this is an error: we can generate the problem without assuming such reducibility. All that we need are some very weak normative assumptions about rational relationships between belief and credence. The only view that escapes my way of formulating the problem for the deductive closure constraint is in fact itself a reductive view: namely, the view that outright belief is credence 1. However, I argue that this view is unsustainable. Moreover, my version of the problem turns on no particular theory of evidence or evidential probability, and so cannot be avoided by adopting some revisionary such theory. In sum, deductive closure is in more serious, and more general, trouble than some have thought.     

Do Personal Dispositions Affect the Relationship Between Psychosocial Working Conditions and Workplace Bullying?

There is scarce research on the interaction between psychosocial working conditions and being a target of workplace bullying with individual characteristics as a moderator. We therefore examined 3,363 employees from 60 Danish workplaces to test whether sense of coherence moderates the relationship between the job demand-control model and bullying. This work is exploratory in nature, as no previous study to assess this moderation was found. Hierarchical linear regressions showed that demand-control model was significantly associated with bullying. Sense of coherence displayed a significant though practically negligible moderating effect. This suggests that negative psychosocial working conditions are associated with bullying independently of personal characteristics, at least in terms of sense of coherence.     

Life story chapters and narrative self-continuity in patients with schizophrenia

The present study compared life story chapters and self-defining memories in 25 patients with schizophrenia and 25 matched controls. All participants were tested on neurocognition and rated on symptoms. Participants identified and rated life story chapters and self-defining memories on emotional valence, causal coherence, and self-continuity. Temporal coherence and temporal macrostructure were also assessed. Patients rated their life story chapters as more negative compared to controls, but there were few significant differences regarding temporal coherence, temporal macrostructure, and ratings of causal coherence and self-continuity. In patients, poorer neurocognitive function and higher degree of negative symptoms were related to less causal coherence and lower self-continuity in relation to chapters. In general, few differences were found between the patients and the controls. This may be due to the highly structured method used to assess life stories or to the fact that our patient group was cognitively well-functioning.     

Sense of Coherence During Female Holocaust Survivors’ Formative Years

Four female Holocaust survivors were interviewed in order to investigate how they coped prior to the Holocaust, during the Holocaust years, following the end of World War II, and during integration within emerging Jewish society prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. Antonovsky’s (1987 Antonovsky, A. (1987). Unraveling the mystery of health: How people manage stress and stay well. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. [Google Scholar]) concept of sense of coherence (SOC) and thematic analysis were employed. The analysis suggests that their ability to navigate these life-changing circumstances as young women was the result of the elasticity of the SOC components and the meanings ascribed to them, depending on the situations encountered.     

Good vibrations: Global processing can increase the pleasantness of touch

Visual–tactile carry-over effects of global/local processing (attention to the whole, versus the details) have been reported under active touch conditions. We investigated whether carry-over effects of global/local processing also occur for passive touch and whether global/local processing has differential effects on affective and discriminative aspects of touch. Participants completed two tactile tasks involving pleasantness rating and discrimination of a set of tactile vibrations before and after completing a version of the Navon task that encouraged a focus on the global (n?=?30), local (n?=?30), or both (n?=?30) features of a series of visual stimuli. In line with previous research suggesting a link between global processing and positive emotion, global processing increased pleasantness ratings of high-frequency (but not low-frequency) tactile vibrations. Local processing did not improve the ability to discriminate between vibrations of different frequencies, however. There was some evidence of a tactile–visual carry-over effect; prior local processing of tactile vibrations reduced global precedence during the Navon task in the control group. We have shown carry-over effects of global versus local processing on passive touch perception. These findings provide further evidence suggesting that a common perceptual mechanism determines processing level across modalities and show for the first time that prior global processing affects the pleasantness of touch.     

The Smith-Walley Interpretation of Subjective Probability: An Appreciation

The right interpretation of subjective probability is implicit in the theories of upper and lower odds, and upper and lower previsions, developed, respectively, by Cedric Smith (1961) and Peter Walley (1991). On this interpretation you are free to assign contingent events the probability 1 (and thus to employ conditionalization as a method of probability revision) without becoming vulnerable to a weak Dutch book. Special Issue Formal Epistemology I. Edited by Branden Fitelson     

记叙文中因果连贯对空间情境模型回溯建构的促进

采用移动窗口阅读技术探讨记叙文理解中因果关系对于空间信息加工的作用。实验1和2的自变量是故事中空间信息与故事结果的因果关系,采用相关样本t检验对不同条件下探测词的反应时进行统计分析,结果表明因果关系不仅会影响文本明确提及的空间信息的加工而且能够促进隐含的空间关系建构情境模型。实验3的自变量是故事中物体与位置词的空间关系,采用相关样本t检验对不同条件下位置探测词的反应时进行统计分析,结果进一步表明空间情境模型是读者为保持故事因果连贯回溯建构的而不是在阅读进程中的实时建构。实验4中空间关系的复杂程度增大,结果发现当故事中空间信息的文本距离较远时即使有保持因果连贯的需要,读者仍无法回溯建构空间模型。