Project systems of procrastinators: a personal project-analytic and action control perspective

The purpose of this research was to explore the Personal Project Systems (e.g., Little, 1983) of state-oriented and action-oriented individuals. Eighty-four female and 57 male undergraduates enrolled in an introductory psychology class completed Little’s Personal Projects Analysis (e.g., 1983) and Kuhl’s Action Control Scale (Kuhl, 1994). The results from the present study revealed that the project systems of state-oriented individuals are higher in procrastination, frustration, boredom, uncertainty, and guilt, and lower in absorption, control, outcome, progress and self-identity. These findings are discussed in terms of previous research in the area of procrastination, project-analytic theory (e.g., Little, 1983) and Kuhl’s theory of action (e.g., Kuhl, 1994).     

Temporal lobe lability in the highly transliminal mind

Transliminality is “a hypothesized tendency for psychological material to cross thresholds into or out of consciousness,” which has been proposed to derive from hyperconnectivity between temporal-limbic structures and sensory association cortices. Accordingly, it might be expected that transliminality would positively correlate with temporal lobe lability. To test this hypothesis, 135 undergraduate psychology students at an Australian and a British university completed the Revised Transliminality Scale (Lange et al., 2000) and the Personal Philosophy Inventory (Persinger, 1984a), a validated measure of temporal lobe lability. As predicted, scores on transliminality showed a strong association with the general temporal lobe scale (r=0.72), as well as moderate correlations with a number of other scalar variables and individual items. The findings are consistent with the idea that transliminality is related to more ungated processing related to temporal lobe functioning, and furthermore that temporal lobe phenomenology promotes transliminal experiences with mystical or religious overtones.     

Career self-management: Its nature, causes and consequences

In a recent special issue [Journal of Vocational Behavior 59 (2001) 284], scholars noted that the field of vocational psychology needs a better understanding of career self-management. This article proposes a conceptual framework of career self-management, based on Crites’ [Vocational Psychology, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1969] model of vocational adjustment. It argues that people use three types of career self-managing behavior (positioning, influence, and boundary management) as adaptive responses to career development tasks. These behaviors are used to respond to or eliminate thwarting conditions or career barriers, and thereby lead to vocational adjustment. Suggested determinants of this behavior are self-efficacy, desire for control, and career anchors. Career self-management can enhance perceptions of control over the career, leading to career satisfaction, but it may also be associated with negative outcomes and maladjustment. The framework is suggested to apply both to bounded ‘organizational’ careers and to more flexible, improvised careers. The article concludes by considering the implications for research and practice.     

The effects of personal and collective mortality salience on individualism: Comparing Australians and Japanese with higher and lower self-esteem

The cross-cultural generality of terror management theory was examined in Australia and Japan. Based on previous research suggesting that individualism is stronger in Australia than in Japan, mortality salience was predicted to enhance individualism in Australia, but to reduce it in Japan. The results supported this prediction. Consistent with the theory, the cultural pattern of worldview defense was found only among Australians and Japanese with low self-esteem. We also found preliminary evidence that collective mortality (death of one’s in-group) has a greater impact than personal mortality (personal death) in Japan. Although the cultural worldview and self-esteem may serve terror management functions in both cultures, there may be differences between cultures in the type of mortality that produces the greatest levels of anxiety and the manner in which a given worldview is used to cope with anxiety about mortality.     

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.     

Social Justice and Race in the United States: Key Issues and Challenges for Couple and Family Therapy

Social justice tends to be narrowly defined as equality without due recognition of human dignity and respect for those whose daily lives continue to be adversely impacted by race. This article seeks to explore key issues and challenges at the intersection of social justice and race for couple and family therapy. These include: (a) defining social justice; (b) diversity and inclusion; (c) power and privilege; (d) witness; and (e) personal responsibility.     

Recherche en santé et protection des données personnelles à l’heure du Règlement général relatif à la protection des données

France has a very rich legal framework, which defines the conditions of access and use of health data for scientific research purposes and ensures their protection. Currently, this legal framework is undergoing revision. The European regulation of April 27th 2016 on protection of natural persons in relation to the processing of personal data came into effect in EU member states since 25th May 2018 and substitute a rationale of administrative process for a rationale that empowers the researchers to document and prove compliance with the regulation (“accountability”). This regulation must be coordinated with the other regulation applicable to research in UE and with national law.     

A novel machine learning approach for early detection of hepatocellular carcinoma patients

Liver cancer is quite common type of cancer among individuals worldwide. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the malignancy of liver cancer. It has high impact on individual’s life and investigating it early can decline the number of annual deaths. This study proposes a new machine learning approach to detect HCC using 165 patients. Ten well-known machine learning algorithms are employed. In the preprocessing step, the normalization approach is used. The genetic algorithm coupled with stratified 5-fold cross-validation method is applied twice, first for parameter optimization and then for feature selection. In this work, support vector machine (SVM) (type C-SVC) with new 2level genetic optimizer (genetic training) and feature selection yielded the highest accuracy and F₁-Score of 0.8849 and 0.8762 respectively. Our proposed model can be used to test the performance with huge database and aid the clinicians.     

Virtual prejudice

According to recent theorizing in social psychology, social behavior is controlled not only by reflective, but also by impulsive systems. The latter are based on associative links that may influence behavior without intent. The current study examined how prejudiced implicit associations affect physiological and automatic behavioral responses. Our native Dutch participants were immersed in a virtual environment in which they encountered virtual persons (avatars) with either White or Moroccan facial features. In line with our predictions, participants maintained more distance and showed an increase in skin conductance level when approaching Moroccan avatars as opposed to White avatars. Participants’ implicit negative associations with Moroccans moderated both effects. Moreover, evidence was found that the relation between implicit prejudice and distance effects was fully mediated by skin conductance level effects. These data demonstrate how prejudiced implicit associations may unintentionally lead to impulsive discriminatory responses.