Identity,ideology, and personality: Examining moderators of affective polarization in New Zealand

Affective polarization (i.e., differences in evaluations of the in-party and out-party) has important implications for political outcomes including civic engagement and partisan-motivated attitudes and behaviours. In this study, we add to the burgeoning literature on affective polarization by examining moderators of the effect of in-party support on out-party opposition across the three main political parties in New Zealand. Using a large national probability sample of adults (N = 19,078), we assessed the effects of social demographics, Big-Five personality traits, liberal-conservative ideology, political identity centrality, and weekly news exposure on the relationship between in-party and out-party support. Results show political identity centrality is the strongest and most consistent moderator. The effects of some other moderators (e.g., personality, news exposure) are party-specific.     

高中生的亲子沟通质量对情绪性刺激注意偏向的影响

为了探讨高中生亲子沟通质量对情绪性刺激注意偏向的影响,实验一采用亲子沟通量表,筛选出亲子沟通高分组和低分组,两组被试参加点探测任务,要求被试迅速判断情绪性图片出现后呈现的圆点的位置。实验为2（组别：高亲子沟通组、低亲子沟通组）×2（情绪类型：负性和正性）×2（探测点位置一致性：一致、不一致）的混合实验设计。结果发现,负性和正性刺激的不一致条件反应时均显著短于一致条件的反应时。实验二采用事件相关电位（ERP）记录了情绪性图片诱发的信号反应。结果发现,亲子沟通高分组对负性刺激所诱发的注意指向和集中（P2成分）及选择和巩固（P3成分）显著高于低分组。以上结果表明,亲子沟通较好,在注意早期定向和选择中会对负性情绪刺激产生注意偏向。亲子沟通较差,则对情绪性的刺激没有明显的偏向性,类似于“漠不关心”的状态。     

Interactional patterns of bipolar patients and their spouses

This study examined the interactional patterns of eight bipolar patients (when manic and in remission) and their spouses by videotaping the couples' interactions and then quantifying those interactions using the Marital Interaction Coding system. These couples' interactions were compared to the interactions of eight happily and eight unhappily married nonbipolar psychiatric control patients and their spouses. The purposes were to determine (a) whether the interactional pattern between bipolar patients and their spouses changes or remains the same when the patient is in a manic vs. a nonmanic state and (b) how the interaction patterns of bipolar patients when manic and nonmanic compare to happily and unhappily married nonbipolar psychiatriccontrol patients. Significant differences in interactions were found between manic and nonmanic states, in addition to significant differences between these patients and the control groups. There were also expected differences between happily and unhappily married psychiatric control groups. Implications are discussed for marital therapy for manies that involves problemsolving and communication training.     

Health Risk Behaviors and Their Relationships to Health Care Utilization Among Veterans Receiving Primary Medical Care

This paper reports the findings of a behavioral health risk screening form and examines the interrelationships among behavioral risk factors and health care utilization. Participants were 1,000 veterans who completed a brief self-report questionnaire assessing affective distress and behavioral health risk factors while they waited to see their primary care provider. Participants reported a mean level of affective distress in the mild range on a scale of 0 to 20 (M = 6.4, SD = 4.95), and 22.4% reported moderate or high levels of affective distress. Fifty percent of the sample denied alcohol use; 5% of the men and none of the women reported a pattern of use that met established criteria for at-risk drinking. Twenty-six percent of the sample reported current tobacco use, 45% acknowledged concerns about diet and/or weight, and 54% reported concern about pain. These factors were largely significantly intercorrelated and several were related to indices of health care utilization. It was concluded that veterans receiving health care in primary care settings report significant levels of affective distress and other health risk behaviors and that the presence of these factors is associated with increased use of the health care system. These data encourage increased efforts to identify these factors and to develop behavior change interventions.     

Pharmacotherapy of schizophrenia and affective disorders: Behavioral assessment of psychiatric medications

Objectively defined, publicly observable ward behaviors (body activity, extremity activity, scanning, social interaction, proximity, participation, laughing/smiling, and idiosyncratic behavior) emitted by psychiatric inpatients with either schizophrenic or affective disorders were time sampled both before and during the administration of psychiatric medications (neuroleptics, tricyclics, and lithium). The data indicate that the primary effects of the pharmacological interventions are confined to activity measures and symptoms rather than social behaviors. The implications of these results for treatment protocols are discussed in terms of interactions between pharmacological and psychosocial interventions. In addition, rates of behavior during treatment were related to baseline rates via a log-log function of negative slope, a result that is consistent with data derived from the infrahuman laboratories. Taken together the results provide support for attempts to relate preclinical and clinical psychopharmacology and suggest that behavioral assessment can be applied profitably to drug effects in clinical situations.These investigations were supported in part by State of Illinois Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Grants RD836-13 and RD622-02 to the first author. The cooperation of the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute staff is gratefully acknowledged. Assistance in data collection was provided by S. Sussman and K. Mueser.     

Counterfactual thinking may attenuate polarization of COVID-19 prevention behavior

Data from two U.S. online samples (N = 613) indicated that conservatives consistently perceived face mask use as less important than did liberals. This difference was attenuated with high counterfactual engagement. Both studies provide correlational evidence of this robust moderation. Study 2 provides further insight into differences between liberals' and conservatives' emotional responses to COVID-19 information, and suggests that during on-going negative events, downward counterfactuals may not provide relief. Overall, these studies document the politicization of public health behavior, and find that emphasizing the causal links between behavior and COVID-19 prevention may improve conservatives' attitudes toward CDC guidelines.     

A multi-analyses approach of inductive/deductive asymmetry in the affective priming paradigm

Rapidly evaluating our environment's beneficial and detrimental features is critical for our successful functioning. A classic paradigm used to investigate such fast and automatic evaluations is the affective priming (AP) paradigm, where participants classify valenced target stimuli (e.g., words) as good or bad while ignoring the valenced primes (e.g., words). We investigate the differential impact that verbs and adjectives used as primes and targets have on the AP paradigm. Based on earlier work on the Linguistic Category Model, we expect AP effect to be modulated by non-evaluative properties of the word stimuli, such as the linguistic category (e.g., if the prime is an adjective and the target is a verb versus the reverse). A reduction in the magnitude of the priming effect was predicted for adjective–verb prime-target pairs compared to verb–adjective prime-target pairs. Moreover, we implemented a modified crowdsourcing of statistical analyses implementing independently three different statistical approaches. Deriving our conclusions on the converging/diverging evidence provided by the different approaches, we show a clear deductive/inductive asymmetry in AP paradigm (exp. 1), that this asymmetry does not require a focus on the evaluative dimension to emerge (exp. 2) and that the semantic-based asymmetry weakly extends to valence (exp. 3).     

Moral Identity Predicts Adherence to COVID-19 Mitigation Procedures Depending on Political Ideology: A Comparison Between the USA and New Zealand

Reducing the spread of infectious viruses (e.g., COVID-19) can depend on societal compliance with effective mitigations. Identifying factors that influence adherence can inform public policy. In many cases, public health messaging has become highly moralized, focusing on the need to act for the greater good. In such contexts, a person's moral identity may influence behavior and serve to increase compliance through different mechanisms: if a person sees compliance as the right thing to do (internalization) and/or if a person perceives compliance as something others will notice as the right thing to do (symbolization). We argue that in societies that are more politically polarized, people's political ideology may interact with their moral identity to predict compliance. We hypothesized that where polarization is high (e.g., USA), moral identity should positively predict compliance for liberals to a greater extent than for conservatives. However, this effect would not occur where polarization is low (e.g., New Zealand). Moral identity, political ideology, and support for three different COVID-19 mitigation measures were assessed in both nations (N = 1,980). Results show that while moral identity can influence compliance, the political context of the nation must also be taken into account.