Frontiers in psychology
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Human decision-making shows systematic simplifications and deviations from the tenets of rationality ('heuristics') that may lead to suboptimal decisional outcomes ('cognitive biases'). There are currently three prevailing theoretical perspectives on the origin of heuristics and cognitive biases: a cognitive-psychological, an ecological and an evolutionary perspective. However, these perspectives are mainly descriptive and none of them provides an overall explanatory framework for the underlying mechanisms of cognitive biases. ⋯ The supposed mechanisms are complementary and not mutually exclusive. For different cognitive biases they may all contribute in varying degrees to distortion of information. The present viewpoint not only complements the earlier three viewpoints, but also provides a unifying and binding framework for many cognitive bias phenomena.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2018
Long-Term Pain Treatment Did Not Improve Sleep in Nursing Home Patients with Comorbid Dementia and Depression: A 13-Week Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trial.
Objective: Previous research indicates that pain treatment may improve sleep among nursing home patients. We aimed to investigate the long-term effect of pain treatment on 24-h sleep patterns in patients with comorbid depression and dementia. Design: A 13-week, multicenter, parallel-group, double-blind, placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial conducted between August 2014 and September 2016. ⋯ This could indicate that some patients had beneficial effects from the most potent pain treatment. However, based on the present findings, long-term pain treatment is not recommended as a strategy to improve sleep. Clinical Trial https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02267057.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2018
The Impact of Mortality Salience on Intergenerational Altruism and the Perceived Importance of Sustainable Development Goals.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), consisting of 17 specific goals such as ending poverty, reducing inequality, and combating climate change, were proposed by the UN member states in 2014 for the ongoing UN agenda until 2030. These goals articulate the growing need for the international community to build a sustainable future. To progress and build a truly sustainable future requires not only the immediate support of individuals for the current SDGs, but also their personal long-term commitment to the needs of future generations (i.e., intergenerational altruism). ⋯ Using a three-condition (mortality salience vs. dentist visit vs. neutral) randomized experiment, we found that mortality salience led participants to place a higher priority on the needs of future generations only when compared to the neutral condition. Further, we conducted a factor analysis that generated two SDGs factors (socially related SDGs and ecologically related SDGs). We found that mortality salience reduced participants' perceived importance of the socially related SDGs when compared to both the dentist visit and the neutral conditions, and mortality salience decreased participants' perceived importance of the ecologically related SDGs only when compared to the neutral condition.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2018
Skiing and Thinking About It: Moment-to-Moment and Retrospective Analysis of Emotions in an Extreme Sport.
Happiness is typically reported as an important reason for participating in challenging activities like extreme sport. While in the middle of the activity, however, participants do not seem particularly happy. So where does the happiness come from? The article proposes some answers from a study of facially expressed emotions measured moment-by-moment during a backcountry skiing event. ⋯ Moment-to-moment and self-reported measures of emotions were largely unrelated. These findings are explained with reference to the Functional Wellbeing Approach (Vittersø, 2013), which argues that some moment-to-moment feelings are non-evaluative in the sense of being generated directly by the difficulty of an activity. By contrast, retrospective emotional feelings are more complex as they include an evaluation of the overall goals and values associated with the activity as a whole.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2018
Spousal Support for Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis: Getting the Wrong Kind Is a Pain.
Research indicates that perceived support availability is beneficial, with support available from the spouse particularly important for well-being. However, actual support mobilization has shown mixed associations with recipient well-being. The primary goal of the present study was to go beyond examining the effects of global perceptions of support on recipient outcomes. ⋯ Reverse causation analyses indicated higher levels of patient pain may lead partners to increase solicitous support mobilization to the patient. Findings underscore the importance of examining both partners' reports of support within a dyadic coping framework. They further suggest that not all forms of support are equally beneficial, calling for a finer grained assessment of specific support transactions.