Testosterone intake and aggressiveness: Real effect or anticipation?

In a double-blind experiment, human males (n = 27) were given either testosterone (40 mg/day), placebo, or no treatment, over a one week period. Subjective and observer assessed mood estimations were conducted before and after treatment. Testosterone levels in saliva were measured with radioimmunoassay. The results revealed a significant placebo effect [c. f. Medicine and Science in Sports 4: 124–126]: After treatment, the placebo group scored higher than both the testosterone and the control group on self-estimated anger, irritation, impulsivity, and frustration. Observer-estimated mood yielded similar results. The lack of a placebo effect in the testosterone group is intriguing, and may be due to secondary effects caused by suppression of the body's own testosterone production, since recorded non-protein bound testosterone did not significantly rise due to treatment. The resultss suggest that androgen usage causes expectations, rather than an actual increase of aggressiveness. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Toward a taxonomy of attention shifting: Individual differences in fMRI during multiple shift types

Although task switching is often considered one of the fundamental abilities underlying executive functioning and general intelligence, there is little evidence that switching is a unitary construct and little evidence regarding the relationship between brain activity and switching performance. We examined individual differences in multiple types of attention shifting in order to determine whether behavioral performance and fMRI activity are correlated across different types of shifting. The participants (n=39) switched between objects and attributes both when stimuli were perceptually available (external) and when stimuli were stored in memory (internal). We found that there were more switchrelated activations in many regions associated with executive control—including the dorsolateral and medial prefrontal and parietal cortices—when behavioral switch costs were higher (poor performance). Conversely, activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and the rostral anterior cingulate was consistently correlated with good performance, suggesting a general role for these areas in efficient attention shifting. We discuss these findings in terms of a model of cognitive-emotional interaction in attention shifting, in which reward-related signals in the VMPFC guide efficient selection of tasks in the lateral prefrontal and parietal cortices.     

Acceptance, inference, and the multiple-conclusion sequent

This paper offers an interpretation of multiple-conclusion sequents as a kind of meta-inference rule: just as single-conclusion sequents represent inferences from sentences to sentences, so multiple-conclusion sequents represent a certain kind of inference from single-conclusion sequents to single-conclusion sequents. The semantics renders sound and complete the standard structural rules of reflexivity, monotonicity (or thinning), and transitivity (or cut). The paper is not the first one to attempt to account for multiple-conclusion sequents without invoking notions of truth or falsity??but unlike earlier such efforts, which have typically helped themselves to primitive notions of both acceptance and rejection, the present one makes do with the former alone. For technical reasons, the treatment is limited to sequents with non-empty succedents.     

The relative effects of competence and likability on interpersonal attraction

Undergraduate students in Singapore (N = 80) learned about the competence (low vs. high) and likability (low vs. high) of a future interaction partner and indicated their attraction toward that stranger. The effect of likability was two times as large as that of competence. Because of the additive effects of the two manipulated factors on attraction, the authors interpreted the preference for lovable fools over competent jerks as an outcome of a generalized supremacy of likability over competence.     

What people believe about memory

Two representative samples of adult Norwegians (n=2000) were asked a set of general and specific questions regarding their beliefs and opinions about human memory. The results indicate that on many questions, such as time of the earliest memories, inhibiting effects of collaboration, and memory for dramatic versus ordinary events, the views of the general public concurred with current research findings, and people in general had realistic views about their own memory performance. On other questions, such as the reliability of olfactory as compared with visual and auditory memory, the memory of small children in comparison with that of adults, the likelihood of repression of adult traumatic memories, and on more general questions such as the possibility of training memory and the capacity limitations of long-term memory, a large proportion of the participants expressed views that are less supported by scientific evidence. Implications of these findings are briefly discussed.     

Interpreting the uninterpretable: The effect of self-esteem on the interpretation of meaningless feedback

People often seek out and retain positive information about themselves via self-enhancement processes. Under other circumstances, they seek out and retain self-confirmatory information via self-verification processes. Research on both of these self-evaluation processes has been based heavily on domains such as social skills, in which people have a large database of prior information that presumably influences the way in which incoming self-relevant information is interpreted. In the present research, participants were asked to evaluate themselves on a set of imaginary "pseudotraits" to investigate how self-esteem influences the self-evaluation process when prior information is unavailable. Participants who had been identified through pre-testing as either high or low in self-esteem received false feedback on five pseudotraits (e.g., "casortic"), after which they evaluated the favorability of this feedback. High self-esteem participants tended to view their feedback as favorable, whereas low self-esteem participants did not.     

A hierarchical model of approach achievement motivation and effort regulation during a 90-min. soccer match

Research indicates that effort close to the lactate threshold during a soccer match is of importance to succeed, so a prospective study was conducted and a hierarchical achievement motivation approach model tested in relation to effort reglation among 55 male high level soccer players (M=23.6 yr., SD=4.3). The motive to chieve success was expected to be positively associated with the mastery goal, which would be positively associated with playing time close to the lactate threshold in the irst soccer match period, and this positively associated with the same magnitude of effort in the second period. We also examined whether the mastery goal would medite the link between the motive to achieve success and playing time close to the lactate threshold during the first period and also playing time close to the lactate threshold in the first period would mediate the link between the mastery goal and playing time at this effort level during the second period. LISREL analyses supported these predictions. Additional hierarchical polynomial multiple regression analyses indicated unexpected significant nonlinear associations between the motive to avoid failure and effort regulation. The latter is partly explained by ideas from the catastrophe theory.     

Why do Managers Engage in Trustworthy Behavior? A Multilevel Cross‐Cultural Study in 18 Countries

Drawing on theories of generalized exchange and the norm of indirect reciprocity, we conceptualize subordinates’ organizational citizenship behavior directed toward the organization (OCBO) and directed toward peers (OCBI) as antecedents of managerial trustworthy behavior and examine how managers’ affective trust in subordinates mediates this relationship. We also investigate the extent to which this mediation is moderated by the level of collectivism in a society. Data were collected from 741 managers and 2,111 subordinates in 18 countries representing all major cultural regions of the world. We find support for our hypothesized moderated mediation in that managers’ affective trust in subordinates mediates the relationships between both subordinates’ OCBO and managerial trustworthy behavior, and subordinates’ OCBI and managerial trustworthy behavior across the different countries studied. Further, managers’ affective trust in subordinates only mediates the relationships between both types of citizenship behavior and managerial trustworthy behavior when collectivism is low to medium but not when it is high. Implications for research on cross‐cultural psychology, trust, and organizational citizenship behavior are discussed.     

Authors’ response: what are emotions and how are they created in the brain?

In our response, we clarify important theoretical differences between basic emotion and psychological construction approaches. We evaluate the empirical status of the basic emotion approach, addressing whether it requires brain localization, whether localization can be observed with better analytic tools, and whether evidence for basic emotions exists in other types of measures. We then revisit the issue of whether the key hypotheses of psychological construction are supported by our meta-analytic findings. We close by elaborating on commentator suggestions for future research.     

Brought Up to Rebel in the Sixties: Birth Order Irrelevant,Parental Worldview Decisive

In Born to Rebel 1997 [1996] and subsequent works Frank Sulloway asserts that laterborns are more supportive of radical rebellions than are firstborns. Failure to replicate his historical cases and lack of significant sibling differences in contemporary studies of personality have produced fierce debate and grave doubts about the theory. It has yet to find robust support from studies of contemporary rebellions. Using retrospective survey data on the 1960s radicalization from 1,246 former students at the University of Oslo, we find no effect of birth order on who became student radicals. What we find are strong effects on political orientation of conventional radicalizing factors: upbringing in an urban environment and in particular in a home with radical parents. Within the group of radicals, birth order did not increase the propensity for political protest activity such as demonstrations and civil disobedience. Laterborns moreover had no higher proclivity than firstborns to apolitical protest behavior such as using cannabis or letting males' hair grow. Coming on top of concerns about the empirical support for other parts of the theory, our findings indicate that Sulloway's contested claim about the extrafamilial effects of birth order is not viable.