bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Cognitive bias modification of face emotion perception: A randomised controlled trial of transference to cognitive and self-report measures in healthy volunteers
Authors: Peters Sarah Elizabeth , Lumsden Jim Alexander , Peh Oon Him , Penton-Voak Ian , Munafo Marcus Robert , Robinson Oliver Joe
Published: July 2018

Cognitive bias modification (CBM) is a potential low-intensity intervention for mood disorders, but previous studies have shown mixed success. The current study explored whether CBM designed to shift emotional perception of faces would transfer to: a) a battery of cognitive tasks, and b) self-reported symptoms. In a preregistered, double-blind randomised controlled trial, healthy participants received eight online sessions of CBM (N=52) or eight sham sessions (N=52). While we replicate that CBM successfully shifts ambiguous facial expression interpretation in the intervention group, this failed to transfer to the majority of cognitive or self-report measures. There was, however, weak, inconclusive evidence of transfer to a self-report measure of stress, a cognitive measure of anhedonia, and a ceiling effect (whereby transference was greatest in those with higher symptoms). We discuss the need for work in both larger and clinical samples, whilst urging caution that these CBM training effects may not transfer to clinically relevant domains.
Performance and belief-based emotion regulation capacity and tendency: Mapping links with cognitive flexibility and perceived stress
Authors: Guassi Moreira Joao F , Sahi Razia S. , Ninova Emilia , Parkinson Carolyn , Silvers Jennifer A
Published: July 2018

Cognitive reappraisal is among the most effective and well-studied emotion regulation strategies humans have at their disposal. Here, in 250 healthy adults across two preregistered studies, we examined whether reappraisal capacity (the ability to reappraise) and tendency (the propensity to reappraise) differentially relate to perceived stress. In Study 1, we also investigated whether cognitive flexibility, a skill hypothesized to support reappraisal, accounts for associations between reappraisal capacity and tendency, and perceived stress. Intriguingly, cognitive flexibility was unrelated to reappraisal and perceived stress. Both Studies 1 and 2 showed that reappraisal tendency was associated with perceived stress, whereas the relationship between reappraisal capacity and perceived stress was less robust. Further, Study 2 suggested that self-reported beliefs about one’s emotion regulation capacity and tendency were predictive of wellbeing, whereas no such associations were observed with performance-based assessments of capacity and tendency. That associations between reappraisal capacity and tendency and perceived stress were not accounted for by cognitive flexibility or working memory, core cognitive skills, alone, suggests that reappraisal’s links to wellbeing cannot be sufficiently explained by its underlying cognitive parts. Moreover, these data suggest that self-reported perceptions of reappraisal skills may be more predictive of wellbeing than actual reappraisal ability.
Longitudinal Changes in Attachment Orientation over a 59-year Period
Authors: Chopik William J.
Published: July 2018

Research on individual differences in attachment—and their links to emotion, cognition, and behavior in close relationships—has proliferated over the last several decades. However, the majority of this research has focused on children and young adults. Little is known about mean-level changes in attachment orientation beyond early life, in part due to a dearth of longitudinal data on attachment across the lifespan. The current study used a Q-Sort-based measure of attachment to examine mean-level changes in attachment orientation from age 13 to 72 using data from the Block and Block Longitudinal Study, the Intergenerational Studies, and the Radcliffe College Class of 1964 Sample (total N = 628). Multi-level modeling was employed to estimate growth curve trajectories across the combined samples. We found that attachment anxiety declined on average with age, particularly during middle age and older adulthood. Attachment avoidance decreased in a linear fashion across the lifespan. Being in a relationship predicted lower levels anxiety and avoidance across adulthood. Men were higher in attachment avoidance at each point in the lifespan. Taken together, these findings provide much-needed insight into how attachment orientations change over long stretches of time. We conclude with a discussion about the challenges of studying attachment dynamics across the life course and across specific transitions.
Grounding Social Embodiment
Authors: Lakens Daniel
Published: July 2018

Social embodiment research examines how thoughts, affect, and behavior is influenced by sensory, motor, and perceptual cues in the environment. It has repeatedly received criticism due to a focus on demonstration studies. Here, I aim to identify some of the possible reasons underlying the lack of theoretical progress. First, I warn against relying too strongly on inductive inferences due to the weak empirical support for social embodiment findings. Second, I will discuss two dominant theoretical frameworks in social embodiment research (conceptual metaphor theory and perceptual symbol systems theory) in light of their potential to inspire empirically testable hypotheses. Finally, I propose that one way to turn social embodiment research into a progressive research line is to integrate it more firmly with past theoretical work in social cognition, and focus on understanding the contexts in which concrete cues in the environment are salient and accessible enough to influence social inferences.
Historical heterogeneity predicts smiling
Authors: Girard Jeffrey M. , McDuff Daniel
Published: July 2018

Facial behavior is a valuable source of information about an individual's feelings and intentions. However, many factors combine to influence and moderate facial behavior including personality, gender, context, and culture. Due to the high cost of traditional observational methods, the relationship between culture and facial behavior is not well-understood. In the current study, we explored the sociocultural factors that influence facial behavior using large-scale observational analyses. We developed and implemented an algorithm to automatically analyze the smiling of 866,726 participants across 31 different countries. We found that participants smiled more when from a country that is higher in individualism, has a lower population density, and has a long history of immigration diversity (i.e., historical heterogeneity). Our findings provide the first evidence that historical heterogeneity predicts actual smiling behavior. Furthermore, they converge with previous findings using selfreport methods. Taken together, these findings support the theory that historical heterogeneity explains, and may even contribute to the development of, permissive cultural display rules that encourage the open expression of emotion.
Elevated moral condemnation of third-party violations in multiple sclerosis patients
Authors: Patil Indrajeet , Young Liane , Sinay Vladimiro , Gleichgerrcht Ezequiel
Published: July 2018

Recent research has demonstrated impairments in social cognition associated with multiple sclerosis (MS). The present work asks whether these impairments are associated with atypical moral judgment. Specifically, we assessed whether MS patients are able to integrate information about intentions and outcomes for moral judgment (i.e., appropriateness and punishment judg- ments) in the case of third-party acts. We found a complex pattern of moral judgments in MS patients: although their moral judgments were comparable to controls’ for specific types of acts (e.g., accidental or intentional harms), they nevertheless judged behaviors to be less appropriate and endorsed more severe punishment across the board, and they were also more likely to report that others’ responses would be congruent with theirs. Further analyses suggested that elevated levels of externally oriented cognition in MS (due to co-occurring alexithymia) explain these effects. Additionally, we found that the distinction between appropriateness and punishment judgments, whereby harmful outcomes influence punishment judgments to a greater extent than appropriateness judgments, was preserved in MS despite the observed disruptions in the affective and motivational components of empathy. The current results inform the two-process model for intent-based moral judgments as well as possible strategies for improving the quality of life in MS patients.
Pan and Rickard (2018) Transfer of test-enhanced learning meta-analysis (preprint)
Authors: Pan Steven C.
Published: July 2018

Attempting recall of information from memory, as occurs when taking a practice test, is one of the most potent training techniques known to learning science. However, does testing yield learning that transfers to different contexts? In the present article, we report the findings of the first comprehensive meta-analytic review into that question. Our review encompassed 192 transfer effect sizes extracted from 122 experiments and 67 published and unpublished articles (N = 10,382) comprising over 40 years of research. A random-effects model revealed that testing can yield transferrable learning as measured relative to a non-testing reexposure control condition (d = 0.40, 95% CI [0.31, 0.50]). That transfer of learning is greatest across test formats, to application and inference questions, to problems involving medical diagnoses, and to mediator and related word cues; it is weakest to rearranged stimulus-response items, to untested materials seen during initial study, and to problems involving worked examples. Moderator analyses further indicated that response congruency and elaborated retrieval practice, as well as initial test performance, strongly influence the likelihood of positive transfer. In two assessments for publication bias (using PET-PEESE and various selection methods), the moderator effect sizes were minimally affected. However, the intercept predictions were substantially reduced, often indicating no positive transfer when none of the aforementioned moderators are present. Overall, our results motivate a three-factor framework for transfer of test-enhanced learning and have practical implications for the effective use of practice testing in educational and other training contexts.
Ekblad Pfuhl Autistic self-stimulatory behaviors (stims): Useless repetitive behaviors or nonverbal communication?
Authors: Ekblad Leif , Pfuhl Gerit
Published: July 2018

Do repetitive behaviors, also known as stims, serve a function? We hypothesized that stims are a mean of non-verbal communication, related to emotions and feelings. In a convenience sample with nearly 5000 respondents, we presented them a variety of stims paired with emotion words. Participants also answered a personality questionnaire measuring the continuum neurotypical – neurodiversity. Our results showed that 22 stims could be labelled with an emotion word, such as being nervous, anxious, stressed, frustrated, anticipating, excited, angry, upset, closed state of mind and even pretending to be uninterested. Furthermore, the higher the score on neurodiversity the more likely a participant indicated using stims for expressing emotional states. Thus, many use, most likely unconsciously, stims to express feelings and emotional states, and thus stims are a means of nonverbal communication. These idiosyncratic stims can facilitate communication with nonverbal children and adults.
Differences in Working-Memory Capacity Modulate Top-down Control of Social Attention
Authors: Momen Ali , Wiese Eva
Published: July 2018

Gaze following, or our ability to attend to where others are looking can be top-down controlled by context information about the social relevance of the gaze signal. In particular, it has been shown that gaze signals are followed more strongly when the gazer is believed to have a mind with the ability to show intentional behavior (i.e., human) compared to being pre-programmed (i.e., robot). Perceiving human traits in nonhuman agents (i.e., anthropomorphism) occurs naturally in human-robot interaction, where it has positive effects on performance. It can also attenuate performance, if the robot is designed in a way that makes it hard to categorize as human or nonhuman (e.g., humanoid appearance), and inflicts additional working memory load due to categorical ambiguity. Here, we examine if gaze signals of ambiguous humanoid agents are followed differently than those of unambiguous human or robot agents, and to what extent gaze following is affected by individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC). We assume participants with high versus low WMC to be more capable of suppressing reflexive gaze following behaviors to the cued location in a counter-predictive paradigm (where targets appear with high likelihoods at uncued locations), particularly when being cued by humanoid gazers (top-down control, which requires cognitive resources). While the analysis showed no effect of categorical ambiguity on top-down control abilities overall, it revealed that participants with low WMC had weaker top-down control than participants with high WMC for the most ambiguous humanoid agent. The results are discussed with regard to the design of social agents and human-robot interaction
The War of the Words: How Linguistic Differences in Reporting Shape Perceptions of Terrorism
Authors: Dunn Elizabeth , Moore Moriah , Nosek Brian A.
Published: July 2018

In four studies, we demonstrate that subtle linguistic differences in news reporting are sufficient to influence whether people interpret violent acts as patriotism or terrorism. In Study 1, a content analysis of newspaper articles describing violence in Iraq revealed that words implying destruction and devious intent were typically used in reference to violent actions associated with Iraq and opponents of the U.S., while more benign words were used in reference to the U.S. and its allies. These observed differences in word usage establish schemas that guide perception of violence as terrorism or patriotism, thereby affecting people’s attitudes toward (Study 2) and memory for (Studies 3 and 4) violent events. Implications for the media’s impact on public policy are discussed.
The Bi-Dimensional Rejection Taxonomy: Organizing Responses to Social Rejection along Antisocial–Prosocial and Engaged–Disengaged Dimensions
Authors: Sunami Naoyuki , Nadzan Megan Ann , Jaremka Lisa M
Published: July 2018

Interpersonal responses to social rejection vary widely in form and function. Existing theories of social rejection have exclusively focused on organizing these responses on a single antisocial–prosocial dimension. Accumulating evidence suggests a gap in this approach: variability in social responses to rejection cannot solely be explained by the antisocial–prosocial dimension alone. To fill this gap, we propose the bi-dimensional rejection taxonomy, consisting of the antisocial–prosocial x-axis and engaged-disengaged y-axis, a novel contribution to the literature. We demonstrate that both the x- and y-axes are necessary for understanding interpersonal responses to rejection and avoiding erroneous conclusions. We also show how this new framework allows researchers to generate more nuanced and accurate hypotheses about how people respond when rejected. We further demonstrate how existing research about individual differences and situational factors that predict responses to rejection can be viewed in a new light within the bi-dimensional rejection taxonomy. We conclude by suggesting how the taxonomy inspires innovative questions for future research, including understanding spontaneous responses and neurophysiological markers.
Setting Lower Limits High: The Role of Boundary Goals in Achievement Motivation
Authors: Corker Katherine S. , Donnellan Brent
Published: July 2018

Boundary goals specify the minimum performance level that an individual must attain to subjectively experience success. The current research integrates boundary goals into the hierarchical model of achievement motivation (A. Elliot, 2006) by positing that boundary goals are a sub-goal in the goal hierarchy. We predicted that performance approach goals would be associated with higher boundary goals, whereas performance avoidance goals would be associated with lower boundary goals. We further predicted that boundary goals would mediate the association between achievement goals and performance, independent of other target goals (i.e., levels of aspiration). We also evaluated whether boundary goals served a similar role in explaining associations between mastery goals and performance. We tested these predictions by tracking the performance of 347 college students across the semester. As predicted, performance approach goals were positively associated with boundary goals (beta = .32) whereas performance avoidance goals were negatively associated with boundary goals (beta = -.11). Further, we found that mastery approach goals had positive associations with boundary goals (beta = .29) whereas the opposite pattern occurred for mastery avoidance goals (beta = -.25). Boundary goals were positively linked to exam scores (beta = .32) and mediated the associations between performance approach, mastery approach, and mastery avoidance goals and grades. These statistical effects were independent of the effects of level of aspiration. In short, boundary goals seem to play an important role in the achievement motivation process and may therefore serve as a potentially useful focus for interventions.
Changing what you see by changing what you know: the role of attention
Authors: Lupyan Gary
Published: July 2018

Attending is a cognitive process that incorporates a person’s knowledge, goals, and expectations. What we perceive when we attend to one thing is different from what we perceive when we attend to something else. Yet, it is often argued that attentional effects do not count as evidence that perception is influenced by cognition. I investigate two arguments often given to justify excluding attention. The first is arguing that attention is a post-perceptual process reflecting selection between fully constructed perceptual representations. The second is arguing that attention as a pre-perceptual process that simply changes the input to encapsulated perceptual systems. Both of these arguments are highly problematic. Although some attentional effects can indeed be construed as post-perceptual, others operate by changing perceptual content across the entire visual hierarchy. Although there is a natural analogy between spatial attention and a change of input, the analogy falls apart when we consider other forms of attention. After dispelling these arguments, I make a case for thinking of attention not as a confound, but as one of the mechanisms by which cognitive states affect perception by going through cases in which the same or similar visual inputs are perceived differently depending on the observer’s cognitive state, and instances where cuing an observer using language affects what one sees. Lastly, I provide two compelling counter-examples to the critique that although cognitive influences on perception can be demonstrated in the laboratory, it is impossible to really experience them for oneself in a phenomenologically compelling way. Taken together, the current evidence strongly supports the thesis that what we know routinely influences what we see, that the same sensory input can be perceived differently depending on the current cognitive state of the viewer, and that phenomenologically salient demonstrations are possible if certain conditions are met.
Preprint: What are you waiting for? Real-time integration of cues for fricatives suggests encapsulated auditory memory.
Authors: Galle Marcus , Klein-Packard Jamie , Schreiber Kayleen , McMurray Bob
Published: July 2018

Speech unfolds over time and the cues for even a single phoneme are rarely available simultaneously. Consequently, to recognize a single phoneme listeners must integrate material over several hundred milliseconds. Prior work contrasts two accounts: 1) a memory buffer account in which listeners accumulate auditory information in memory and only access higher level representations (i.e. lexical representations) when sufficient information has arrived; and 2) an immediate integration strategy in which lexical representations can be partially activated on the basis of early cues and then updated when more information arises. These studies have uniformly shown evidence for immediate integration for a variety of phonetic distinctions. We attempted to extend this to fricatives, a class of speech sounds which requires not only temporal integration of asynchronous cues (the frication, followed by the formant transitions 150-350 msec later), but also integration across different frequency bands, and compensation for contextual factors like coarticulation. Experiments employed eye-movements in the visual world paradigm and showed clear evidence for a memory buffer. Results were replicated in five experiments, ruling out methodological factors and tying the release of the buffer to the onset of the vowel. These findings support a general auditory account for speech by suggesting that the acoustic nature of particular speech sounds may have large effects on how they are processed. It also has major implications for theories of auditory and speech perception by raising the possibility of an encapsulated memory buffer in early auditory processing.
Evaluating the Structure of Psychopathic Personality Traits: A Meta-Analysis of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory
Authors: Ruchensky Jared Robert , edens John , Corker Katherine S. , Donnellan Brent , Witt Edward A. , Blonigen Daniel M.
Published: July 2018

Which core traits exemplify psychopathic personality disorder is a hotly debated question withinpsychology, particularly regarding the role of ostensibly adaptive traits such as stress immunity, social potency, and fearlessness. Much of the research on the inter-relationships among putatively adaptive and more maladaptive traits of psychopathy has focused on the factor structure of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) and its revision, the Psychopathic Personality Inventory – Revised (PPI-R). These instruments include content scales that have coalesced to form 2 higher-order factors in some (but not all) prior studies: Fearless Dominance and Self-Centered Impulsivity. Given the inconsistencies in prior research, we performed a meta- analytic factor analysis of the 8 content scales from these instruments (total N > 18,000) and found general support for these 2 dimensions in community samples. The structure among offender samples (e.g., prisoners, forensic patients) supported a three-factor model in which the Fearlessness content scale uniquely loaded onto Self-centered Impulsivity (rather than Fearless Dominance). There were also indications that the Stress Immunity content scale had different relations to the other PPI scales in offender versus community samples. We discuss the theoretical and diagnostic implications of these differing factor structures for the field of psychopathy research.
Do puzzle pieces and autism puzzle piece logos evoke negative associations?
Authors: Gernsbacher Morton Ann , Raimond Adam R , Stevenson Jennifer L. , Boston Jilana S , Harp Bev
Published: July 2018

This study examined whether puzzle-piece images evoke negative associations in the general public.
CJEP Outgoing Editorial
Authors: Pexman Penny M.
Published: July 2018

Editorial by CJEP Outgoing Editor, Penny Pexman.
Trait knowledge forms a common structure across social cognition
Authors: Stolier Ryan Mayer , Hehman Eric , Freeman Jonathan B.
Published: July 2018

This is a preprint of this manuscript, currently in press at Nature Human Behaviour, version dated November 27th, 2019 (date will be updated with preprint, prior versions documented by OSF). Project data and analysis materials are available online: https://osf.io/2uzsx/ .
Are people more prejudiced toward groups that are perceived as coherent? A meta-analysis of the relationship between out-group entitativity and prejudice
Authors: Agadullina Elena , Lovakov Andrey
Published: July 2018

A meta-analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between out-group entitativity and prejudice. A quantitative analysis of 85 effect sizes from 33 independent samples showed a significant positive relationship between entitativity and prejudice (Fisher’s z = .414, 95% CI [.272, .557], p < .0001). Three possible moderators of the relationship between entitativity and prejudice were tested: conceptualization of the entitativity (essence-based entitativity scale, agency-based entitativity scale, common entitativity scale), the target of the prejudice, the measures of prejudice (attitudes, emotions, behavior towards out-group).Results demonstrated that out-group entitativity correlated with prejudice only when entitativity was conceptualized as an essence-based or common-based scale, and prejudice was measured as the attitude to the outgroup. The target of prejudice does not moderate the relationship between entitativity and prejudice.
Self-Esteem, Relationship Threat, and Dependency Regulation: Independent Replication of Murray, Rose, Bellavia, Holmes, and Kusche (2002) Study 3
Authors: Campbell Lorne , Balzarini Rhonda Nicole , Kohut Taylor , Dobson Kiersten , Hahn Christian , Moroz Sarah , Stanton Sarah C. E.
Published: July 2018

Across three studies, Murray et al. (2002) found that low self-esteem individuals responded in a negative manner compared to those high in self-esteem in the face of relationship threat, perceiving their partners and relationships less positively. This was the first empirical support for the hypothesized dynamics of a dependency regulation perspective, and has had a significant impact on the field of relationship science. In the present research, we sought to reproduce the methods and procedures of Study 3 of Murray et al. (2002) to further test the two-way interaction between individual differences in self-esteem and situational relationship threat. Manipulation check effects replicated the original study, but no interaction between self-esteem and experimental condition was observed for any primary study outcomes.
“If he wins, I’m moving to Canada”: Ideological migration threats following the 2012 US Presidential election
Authors: Motyl Matt
Published: July 2018

Every four years, partisan Americans threaten to migrate to Canada (or some other country) if their preferred candidate loses the Presidential election. This phenomenon has yet to undergo an empirical test. In the present experiment, 308 Obama voters and 142 Romney voters following the 2012 election responded to one of two writing prompts that led them to think about how the US was becoming more liberal or conservative. Regardless of the writing prompt condition, Romney voters endorsed migration expressions more than Obama voters. Furthermore, Romney voters, compared to Obama voters, expressed a reduced sense of belonging in the US. The relationship between voting for Romney and migration expressions was fully mediated by sense of belonging. Together, these findings support the ideological migration hypothesis and suggest that threatening to move to Canada following an undesirable election outcome may be driven by voters’ belonging needs.
The importance of retrospective findings in child maltreatment research
Authors: Becker-Blease Kathryn A.
Published: July 2018

Comments on an article by Dube et al (see record 2004-17031-003). Dube and her colleagues from the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study say that retrospective findings are trustworthy. The ACE study is a large epidemiological study that examines the health impact of adverse childhood events on the health of adults in an HMO population. In the current study, they used data from 658 participants who completed the ACE study on two separate occasions, approximately a year apart. They found some mild differences in the two reports, but overall retrospective reports of adverse childhood events were stable over time. For child maltreatment researchers, the reliability of retrospective findings is no mere methodological quibble. Much of what we know about the long-term effects of childhood abuse comes from retrospective studies. But what about the prospective findings? Depending on the research question, prospective studies can provide a number of significant advantages over retrospective designs. Researchers often consider prospective designs to be more rigorous, with less biased sample selection and better measurement of the natural history of a phenomenon. Given the strengths of prospective data, does this mean that we should now disregard findings from retrospective studies? Not necessarily.
Maximizing entropy of the Predictive Processing framework
Authors: Otworowska Maria , van Rooij Iris , Kwisthout Johan
Published: July 2018

The Predictive Processing (PP) framework offers a unifying view on the existence and working of all living systems. The core premise of PP states that as long as agents minimize prediction error, and consequently entropy, they are successful. Current developments and advances in PP indicate that the interaction between agents and their environments is an important component of entropy minimization. In this paper, we explore by means of computer simulations, the interaction between PP-agents and their environments under different conditions. We argue the need to redefine the notion of success in PP in terms of entropy, behavioral and cognitive success, as we show that the environmental conditions that lead to entropy success, are different from conditions that lead to behavioral or cognitive success. Furthermore, we show that being equipped in and applying the mechanisms to minimize prediction error, do not in practice guarantee that the agents will be successful in any sense (entropy, cognitive or behavioral).
Genomic imprinting is implicated in the psychology of music
Authors: Mehr Samuel A , Kotler Jennifer , Howard Rhea M , Haig David , Krasnow Max
Published: July 2018

Why do we sing to babies? Human infants are relatively altricial and need their parents' attention to survive. Infant-directed song may constitute a signal of that attention. In the rare genomic imprinting disorder Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), typically paternally-expressed genes from chromosome 15q11–q13 are unexpressed, resulting in exaggeration of traits that reduce offspring investment demands on the mother. PWS may thus be associated with a distinctive musical phenotype. We report unusual responses to music in PWS. Subjects (N = 39) moved more during music listening, exhibited greater reductions in heart rate in response to music listening, and displayed a specific deficit in pitch discrimination ability relative to typically-developing adults and children (N = 589). Paternally-expressed genes from 15q11–q13, unexpressed in PWS, may thus increase demands for music and enhance perceptual sensitivity to music. These results implicate genomic imprinting in the psychology of music, informing theories of music's evolutionary history.
Dead Science in Live Psychology: A Case Study from Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
Authors: Heathers James , Goodwin Matthew
Published: July 2018

Psychological theories often build from theoretically separate fields in the biosciences – physiology, biology, neuroscience, etc. – to situate human behavior within the body. However, these are increasingly sophisticated areas of research which rapidly change and adapt their evidence base. The current paper is a case study examining what happens to psychological research when its foundational biological context is invalidated or superseded. The example we use is heart rate variability (HRV) as a purported measure of cardiac sympathetic outflow. While objections to this technique within physiological research have been established and confirmed for decades, its false status continues to be maintained in applied psychological research. We review a combination of factors within scientific and publishing practice, practical and conceptual barriers to experimental interface, and personal/professional value of the invalidated theory in attempt to understand how dead science can be kept alive in psychological science.
Why Do Some Psychology Researchers Resist Using Proposed Reforms to Research Practices? A Description of Researchers’ Rationales
Authors: Washburn Anthony N. , Hanson Brittany Elyse , Motyl Matt , Skitka Linda , Yantis Caitlyn , Wong Kendal , Sun Jiaqing , Prims JP , Mueller Ali , Melton Zachary John , Carsel Timothy S
Published: July 2018

In response to the “replication crisis” many psychologists recommended that the field adopt several proposed reforms to research practices (PRRPs), like preregistration, to make research more replicable. However, reception of PRRPs is not well known. We wanted to know the rationales researchers had for not using them. We analyzed data of 1,035 researchers in social and personality psychology from Motyl et al. (2017) who asked them to explain when they thought it was acceptable to not use four specific PRRPs: preregistering hypotheses/methods, making data publicly available online, conducting formal power analyses, and reporting effect sizes. Our results suggest that (a) adoption and use of PRRPs is quite varied and (b) rationales for not using them reflect a need for more discussion and education about the utility and feasibility of the proposed reforms.
The Transition to Parenthood as a Critical Window for Adult Health
Authors: Saxbe Darby , Rossin-Slater Maya , Goldenberg Diane
Published: July 2018

Becoming a parent is a transformative experience, marked by hormonal changes and neuroplasticity as well as shifts in self-concept, social roles, and daily routines. Although the arrival of a new baby is often a joyful event, the postpartum period can also be a time of heightened psychosocial stress and health behavior changes including significant sleep disruption and decreased physical activity. Markers of allostatic load, such as physiological stress and inflammation, may also become dysregulated during this time. Given these neurobiological, psychosocial, and behavioral changes, the transition to parenthood may shape health trajectories in midlife. For many mothers and fathers, the transition to parenthood represents an inflection point for obesity, such that perinatal weight gains are retained long-term. Similarly, many individuals experience their first episode of major depression during the postpartum period. In sum, the transition to parenthood may represent a critical window for determining both mental and physical health in midlife and beyond. Physical and mental health problems over the transition to parenthood may be exacerbated for parents without access to protected, paid time off from employment. Known disparities in mood disorders, obesity, and allostatic load may be linked to risk factors stemming from the perinatal period. This paper will relate the importance of the transition to parenthood to population health and discuss parental leave policy as an example of an initiative that can support parents and relieve stress during the perinatal period.
The Self in its Social Context: Why Resilience Needs Company
Authors: IJzerman Hans , Lindenberg Siegwart
Published: July 2018

In their target article Kalisch et al. provide an appraisal-based model to explain resilience from stress. Three cognitive classes shape their posited individual’s appraisal style: Positive situation classification, reappraisal, and interference inhibition. They posit that a positive appraisal style is “the primary pathway to resilience” and that their model provides new avenues for prevention. We concur with the authors that we need to rely on biosocial models to understand the development of resilience. However in our view the model misses an important component: The functional relevance of the agent’s relational experiences. We concur that stress, or, more broadly, emotions have adaptive functions. But for their model and for interventions it is crucial to know whether emotions should be reappraised or whether they can actually contribute to resilience. We think that for answering this question, we need to extend their biosocial model by adding the agent’s begin-state φ – a resilience factor they ponder about. Prevention interventions that are focused solely on individual facets and ignore the agent’s relational context (which are indeed non-independent) in some instances may well lead to alienation – and, we think – to greater stress, poorer resilience, and worse health instead.This paper was published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences:IJzerman, H., & Lindenberg, S. (2015). The self in its social context: Why resilience needs company. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 38.
From the Political Here and Now to Generalizable Knowledge
Authors: Brandt Mark John , Wagemans Fieke Maria Antoinet
Published: July 2018

Political psychology is an exciting field because it is directly and immediately relevant to current events. This feature of the field is also a drawback as it can unintentionally limit the knowledge of the field to current events and prevent the development of generalizable knowledge. We discuss how using representative samples, representative political systems, and representative stimuli can help political psychology develop a more comprehensive political psychology with knowledge that is both generalizable and relevant.
Moral Incongruence and Pornography Use: A Critical Review and Integration
Authors: Grubbs Joshua B. , Perry Samuel L.
Published: July 2018

Internet pornography use (IPU) remains a controversial topic within sexual behavior research fields. Whereas some people report feeling dysregulated in their use of pornography, mental health and medical communities are divided as to whether or not IPU can be addictive. The present review seeks to examine this issue more closely, with a focus on how variables other than pornography use, such as moral disapproval and moral incongruence (i.e., feeling as if one’s behaviors and one’s values about those behaviors are misaligned) might specifically contribute to self-perceived problems around pornography use. Through an examination of recent literature, the present work reviews evidence that moral incongruence about IPU is a common phenomenon and that it is associated with outcomes relevant to current debates about pornography addiction. Specifically, moral incongruence regarding IPU appears to be associated with greater distress about IPU, greater psychological distress in general, greater reports of problems related to IPU, and greater reports of perceived addiction to IPU. The implications of this body of evidence for both clinical and research communities are discussed, and future directions for research are considered.
Response inhibition on the stop signal task improves during cardiac contraction
Authors: Rae Charlotte , Botan Vanessa , van Praag Cassandra Gould , Herman Aleksandra , Nyyssonen Jasmina , Watson David , Duka Theodora , Garfinkel Sarah , Critchley HUgo
Published: July 2018

Motor actions can be facilitated or hindered by psychophysiological states of readiness, to guide rapid adaptive action. Cardiovascular arousal is communicated by cardiac signals conveying the timing and strength of individual heartbeats. Here, we tested how these interoceptive signals facilitate control of motor impulsivity. Participants performed a stop signal task, in which stop cues were delivered at different time points within the cardiac cycle: at systole when the heart contracts, or at diastole between heartbeats. Response inhibition, indexed by a shorter stop signal reaction time (SSRT) and longer stop signal delay (SSD), was better at systole. Furthermore, parasympathetic control of cardiovascular tone, and subjective sensitivity to interoceptive states, predicted response inhibition efficiency. This suggests that response inhibition capacity is influenced by interoceptive physiological cues, such that people are more likely to express impulsive actions during putative states of lower cardiovascular arousal, when frequency and strength of cardiac afferent signalling is reduced.
Reciprocity of social influence
Authors: Mahmoodi Ali , Bahrami Bahador , Mehring Carsten
Published: July 2018

Humans seek advice, via social interaction, to improve their decisions. While social interaction is often reciprocal, the role of reciprocity in social influence is unknown. Here, we tested the hypothesis that our influence on others affects how much we are influenced by them. Participants first made a visual perceptual estimate and then shared their estimate with an alleged partner. Then, in alternating trials, the participant either revised their decisions or observed how the partner revised theirs. We systematically manipulated the partner’s susceptibility to influence from the participant. We show that participants reciprocated influence with their partner by gravitating towards the susceptible (but not insusceptible) partner’s opinion. In further experiments, we showed that reciprocity is both a dynamic process and is abolished when people believed that they interacted with a computer. Reciprocal social influence is a signaling medium for human-to-human communication that goes beyond aggregation of evidence for decision improvement.
Curating Research Assets: A Tutorial on the Git Version Control System
Authors: Vuorre Matti , Curley James P.
Published: July 2018

Recent calls for improving reproducibility have increased attention to the ways in which researchers curate, share and collaborate on their research assets. In this tutorial paper, we explain how version control systems, such as the popular Git program, address these challenges to reproducibility. We then present a tutorial on how to use Git with a graphical interface in the R Studio program. This tutorial is written for researchers with no previous experience using version control systems, and covers single-user and collaborative workflows. An online supplement provides information on advanced Git command line functions. Git presents an elegant solution to specific challenges to reproducibility, facilitates multi-site collaboration and productivity by allowing multiple collaborators to work on the same source files simultaneously, and can be implemented to common workflows with little extra effort. Git may also offer a suitable solution to transparent data and material sharing through popular online services, such as GitHub and Open Science Framework.
A Decade of System Justification Theory: Accumulated Evidence of Conscious and Unconscious Bolstering of the Status Quo
Authors: Jost John , Banaji Mahzarin R. , Nosek Brian A.
Published: July 2018

Most theories in social and political psychology stress self-interest, intergroup conflict, ethnocentrism, homophily, ingroup bias, outgroup antipathy, dominance, and resistance. System justification theory is influenced by these perspectives—including social identity and social dominance theories—but it departs from them in several respects. Specifically, we argue that (a) there is a general ideological motive to justify the existing social order, (b) this motive is at least partially responsible for the internalization of inferiority among members of disadvantaged groups, and (c) paradoxically, it is sometimes strongest among those who are most harmed by the status quo. In this article, we review and integrate 10 years of research on 20 hypotheses derived from a system justification perspective, focusing especially on the phenomenon of implicit outgroup favoritism among members of disadvantaged groups (including African Americans, the elderly, and gays/lesbians) and its relation to political ideology (especially liberalism-conservatism).
Asymmetric mixtures: Common conceptual priorities for social and chemical kinds
Authors: Noyes Alexander , Keil Frank
Published: July 2018

Hypodescent is the phenomenon of categorizing biracials asymmetrically, e.g., viewing Black-White biracials as Black instead of White. We propose hypodescent is explained by domain-general attentional biases towards dangerous and distinctive components in conceptual representation. This cognitive mechanism derives its empirical support from several research traditions, especially from research on how people evaluate generic statements. Here, we demonstrate liquid mixtures are categorized in ways characteristic of hypodescent. Mixtures that contain equal amounts of two liquids are categorized as whichever liquid is more dangerous or distinctive (Study 1). Dangerous and distinctive components are prioritized even when they are less than 50% of the mixture (Study 2). The relative dangerousness or distinctiveness of liquids (Study 3) or racial groups (Study 4) predicts the strength and direction of this asymmetry. We discuss how conceptual prominence relates to previous theories of hypodescent.
Psychological Science Applied to Improve Captive Animal Care: A Model for Development of a Systematic, Evidence-Based Assessment Of Environmental Enrichment for Nonhuman Primates
Authors: Bennett Allyson J. , Bailoo Jeremy D. , Dutton Mackenzie , Michel George F. , Pierre Peter J.
Published: July 2018

Nonhuman primates (NHP) are housed in captivity for a variety of purposes. In the US the housing and care for the majority of primates fall under federal regulation with additional guidelines and means of evaluation provided by various accreditation organizations. There is a gap, however, between the policy, common practices, and the findings of a large empirical literature on the effectiveness of care strategies aimed at ensuring the animals’ psychological wellbeing. Uniform assessment tools to guide decisions about selection and refinement of standards and practices are largely missing. In two consecutive publications, we propose a novel approach to evaluation and refinement of environmental enrichment (EE) programs that: 1) is based on empirical evidence; 2) permits flexibility to balance facility goals (or purpose) with consideration of animal wellbeing; 3) provides a systematic framework for assessment; and 4) identifies priority areas for hypothesis-driven research. We focus on one area of EE that is relatively neglected with respect to consistency in practice and detail in standards yet is well-supported both theoretically and empirically. The non-social, non-structural EE domain includes practices that promote sensory, manipulative (motor), and cognitive (SMC) engagement which often are less constrained by space, geography, resources, and any conflicts with the facilities’ varying purposes. This first paper provides the theoretical background for our proposed EE evaluation technique; whereas, the second describes the technique in detail. The systematic approach to categorization and assessment of the relevant components of facilities’ federally-required NHP EE plans (EEP) proposed here can readily accommodate new evidence and is adaptable for different species and facility types. In turn, the approach can assist consideration of refinement, changes in EE, and development of best practices that transcend facility type.