“To hope was to expect”: The impact of perspective taking and forecast type on wishful thinking

When forecasting future outcomes, people tend to believe that the outcomes they want to happen are also likely to happen. Despite numerous attempts, few systematic factors have been identified that consistently and robustly reduce wishful thinking (WT) effects. Using elections and sporting event outcomes as contexts, three experiments examined whether taking the perspective of a political rival or opposing fan reduced WT effects. We also examined whether making deliberative (vs. intuitive-based) forecasts was associated with lower WT effects. Online adult samples of U.S. citizens from Mechanical Turk and U.S. college students provided their preferences and forecasts for the U.S. presidential election (Experiments 1 and 2) and a sports competition outcome (Experiment 3). Critically, some participants received perspective taking prompts immediately before providing forecasts. First, results revealed reductions in WT effects when participants engaged in perspective taking. Interestingly, this effect only emerged when intuitive-based forecasts were made first (Experiment 3). Second, intuitive-based forecasts revealed stronger evidence of WT effects. Finally, we found that perspective taking and forming forecasts deliberately promoted a shift in focus away from preferences and toward a consideration of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the entities (i.e., candidates and teams). Theoretical implications for understanding WT effects and applied implications for developing interventions are discussed.     

Religion,Type A behavior,and health

In a study of air traffic controllers, religious differences are found in the way Type A behavior is associated with several health status indicators. Associations between the Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS) and physical illness incidence, health-promotive behavior, diastolic and systolic blood pressure, subjective distress and impulse control problems, and alcohol consumption are examined by religious attendance, religious affiliation, and change in affiliation. Findings confirm that Type A does not vary significantly by religion. However, there are several significant findings between Type A and various health indicators. Type A is associated with illness incidence, overall and more strongly in several religion, subgroups. Type A and alcohol consumption are related positively in Protestants and converts, and negatively in churchgoing Catholics. Type A is related to impulse control problems in churchgoing Protestants and to subjective distress in churchgoing Catholics. Finally, in individuals with weak or no religious ties, Type A is associated with lower blood pressure. This last finding suggests that in some people (for example, the irreligious or unchurched), the coronary-prone behavior pattern may have cardiovascular effects which are salutary in at least one respect.The authors wish to thank Dr. Kyriakos S. Markides and Laura A. Ray for their assistance with this study. Address requests for reprints to Dr. Levin at the Institute of Gerontology, 300 North Ingalls, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.     

Response latency measurements to visual cognitive tasks by normal hearing and deaf subjects

Visual cognitive differences between hearing (N = 16) and deaf (N = 32) high-school and middle-school students were studied. Visual tasks were presented on a microcomputer and response latencies were collected. Significant differences were noted between the deaf and normal groups but not between total communication deaf and oral deaf students. These differences support the hypothesis that deaf students prefer a visual cognitive strategy. Implications for educating the deaf are discussed.     

Degree of learning,interpolated tests,and rate of forgetting

The purpose of the two experiments reported here was to observe the effects of degree of learning, interpolated tests, and retention interval, primarily on the rate of forgetting of a list of words, and secondarily on hypermnesia for those words. In the first experiment, all the subjects had one study trial on a list of 20 common words, followed by two tests of recall. Half of the subjects had further study and test trials until they had learned the words to a criterion of three correct consecutive recalls. Two days later, half of the subjects under each learning condition returned for four retention tests, and 16 days later, all the subjects returned for four tests. Experiment 2 was similar, except that all the subjects had at least three study trials followed by four recall tests on Day 1, intermediate tests were given 2 or 7 days later, and they all had final tests 14 days later. The results showed that rate of forgetting was attenuated by an additional intermediate set of tests but not by criterion learning. Hypermnesia was generally found over the tests that were given after a retention interval of 2 or more days. The best predictor of the amount of hypermnesia over a set of tests was the difference between overall cumulative recall and net recall on the first test of the set.     

Subalgebras and homomorphisms of semi-Post algebras

Semi-Post algebras have been introduced and investigated in [6]. This paper is devoted to semi-Post subalgebras and homomorphisms. Characterization of semi-Post subalgebras and homomorphisms, relationships between subalgebras and homomorphisms of semi-Post algebras and of generalized Post algebras are examined.     

Long-term memory formation in chicks is blocked by 2-deoxygalactose, a fucose analog

When day-old chicks are trained on a passive avoidance task there is enhanced synthesis of glycoproteins. Bilateral intracerebral injections of 20 mumole of 2-deoxygalactose (2-D-gal), administered just before and just after training on the task, produce amnesia for the avoidance. Amnesia develops slowly over the first hour and persists for at least 24 h subsequently. If 2-D-gal injections are administered 4 h prior to the training or delayed for 3 h after training, no amnesia occurs. Apart from a brief initial suppression of pecking following injection there are no effects of 2-D-gal on other observed behaviors of the birds. Within the first hour this dose of 2-D-gal inhibits [3H]fucose incorporation into acid-insoluble material by 26% (or 68%, calculated relative to free pool fucose). The amnestic effect of 2-D-gal is not shown by galactose, glucose, fucose, or 2-D-glucose. Injecting 40 mumole of galactose simultaneously with the 2-D-gal abolishes the 2-D-gal-induced amnesia; 40 mumole of fucose, however, does not abolish the amnesia. The utility of 2-D-gal as an agent for analyzing the role of glycoproteins in memory formation is discussed.     

Behavioral contrast in fixed-interval components: effects of extinction-component duration.

Seven albino rats were exposed to a multiple schedule of reinforcement in which the two components (fixed interval and extinction) alternated such that a presentation of the extinction component followed each fixed-interval reinforcement. In baseline sessions, the duration of the extinction component was constant and always one-third of the fixed-interval value. Probe sessions contained a probe segment in which the duration of the extinction component was increased; the response rate in fixed-interval components during the probe segment was compared with the response rate in the segments preceding and following the probe. The effect of increasing the duration of the extinction component was studied under three values of fixed interval: 30 s, 120 s, and 18 s, in three successive conditions. Response rate within fixed intervals was a direct function of duration of the extinction component. Pausing at the beginning of the fixed interval decreased as extinction duration increased. These effects were larger and more consistent for the shorter fixed-interval values (18 s and 30 s). These results indicate a functional relation between relative component duration and responding. For the component providing more frequent reinforcement, this could be stated as an inverse relationship between relative component duration and response rate. This relation is similar to findings regarding the ratio of trial and intertrial duration in Pavlovian conditioning procedures, and suggests that behavioral contrast may be related to Pavlovian contingencies underlying the multiple schedule.     

Social and emotional loneliness: an examination of Weiss's typology of loneliness

This study examined Weiss' conceptualization of social and emotional loneliness. Using data from an extensive survey of undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Iowa, we measured social and emotional loneliness, students' affective and behavioral reactions to loneliness, students' social relationships, and their judgments of the degree to which their relationships supply the six social provisions described by Weiss. As expected, we found differences in the subjective experiences of social and emotional loneliness, although both forms of loneliness were also characterized by a common core of experiences. The results generally supported Weiss's ideas concerning the determinants of social and emotional loneliness. Predictions concerning the affective and behavioral consequences associated with each type of loneliness, however, were only partly supported, although the two forms of loneliness were associated with different affective reactions and coping behaviors. The implications of these findings for Weiss's typology of loneliness are discussed.     

Envisioning motherhood: Mental-state language in caregiving narratives across the perinatal period

Nancy Suchman's work highlighted the fundamental role of maternal mentalization in maternal addiction, mental health, and caregiving challenges. In this study, we aimed to examine the role of mental-state language (MSL) as a measure of mentalization in prenatal and postnatal narratives and their sentiment in a sample of 91 primarily White mothers from the western United States, followed from the second trimester of pregnancy, through the third trimester, to 4 months postpartum. Specifically, we investigated the use of affective and cognitive MSL in prenatal narratives when mothers visualized caring for their baby and postnatal narratives when mothers compared their prenatal visualization to the current caregiving reality. Results indicated moderate consistency in MSL between the second and third trimesters, but prenatal and postnatal MSL was not significantly correlated. Across all time points, higher use of MSL was related to more positive sentiment, indicating an association between mentalization and positive caregiving representations across the perinatal period. Women used more affective than cognitive MSL in prenatal imagination of caregiving, but this pattern was reversed in their postpartum reflection. Implications on assessing parental mentalization prenatally and considering the relative dominance of affective and cognitive mentalizing are discussed while considering study limitations.