The effects of the presence of others during a rowing exercise in a virtual reality environment

ObjectivesThe aim of the study was to test the performance, motivational, and affective impact of aerobic exercise within an immersive virtual reality environment experienced alone or with another individual.DesignSixty female participants aged 18–30 years were assigned to one of three conditions: no virtual reality (NVR), individual virtual reality (IVR), or companion virtual reality (CVR).MethodParticipants completed 9 min of self-paced rowing on an ergometer without any visual input or performance feedback (NVR), individually within a virtual reality environment (IVR), or within a virtual reality environment that included a companion depicted as an avatar (CVR).ResultsThe two virtual reality groups rowed a further distance and at a higher power output than the NVR group. Furthermore, the CVR group outperformed the IVR group in distance and had a higher heart rate. Participants in the virtual reality groups did not perceive themselves to be exerting more physical effort and rated the task as more enjoyable than participants in the NVR group.ConclusionsVirtual reality improves performance and the affective response to aerobic exercise, and performance effects are further enhanced by the presence of others in the virtual environment.     

Consequences of prosocial and antisocial behavior for the recipient

Statement of problemAlthough studies have examined antecedents of prosocial and antisocial behaviors in sport, little is known about the potential consequences of these behaviors for the recipient. In this research, we examined: (a) whether teammate prosocial and antisocial behaviors are related to athletes’ effort, performance, enjoyment and anger during a match and the mediating role of enjoyment and anger (Studies 1 and 2); and (b) whether prosocial and antisocial behaviors are related to commitment to play for one’s team and whether enjoyment and performance mediate these relationships (Study 2).MethodRight after a game, football/soccer (N = 203; Study 1) and basketball (N = 281; Study 2) players completed a multi-section questionnaire measuring the aforementioned variables.ResultsProsocial teammate behavior was positively related to effort, performance, and enjoyment, and enjoyment mediated the relationship between prosocial teammate behavior and effort and performance; prosocial teammate behavior was also positively related to commitment directly and indirectly through enjoyment and performance. Antisocial teammate behavior was positively related to anger and negatively related to effort and performance. Anger and performance mediated the effects of antisocial teammate behavior on effort and commitment, respectively.ConclusionsOur findings demonstrate the importance of acting prosocially and not acting antisocially toward one’s teammates and have implications for enjoyment, effort, performance, and commitment in sport.     

The role of the Self in assessing doping cognition: Implicit and explicit measures of athletes’ doping-related prototype perceptions

ObjectivesTo examine athletes’ implicit and explicit prototype perceptions of performance enhancing substance (PES) users and non-users.DesignA cross-sectional mixed-method study.MethodsCompetitive athletes from 39 sports (N = 226; mean age = 27.66 ± 9.74 years; 59% male) completed four self-report questions and two Brief Implicit Association Tests online, assessing prototype favourability and similarity of PES users and non-users.ResultsAthletes explicitly associated themselves with a non-user (M = 3.13 ± 0.92) more than a PES user (M = 0.56 ± 0.88) and perceived a non-user (M = 89.92 ± 14.98) more favourably than a PES user (M = 13.18 ± 21.38). Indexing behaviour on self-reports, doping contemplators did not differ from ‘clean’ athletes in their perceptions of PES user prototypes while dopers perceived PES users favourably and similar to themselves. In comparison, doping contemplators paired the concept of 'dopers' easier with themselves than with others, while clean athletes and dopers had no preference for either pairing (D = −0.33, -0.08 and 0.01, respectively). All groups demonstrated some degree of preference for ‘good and doper’, moving from slight to moderate to strong preference in the groups of clean athletes, dopers and contemplators, respectively (D = −0.20, −0.37 and −0.80, respectively).ConclusionsResults suggest that doping contemplators may have a positive bias towards doping which is not endorsed in self-reports. Implicit preferences, along with the disparity between the implicit and explicit measures of athletes’ doping-related prototype perceptions advance understanding of doping behaviour and make a unique contribution to research methodology. Factors influencing the interplay between explicit and implicit endorsements of PES user prototypes warrant further research.     

Empathy,culture and self‐humanising: Empathising reduces the attribution of greater humanness to the self more in Japan than Australia

People tend to ascribe greater humanness to themselves than to others. Previous research has indicated that this “self‐humanising” bias is independent of self‐enhancement and robust across cultures. The present study examined the possible role of empathy in reducing this bias in Japan (N = 80) and Australia (N = 80). Results showed that unlike Australians, Japanese participants who recalled personal experiences of empathising with others were less likely to self‐humanise than those in a neutral condition. The effect of the empathy manipulation was not observed in Australia. The findings suggest that empathy may reduce self‐focus and enable perceivers to appreciate the full humanness of others, but this effect may be culturally contingent.     

Greater self‐enhancement in Western than Eastern Ukraine,but failure to replicate the Muhammad Ali effect

Based on the cross‐cultural research linking individualism–collectivism and self‐enhancement, this research examines regional pattern of self‐enhancement in Ukraine. Broadly speaking, the western part of Ukraine is mainly Ukrainian speaking and historically oriented towards Europe, whereas Eastern Ukraine is mainly Russian speaking and historically oriented towards the Russian cultural sphere. We found self‐enhancement on a “better than average” task to be higher in a Western Ukrainian sample compared to an Eastern Ukrainian sample, with differences in independent self‐construals supporting assumed regional variation in individualism. However, the Muhammad Ali effect, the finding that self‐enhancement is greater in the domain of morality than intelligence, was not replicated. The discussion focuses on the specific sources of this regional difference in self‐enhancement, and reasons for why the Muhammad Ali effect was not found.     

Development and validation of an in-competition emotion measure: The Brief In-Competition Emotion (BICE) scale

ObjectivesWe aimed to develop a concise psychometric scale to assess athletes’ in-competition emotions, which would reduce the practical and conceptual limitations of previous measures.DesignFour studies were designed to develop and assess the validity of the new Brief In-Competition Emotion (BICE) scale.MethodIn Study 1, the content validity of 39 emotion adjectives was investigated using expert analysis, 9 adjectives were subsequently removed. In Study 2, 402 university athletes used the remaining 30 adjectives to record their in-competition emotions and confirmatory factor analyses and a reliability removal method was used to create the 10-item BICE scale. Study 3 (N = 109) and Study 4 (N = 74) consisted of both concurrent and predictive validity assessments of the BICE scale.ResultsConstruct validity, reliability and confirmatory factor analyses completed during Study 1 and Study 2 resulted in the development of the 10-item BICE scale, consisting of five composite emotion factors: anger, anxiety, excitement, dejection and happiness. The findings from Study 3 and Study 4 showed that the BICE scale presented acceptable levels of concurrent and predictive validity.ConclusionsThe BICE scale is a rigorously developed parsimonious scale which offers researchers new opportunities for investigation and provides applied practitioners with a new method of evaluating in-competition intervention efficacies.     

Virtuous Play: The Ethics,Pleasures, and Burdens of Brain Training

Through normative appeals of cognitive enhancement, the brain has become a site of both promise and peril. Displaying oneself as ethically sound may now include showing requisite care for cognitive capacities. Moreover, enhancing our cognitive reserves is framed as aspirational means of averting neurodegenerative disease and neoliberal precarity. Such demanding labours of self-care warrant close scrutiny. Promissory discourses proclaim our ‘neuroplasticity’, encouraging subjects to work on endlessly improvable functional capacities that hold labour market value. Yet a ‘fun morality’ is equally prevalent in today’s experiential economies. Neuro-enhancement is thus sold not as an ascetic chore, but an ecstatic potential. Hope, fear, pleasure, and ethical conduct are, therefore, all closely entwined in the ‘virtuous play’ of ‘brain training’, where commercial entities use digital platforms for game-based tasks designed to enhance cognitive abilities. These services are typically promoted through appeals to our dutiful biocitizenship. This type of virtuous play is increasingly the means by which subjects produce themselves as simultaneously pleasure-seeking, productive, and resoundingly ‘well’. However, this understanding of virtuosity is often narrowly derived—reduced to ‘active ageing’, corporate-style ‘neurohacking’, and ‘brain profiles’—that threaten to foreclose other ways of imagining well-being. In failing to recognize the neoliberal underpinnings of virtuous play we entrench burdensome attachments to emerging modes of personal enhancement. Against these seductive appeals of combining pleasure with self-improvement, we must cultivate a critical reflexivity regarding exactly how ‘enhancement’ is conceived, opening room for lines of possibility outside of currently dominant frameworks.     

目光注视线索对客体注意的影响及作用机制

目光注视在人类社交以及捕获和维持注意方面发挥重要作用。但是, 目光注视如何与客体交互以引导注意分配至今尚不明确。因此, 本研究采用双框线索范式, 以具有两种注视方向(直视或回避)的面孔或实物作为客体, 通过操纵线索到目标间的SOA来考察目光注视对客体注意的影响及作用机制。实验1发现, 目光注视对客体效应的影响只出现在300 ms SOA时; 进一步分析发现, 客体效应的差异来自于直视条件下被试对无效相同客体位置上的目标比回避条件下反应更快。这表明与回避目光相比, 直视更能捕获我们的注意, 从而产生更大的客体效应。实验2将面孔对比度反转, 排除了低水平物理特征对实验1结果的影响。实验3使用两种注视方向的眼睛叠加杯子作为客体, 以探究目光注视效应是否能扩展到其他客体中, 结果与实验1相同。本研究结果表明, 目光注视能够与客体交互共同引导注意分配, 直视更能捕获注意, 但受SOA的影响, 上述结果支持了感觉增强理论。     

Effet du télétravail sur la santé psychologique et la performance des travailleurs durant la pandémie de la Covid-19

The aim of this study was to examine how the widespread use of telework during the COVID-19 pandemic may have created a specific work context influencing employees’ psychological health and performance. Results of analyses conducted on a sample of 3771 Canadian teleworkers revealed that telework created additional demands such as task interdependence and professional isolation. These demands had negative effects on telework performance by increasing the frequency of perceived stress. However, the presence of resources such as organizational support appeared to play a buffering role in moderating the direct effect of professional isolation on telecommuting performance.