Failure Causes Fear: The Effect of Self-Esteem Threat on Death-Anxiety

ABSTRACT

According to terror management theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, 1986 Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T. and Solomon, S. 1986. “The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory”. In Public self and private self, Edited by: Baumeister, R. F. 189–212. New York, NY: Springer-Verlag. doi:10.1007/978-1-4613-9564-5_10[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), self-esteem protects people from anxiety associated with the knowledge of certain mortality. A number of studies provide evidence consistent with this assertion, but no studies have experimentally examined the effect of threatened self-esteem on death-anxiety. In the current study, self-esteem was manipulated and death-anxiety measured. A self-esteem threat increased death-anxiety relative to a self-esteem boost and non-self threat control condition.     

The effect of viewing ultra-fit images on college women's body dissatisfaction

Modern ideals of female attractiveness include an extremely toned and fit appearance in addition to extreme thinness. Although viewing thin models has a negative effect on women's body image, research has not tested the effect of exposure to the ultra-fit physique separate from the thin-ideal. This randomized, posttest-only experiment tested the effects of the athletic aspect of the current ideal by exposing 138 undergraduate women to thin and athletic models, normal weight athletic models, or a control condition consisting of neutral objects. The study also tested the moderating effects of thin-ideal and athletic-ideal internalization. Exposure to thin ultra-fit models, but not normal weight ultra-fit models, produced an increase in body dissatisfaction and neither internalization variable moderated this effect. Findings suggest that interventions that focus on the benefits of fitness while challenging the desirability of thinness may offer promising results.     

青少年早期抑郁的自尊缓解假设的追踪研究

本研究采用追踪设计和青少年自我报告法,以初一年级598名青少年为研究对象,运用分层多元回归分析,考察其自尊缓解生活事件对抑郁的影响是否随自尊与抑郁之间的时间间隔而异。发现当前自尊显著缓解压力事件对抑郁的即时作用和长期作用;先前自尊不能显著缓解先前压力事件对抑郁的长期作用,反而加剧压力事件的长期作用。这些发现对青少年抑郁的干预将有重要启示。     

中小学生的灾难暴露程度对创伤后应激障碍的影响：中介和调节效应

汶川地震后1年时,采用灾难暴露程度问卷、主观害怕程度问卷、社会支持问卷和创伤后应激障碍症状量表,对地震极重灾区的3058名中小学生进行调查,考察灾难暴露程度、主观害怕程度、社会支持与创伤后应激障碍的关系。结果发现：（1）震后1年时中小学生创伤后应激障碍的发生率为9.6%,其中有目睹他人死亡经历的学生的创伤后应激障碍发生率为16.2%;（2）灾难暴露程度能正向预测创伤后应激障碍,而主观害怕程度在灾难暴露程度对创伤后应激障碍的影响中起部分中介作用;（3）社会支持在灾难暴露程度与创伤后应激障碍的关系中起调节作用,但不能调节主观害怕程度与创伤后应激障碍之间的关系。其中,无论支持的性质如何,父母和教师的支持都能缓解灾难暴露程度对创伤后应激障碍的影响,而同学和其他人的支持则不具有调节效应。     

Literacy skills seem to fuel literacy enjoyment,rather than vice versa

Children who like to read and write tend to be better at it. This association is typically interpreted as enjoyment impacting engagement in literacy activities, which boosts literacy skills. We fitted direction-of-causation models to partial data of 3690 Finnish twins aged 12. Literacy skills were rated by the twins’ teachers and literacy enjoyment by the twins themselves. A bivariate twin model showed substantial genetic influences on literacy skills (70%) and literacy enjoyment (35%). In both skills and enjoyment, shared-environmental influences explained about 20% in each. The best-fitting direction-of-causation model showed that skills impacted enjoyment, while the influence in the other direction was zero. The genetic influences on skills influenced enjoyment, likely via the skills→enjoyment path. This indicates an active gene-environment correlation: children with an aptitude for good literacy skills are more likely to enjoy reading and seek out literacy activities. To a lesser extent, it was also the shared-environmental influences on children's skills that propagated to influence children's literacy enjoyment. Environmental influences that foster children's literacy skills (e.g., families and schools), also foster children's love for reading and writing. These findings underline the importance of nurturing children's literacy skills.

Highlights

• It's known that how much children enjoy reading and writing and how good they are at it correlates ∼0.30, but causality remains unknown.
• We tested the direction of causation in 3690 twins aged 12.
• Literacy skills impacted literacy enjoyment, but not the other way around.
• Genetics influence children's literacy skills and how much they like and choose to read and write, indicating genetic niche picking.

     

结合题目作答时间的计算机化自适应测验选题方法

计算机形式的测验能够记录考生在测验中的题目作答时间（Response Time, RT），作为一种重要的辅助信息来源，RT对于测验开发和管理具有重要的价值，特别是在计算机化自适应测验（Computerized Adaptive Testing, CAT）领域。本文简要介绍了RT在CAT选题方面应用并作以简评，分析了这些技术在实践中的可行性。最后，探讨了当前RT应用于CAT选题存在的问题以及可以进一步开展的研究方向。     

新型冠状病毒肺炎疫情下普通民众焦虑的影响因素研究

为考察新型冠状病毒肺炎疫情下普通民众焦虑情绪的影响因素,采用自陈式问卷,对新型冠状病毒肺炎疫情防控下的1050位普通民众的疫情经历、媒体信息暴露时长及性质、疫情风险感知和焦虑进行调查。结果发现新型冠状病毒肺炎疫情防控当下民众焦虑情绪的发生率为18.0%,焦虑情绪的发生率在性别、年龄、受教育程度、婚姻状况和月收入等方面没有显著的差异;疫情经历、媒体信息暴露时长、负面信息暴露和感知疫情的严重性会增加焦虑情绪产生的可能性,正面信息暴露、对疫情熟悉度和可控度的感知可以减少焦虑情绪产生的可能性。这些结果说明了疫情经历、媒体信息暴露时长和性质、疫情风险感知是疫情防控当下民众焦虑出现的重要因素。     

Impacts of exposure to television and types of animations on children’s task persistence

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of the duration of children’s exposure to television, the level of parental guidance during the exposure and the types of animations (realistic or unrealistic) on their task persistence. A total of ninety young children with a mean age of 60.1 months (SD = 5.89) participated in the study. The time the children spent on unsolvable puzzles was recorded as an indicator of task persistence. The children were randomly assigned to either a realistic animation group or an unrealistic animation group. Initially, the children were tested with an unsolvable puzzle as a pretest. They were given a posttest two weeks later. During the test, the realistic animation group watched a realistic animation and the unrealistic animation group watched an unrealistic animation before they were asked to work on another unsolvable puzzle. The same procedure was repeated with a follow-up test two weeks later. In the pretest, no significant difference among the independent variables emerged between the groups. Multiple regression between the posttest and the follow-up test pointed out children’s daily exposure to television as a predictor of a decrease in their task persistence. The finding places more emphasis on the duration of children’s exposure to television than parental guidance and the types of television programs.     

When Times Get Tough: Savoring and Relationship Satisfaction in Couples Coping with a Stressful Life Event

Background and Objectives: When couples face a stressful life event, this can adversely impact relationship satisfaction. Because savoring positive experiences is thought to enhance intimate relationships and there is evidence that savoring buffers the negative effects of stress at the intrapersonal level, this study examined savoring as an interpersonal resource for couples who experienced a stressful life event.

Methods: One hundred and twenty-eight opposite-sex couples completed measures of impact of event, savoring, positive affect, and relationship satisfaction.

Results: Results from actor-partner interdependence models found that: (1) For couple members who reported a relatively low impact of event, their own savoring was positively predicted by their partner’s impact of event; (2) For women, their own savoring the moment predicted their own and their partner’s greater relationship satisfaction; (3) The relationship between one’s own impact of event and relationship satisfaction was buffered by one’s partner’s savoring the moment; and (4) The relationship between one’s own savoring and relationship satisfaction was mediated by one’s own positive affect.

Conclusions: The findings support the study of savoring as an interpersonal resource in times of stress and have implications for couples-based interventions.     

Manipulating the reported age in earliest memories

ABSTRACT

Previous work suggests that the estimated age in adults’ earliest autobiographical memories depends on age information implied by the experimental context [e.g., Kingo, O. S., Bohn, A., & Krøjgaard, P. (2013). Warm-up questions on early childhood memories affect the reported age of earliest memories in late adolescence. Memory, 21(2), 280–284. doi:10.1080/09658211.2012.729598] and that the age in decontextualised snippets of memory is younger than in more complete accounts (i.e., event memories [Bruce, D., Wilcox-O’Hearn, L. A., Robinson, J. A., Phillips-Grant, K., Francis, L., & Smith, M. C. (2005). Fragment memories mark the end of childhood amnesia. Memory & Cognition, 33(4), 567–576. doi:10.3758/BF03195324]). We examined the malleability of the estimated age in undergraduates’ earliest memories and its relation with memory quality. In Study 1 (n?=?141), vignettes referring to events happening at age 2 rendered earlier reported ages than examples referring to age 6. Exploratory analyses suggested that event memories were more sensitive to the age manipulation than memories representing a single, isolated scene (i.e., snapshots). In Study 2 (n?=?162), asking self-relevant and public-event knowledge questions about participants’ preschool years prior to retrieval yielded comparable average estimated ages. Both types of semantic knowledge questions rendered earlier memories than a no-age control task. Overall, the reported age in snapshots was younger than in event memories. However, age-differences between memory types across conditions were not statistically significant. Together, the results add to the growing literature indicating that the average age in earliest memories is not as fixed as previously thought.