Driving anger in Germany: Validation of the driving anger scale for German drivers

In 1994, Deffenbacher et al. published the Driving Anger Scale (DAS), a tool for assessing a driver’s propensity to experience anger in road traffic. Since then, much research has used this scale to measure the driving anger experienced in various countries around the world. This study examines the scale’s validity for German drivers. It also relates their experiences of anger while driving to their experiences and expressions of anger in general, as well as to certain demographic variables. In addition, it compares German drivers’ experiences of driving anger to those reported by drivers from other countries. We distributed a German version of the DAS and the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI) to a sample of 1136 German drivers. Results showed that a 22-items version of the DAS with six factors produced good fit indices for German drivers. Furthermore, data analysis revealed small to moderate significant relationships between German drivers’ driving anger experiences and their experiences and expressions of anger in general, underlining the idea that driving anger is a personality characteristic that is related to one's general experience and expression of anger. Finally, German drivers' driving anger experiences differed from those of drivers from other countries in that German drivers reported less driving anger than drivers from Spain and New Zealand, comparable levels to those from Turkey, Malaysia, and the United States, and more driving anger than drivers from France, Australia, China, and the United Kingdom. In addition, discourteous driver actions and hostile gestures consistently triggered highest driving anger ratings whereas police presence was rated lowest. Given these results, we conclude that the DAS can be applied to German drivers in its modified version.     

How to improve the walking realm in a car-oriented city? (Dis)agreements between professionals

PurposeUrban environments and transport systems can enable and encourage walking, and therefore play a key role in climate action, public health, equity of access, and population wellbeing. The question, especially in cities that have been dominated by car traffic, is how? The challenge is heightened by the multidisciplinary involvements in the design, operation, and maintenance of urban infrastructure.This study examines the views of professionals from different disciplines involved in delivering walking environments in Auckland, New Zealand. The study examines agreements and disagreements regarding users’ needs, priorities, challenges, and evidence gaps for delivering quality walking environments in a car-dominated city.MethodsPrimary data were collected through an online survey (N = 28) and a focus group, both involving professionals active in urban design, road safety, transport planning, public health, urban development and strategy. Analysis involved content coding and comparing the frequency of responses across professional groups.ResultsThe results indicated a consensus on the complexity associated with providing walking environments, as well as the importance of the quality of street environments. The lack of priority given to walking, car-dominated environments, and the inability to deliver change were seen as challenges. The inputs suggested a negative chain reaction linking the low priority of walking and the lack of consensus relative to users’ experience. There appeared to be a lack of common understanding of users’ needs and experiences and a paucity of evidence on this topic.ConclusionThe findings suggest the need for urban retrofit rooted in a sound understanding of users’ needs and experiences, and walkability as a sub-system of the urban environment. Recommendations include higher interdisciplinary collaboration at the policy and practice level, reviewed delivery processes, and better-quality data.     

The Short-Term Psychological Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Psychiatric Patients: Evidence for Differential Emotion and Symptom Trajectories in Belgium

The spread of COVID-19 and the implementation of various containment strategies across the world have seriously disrupted people’s everyday life, and it is especially uncertain what the psychological impact of this pandemic will be for vulnerable individuals, such as psychiatric (ex-)patients. Governments fear that this virus outbreak may prelude a major mental health crisis, and psychiatrists launch critical calls to flatten an upcoming mental ill-health surge. Here, we aim to add nuance to the idea that we are heading towards a mental health pandemic and that psychiatric populations will unavoidably (re)develop psychopathology. Despite being subjected to the same challenges posed by COVID-19, we argue that people with a history of psychiatric illness will psychologically deal with this adversity in different ways. To showcase the short-term differential impact of COVID-19 on patients’ mental health, we present the day-to-day emotion and symptom trajectories of different psychiatric patients that took part in an experience sampling study before, during, and after the start of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and associated lockdown measures in Belgium. Piecewise regression models show that not all patients’ psychological well-being is affected to a similar degree. As such, we argue that emphasizing human resilience, also among the more vulnerable in society, may be opportune in these unsettling times.     

Offenders’ claims of taking the victims’ perspective can promote forgiveness,or backfire! The moderating role of correctly voicing the victims’ emotions in collective apologies

In the context of collective apologies, we investigate whether offenders’ claim to have taken the victims’ perspective enhances victims’ conciliation. We argue this depends on whether offenders acknowledge emotions in victims that match victims’ emotional experience. In Studies 1 and 2 (Ns = 152 and 171), using scenarios, we experimentally manipulated offenders’ claim and the qualitative or quantitative match of acknowledged emotions. When acknowledged emotions matched victims’ experience, claimed perceptive‐taking increased conciliatory victim responses; but when emotions did not match, the offenders’ claim reduced conciliatory victim responses. In Study 3 (N = 138), African‐Americans were presented with the U.S. government's apology for slavery. We manipulated the perspective‐taking claim and measured the similarity of the emotion profile expressed in the apology to that experienced by African‐Americans over their enslavement. With greater mismatch, the perspective‐taking claim backfired, reducing conciliatory responses. Correct acknowledgment of emotions is key for victims perceiving perspective‐taking and responding conciliatorily.     

Psychological aspects of childbirth: Evidence for a birth‐related mindset

Psychological research on childbirth is rare, even though research from other scientific fields such as obstetrics or midwifery highlights the importance of psychological factors in childbirth. In this article, the theoretical construct of a birth‐related mindset and direct and indirect measures for assessing the mindset are proposed. It is assumed that childbirth can be mentally presented as a rather natural (natural mindset) or a rather medicalized (medicalized mindset) event. In three online studies (Study 1: N = 117, Study 2: N = 206, Study 3: N = 192), we aimed to explore whether the proposed birth‐related mindset is related to the retrospectively reported process of labor and birth (operationalized, e.g., by performed interventions, duration of birth, place of birth). For this, the relation between the mothers’ birth‐related decisions and outcomes of childbirth and the mothers' birth‐related mindsets were analyzed. Results indicated that (1) birth‐related criteria such as place of birth, epidural anesthesia, and C‐sections were associated with the birth‐related mindset, (2) these aspects of the delivery were related to the evaluation of the birth (birth experience), (3) the birth‐related mindset moderated the relationship between C‐section and birth experience, and (4) the indirect measures had little to no added explanatory value to the developed Mindset and Birth Questionnaire. Thus, the results indicate that the birth process experienced by the women and the mental representations of birth (birth‐related mindset) are closely related. Future studies need to investigate to what extend the experienced birth process influences the mindset of birth, or the mindset the experienced birth process, or both.     

The Power of Political Déjà Vu: When Collective Action Becomes an Effort to Change the Future by Preventing the Return of the Past

This article examines the conditions under which political déjà vu (PDV), a perceived analogy between past and present societal-level traumatic events, can mobilize people to support system-changing collective action. We propose that individuals' perceptions of PDV can evolve both social identification with a group that sustains the victimized and disidentification with the perceived perpetrators. We further suggest that disidentification and identification can form two distinct psychological paths to collective action through the sequential effects of moral outrage and collective efficacy beliefs. We tested these ideas in a cross-sectional field study (N = 272) in the context of antigovernment protests over a missing activist in Argentina, a country with a legacy of enforced disappearances. The findings demonstrated that perceiving two events from different times as similar simultaneously predicted identifying as a supporter of the victimized and disidentifying with the perceived wrongdoer. Disidentification was found to predict collective action intentions through the sequential effect of collective efficacy beliefs and moral outrage, whereas the indirect effect of social identification was nonsignificant. Results provide an intriguing example of the effects of perceived PDV in social mobilization and extend our understanding of disidentification as a powerful predictor of collective action.     

知识整合的时间进程：ERP研究

本研究借助ERP技术,采用分离句子范式,考察了被试通过整合主干事实生成新知识的时间进程。结果发现：（1）知识整合事实相对于传递性推理事实和新颖事实诱发了更小的N400,与众所周知事实没有显著差异,表明通过整合生成的新信息已经快速纳入了语义知识库;（2）对比两次呈现,延迟性整合事实在第二次呈现的350ms之后波幅显著下降,与众所周知事实没有显著差异,表明知识经验影响了整合的时间进程,相较两个新信息之间的即时整合,新旧信息之间的延迟整合需要更多的时间。     

The paradox of happiness: Why are we not doing what we know makes us happy?

Achieving and maintaining happiness can be difficult, especially when people are not engaging in the activities they know facilitate it. ‘Flow’ activities require clear rules, challenge, a high investment of energy, and have been shown to promote long-term happiness better than low investment, passive activities. Do people know this? In two studies, we found that, despite recognizing that flow activities are more likely to facilitate happiness, people nevertheless participated in passive leisure significantly more often in a typical week. Participants rated passive activities as being significantly more enjoyable, requiring less effort, and being less daunting to get started than flow activities. Participants’ engagement in flow activities was significantly predicted by how enjoyable the activities were perceived to be, whereas how daunting those activities were rated predicted non-engagement. Passive activity engagement was only significantly predicted by enjoyment. Suggestions for enabling people to rise above the barriers to flow activities are offered.     

Remotely Close Associations: Openness to Experience and Semantic Memory Structure

Openness to experience—the enjoyment of novel experiences and ideas—has many connections to cognitive processes. People high in openness to experience, for example, tend to be more creative and have broader general knowledge than people low in openness to experience. In the current study, we use a network science approach to examine if the organization of semantic memory differs between high and low groups of openness to experience. A sample of 516 adults completed measures of openness to experience (from the NEO Five‐Factor Inventory‐3 and Big Five Aspect Scales) and a semantic verbal fluency task. Next, the sample was split into half to form high (n = 258) and low (n = 258) openness to experience groups. Semantic networks were then constructed on the basis of their verbal fluency responses. Our results revealed that the high openness to experience group's network was more interconnected, flexible, and had better local organization of associations than the low openness to experience group. We also found that the high openness to experience group generated more responses on average and provided more unique responses than the low openness to experience group. Taken together, our results indicate that openness to experience is related to semantic memory structure. © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology