Collateral Reports and Cross-Informant Agreement about Adult Psychopathology in 14 Societies

To advance international mental health assessment, instruments that have been internationally validated are needed. To this end, we analyzed ratings from 14 societies on the Adult Behavior Checklist (ABCL), a collateral-report form parallel to the Adult Self-Report (ASR; Achenbach and Rescorla 2003) for ages 18 to 59. Both the ABCL and the ASR assess problems, personal strengths, and adaptive functioning. For a sample of 8322 see note below collaterals, we found strong consistency across societies regarding which ABCL problem items tended to obtain relatively low, medium, or high ratings. Most societal effect sizes (ESs) for problem scale scores were small to medium (< 13.9 %), but the ES for the ABCL Personal Strengths scale was 25 %. For most of the same participants (N = 8,302), we analyzed cross-informant agreement between self-reports on the ASR and collateral reports on the ABCL. Cross-informant correlations for problem scale scores averaged .47, with considerable societal variation. Problem score means were higher on the ASR than the ABCL in every society, but the size of the difference varied across societies. Mean item ratings on the ABCL and ASR were highly correlated within every society (mean r = .92), but within-dyad item rating agreement varied widely in every society (mean r = .39). In all societies, non-corroboration of self-reported deviance and of collateral-reported deviance was common. Overall findings indicated considerable similarity but also some important differences in collateral-reported problems and adaptive functioning across 14 societies.     

Variable-interval punishment during variable-interval reinforcement

Variable-interval punishment was superimposed on a variable-interval food reinforcement baseline for three groups of rats. The value for the variable-interval punishment schedule was the same as that for the variable-interval food reinforcement schedule, although the two schedules were programmed independently. The three groups were Variable Intervals 0.5, 1, and 3 min. Little or no suppression occurred in the three groups at mild (0.2 and 0.4 ma) intensities of punishment, but at 0.6 ma, complete suppression occurred almost uniformly. During continued punishment, there was no consistent recovery toward the pre-punishment baseline at suppressing intensities of punishment. After punishment was discontinued, recovery from suppression was more rapid the lower the punishment intensity, and the lower the value of the variable-interval schedules of reinforcement and punishment.     

Influence of social context on the relationship between guilt and prosocial behaviour

While some previous researchers have found that guilt encourages prosocial behaviour towards a victim at the expense of other people, others have found the opposite, that is, people allocate resources at the expense of themselves. The present research used a hypothetical scenario method to determine which of these patterns would be replicated in the collectivistic context of Japanese society. In addition, we separated the cause of feelings of guilt into having caused harm and being at fault, and examined in more detail the effect of guilt on prosocial behaviour. Our results show that, in line with the second set of previous researchers, participants who were induced to feel guilt for having caused harm were more likely to allocate their resources to their victim at the expense of themselves than were individuals in the no‐harm condition. This suggests that differences in social context influence the effect of guilt on prosocial behaviour in different ways.     

Guilt Signals a Crisis of Rejection: Two Types of Individual Differences Related to Social Rejection Have Dissimilar Effects on Guilt and Compensatory Behavior

We investigated whether feelings of guilt, which signal crises in interpersonal relationships (Baumeister, Stillwell, & Heatherton, 1994), are differently evoked by two types of individual differences in social rejection: rejection detection capability (Kawamoto, Nittono, & Ura, 2015) and rejection sensitivity (Downey & Feldman, 1996). Using the hypothetical scenario method, we found that in situations with a potential risk of being rejected as a consequence of causing another person harm (i.e., harm‐present condition), participants with higher rejection detection capability felt more guilt and engaged in more compensatory behavior towards the victims. In addition, guilt mediated the relationship between rejection detection capability and compensatory behavior. Conversely, in situations with no potential risk of being rejected (i.e., harm‐absent condition), participants with higher rejection sensitivity felt more guilt but did not engage in much compensatory behavior. These results suggest that individual differences in social rejection foster different responses to specific threats.     

The Role of Individual Factors in Friendship Formation: Considering Shyness,Self‐Esteem,Social Skills,and Defensive Pessimism

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of four individual factors (shyness, self‐esteem, social skills, and defensive pessimism) on the formation of friendships among undergraduate students. Freshmen (N = 93) completed a questionnaire assessing their shyness, self‐esteem, social skills, and level of defensive pessimism. Then, they answered questions about interpersonal indices (number of friends, satisfaction with friendships, their willingness to continue relationships, and their feelings of interpersonal friction). After 3 months, they completed a questionnaire about their anxiety state and behavior when talking with the people they had met since university admission. Moreover, they discussed the interpersonal indices they used in a pre‐questionnaire. Path analysis indicated that shyness directly leads to having fewer friends, whereas social skills lead to having more friends through extroversive behavior. Moreover, self‐esteem was positively related to an increase in the willingness to continue relationships, and reflection and pessimistic thinking (which is one component of defensive pessimism) led to a feeling of being fatigued from the effort of considering and respecting the reactions of others.     

Space, Time and Documents in a Refrigerated Warehouse

In a refrigerated warehouse, workers organize distribution and exchange of frozen seafood by the spatial and temporal arrangement of loads. Using videotapes of workers' activities and interviews, this paper investigates how workers organize space, time and artifacts in the activity of frozen seafood distribution and exchange, and how organized space, time and artifacts systematize workers' multiple courses of actions and give direction to them. Particular attention is paid to how the workers use artifacts such as various documents and computers as part of their practices, because the activity of distribution and exchange in this workplace is regarded as the activity of organizing space and time with various artifacts in multiple contexts. Through the analysis of situated literacy of using artifacts, it was shown that the activity of using artifacts is always embedded in multiple contexts. At the same time, diverse artifacts organize multiple contexts of work. Thus, there is the reflexive interaction between the artifacts and the contexts.     

Encoding richness of self-generated elaboration and spacing effects on incidental memory

The present study investigated encoding variability in self-generated elaboration on incidental memory as a function of the type of presentation which was either massed or spaced. The subjects generated different answers to a "why" question for the first and the second presentations of a target sentence in a self-generated elaboration condition. In an experimenter-provided elaboration condition they then rated the appropriateness of the different answers provided by the experimenter for the first and second presentations. This procedure was followed by two free recall tests, one of which was immediate and the other delayed. A self-generated elaboration effect was observed in both the spaced and the massed presentations. These results indicated that the self-generated elaboration effect was facilitated, even in the massed presentation because the different answers to the first and the second presentations led to a richer encoding of each target.     

The effect of multiple-goal strategies on performance outcomes in training and competition

Abstract

Many sport psychologists have been fighting against the pervasive “winning is everything” mentality and have encouraged athletes to set only self-referenced performance and process goals. However, studies that have explored the practices of successful performers have found that they do in fact make effective use of outcome goals (Weinberg, Burton, Yukelson, & Weigand, 1993; Jones & Hanton, 1996). The aim of this study was to examine empirically Hardy, Jones, and Gould's (1996) suggestion, that consultants should now be promoting the use of a multiple-goal strategy. Forty participants were split into five groups of equal number and matched for ability on a soccer task. Four of the groups used different combinations of outcome, performance, and process goals while the other acted as a control group. Performance on the soccer task was measured over a 5-week training period, and then in a competition. Two-factor (Group X Test) ANOVA's indicated significant differences (p < .05) between the groups for both training and competition performance. The superior performance of the groups using multiple-goal strategies provided evidence to support the efficacy of maintaining a balance between the use of outcome, performance, and process goals.