The effects of contextual information and gender on the prediction of hypnotic susceptibility

Council, Kirsch, and Hafner (1986) obtained empirical support for the hypothesis that significant correlations between questionnaire measures of absorption and hypnotic susceptibility are an artifact of subjects' beliefs about their own hypnotizability. We tested this hypothesis in a two-session experiment. During Session 1, subjects completed questionnaire measures of absorption, mystical experience, daydreaming frequency, and paranormal beliefs. During Session 2, subjects were tested for hypnotic susceptibility. Subjects were also exposed to one of three information manipulations: They were told about hypnotic testing either before or after filling out the questionnaires or were not told about hypnotic testing. The information manipulation moderated the prediction of susceptibility by the questionnaire measures for women, but not for men. For women, scores on the absorption questionnaire predicted susceptibility only when subjects were informed about hypnotic testing. In the told-after condition, this effect generalized to all of the remaining questionnaire measures. For men, none of the questionnaires was a reliable predictor of susceptibility.     

Children's social behavior: Reliability and concurrent validity of two self-report measures

In this study the psychometric qualities of Deluty's Children's Action Tendency Scale (CATS) and Michelson and Wood's Children's Assertive Behavior Scale (CABS) were assessed with 157 Dutch children. Both instruments are designed to assess children's self-reported responses to interpersonal situations, whereby aggressive, assertive, and submissive scores are obtained. In general acceptable psychometric properties were obtained for both the CATS and the CABS, except for the assertive scale of the CATS. Furthermore, it was found that the ability of both the CATS and the CABS to discriminate between submissiveness and assertiveness was low. Important gender differences that were found regarding the relations with measures of perceived competence and social desirability are offered as a possible explanation for the relative failure of the CABS and the CATS to unbind submissive from assertive behavior. The parent version of the CABS is offered as a possible alternative or additional source of information for the assessment of children's submissiveness. Recommendations for future applications and research are presented.This research was supported by Grant 2843 from the NFGV to the second author.     

Associative facilitation of word recognition as measured from a neutral prime

It is shown that lexical decision times to strong associates with an associative strength of approximately 40% are facilitated relative to targets following a neutral prime, “blank,” whereas very weak associates with an associative strength of less then 3% are neither facilitated nor inhibited. It is also shown that relative to the “blank” baseline time, a row of crosses inhibits processing of the following target. The latter finding has implications for earlier studies that have used crosses as a neutral prime. In these studies, facilitation effects have been overestimated and inhibition effects have been underestimated. Neely 1976 has proposed a predict-and-match strategy according to which subjects are assumed to predict one or more targets from the prime and to match the actual target onto the predicted targets. A part of this theory is not supported by the present data. The results are discussed in terms of the two-process theory of expectancy (Posner & Snyder, 1975). They are also considered in the light of a recent theory by Becker (1980). As an alternative interpretation of part of the reported data, a coherence assumption by the subjects about all reading materials is introduced.     

Large-scale ensemble averaging of ambulatory impedance cardiograms

Impedance cardiography has been used increasingly to measure human physiological responses to emotional and mentally engaging stimuli. The validity of large-scale ensemble averaging of ambulatory impedance cardiograms was evaluated for preejection period (PEP), interbeat interval, and dZ/dt_(min) amplitude. We tested whether the average of “classical” 60-sec ensemble averages across periods with fixed activity, posture, physical load, social situation, and location could be accurately estimated from a single large-scale ensemble average spanning these entire periods. Impedance and electrocardiograms were recorded for about 24-h from 21 subjects. Recordings were scored by seven raters, using both methods for each subject. Good agreement (average intraclass correlation coefficient was .91) between both ensemble averaging methods was found for all three cardiac function measures. The results indicate that for unambiguous ambulatory impedance cardiograms, large-scale ensemble averaging is valid, which makes measuring prolonged changes in cardiac sympathetic activity by measuring ambulatory PEP feasible even in large epidemiological samples.     

Stronger suboptimal than optimal affective priming?

The finding of stronger affective priming in less conscious (suboptimal) conditions than in fully conscious (optimal) conditions (S. T. Murphy & R. B. Zajonc, 1993) is theoretically important because it contradicts notions that emotions are primarily reflected by conscious states. In 2 experiments, this pattern of results was obtained. Happy and angry faces were presented both optimally and suboptimally and were masked by unknown ideographs. In Experiment 1, instructions for the conscious and less conscious affective priming conditions were matched, and affective ratings of ideographs were determined. In Experiment 2, a more implicit affective measure (facial electromyography of musculus zygomaticus major and musculus corrugator supercilii) served as the dependent variable. Stronger suboptimal than optimal affective priming was found in both experiments. It is concluded that stronger suboptimal than optimal processing is characteristic for affective processing and that it can also be found when instructions are matched and when a more implicit measure is assessed.     

Arm adductor with arm abduction in rotator cuff tear patients vs. healthy--design of a new measuring instrument

The incidence of (a)symptomatic rotator cuff tears is high, but etiologic mechanisms are unclear and treatment outcomes vary. A practical tool providing objective outcome measures and insight into etiology and potential patient subgroups is desirable. Symptomatic cuff tears coincide with humerus cranialization. Adductor co-activation during active arm abduction has been reported to reduce subacromial narrowing and pain in cuff patients. We present an easy-to-use method to evaluate adductor co-activation. Twenty healthy controls and twenty full-thickness cuff tear patients exerted EMG-recorded isometric arm abduction and adduction tasks. Ab- and adductor EMG's were expressed using the "Activation Ratio (AR)" (-1 ≤ AR ≤ 1), where lower values express more co-activation. Mean control AR's ranged from .7 to .9 with moderate to good test-retest reliability (ICC: .60-.74). Patients showed significantly more adductor co-activation during abduction, with adductor AR's ranging between .3 (teres major) and .5 (latissimus dorsi). In conclusion, the introduced method discriminates symptomatic cuff tear patients from healthy controls, quantifies adductor co-activation in an interpretable measure, and provides the opportunity to study correlations between muscle activation and humerus cranialization in a straightforward manner. It has potential as an objective outcome measure, for distinguishing symptomatic from asymptomatic cuff tears and as a tool for surgical or therapeutic decision-making.     

Towards a Relationally and Action‐orientated Social Psychology of Homelessness

Homelessness is a pressing social and health concern that literally embodies broader inequities in society. This article provides an introduction to research in social psychology on homelessness and an emerging research agenda that situates the contributions of social psychologists within the broader social science effort. Attention is given to the consequences of homelessness, definitional issues, the relevance of a turn to place and interpersonal and intergroup relationships, and the importance of an action‐orientated agenda for responding to the complexities of homelessness.     

Age and Education Differences in Marriages and their Effects on Life Satisfaction

Within marriages husbands typically tend to be older and higher educated than their wife. This paper tries to explain this by analyzing whether age and education differences between spouses have an effect on happiness. Two alternative hypotheses are tested on the relation between age and education gaps between partners and life satisfaction. It is found that a positive age gap between husband and wife increases both male and female life satisfaction, while female life satisfaction increases if the education gap is smaller.     

Number-of-translation norms for Dutch—English translation pairs: A new tool for examining language production

We collected number-of-translation norms on 562 Dutch-English translation pairs from several previous studies of cross-language processing. Participants were highly proficient Dutch—English bilinguals. Form and semantic similarity ratings were collected on the 1,003 possible translation pairs. Approximately 40% of the translations were rated as being similar across languages with respect to spelling/sound (i.e., they were cognates). Approximately 45% of the translations were rated as being highly semantically similar across languages. At least 25% of the words in each direction of translation had more than one translation. The form similarity ratings were found to be highly reliable even when obtained with different bilinguals and modified rating procedures. Number of translations and meaning factors significantly predicted the semantic similarity of translation pairs. In future research, these norms may be used to determine the number of translations of words to control for or study this factor. These norms are available at http://www.talkbank.org/norms/tokowicz/.     

How do I see myself? A systematic review of identities in pro‐environmental behaviour research

Encouraging pro‐environmental behaviour (PEB) is an environmental and societal concern. Encouraging PEB focussing on how consumers see themselves (their identity) has blossomed. However, a theoretical assessment of this research is missing. Three main identity theories seem to best explain the research, specifically, and two‐fold, identity, and social identity theory (SIT), collectively known as the unified identity theory (UIT), and place identity theory (PIT). As these theories overlap more than differ in their understanding of identity, we argue that combining these theories is needed to avoid redundancies in identity theorizing, provide a universal approach to identity in terms of the processes and outcomes, and explain the PEB research most succinctly. Therefore, we understand identity similarly between the theories and offer a universal identity theory approach based on the theoretical definitions and assumptions. Finally, we demonstrate how the theory can be used to explain the research. Next, research was identified by conducting a systematic review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses guidelines, where 62 studies were relevant. Multiple identities relevant for a given PEB are assumed and evidenced: 99. Identities are assumed to be either individually‐, group‐, and/or place‐focused, drawing on the specific subsets of the universal theory: identity theory, social identity theory, and place identity theory, respectively. Identities are assumed to relate to behaviour, where identity increased PEB with medium effect sizes. Finally, to move the field forward, we provide a theoretical framework of how to test identities in relation to other psychological variables relevant for PEB research.