The Journal of general psychology
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Busier people tend to perform better on cognitive tasks than less busy individuals. Nevertheless, the characteristics that are associated with greater perceived busyness are unknown. To address this question participants (N = 463) from the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study (ages 20-89) completed a self-report busyness assessment and demographic, health, personality, and lifestyle measures. ⋯ Overall, younger age, female gender, agreeableness, neuroticism, frequent participation in novel activities, and enjoyment of cognitive processing were independently associated with being busier, and the characteristics related to busyness were generally stable across age. Notably, participation in novel activities and need for cognition were the most predictive lifestyle characteristics, supporting the framing of busyness as an indicator of mental engagement. We also propose personality-based sources of self-generated and other-generated busyness.
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Resilience represents coping with adversity and is in line with a more positive paradigm for viewing responses to adversity. Most research has focused on resilience as coping-a state-based response to adversity. However, a competing hypothesis views resilience or resiliency as a trait that exists across time and types of adversity. ⋯ Consistent with the trait-based resiliency, and in contrast to state-based resilience, resiliency scores were not strongly correlated with adversity at both testing points but were with positive affect, and resiliency scores remained the same over time despite adversity variations. There was no gender or ethnic group difference in resilience scores. Black/African Americans reported significantly less negative affect and more positive affect than White/Caucasians.
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Sexist comments are not perceived equally in the eyes of women. We extend previous research by examining the degree to which multiple types of potentially sexist comments made by multiple types of men are perceived as sexist. Further, we examine the degree to which three possible mediators--prototypicality, perceived intent, and interdependence--explained these effects. ⋯ Results demonstrate that hostile sexism was perceived as more sexist than benevolent sexism or objectification. Comments made by boyfriends were also rated as less sexist than those made by bosses or strangers. Furthermore, perceptions of prototypicality of the comment or perpetrator and perceived intent to harm mediated the effect of study manipulations on perceptions of sexism.
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The forced-recall paradigm requires participants to fill all spaces on the memory test even if they cannot remember all the list words. In the present study, the authors used that paradigm to examine the influence of implicit memory on guessing--when participants fill remaining spaces after they cannot remember list items. ⋯ The authors examined implicit memory on guessing with forced recall (Experiment 1), forced cued recall with younger and older adults (Experiment 2), and forced free and cued recall under a depth-of-processing manipulation (Experiment 3). They conclude that implicit memory influences guesses of targets in the forced-recall paradigm.
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The authors provided a differential test between stimulus-stimulus (S-S) and stimulus-response (S-R) theory predictions in regard to the roles that the constructs of expectancy and of fear play in maintaining classically conditioned fear responding within the context of a human conditioned-avoidance paradigm. After the participants had developed sustained avoidance responding, their shock electrodes and avoidance response apparatus were removed to enhance the cognitive expectancy that the conditioned stimulus (CS) would not be followed by the unconditioned stimulus (UCS). This manipulation of expectancy was successful in 96% of the participants. ⋯ During the test trials, the authors used autonomic and self-report indices of fear to assess the presence or absence of fear to the CS. The data disconfirmed the prediction of the S-S theory that fear to the CS would be extinguished. The authors discuss the implications of this finding for S-S theories and for approaches in cognitive behavior therapy.