EXPOSURE TO INDUSTRIAL AND URBAN ENVIRONMENTS AND FORMAL SCHOOLING AS FACTORS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL DIFFERENTIATION

The influence on psychological differentiation exerted by exposure to industrial and urban environments and to formal schooling was investigated with the help of Story-Pictorial EFT administered on 240 7–10-year-old children belonging to the Santhal tribe residing in and around an industrial city in Bihar. A 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA performed on differentiation scores revealed significant main effects of industrial and urban exposures, and of schooling. Significant 3-way interaction effect indicated that the impact of urbanization in the industrial and non-industrial settings varied with exposure to formal schooling, and that the main effects in spite of their being statistically significant have to be taken with caution. Impact of the three factors on psychological differentiation is interpreted in terms of changes induced through acculturation that alter the experiential base of the individual as well as cultural characteristics of this environment.     

Biases in social comparisons: Optimism or pessimism?

Social comparisons typically lead to two kinds of biases: A comparative optimism bias (i.e., a tendency for people to view themselves as more likely than others to be the beneficiaries of positive outcomes) or a comparative pessimism bias (i.e., a tendency for people to view themselves as less likely than others to be such beneficiaries); rarely are people fully calibrated in terms of how they compare to others. However, there is little systematic research on the factors that determine when a comparative optimism versus pessimism bias will occur, how they can be attenuated and whether such attenuation is always desirable. In this paper, we report four studies which demonstrate the following key results: First, we show that perceived level of control over the outcome drives whether a comparative optimism or pessimism bias will occur (Study 1). Second, an increase in perceived similarity between self and a comparison target person attenuates the comparative optimism bias in domains that people view as highly controllable (Study 2a) and attenuates the comparative pessimism bias in domains that people view as less controllable (Study 2b). Finally, we show that people are willing to work harder when they experience more comparative optimism in higher control scenarios and when they experience less comparative pessimism in lower control scenarios, illustrating that motivating people to strive harder for positive outcomes can result from exacerbated or attenuated bias, depending on the context (Study 3).     

Psychometric Properties of the Primary Care Behavioral Health Screen

The Primary Care Behavioral Health Screen (PCBHS) is a self-report instrument developed to screen for behavioral health problems in primary care settings. The present paper describes development of the PCBHS and reports findings from item analyses and studies examining the instrument’s convergent validity and test–retest reliability. Results suggest the PCBHS is a useful and valid method for screening a variety of behavioral health problems in a busy primary care practice. Recommendations for further research on the PCBHS are provided.     

Depressed or Just Blue? The Persuasive Effects of a Self‐Diagnosis Inventory1

A self‐diagnosis inventory is both a response instrument and a tool for an individual to assess his or her risk. Three experiments show that the manner in which a depression self‐diagnosis inventory is administered and constructed affects the manner in which a respondent interprets behavioral symptoms. This in turn affects (a) self‐reports of whether the symptoms apply to the respondent; (b) the respondent's perceived risk of depression; (c) the perceived controllability of the behavioral symptoms; and (d) the respondent's likelihood of seeking treatment. Theoretical implications of the content and format of self‐diagnosis inventories are discussed, as are implications for how to persuade people to seek assistance when they are at risk.     

Construal level and temporal judgments of the past: the moderating role of knowledge

The vast majority of work in construal level theory has found a robust relationship between construal level and temporal judgments for future events: Distance is associated with the abstract, and nearness is associated with the concrete. Our work looks at the past and proposes a critical moderator that reverses this relationship: knowledge. Through experiments involving real news events, we demonstrate that people with less knowledge about events felt nearer to them when recalling them in a concrete mindset versus an abstract one. However, this relationship reverses for those with greater knowledge: They feel closer to past events when recalling them in an abstract mindset versus a concrete one. We provide evidence that this reversal stems from feelings of metacognitive ease that inform temporal judgments when knowledge (which drives what information is held available and accessible in memory) and construal mindset (which drives what information is sought from memory) coincide. Our findings suggest that in memory, there are instances where the abstract seems near and the concrete seems distant.     

Reconstruction of things past: Why do some memories feel so close and others so far away?

The vast majority of work in construal level theory focuses prospectively on the future. Through a series of studies controlling for knowledge about an event, we look retrospectively at the past and demonstrate that construal mindsets can materially influence how a past event is reconstructed in memory. Specifically, an event recalled in a more concrete mindset feels subjectively closer than when recalled in an abstract mindset (Studies 1-3). We present evidence suggesting this is because a concrete mindset actually makes people feel as though they know more, even if they were initially exposed to the same set of information—perceived information accessibility mediates the effect of construal level on temporal distance (Study 2). The effect of construal level on memory reconstruction extends to judgments of blame, where judgments of greater temporal distance drive a greater propensity to blame parties for negative events and temporal distance mediates these judgments (Study 3). Together, these studies are the first to demonstrate that the mindset employed when recalling an event shapes its remembrance.     

Using a Session Feedback Form in Cognitive Therapy with Children

This article presents a new written form for eliciting session feedback from children. The importance of session feedback is discussed and the specific written form is presented. Clinical applications and advantages of the session feedback form are also reviewed. Additionally, the uses of the session feedback form in supervision are explained. Finally, cautions and limitations are outlined.     

Can Facilitation Imagery Alter the Effects of Semantic Priming?

This study examined if task motivational imagery suggestions could facilitate a semantic priming effect, relative to general relaxation suggestions and no specific suggestions; and if the participants’ hypnotizablity moderated the effects of the three types of instructions. Participants (n = 127) were assigned randomly in groups to one of the three instructional conditions (imagery, relaxation, or control) and two versions of a stimulus list for counterbalancing. A 3-way analysis of variance suggested that the semantic priming effect was found to be stronger for stimulus list version 2 than for version 1. A stronger semantic priming effect was found for the high, relative to the low and medium, hypnotizable groups. When medium hypnotizable participants were excluded, an instructional group X hypnotizability group interaction was found for list 1 suggesting that while the low hypnotizable participants benefited more from the relaxation suggestion, the high hypnotizables benefited more from the imagery instruction. The results suggest that imagery instructions may moderate automatic processes for highly hypnotizable individuals.     

On the existence of semantic working memory: evidence for direct semantic maintenance

Despite widespread acknowledgment of the importance of online semantic maintenance, there has been astonishingly little work that clearly establishes this construct. We review the extant work relevant to short-term retention of meaning and show that, although consistent with semantic working memory, most data can be accommodated in other ways. Using a new concurrent probe paradigm, we then report experiments that implicate a semantic maintenance capacity that is independent of phonological or visual maintenance that may build on a mechanism of direct semantic maintenance. Experiments 1 through 5 established that while subjects maintain the meaning of a word, a novel delay-period marker of semantic retention, the semantic relatedness effect, is observed on a concurrent lexical decision task. The semantic relatedness effect refers to slowed response times when subjects make a lexical decision to a probe that is associatively related to the idea they are maintaining, compared to when the probe is unrelated. The semantic relatedness effect occurred for semantic but not for phonological or visual word-form maintenance, dissipated quickly after maintenance ends, and survived concurrent articulatory suppression. The effect disappeared when subjects performed our immediate memory task with a long-term memory strategy rather than with active maintenance. Experiment 6 demonstrated a parallel phonological relatedness effect that occurs for phonological but not semantic maintenance, establishing a full double dissociation between the effects of semantic and phonological maintenance. These findings support a distinct semantic maintenance capacity and provide a behavioral marker through which semantic working memory can be studied.     

Racial Prototypicality,Affirmative Action,and Hiring Decisions in a Multiracial World

This research examined how the racial prototypicality of minority job applicants' faces influenced hiring decisions under different affirmative action (AA) policies: no AA, soft AA (recruitment of minorities with merit‐based hiring), and hard AA (race as a tie‐break factor in hiring). Participants (N=252) evaluated resume/photograph pairs, each containing a Caucasian and a Black applicant, with minority applicants representing three levels of racial prototypicality. The number of jobs awarded to minorities increased as Black racial prototypicality increased. Each level of AA policy strength increased the number of minority hires, but these increases came with a price: AA directives decreased the percentage of minority hires attributed to higher qualifications and increased perceptions that hires were due to AA more than was actually the case.