Reexamining adaptation and the set point model of happiness: Reactions to changes in marital status.

According to adaptation theory, individuals react to events but quickly adapt back to baseline levels of subjective well-being. To test this idea, the authors used data from a 15-year longitudinal study of over 24,000 individuals to examine the effects of marital transitions on life satisfaction. On average, individuals reacted to events and then adapted back toward baseline levels. However, there were substantial individual differences in this tendency. Individuals who initially reacted strongly were still far from baseline years later, and many people exhibited trajectories that were in the opposite direction to that predicted by adaptation theory. Thus, marital transitions can be associated with long-lasting changes in satisfaction, but these changes can be overlooked when only average trends are examined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The shifting basis of life satisfaction judgments across cultures: Emotions versus norms.

The relative importance of emotions versus normative beliefs for life satisfaction judgments was compared among individualist and collectivist nations in 2 large sets of international data (in total, 61 nations, N?=?62,446). Among nations, emotions and life satisfaction correlated significantly more strongly in more individualistic nations (r?=?.52 in Study 1; r?=?.48 in Study 2). At the individual level, emotions were far superior predictors of life satisfaction to norms (social approval of life satisfaction) in individualist cultures, whereas norms and emotions were equally strong predictors of life satisfaction in collectivist cultures. The present findings have implications for future studies on cultural notions of well-being, the functional value of emotional experiences, and individual differences in life satisfaction profiles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Wind projection basis for real-time animation of trees

This paper presents a real-time method to animate complex scenes of thousands of trees under a user-controllable wind load. Firstly, modal analysis is applied to extract the main modes of deformation from the mechanical model of a 3D tree. The novelty of our contribution is to precompute a new basis of the modal stress of the tree under wind load. At runtime, this basis allows to replace the modal projection of the external forces by a direct mapping for any directional wind. We show that this approach can be efficiently implemented on graphics hardware. This modal animation can be simulated at low computation cost even for large scenes containing thousands of trees.     

Cross-cultural correlates of life satisfaction and self-esteem.

College students in 31 nations (N?=?13,118) completed measures of self-esteem, life satisfaction, and satisfaction with specific domains (friends, family, and finances). The authors assessed whether cross-cultural variations in the strength of associations were related to societal dimensions including income and individualism. At the national level, individualism correlated –.24 (ns) with heterogeneity and .71 (p?     

The relationship in experience between various types of affect.

Investigated the co-occurrence in experience of various emotions placing the focus on positive vs negative affect. In Study 1, 72 college students read stories designed to produce varying levels of either positive or negative affect and then rated their level of both types of affect. In Study 2, 42 undergraduates rated their feelings during emotional times in everyday life for a period of 6 wks. Results show that emotions of the same hedonic valence (e.g., fear and anger) tend to co-occur. Results also show that positive and negative affect do not occur together at high levels of intensity. It is suggested that these 2 facts about the relation of positive and negative affect are probably responsible for the bipolarity that is often found between them. These findings represent a challenge to those who postulate that there are unrelated discrete emotions and that the terms positive affect and negative affect do not describe meaningful clusters of emotions. Findings suggest that if one type of affect is of low intensity, the other type can be at any level from low to high. Therefore, a truly inverse and linear relation does not characterize positive and negative affect. This finding represents a challenge to most structural models of emotion. It appears that mutual exclusion only at high levels of intensity characterizes the relation between positive and negative affect. (2 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Events and subjective well-being: Only recent events matter: Erratum.

Reports an error in the original article by E. Suh et al (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1996 [May], Vol 70 [5], 1091–1102). On page 1097, the headings for the second and third columns of Tables 4 and 5 were incorrectly labeled R–2 and R–2 change. The headings should read R and R change, respectively. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1996-01753-014.) The effect of life events on subjective well-being (SWB) was explored in a 2-year longitudinal study of 115 participants. It was found that only life events during the previous 3 months influenced life satisfaction and positive and negative affect. Although recent life events influenced SWB even when personality at Time 1 was controlled, distal life events did not correlate with SWB. SWB and life events both showed a substantial degree of temporal stability. It was also found that good and bad life events tend to covary, both between individuals and across periods of the lives of individuals. Also, when events of the opposite valence were controlled, events correlated more strongly with SWB. The counterintuitive finding that good and bad events co-occur suggests an exciting avenue for explorations of the structure of life events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of voluntary and semivoluntary peer-monitored programs on academic performance.

Three studies involving a total of 302 undergraduates examined the effects of variations of peer-monitoring procedures on academic performance of college students. The variations included voluntary course "requirements," minimal mutual study time, and voluntary grade averaging. Mutual study groups performed at higher levels than control groups but averaged no more total time studying than controls. Varying methods of alleviating student concerns about the approach and of implementing the innovations to benefit the maximum number of students were investigated. It appears that although students can do well with the methods, participation is unlikely without the use of grade contingencies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The cerebellum contributes to mental skills.

The cerebellum is known to play a role in simple associative motor learning in animals. It has recently been suggested that the cerebellum might also contribute to cognitive abilities in humans, particularly those located primarily in frontal cortex. Therefore 5 patients with either cerebellar lesions or atrophy were compared with 10 controls on a range of intellectual and learning abilities. The patients were impaired on two tests of associative learning, but not on many other types of memory test. There was, however, a generalized tendency toward poorer performance by the patients. The results nevertheless indicate that the cerebellum contributes to a particular type of mental skill, although whether this is related to frontal lobe functions remains to be determined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of same-category and different-category extraneous memory sets on item recognition

In a study designed to distinguish between parallel and serial models of performance on Sternberg's item recognition task, Krueger (1975) presented subjects with a memory set (the "added" set) followed by a second ("core") set, a probe to the core set, and finally a probe to the added set. Response latency (RT) to both the core- and added-set probes initially increased with the size of the extraneous set. Over successive blocks of trials, the effect of the size of the extraneous set diminished. In Experiment 1 of the present study, Krueger's basic procedures were replicated with results similar to those he reported for early trials. Experiment 2 was a variation on the added-set procedure. Rather than the memory sets' being drawn from different categories (letters and digits), both sets consisted of digits. On half of the negative trials for both the core and the added tasks, the probe was drawn from the extraneous set, forcing the subjects to separate the two sets. Although RT on the core task did not increase with the size of the added set, there was an increase in RT to the added set with increases in core-set size, a finding inconsistent with the serial search model.     

Limiting temperature and relative humidity for growth and production of aflatoxin and free fatty acids byAspergillus flavus in sterile peanuts

Sound mature kernels, broken mature kernels, immature kernels, and unshelled Early Runner peanuts were heat-treated in controlled environment cabinets and inoculated with spores ofAspergillus flavus. Treatments were incubated at 97-99% relative humidity at different temperatures ranging from 5 to 55C and also at 30C with relative humidities ranging from 55 to 99%. Samples were removed after 7 and 21 days and assayed for aflatoxin, free fatty acids, and peanut kernel moisture. The limiting relative humidity for aflatoxin production byA. flavus was 85ŷ1% relative humidity for 21 days at 30C. The limiting low temperature for visible growth and aflatoxin production by the fungus was 13ŷ1C for 21 days at 97-99% relative humidity. Damaged kernels, however, developed some afllatoxin in 21 days at 12C. The maximum temperature for aflatoxin production was 41.5ŷ1.5C for 21 days at 97-99% relative humidity. Fungus growth and sporulation at 43C were equal to that at 40C, but no aflatoxin was produced. Moisture content of immature kernels was higher at equilibrium with the same relative humidity than the moisture content of sound mature kernels, damaged kernels, or kernels from unshelled peanuts. There appeared to be no proportional quantitative correlation between synthesis of aflatoxin and production of free fatty acids in nonliving peanuts, but no aflatoxin was produced without a simultaneous increase in free fatty acids.