Comorbid interpretation and expectancy bias in social anxiety and alcohol use

Background: In two studies, the present research examined whether being high in both social anxiety and alcohol use disorder symptoms is associated with a comorbid interpretation and expectancy bias that reflects their bidirectional relationship.

Design: Cross-sectional, quantitative surveys.

Methods: Measures of social anxiety and alcohol use disorder symptoms, as well as an interpretation and expectancy bias task assessing biases for social anxiety, drinking, and comorbid social anxiety and drinking.

Results: In Study 1 (N?=?447), individuals high (vs. low) in social anxiety had stronger social threat bias and individuals high (vs. low) in alcohol use disorder symptoms had stronger drinking bias. Those high in both social anxiety and alcohol use disorder symptoms endorsed interpretations and expectancies linking social interaction with alcohol use. Comorbid bias predicted membership into the high social anxiety/drinking group, even after taking into account single-disorder biases. In Study 2 (N?=?325), alcohol use disorder symptoms predicted drinking bias and social anxiety symptoms predicted social anxiety bias. Alcohol use disorder symptoms, social anxiety symptoms, and their interaction predicted comorbid interpretation and expectancy bias.

Conclusion: Results indicate unique cognitive vulnerability markers for persons with comorbid social anxiety and alcohol use disorder symptoms, which may improve detection and treatment of this serious comorbidity.     

累积生态风险与青少年网络成瘾:心理需要满足和积极结果预期的中介作用

青少年网络成瘾与个体所处的生态背景密切相关。目前已有不少研究探讨家庭、学校、同伴背景中单个或少数风险因素对青少年网络成瘾的影响,但少有研究关注多个背景中生态风险因素的累积对青少年网络成瘾的影响及其心理机制。本研究基于累积风险模型和动机心理学理论,考察累积生态风险对青少年网络成瘾的影响及基本心理需要满足(个体在现实生活中需要被满足的情况)和积极结果预期(个体对网络使用诱因大小的判断)在其中的并行和/或链式中介作用。被试为5所中学的998名青少年。结构方程模型分析表明:(1)在控制了人口学变量后,累积生态风险对青少年网络成瘾具有显著的正向预测作用(呈"负加速模式")。(2)累积生态风险通过显著降低基本心理需要满足(表现出"梯度效应"),进而促进青少年网络成瘾。(3)累积生态风险通过显著提升积极结果预期(呈"负加速模式"),进而促进青少年网络成瘾。(4)累积生态风险对青少年网络成瘾的影响被基本心理需要满足和积极结果预期两条并行路径完全中介。上述结果表明,累积生态风险对青少年网络成瘾具有重要影响,且这种影响是通过需要和诱因两种动机力量一"推"一"拉"的合力来实现。     

“Blind” interviewing: Is ignorance bliss?

Current investigative interviewing guidelines [e.g., Technical Working Group: Eyewitness evidence. (1999). Eyewitness evidence: A guide for law enforcement. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/178240.pdf] suggest that interviewers review available case information prior to conducting a witness interview. The present study investigated the effect of interviewers’ pre-interview awareness of crime details on eyewitnesses’ memory and interviewer behaviour shortly after a mock crime or a week later. Results indicate that blind interviewers with no knowledge about the crime elicited more correct information than those who were correctly informed about the crime. Differences in interviewer behaviour emerged only in the very first question of the interview: Blind interviewers were more likely to begin the interview with a non-suggestive question than the informed interviewers. Blind interviewers also recalled more details than the informed interviewers when asked to generate a report after the witness interview documenting the witness’ account.     

Response expectancy theory and application: A decennial review

Response expectancy is the anticipation of automatic, subjective, and behavioral responses to particular situational cues. More than a decade of research in diverse laboratories indicates that response expectancies are important considerations in designing and administering treatments and prevention programs for such problems as anxiety disorders, depression, substance abuse, and sexual dysfunction. Response expectancy also plays a central role in the effects of antidepressive medication, psychotherapy, and hypnosis. In addition, studies of the effects of placebos reveal that response expectancies can produce lasting changes in pain, anxiety, depression, alertness, tension, sexual arousal, alcohol craving and consumption, aggression, asthma, warts, and contact dermatitis. The veracity of many self-reported placebo effects have been corroborated by changes in physiological function.     

Choice in the time-left procedure and in concurrent chains with a time-left terminal link.

In two experiments, rats chose between a standard fixed-duration food-associated stimulus and a stimulus whose duration was the time remaining to reinforcement in an elapsing comparison interval. In Experiment 1, 4 rats responded in a time-left procedure wherein a single initial-link variable-interval schedule set up two potential terminal links simultaneously. As time elapsed in the initial-link schedule, the choice was between a standard fixed-interval 30-s terminal link and a time-left terminal link whose programmed interval requirement equaled 90 s minus the elapsed time in the initial link. Rats generally responded more on the lever with the shortest programmed terminal-link duration, but the temporal parameters of the procedure were found to vary with response distributions. Contrary to previous reports, therefore, time-left data were well predicted by choice models that make no assumptions about animal timing. In Experiment 2, 8 rats responded on a concurrent-chains schedule with independent variable-interval initial links and a time-left terminal link in one of the choice schedules. On the time-left lever, the programmed terminal-link delay equaled 90 s minus the elapsed time in the time-left initial link. On the standard lever, terminal-link responses were reinforced according to a variable-interval schedule whose average value varied over four conditions. Relative time-left initial-link responses increased in the elapsing time-left initial-link schedule as the time-left terminal link became shorter relative to the standard terminal link. Scalar expectancy theory failed to predict the resultant data, but a modified version of the delay-reduction model made good predictions. An analysis of the elaboration of scalar expectancy theory for variable delays demonstrated that the model is poorly formulated for arithmetically distributed delays.     

Adaptation of the Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire (AEQ-A): A short version for use among 13-year-olds in Norway

An adaptation of a Norwegian modified short version of Christiansen & Goldman's Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire for Adolescents (AEQ-A) was examined in this survey. Subjects were 924 Norwegian seventh graders, with an average age of 13.3 years. From the original 90 items, 27 items representing all seven original scales were used in this study. Factor analysis did not create any preferred new factor solution compared to Christiansen & Goldman's original factors. Internal consistency of the seven AEQ-A scales ranged from 0.37 to 0.72 on Cronbach's alpha. All seven AEQ-A scales correlated significantly with self-reported alcohol use as was expected, and this study also replicated the relative importance of the social enhancement scale. This was the first study using AEQ-A in a non-English-speaking culture. The generalizability of alcohol outcome expectancies was strongly supported.
The present study indicates that the Norwegian version of AEQ-A possesses a level of concurrent validity and internal reliability that is acceptable compared to the original scales, and can serve as a useful instrument in behavioral research on alcohol use among Norwegian adolescents in the years to come.     

Online daters' reactions to sexually explicit initiation messages

This study used expectancy violations theory and uses and gratifications theory to conduct an experiment investigating how the content of relationship initiation messages, recipients' gender, and recipients' motives for using online dating applications shape whether and how the initiation message violates recipients' expectations. Participants (N = 275) were recruited through an emergent adult population at a large Midwestern university and identified primarily as women (66.7%), heterosexual (79%), and white (64.5%). Participants were randomly assigned to imagine matching with someone through online dating who sent either a traditional greeting or sexually explicit content in their initial message. As predicted, receiving a sexually explicit message was more unexpected and perceived more negatively than receiving an ordinary greeting, but the intensity of that negative reaction was moderated by users' motives for using online dating apps and gender. Negative reactions to receiving sexually explicit content were amplified for women and individuals interested in long-term relationships. Negative reactions were dampened for men and online daters interested in casual sexual relationships. The implications of the findings are discussed in relation to expectancy violations theory and research on relationship initiation in online contexts.     

Math-gender stereotypes and career intentions: an application of expectancy–value theory

Exposure to negative math-gender stereotypes undermines the intentions of female college students to engage in careers in the math field, yet the mechanisms by which such stereotypes relate to girls’ career intentions remain unclear. We simultaneously tested multiple mediators in a sample of 186 female students from one high school in central China. Participants completed five questionnaires that measured mathematics-related gender stereotypes, competence beliefs, task value, sexual attraction beliefs and career intentions. The path analysis results indicated that math-gender stereotypes were negatively related to adolescent girls’ career intentions in math fields through negative relationships with students’ mathematics-related competence beliefs, task value and sexual attraction beliefs. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for theory and educational practice.     

An Expectancy Theory Approach to Group Coordination: Expertise,Task Features,and Member Behavior

Working in a group requires coordination. The current paper examines coordination in terms of member‐level behavioral choices. Extending expectancy theory to a collaborative group setting, we interpret past findings on expertise and hypothesize that component features (specifically their difficulty and worth relative to each other) impact member behavior and hence coordination both directly and by moderating the role of expertise. Findings were largely as predicted, suggesting that an expectancy theory perspective may be a useful tool for the study and understanding of coordination. An exploratory examination of recordings of group interaction suggested that although most of our groups discussed coordination strategies, the strategies discussed did not generally map to the behavioral choices observed. Implications for coordination in general and transactive memory specifically are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

饮酒期望、饮酒拒绝自我效能与青少年的饮酒行为:有中介的调节效应分析

以544名初一、初二、高一和高二的学生为研究对象,考察在控制了相关人口学变量后,消极饮酒期望对积极饮酒期望与青少年饮酒行为关系的调节作用,以及饮酒拒绝自我效能对消极、积极饮酒期望及两者交互作用与饮酒行为关系的中介作用。结果发现:(1)28.31%的中学生在过去一个月中曾饮酒,其中13.60%在过去一个月中曾大量饮酒,8.27%曾醉酒;(2)积极饮酒期望能正向预测青少年的饮酒行为,消极饮酒期望在积极饮酒期望与青少年饮酒行为关系中发挥调节作用;(3)饮酒拒绝自我效能在消极饮酒期望与饮酒行为关系中起部分中介作用,在积极饮酒期望与饮酒行为的关系以及消极饮酒期望的调节作用中发挥了完全中介作用;(4)调节效应的中介机制表明,低消极期望组中,随着积极期望的提高,饮酒拒绝自我效能呈直线下降的趋势;而在高消极期望组中,无论积极期望高或者低,饮酒拒绝自我效能均较高。研究结果对青少年饮酒行为的干预有重要的指导意义。