DISTRACTION: ITS UTILIZATION AND EFFICACY WITH CHILDREN UNDERGOING DENTAL TREATMENT

We investigated the utilization and efficacy of distraction in reducing the anxious and disruptive behavior of 4 children undergoing dental treatment. During the distraction procedure, the children were shown a poster and told a story about it during dental treatment. They earned a prize if they attended to the poster and story and could correctly answer questions about them following each intervention visit. The children's disruptive behavior was assessed via direct observation, and results were analyzed within a multiple baseline design. The children exhibited high levels of anxious and disruptive behavior across baseline visits, regardless of the length of time in treatment or number of visits. Anxious and disruptive behavior decreased upon introduction of the intervention for all children. This was accompanied by the children meeting the criterion for correct answers on the distraction quiz. However, 2 of the children demonstrated an increase in their anxious and disruptive behavior across intervention visits. Results are discussed in terms of the need to evaluate treatment strategies that promote maintenance as well as initial changes.     

Dreaming for the World: A Jungian Study of Dreams During the COVID-19 Pandemic1

This project explores what dreams might reveal about the collective psyche’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic in its first year, before the development of vaccines. A brief survey, distributed to Jungian colleagues and organizations, and to various social media sites, invited people to submit online a dream related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Four hundred and thirty-six dreams were submitted. Forty additional Russian dreams were collected and submitted by Russian colleagues. Using qualitative research methods based on phenomenological hermeneutics, the researchers categorized and counted the range of COVID imagery. In addition, the researchers describe a range of psychic responses to the pandemic, including horror, grief, sickness, social discord, and violence, but also images of healing and transformation, increased sense of community, and spiritual renewal. Several healing nightmares are presented. Healing alchemical and anima/animus imagery is described. Twelve dreams are introduced and presented. It is concluded that the collective psyche, rooted in the Self, is a healing resource for social and cultural trauma. This project supports Beradt’s (1968) inspirational study of dreaming in Nazi Germany, as well as recent studies of COVID-related dreams and recent publications on the social nature of dreaming.     

Understanding dark side personality at work: Distinguishing and reviewing nonlinear,interactive, differential,and reciprocal effects

The topic of dark side personality at work has received considerable research attention over the past decade, and both qualitative and quantitative reviews of this field have already been published. To show the relevance of dark personality in the work context, existing reviews have typically focused on systematically discussing the different criteria that have been linked to dark traits (e.g., job performance, work attitudes, leadership emergence, etc.). In contrast, and complementing this earlier work, the current review paper summarizes the available literature on this topic by structuring it in terms of the nature of the relationships studied rather than in terms of the types of outcome variables. Doing so, the focus shifts from “What are the outcomes of dark traits?” to “How are dark traits related to work outcomes?” Scrutinizing the nature of these relationships, we specifically focus on four types of effects (i.e., nonlinear, interactive, differential, and reciprocal) that highlight the complexity of how dark side traits operate in the work context. Structured this way, this review first provides a conceptual underpinning of each of these complex effects, followed by a summary of the empirical literature published over the past 10 years. To conclude, we present an integration of this field, provide suggestions for future research, and highlight concrete assessment challenges.     

Prosocial orientation and COVID-19 vaccine willingness in the U.S.

Despite evidence of the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines and their wide availability, many in the U.S. are not vaccinated. Research demonstrates that prosocial orientations predict COVID-19 health behaviors (e.g., social distancing) and vaccination intentions, however, little work has examined COVID-19 vaccination willingness in the U.S. since vaccines were approved. Findings from two U.S. samples show that, in contrast to other COVID-19 health behaviors, vaccine willingness in unvaccinated people is unrelated to prosocial orientation. Study 2 demonstrates that the lack of association between vaccine willingness and prosocial orientation in unvaccinated participants was specific to those with stronger beliefs that COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective. Thus, in prosocial people, perceptions of vaccines' ineffectiveness may undermine COVID-19 vaccine willingness.     

Sources of difficulty in deductive reasoning: The THOG task

The THOG task presents four designs constructed from two shapes and two colours. Subjects are told that the experimenter has written down one of the shapes and one of the colours and are provided the rule that if, and only if, any design has either the shape or the colour, but not both, written down, then it is a THOG. Finally, they are given an exemplar and are asked to classify the remaining designs. Successful solution requires construction of hypotheses, reasoning under each hypothesis, and comparison of the results under each to reach a final conclusion. Few subjects are able to provide adequate responses on the standard version of the task. We present the results of four experiments, with 160 undergraduates each presented with one of eight versions of the task. Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that (1) some subjects think that the properties that are written down are identical to those of the exemplar, although these are not the same subjects who exhibit the modal error pattern, (2) many subjects correctly understand the disjunction of the rule but fail to consider the hypotheses, and (3) poor initial encoding of the problem is not easily corrected. Experiment 3 investigates the sufficiency of the claim of Griggs and Newstead (1982) that appropriate problem solution follows from explicit presentation of all problem information (including use of positive labels for properties that are not written down), and Experiment 4 investigates the necessity of the claim. The results of Experiments 3 and 4 show that presenting positive category labels does increase the frequency of correct solution; however, positive category labels are not necessary for such improvement. Separation of the labels of the THOG rule from those of the exemplar, or informing subjects that only one other design is a THOG, also increases the frequency of successful solution. The results suggest that many people have some fairly sophisticated reasoning skills. but application of these skills is easily discouraged when the features of the task lead to poor initial encoding.     

Social preference in rats

Rats were given repeated choices between social and nonsocial outcomes, and between familiar and unfamiliar social outcomes. Lever presses on either of 2 levers in the middle chamber of a 3-chamber apparatus opened a door adjacent to the lever, permitting 45-s access to social interaction with the rat in the chosen side chamber. In Experiment 1, rats preferred (a) social over nonsocial options, choosing their cagemate rat over an empty chamber, and (b) an unfamiliar over a familiar rat, choosing a non-cagemate over their cagemate. These findings were replicated in Experiment 2 with 2 different non-cagemate rats. Rats preferred both non-cagemate rats to a similar degree when pitted against their cagemate, but were indifferent when the 2 non-cagemates were pitted against each other. Similar preference for social over nonsocial and non-cagemate over cagemate was seen in Experiment 3, with new non-cagemate rats introduced after every third session. Response rates (for both cagemate and non-cagemate rats) were elevated under conditions of nonsocial (isolated) housing compared to conditions of social (paired) housing, demonstrating a social deprivation effect. Together, the experiments contribute to an experimental analysis of social preference within a social reinforcement framework, drawing on methods with proven efficacy in the analysis of reinforcement more generally.     

When Gender Matters in Scientific Communication: The Role of Generic Language

Sex Roles - Prior research has documented gender differences in self-presentation and self-promotion. For example, a recent analysis of scientific publications in the biomedical sciences reveals...     

Hungry people prefer larger bodies and objects: The importance of testing boundary effects

Several lab-based studies have indicated that when people are hungry, they judge larger women's bodies as more attractive, compared to when they are satiated. These satiety-dependent judgements are assumed to provide explanatory power when it comes to the noted cross-cultural differences in attitudes towards women's adiposity, whereby people who live in regions that are under greater nutritional stress tend to have more favourable attitudes towards bigger bodies. However, it is premature to assume that women's bodies are the proper or actual domain of the satiety-dependent judgement shifts found within research study testing contexts until stimuli other than female bodies have also been tested: The research programme falls into the trap of confirmation bias unless we also seek out disconfirmatory evidence and test the boundaries of the effects of hunger. Accordingly, we collected attractiveness judgements of female and male bodies manipulated to vary in size by varying level of adiposity, and objects manipulated to vary in size, from 186 participants who also reported their current hunger level. We found that larger sizes of stimuli in general, and women's bodies in particular, especially when judged by women, were judged as more attractive by the hungrier participants. We discuss these patterns in the context of the Insurance Hypothesis, the Environmental Security Hypothesis, and the impact of hunger on acquisition.