Self-knowledge and social inference: II. The diagnosticity of cognitive/affective and behavioral data.

Explored the social perceptions of 60 undergraduate observers exposed to tape-recorded interviews in which 20 undergraduate speakers described themselves, either emphasizing past thoughts and feelings, past behaviors, or whatever mix of these speakers perceived as appropriate. Observers' subsequent impressions of speakers were measured using Q-sort ratings and various affective and behavioral predictions, which both speakers and speakers' close friends (n?=?20) had previously completed. It was found that the cognitive/affective interviews produced more accurate social impressions, or at least impressions that were more in accord with speakers' self-assessments prior to the interviews and with the assessments made by their close friends, than did the behavioral or the mixed interviews. This greater congruence was shown to result both from real and from stereotyped accuracy. The relevance of these findings to theory and research on self-perception is discussed. (52 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Empathy and the self: Cognitive and emotional influences on the evaluation of negative affect in others.

Used E. T. Higgins's (see record 1987-34444-001) self-discrepancy model to examine the relation of the self to empathy. In Study 1, Ss read about a target displaying either dejection or agitation because of a self-discrepancy. Ss who possessed the self-discrepancy associated with the target's distress showed greater empathic concern, made more situational attributions, and rated the target's reaction as more appropriate. In Study 2, Ss matched the target on affective and cognitive components of the self. Similarity between observer and target on emotional vulnerability was associated with both affective and cognitive empathic effects. Although similarity on attribute accessibility was associated with cognitive empathic effects, it was associated with affective effects only when the attribute produced a self-discrepancy for an observer. Then only feelings of personal distress showed differences. Results establish a link between the self and empathy and show that a number of effects grouped under empathy respond differently to different similarities between observers and targets. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

You don't know me, but I know you: The illusion of asymmetric insight.

People, it is hypothesized, show an asymmetry in assessing their own interpersonal and intrapersonal knowledge relative to that of their peers. Six studies suggested that people perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them. Several of the studies explored sources of this perceived asymmetry, especially the conviction that while observable behaviors (e.g., interpersonal revelations or idiosyncratic word completions) are more revealing of others than self, private thoughts and feelings are more revealing of self than others. Study 2 also found that college roommates believe they know themselves better than their peers know themselves. Study 6 showed that group members display a similar bias—they believe their groups know and understand relevant out-groups better than vice versa. The relevance of such illusions of asymmetric insight for interpersonal interaction and our understanding of "naive realism" is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and qualitative characteristics of memories for perceived and imagined complex events.

Older and younger adults' memory for perceived and imagined events was examined with a procedure in which everyday situations are simulated in the laboratory. Subjects perceived some situations and imagined others. Later, they were asked to rate their memory for various aspects of these situations (e.g., amount of perceptual detail, thoughts and feelings). A recall test followed the ratings. On the rating scale, for both perceived and imagined events, older subjects reported better memory for their thoughts and feelings than did younger subjects. In addition, on the recall test, older subjects produced more thoughts and feelings than did younger subjects, whereas younger subjects produced more perceptual and spatial information. These results suggest that older subjects may not inhibit personal information (e.g., thoughts and feelings), and this information may interfere with memory for other aspects of information, such as perceptual and contextual details (Hasher & Zacks, 1988). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The differentiation of social-comparison jealousy and romantic jealousy.

Investigated, in 3 studies the differences between social-comparison jealousy and romantic jealousy. In Study 1, 174 undergraduates rated 53 jealousy-provoking situations on several emotion adjectives. These responses were analyzed by multidimensional scaling, which revealed that they were organized along 2 basic dimensions: social-comparison vs romantic and fair vs unfair. Romantic situations produced ratings of greater anger, sadness, and embarrassment than social-comparison situations but somewhat less jealousy. In Study 2, 18 undergraduates read brief vignettes describing typical jealousy-provoking situations. Romantic vs social-comparison situations were compared on several affective and cognitive measures. Although both types of situations promoted equal jealousy ratings, the romantic ones elicited considerably more negative affect. Study 3 replicated Study 2, using 120 undergraduates who read elaborate vignettes that they were asked to imagine in a self-involving way. Once again, the romantic stories and the social-comparison stories were rated about equally in jealousy, but the romantic ones provoked more negative feelings about the self, lover, and rival. Findings support a view that sees more value in differentiating situations that evoke jealousy than in attempting to differentiate the experience of jealousy vs envy. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Is Attention to Feelings Beneficial or Detrimental to Affective Well-Being? Mood Regulation as a Moderator Variable.

This research examined the functionality of attention to feelings for affective well-being. The authors found that mood regulation, but not clarity of feelings, moderated the attention-well-being relationship. For individuals with high mood regulation scores, attention was beneficial to affective well-being, whereas for individuals with low mood regulation scores, attention was detrimental to affective well-being. This finding was corroborated by self- and peer reports in Study 1 and replicated in Study 2. The validity of the scales was established by the convergence of self- and peer ratings. Moreover, Study 2 showed that dysfunctional and functional and self consciousness scales suppressed variance in attention to feelings, thereby revealing that attention incorporates both adaptive and maladaptive aspects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Caution: Fragile! Regulating the interpersonal security of chronically insecure partners.

The authors present and test a model of interpersonal insecurity compensation. According to this model, perceivers detect targets' chronic insecurities about interpersonal acceptance, become vigilant about upsetting targets, and respond with affective exaggeration, which involves cautiously inflating positive thoughts and feelings about targets and concealing negative sentiments. Results of 3 studies support this model across a variety of relationship types. Perceivers who detected targets' chronic insecurities concealed negative sentiments when they believed their sentiments would be observed by targets (Study 1), converged with other perceivers in their self-reported affective exaggeration to insecure targets (Study 2), and reported vigilance about upsetting targets, which predicted perceivers' enhanced cognitive processing of targets' daily insecurity and intensified their tendencies to exaggerate affections in response to that insecurity (Study 3). Perceivers' affective exaggeration appeared to enhance chronically insecure targets' perceptions of being valued by perceivers, but it also predicted perceivers' reduced relationship satisfaction (Studies 2 and 3). Results underscore the active, but perhaps dissatisfying, regulation of relationships with chronically insecure relationship partners. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The motivational and emotional consequences of considering positive or negative possibilities for an upcoming event.

The hypothesis that attention to negative possibilities for an upcoming event can have advantages for performance in comparison with a more optimistic approach was examined in 2 studies. Focus of attention to positive or negative possibilities for a social interaction was manipulated for Ss previously identified as optimists or defensive pessimists in the social domain. In Study 1, negatively focused defensive pessimists performed better in their conversations than positively focused defensive pessimists on several dimensions (e.g., talk time, perceived effort, and sociability). Optimists' behavior was unaffected by the focus manipulation. However, all negatively focused Ss felt worse after their conversations than did positively focused Ss. Study 2 examined the cognitive process by which a negative focus may lead to positive behaviors. Some pessimists may benefit from an initial negative focus that is not accompanied by lowered expectations and that actually facilitates positive thoughts about the self. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in empathy and related behaviors.

According to the prevailing cultural stereotype as well as various psychological theories, empathy (the vicarious affective response to another person's feelings) is more prevalent in females than in males. A review of the research indicates that females do indeed appear to be more empathic than males. They do not appear to be more adept at assessing another person's affective, cognitive, or spatial perspective, however. There is also evidence to suggest that empathy in females may be part of a prosocial affective orientation that includes the tendency to experience guilt over harming others, but it does not, at least in early childhood, appear to be part of a larger interpersonal sensitivity that includes egocentric concerns about the feelings of others toward the self. It is suggested that females may have greater tendency to imagine themelves in the other's place, whereas males have more of a set toward instrumental ameliorative action. (71 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxious solitude and peer exclusion predict social helplessness, upset affect, and vagal regulation in response to behavioral rejection by a friend.

It was hypothesized that combined individual child vulnerability (anxious solitude) and interpersonal stress (peer exclusion) would predict the strongest responses to experimentally manipulated behavioral peer rejection. Results indicated that in a sample of 3rd graders (N = 160, 59% girls), anxious solitary excluded children displayed more behavioral manifestations of social helplessness before and after behavioral rejection, reported more feelings of rejection in anticipation of and reaction to behavioral rejection, and were observably more upset during behavioral rejection than were normative children. Moreover, affective responses to behavioral rejection mediated the relation between anxious solitary excluded status and behavioral manifestations of social helplessness. Furthermore, anxious solitary excluded children versus anxious solitary children demonstrated excessive suppression of vagal tone and more sustained acceleration in heart rate during the experiment. Results also indicated that affective, social–cognitive, and regulatory processes directly contributed to children’s responses to behavioral rejection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attention to behavioral events during interaction: Two actor–observer gaps and three attempts to close them.

In social interactions, people must pay attention to many behavioral events unfolding in themselves and the other person—events that can be observable or unobservable, intentional or unintentional. Three studies explored how people distribute their attention to these different event types and, as a result, build up representations of self and partner during the interaction. Relying on basic principles of attention, the authors predicted 2 actor-observer gaps: Actors pay more attention to unobservable events and less to observable events than do observers, and actors pay more attention to unintentional events and less to intentional events than do observers. Study 1 documents both gaps. Studies 2 and 3 explore factors that might close the gaps, such as relational intimacy and empathy. Implications of these results for the role of attention in attribution and interpersonal behavior are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality, attentional focus, and novelty effects: Reactions to peers with disabilities.

Tested the hypothesis that common reactions to people with disabilities are partly due to the attentional consequences of novelty and explored the impact of personality on nondisabled individuals' reactions. Three hundred and fifty one college students completed personality measures (social anxiety, shyness, public self-consciousness, self-monitoring) and indicated their feelings, self and other-focused thoughts, and behavioral intentions concerning a hypothetical encounter with an "average" student or with 2 types of novel peers: student with a disability and an all-round outstanding individual. Implications of the findings, which indicate that (1) novelty provides a partial explanation of interaction problems between nondisabled and disabled peers and (2) personality factors have a different impact on thoughts and feelings about encounters with peers who are novel than on those who are not, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disclosing of verbal material as a function of information requested, information about the interviewer, and interviewee differences.

Describes an experiment with 64 undergraduate males, differing in reported histories of self-disclosure and assessed level of need approval as measured by the self-disclosure questionnaire and the marlowe-crowne social desirability scale. Ss were given personal vs. Impersonal information by and about e at the outset of an interview, and were subsequently requested to disclose their attitudes, feelings, and experiences about public and private topics. Approval-dependent ss for the most part were not more defensive than low-need-approval ss, either in response to interviewer information models or types of topics. As expected, public topics elicited less guardedness and greater self-disclosure than private aspects of self. Contrary to expectations, low self-disclosers were most disclosing when presented with personal information about the interviewer, and more so than ss reporting high disclosure histories. Results are discussed in terms of viewing dyadic informational exchange from an interpersonal risk framework. (25 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development and testing of the Clinical Post-Conference Learning Environment Survey

Clinical postconference is an integral component of the required laboratory hours in undergraduate baccalaureate nursing education. Empirical evidence supporting the educational benefits of this activity are nearly nonexistent. This article describes the development and psychometric testing of a self-report instrument designed to measure clinical postconference learning environments as perceived by undergraduate nursing students and faculty. The Clinical Post-Conference Learning Environment Survey (CPCLES) consists of 54 items and has been tested with more than 500 participants in three schools of nursing in the Midwest. Based on theoretical support and comprehensive review of the literature, six components of the learning environment are measured in two forms of the instrument; an actual scale and an importance scale. Content validity, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability are discussed. Using the CPCLES, perceptions of undergraduate nursing students and faculty were measured. Significant differences between the actual components of the learning environment and the correlated ratings of the importance of these components were found. Faculty perceived a significantly greater amount of teacher support, task orientation, and innovation in the postconference learning environment than did undergraduate students. No differences were noted between faculty and students regarding the importance of the learning environment components. This study presents findings with the use of the first instrument developed to measure clinical postconference learning environments. The congruence and discrepancy among and between learning groups' perceptions carry implications for educational practices in this setting. Subseqent investigations using this tool may be able to link the perceived learning environment to valued cognitive, affective, and behavioral learning outcomes.     

Thoughts of agoraphobic people during scary tasks.

The authors examined the occurrence of theoretically derived patterns of thinking in 74 agoraphobic participants as they drove alone or tolerated an enclosed place. During the increasingly scary tasks in a behavioral test hierarchy, participants responded to a periodic beep by stating aloud what they were thinking at that moment, yielding more than 1,800 tape-recorded statements. Content analyses revealed that participants were mainly preoccupied with their current anxiety (expressed in 29% of the statements) and with their self-efficacy (15%). Despite participants' mounting feelings of anxiety, fewer than 1% of their statements expressed a thought of danger or an anticipation of future anxiety or panic. The rarity of danger thoughts poses an explanatory challenge for all cognitive theories of phobia and especially for the perceived danger theory of A. T. Beck (1976) and A. T. Beck, G. Emery, and R L. Greenberg (1985). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Consistency, specificity, and correlates of negative emotions.

Four studies with college student participants examined the consistency, specificity, and correlates of sadness, fear, and anger. Study 1 measured emotions with daily diaries, and Study 2 examined the relationship between trait emotions and state emotions. Studies 1 and 2 indicated that specific negative emotions are temporally stable, are positively correlated, and provide information above and beyond that provided by other negative emotions. Study 3 found that negative emotions are differentially associated with different facets of cognitive style, as measured by questionnaires that examined dysfunctional attitudes and attributions concerning negative events. Study 4 indicated that negative emotions are differentially associated with different facets of response style, as measured by the degree to which individuals described their thoughts, feelings, and actions in response to hypothetical events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Extending the bases of subjective attitudinal ambivalence: Interpersonal and intrapersonal antecedents of evaluative tension.

Researchers have conceptualized ambivalence as resulting from the conflicting positive and negative thoughts and feelings that a person holds toward an attitude object (intrapersonal discrepancy). The authors investigated the hypothesis that perceived interpersonal attitudinal discrepancies can also contribute to feelings of subjective ambivalence beyond that determined by intrapersonal discrepancy. Study 1 revealed that the perception of attitudinal discrepancy with one's parents was associated with greater feelings of ambivalence. Studies 2 and 3 found increased ambivalence as a function of manipulated interpersonal discrepancies. Study 4 replicated and reversed the effect, revealing that interpersonal attitudinal discrepancy with a disliked other was associated with less ambivalence. Together, these studies provide support for the proposition that, because of balance processes, interpersonal relationships influence feelings of subjective ambivalence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phantom limb experience in children and adults: Cognitive and affective contributions.

Reviews the literature on cognitive and affective processes that contribute to phantom limb (PL) experience in children and adults and challenges the view that psychologically or emotionally induced sensations or pain referred to the PL necessarily represent a psychopathological response to amputation. It is argued that thoughts and feelings may trigger sensations referred to the PL in psychologically healthy individuals and that the painful or painless PL is not a symptom of a psychological disorder. A model is presented that involves a sympathetic-efferent somatic-afferent cycle of activity initiated by higher brain centers involved in cognitive and affective processes to explain psychologically and emotionally triggered PL sensations. The experience of a PL is determined by a complex interaction of inputs from the periphery and widespread regions of the brain subserving sensory, affective and cognitive processes. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cancer and the threat of death: The cognitive dynamics of death-thought suppression and its impact on behavioral health intentions.

Five studies examined the cognitive association between thoughts of cancer and thoughts of death and their implication for screening intentions. Study 1 found that explicit contemplation of cancer did not increase death-thought accessibility. In support of the hypothesis that this reflects suppression of death-related thoughts, Study 2 found that individuals who thought about cancer exhibited elevated death-thought accessibility under high cognitive load, and Study 3 demonstrated that subliminal primes of the word cancer led to increased death-thought accessibility. Study 4 revealed lower levels of death-thought accessibility when perceived vulnerability to cancer was high, once again suggesting suppression of death-related thoughts in response to conscious threats associated with cancer. Study 5 extended the analysis by finding that after cancer salience, high cognitive load, which presumably disrupts suppression of the association between cancer and death, decreased cancer-related self-exam intentions. Theoretical and practical implications for understanding terror management, priming and suppression, and responses to cancer are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Metacognitive awareness and prevention of relapse in depression: Empirical evidence.

Metacognitive awareness is a cognitive set in which negative thoughts/feelings are experienced as mental events, rather than as the self. The authors hypothesized that (1) reduced metacognitive awareness would be associated with vulnerability to depression and (2) cognitive therapy (CT) and mindfulness-based CT (MBCT) would reduce depressive relapse by increasing metacognitive awareness. They found (1) accessibility of metacognitive sets to depressive cues was less in a vulnerable group (residually depressed patients) than in nondepressed controls; (2) accessibility of metacognitive sets predicted relapse in residually depressed patients; (3) where CT reduced relapse in residually depressed patients, it increased accessibility of metacognitive sets; and (4) where MBCT reduced relapse in recovered depressed patients, it increased accessibility of metacognitive sets. CT and MBCT may reduce relapse by changing relationships to negative thoughts rather than by changing belief in thought content. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)