Journal of personality and social psychology
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Previous research regarding the effects of positive life events on physical health has been inconclusive. We tested the hypothesis that positive life events have a detrimental effect on health only among people with negative self-views. ⋯ In accordance with predictions, both studies showed that desirable life changes were associated with increases in illness only among subjects with low self-esteem; among subjects with high self-esteem, positive life events were linked to better health. Implications for understanding the manner in which life events affect health are considered.
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We conducted three experiments to examine the effects of information about a speaker's status on memory for the assertiveness of his or her remarks. Subjects either read (Experiments 1 and 2) or listened to a conversation (Experiment 3) and were later tested for their memory of the target speaker's remarks with either a recognition (Experiment 1) or a recall procedure (Experiments 2 and 3). In all experiments the target speaker's ostensible status was manipulated. ⋯ This result was replicated in Experiment 2, but only when the status information was provided before subjects read the conversation and not when the information was provided after the conversation had been read. Experiment 2's results eliminate a reconstructive memory interpretation and suggest that information about a speaker's status affects the encoding of remarks. Experiment 3 examined this effect in a more ecologically representative context.
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Comparative Study
Effects of instructional set on attributions of nonvolition during hypnotic and nonhypnotic analgesia.
Fifty highly hypnotizable subjects were assigned to four treatment groups or a no-treatment control group and then underwent two pain stimulation trials. Half the treated subjects were administered hypnotic analgesia, half waking analgesia. ⋯ Both hypnotic and nonhypnotic subjects given passive instructions rated their pain reduction as occurring involuntarily, whereas those given active instructions reported that their pain was reduced through their active use of coping strategies. These findings support sociocognitive formulations of hypnotic responding that view ratings of involuntariness as reflecting contextually guided interpretations of behavior.
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Action identification theory holds that an action can be identified by the performer in different ways, and that these various act identities differ in their appropriateness for maintaining the action effectively. Optimal action identification exists when a personally easy action is identified in relatively high-level terms (i.e., the action's effects and implications) or a personally difficult action is identified in relatively low-level terms (i.e., the action's mechanical details). ⋯ As predicted, subjects made fewer speech errors and felt more satisfied with their performance when the task was personally easy and identified at high level and when the task was personally difficult and identified at low level. Optimal action identification made things easier for them to say.
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A number of studies have shown that mastery experiences strengthen self-efficacy expectancies that are specific to the mastery situation. In this study I assessed the effects of cognitive-behavioral coping skills training on generalized expectancies concerning self-efficacy and locus of control in test-anxious college students. ⋯ Consistent with generalization predictions derived from self-efficacy theory, the coping skills group also exhibited decreases in general trait anxiety and increased scores on a trait measure of generalized self-efficacy. Locus of control was unaffected by the program, and changes in general self-efficacy were unrelated to changes in locus of control, suggesting the possibility that different parameters of experience are related to changes in the two types of generalized expectancies.