Current research in behavioral sciences最新文献

With the surge of social media use in contemporary society, scholars have focused on how feelings of apprehension that one is missing out on important social activities (i.e., fear of missing out [FoMO]) might influence mental health. However, worry surrounding social inclusion is not a contemporary problem, and successfully participating in social events is an important aspect of human evolutionary history. To our knowledge, researchers have yet to frame the phenomenon of FoMO in an evolutionary perspective. In a sample of N = 327 heterosexual American adults (M_age = 36.94, SD = 10.24), we found that FoMO correlated positively with status-striving and intrasexual competitiveness, as well as unrestricted sociosexual behavior and desires. Among females, but not males, FoMO was negatively linked to received social support. Results highlight how adults higher in FoMO express a greater inclination to compete for evolutionarily salient social and reproductive resources and devote more effort toward short-term mating. FoMO may also alert females to the absence of desired social support. Findings provide insight into the utility of an evolutionary approach to studying individual differences in the experience of FoMO, which can aid in gathering a more comprehensive understanding of the construct.

Self- and value-based reward processing were investigated from an individual difference perspective. Participants learnt to associate geometric shapes with three identities (self, friend, stranger) on one occasion and three values (e.g., high, medium, low monetary value) on another occasion. Participants then carried out a perceptual matching task of judging whether shape-label pairings matched (e.g., triangle-self or circle-£16). This personal matching task was followed by a self-report measure concerning personal distance from others. Both self-identification and high value-associations led to better task performance (faster responses with higher perceptual sensitivity) in the matching tasks. Correlations between self- and high value-based reward biases varied as a function of participant ratings of personal distance between themselves and others. For individuals who rated with a large personal distance, there were no correlations between the self- and reward-biases. In contrast, self- and reward-biases did correlate for individuals who rated a close personal distance between themselves and others. These conclusions were supported by cluster analyses, which showed either distinct or common similarity structures for matching, based on personal and value relevance, corresponding to individuals’ self-rating of a large or close distance to others. The data suggest an intertwining model of self-value at the individual level. This model has significant implications for understanding emotion regulation in relation to self and reward interactions and may be relevant for advancing our understanding self in relation to normal and psychopathological processes.

Anxiety and depression negatively impact many. Studies suggest depression is associated with future time horizons, or how “far” into the future people tend to think, and anxiety is associated with temporal discounting, or how much people devalue future rewards. Separate studies from linguistics and economics have shown that how people refer to future time predicts temporal discounting. Yet no one—that we know of—has investigated whether future time reference habits are a marker of anxiety and/or depression. We introduce the FTR classifier, a novel classification system researchers can use to analyse linguistic temporal reference. In Study 1, we used the FTR classifier to analyse data from the social-media website Reddit. Users who had previously posted popular contributions to forums about anxiety and depression referenced the future and past more often than controls, had more proximal future and past time horizons, and significantly differed in their linguistic future time reference patterns: They used fewer future tense constructions (e.g. will), fewer high-certainty constructions (certainly), more low-certainty constructions (could), more bouletic modal constructions (hope), and more deontic modal constructions (must). This motivated Study 2, a survey-based mediation analysis. Self-reported anxious participants represented future events as more temporally distal and therefore temporally discounted to a greater degree. The same was not true of depression. We conclude that methods which combine big-data with experimental paradigms can help identify novel markers of mental illness, which can aid in the development of new therapies and diagnostic criteria.

Unbiased individual unconsciousness is a methodology that involves non-parametric receiver operating characteristics and Bayesian analyses and can enable a researcher to define subjective thresholds for visual suppression. It can enable a researcher to define among brief durations (e.g., 8.33 or 16.67 or 25 ms), per participant and elicitor type, the threshold of presentation for which each participant is individually unconscious during masking. The outcomes of this method are then used in a subsequent experimental session that involves psychophysiological assessments and participant ratings to explore evidence for unconscious processing and emotional responsivity. Following collegial requests for a dedicated manuscript on the rationale and replication of this method, in this manuscript, we provide a thorough, comprehensive and reader-friendly manual for this methodology. We include empirical illustrations, open-source and ready-to-use methodological, mathematical and statistical coding scripts and step-by-step instructions for replicating key parts or the entire method. We discuss the potential contributions and the developing applications of individual metrics for unconsciousness.

People's attitudes toward crimes and how they are related to gender, age, and personal values are studied here based on data from six representative surveys with altogether 14,591 respondents collected in four German cities between 1998 and 2020. The respondents rated fourteen legal offenses such as fare dodging, tax fraud, and car breaking on a “badness” scale. As predicted, women rate all offenses harsher than men and show more agreement in their ratings. As people grow older, their badness ratings rise monotonically in a decelerating way toward an upper asymptote. Exceptions are the youngest cohorts: They have relatively negative attitudes toward petty crimes (pot smoking, fare dodging), leading to initial dips in the growth curves. Personal values, in particular peoples’ striving for conservation, predict people's badness ratings, most effectively for petty crimes, and independent of gender and age. In all age and gender sub-groups, crime-specific attitudes are positively inter-correlated, showing that there is a common underlying attitude object. The structure of the badness items exhibits two dimensions, with highly similar configurations for all age and gender cohorts.

Studies on media multitasking behavior and task-switching performance have yielded mixed results. The present preliminary study (N = 40) focused on task management, and not performance, by allowing participants to choose the switching frequency between tasks all along the experiment. This design revealed two different patterns of organization, with many participants choosing no variation at all and sticking to this organization throughout the entire experiment. We found no impact of organization type on performance. The participants who switched more often scored higher on polychronicity (i.e., preference for multitasking) and media multitasking scales. We did not find any relationship between executive functioning and task organization or media multitasking scores, but this result should be regarded with caution given the limited sample size. In broad terms, individuals tend to declare a media multitasking tendency in line with their spontaneous organization on multiple tasks, with more sequentially organized participants reporting lower media multitasking behavior. These results point to a seemingly global individual strategy to approach multiple tasks.

Background

Body image concerns exist on a continuum in the community, and can include dysmorphic as well as appearance-related symmetry concerns. The current study aimed to investigate the contribution of perfectionism and aesthetic sensitivity to the prediction of dysmorphic and symmetry concerns.

Method

Respondents were 343 individuals from the community. Basic demographic and mental health information (e.g. negative emotions) was collected. Online measures assessing dysmorphic concerns, including the presence and nature of symmetry concerns, multidimensional perfectionism and an aesthetic sensitivity task were completed. Two regressions (hierarchical and logistic) examined predictors of dysmorphic and symmetry concerns.

Results

Up to 42.9% and 53.9% of respondents respectively reported dysmorphic and symmetry concerns. The latter affected the breasts/chest, teeth, nose, and eyebrows. Socially-prescribed perfectionism significantly predicted dysmorphic and symmetry concerns, with self-oriented perfectionism also predicting symmetry concerns. Aesthetic sensitivity was not a significant predictor.

Conclusion

Symmetry concerns may be widespread in the community. Socially-prescribed perfectionism might be a viable therapeutic target for dysmorphic and symmetry concerns. Replication studies in clinical cohorts are needed to corroborate whether these trends extend to the clinical end of the body image spectrum.

Exponential Internet growth, despite functional use in human communication and useful impact on the technological development of the society, has nevertheless demonstrated some downsides in recent years. A growing body of evidence shows both linear and/or nonlinear association between excessive Internet use (e.g., Internet addiction (IA)) and depression followed by depression-related psychopathology (e.g., anxiety, stress, and sleep quality). Some academic groups, such as medical students, have demonstrated to be at high risk for both IA and depression development. However, little is known whether the association between IA and depression is bi-directional or unidirectional, and to what extent the IA-depression relationship is mediated by anxiety, stress, and the quality of sleep. The present cross-sectional study investigated behavioral mechanisms underlying the IA-depression association, mediated by anxiety, stress, and the quality of sleep in a sample of Serbian medical students (N = 161). Participants filled out paper-and-pen questionnaires including the Internet Addiction Test (IAT); self-report questionnaires of Internet use; Depression, Anxiety and Stress scales (DASS-21), and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). We provide strong evidence that IA predicts depression and vice versa clarifying a bi-directional path; however, whereas the IA-depression association was partially mediated by anxiety and stress, the depression-IA path was not intervened by mediators. In addition, the IA-quality of sleep path was fully mediated by anxiety. These results provide evidence for a bi-directional hybrid path between IA and depression, highlighting the mediation role of anxiety and stress. This study may contribute to the academic community by improving mental health prevention programs for medical students.

This paper aims to test the mediating role of turnover intention as well as the moderating role of transformational leadership in the relationship between perceived overqualification and innovative work behaviour in the telecommunications industry. Data were collected using questionnaires from three main telecommunications companies in Turkey. A total of 420 white-collar employees were reached as a result of the application of the simple random sampling method. The data was analysed via structural equation modelling. The present research revealed that transformational leadership had a full moderating role in the relationship between perceived overqualification and innovative work behaviour. Additionally, turnover intention had a mediating role on the increase of overqualification. The results of the study revealed that employees' POQ could be manipulated to produce positive outcomes for the organization. Empirical findings regarding the negative impact of IWB have extended the scope of theoretical discussions on POQ and IWB by adding TI as a critical mediator. Employees with POQ can produce excellent results if managed appropriately. Therefore, when making decisions, leaders should regard employees with a high level of POQ as a source of innovation. Besides, managers can direct the focus of POQ employees from TI to IWB through the application of TL.