Frontiers in psychology
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2017
Inconsistent Effects of Parietal α-tACS on Pseudoneglect across Two Experiments: A Failed Internal Replication.
Transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) is being investigated as an experimental and clinical interventional technique in human participants. While promising, important limitations have been identified, including weak effect sizes and high inter- and intra-individual variability of outcomes. Here, we compared two "inhibitory" tES-techniques with supposedly different mechanisms of action as to their effects on performance in a visuospatial attention task, and report on a direct replication attempt. ⋯ However, this was not confirmed in experiment 2 and in the complete sample. Right parietal c-tDCS and 45 Hz-tACS had no effect. These results highlight the importance of replication studies, adequate statistical power and optimizing tES-interventions for establishing the robustness and reliability of electrical stimulation effects, and best practice.
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Objectives: When physical exercise is systematically coupled to music production, exercisers experience improvements in mood, reductions in perceived effort, and enhanced muscular efficiency. The physiology underlying these positive effects remains unknown. Here we approached the investigation of how such musical agency may stimulate the release of endogenous opioids indirectly with a pain threshold paradigm. ⋯ Musical agency explained 25% of the variance in cold pressor test withdrawal times after factoring out individual differences in general pain sensitivity. Conclusions: This result demonstrates a substantial pain reducing effect of musical agency in combination with physical exercise, probably due to stimulation of endogenous opioid mechanisms. This has implications for exercise endurance, both in sports and a multitude of rehabilitative therapies in which physical exercise is effective but painful.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2017
When Saying Sorry May Not Help: The Impact of Apologies on Social Rejections.
If you have to socially reject someone, will it help to apologize? Social rejection is a painful emotional experience for targets, yet research has been silent on recommendations for rejectors. Across three sets of studies, apologies increased hurt feelings and the need to express forgiveness but did not increase feelings of forgiveness. The investigation of hurt feelings arising from a social rejection is challenging because previous research has shown that participants are reluctant to admit they felt hurt by the rejection. ⋯ As in previous research, participants are reluctant to admit to feeling hurt. Finally, Study 3 (N = 426) found that in response to social rejections with apologies, individuals feel more compelled to express forgiveness despite not actually feeling more forgiveness. Implications for the role of language in social rejections are discussed.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2017
The Effectiveness of a Body-Affective Mindfulness Intervention for Multiple Sclerosis Patients with Depressive Symptoms: A Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial.
Purpose: Mindfulness interventions have been shown to treat depressive symptoms and improve quality of life in patients with several chronic diseases, including multiple sclerosis, but to date most evaluation of the effectiveness of mindfulness interventions in multiple sclerosis have used patients receiving standard care as the control group. Hence we decided to evaluate the effectiveness of a group-based body-affective mindfulness intervention by comparing it with a psycho-educational intervention, by means of a randomized controlled clinical trial. The outcome variables (i.e., depression, anxiety, perceived stress, illness perception, fatigue and quality of life) were evaluated at the end of the interventions (T1) and after a further 6 months (T2). ⋯ A whole-sample intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis broadly confirmed the effectiveness of the mindfulness intervention. Conclusion: In conclusion, these results provide methodologically robust evidence that in multiple sclerosis patients with depressive symptoms mindfulness interventions improve symptoms of depression and anxiety and perceived stress, modulate illness representation and enhance quality of life and that the benefits are maintained for at least 6 months. Trial registration: the study was registered in the ClinicalTrials.gov registry (NCT02611401).
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2017
Are Empowered Employees More Proactive? The Contingency of How They Evaluate Their Leader.
Finding ways to enhance employee proactive behavior is a focal concern for academics and practitioners. Previous studies have found a positive association between empowering leadership and proactive behavior (Martin et al., 2013; Li et al., 2017). However, these studies lack elaboration on mechanisms and do not rule out the effect of employees' proactive personality during empirical testing. ⋯ Our research proposes a more elaborated theoretical model that explains why, and when, empowering leadership might promote employee proactive behavior. Specifically, we examine mediating mechanisms based on social cognitive theory and propose trust in leader competency as boundary condition. Using a sample of 280 leader-follower dyads from a large state-owned Chinese company, our results revealed that (1) empowering leadership was positively related to proactive behavior, with role breadth self-efficacy acting as a mediator for this relationship; (2) employees' trust in leader competency moderated both the empowering leadership-subordinate proactive behavior relationship and the mediating effect of role breadth self-efficacy, such that the empowering leadership-subordinate proactive behavior relationship was weaker, and the mediating effect of role breadth self-efficacy was stronger, for employees with high levels of trust in leader competency.