Psychological Questions Research Articles

Quantifying cultural change: Gender bias in music.

Cultural items (e.g., songs, books, and movies) have an important impact in creating and reinforcing stereotypes. But the actual nature of such items is often less transparent. Take songs, for example. Are lyrics biased against women, and how have any such biases changed over time? Natural language processing of a quarter of a million songs quantifies gender bias in music over the last 50 years. Women are less likely to be associated with desirable traits (i.e., competence), and while this bias has decreased, it persists. Ancillary analyses further suggest that song lyrics may contribute to shifts in collective attitudes and stereotypes toward women, and that lyrical shifts are driven by male artists (as female artists were less biased to begin with). Overall, these results shed light on cultural evolution, subtle measures of bias and discrimination, and how natural language processing and machine learning can provide deeper insight into stereotypes, cultural change, and a range of psychological questions more generally. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

New archival digital exhibit.

Innovations in Language, Emotion, and Empathy Research is a digital exhibit which celebrates the forgotten contributions to psychology by Prof. Vincent V. Herr, S. J. (1901-1970) and his colleagues in the mid-20th century. It draws on the substantial unpublished material in the Herr Papers at the Loyola University Chicago Archives and Special Collections. The online exhibition showcases over 40 archival documents, images, and photographs. These are elaborated with detailed text presenting Herr's research achievements and impactful collaborations. During his time at Loyola University Chicago, Herr pursued a range of interrelated projects using innovative assessment approaches to measure linguistic, emotional, and social aspects of healthy and disordered mental states. He was adept in experimental techniques which he applied to questions in psychiatry and social psychology. Herr investigated individual differences in emotionality and empathy through original tasks and instrumental measures. He collaborated with colleagues at Harvard and Yeshiva Universities on the religion and mental health project in the 1950s and 1960s supported by the National Institute of Mental Health and became an advisor to Vatican II in 1965. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Long-term causal effects of far-right terrorism in New Zealand.

The Christchurch mosque attacks in 2019, committed by a radical right-wing extremist, resulted in the tragic loss of 51 lives. Following these events, there was a noticable rise in societal acceptance of Muslim minorities. Comparable transient reactions have been observed elsewhere. However, the critical questions remain: can these effects endure? Are enduring effects evident across the political spectrum? It is challenging to answer such questions because identifying long-term causal effects requires estimating unobserved attitudinal trajectories without the attacks. Here, we use six preattack waves of Muslim acceptance responses from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (NZAVS) to infer missing counterfactual trajectories (NZAVS cohort 2012, ; replicated in 2013 cohort, ). We find (1) the attacks initially boosted Muslim acceptance; (2) the magnitude of the initial Muslim acceptance boost was similar across the political spectrum; (3) no changes were observed in negative control groups; and (4) two- and three-year effects varied by baseline political orientation: liberal acceptance was stable, conservative acceptance grew relative to the counterfactual trend. Overall, the attacks added five years of growth in Muslim acceptance, with no regression to preattack levels over time. Continued growth among conservatives highlights the attack's failure to divide society. These results demonstrate the utility of combining methods for causal inference with national-scale panel data to answer psychological questions of basic human concern.

Rethinking the globalization through the lens of indonesian traditional political culture

The aim of the study is to identify original Indonesian approaches to the globalization phenomenon from Indonesia’s political culture standpoint, bearing in mind also the socio-political thought of the Indonesian people, as well as the historical and cultural features of the Indonesian statehood formation. The author analyzes the assumption that Indonesian society and the elites share original globalization perception, thus Indonesia’s self-positioning in a globalizing world is not only a matter of diplomacy or politics, but also a question of political philosophy and social psychology. From the point of methodology, the author relies on constructivism IR theory, as it necessary to study the Indonesian beliefs set regarding globalization and world development processes. As a result, the author concludes that the pandemic consequences and international crises are increasingly dividing the world, and globalization is often considered stalled, however, for the Indonesian mindset, globalization is an important world order element, while it is perceived not as total westernization or neocolonialism, but as a fair exchange between sovereign nations. The research contribution is also determined by the need to analyze non-Western approaches to key world development issues and the international actor’s communication, considering the transformation of the contemporary IR system and the global politics shift to the Asia-Pacific region.

Ideological values are parametrically associated with empathy neural response to vicarious suffering.

Several studies in political psychology reported higher levels of empathy among political leftists (i.e. liberals) as compared to political rightists (i.e. conservatives). Yet, all those studies lean on self-reports, which are often limited by subjective bias and conformity to social norms. Here, we tested this putative asymmetry using neuroimaging: we recorded oscillatory neural activity using magnetoencephalography while 55 participants completed a well-validated neuroimaging paradigm for empathy to vicarious suffering. The findings revealed a typical rhythmic alpha-band 'empathy response' in the temporal-parietal junction. This neural empathy response was significantly stronger in the leftist than in the rightist group. In addition to this dichotomous division, the neural response was parametrically associated with both self-reported political inclination and right-wing ideological values. This is the first study to reveal an asymmetry in the neural empathy response as a function of political ideology. The findings reported in this study are in line with the current literature in political psychology and provide a novel neural perspective to support the ideological asymmetry in empathy. This study opens new vistas for addressing questions in political psychology by using neuroimaging.

Self‐Worth and Politics: The Distinctive Roles of Self‐Esteem and Narcissism

One of the classic questions in political psychology has been whether feelings of self‐worth are relevant for politics. In this review, we summarize seven decades of research attempting to address this question, focusing on three sets of political outcomes: (1) political ideology, (2) political interest and engagement, and (3) intergroup relations. We rely on the distinction between self‐esteem (feelings of adequacy and satisfaction with oneself) and narcissism (feelings of entitled self‐importance and superiority over others). We argue that this distinction allows us to integrate the literature and explain the mixed effects observed in past research on self‐evaluation and politics. Our review points to a key role of narcissistic status pursuit and psychological defensiveness in predicting potentially problematic political attitudes and behaviors. We discuss practical implications these associations might have for democratic functioning and for understanding political leaders. We conclude by identifying outstanding questions and promising new research directions.

Does believing something to be fiction allow a form of moral licencing or a 'fictive pass' in understanding others' actions?

The human capacity to engage with fictional worlds raises important psychological questions about the mechanisms that make this possible. Of particular interest is whether people respond differently to fictional stories compared to factual ones in terms of how immersed they become and how they view the characters involved and their actions. It has been suggested that fiction provides us with a 'fictive pass' that allows us to evaluate in a more balanced, detached way the morality of a character's behaviour. We use a randomised controlled experimental design to test this. We show that, although knowing whether a substantial film clip is fact or fiction does not affect how engaged with ('transported' by) a troubling story an observer becomes, it does grant them a 'fictive pass' to empathise with a moral transgressor. However, a fictive pass does not override the capacity to judge the causes of a character's moral transgression (at least as indexed by a causal attribution task).

Knowing before doing: Review and mega-analysis of action understanding in prereaching infants.

The relationship between experience and knowledge is one of the oldest and deepest questions in psychology. In developmental science, research on this question has focused on prereaching infants who cannot yet retrieve objects by reaching for and grasping them. Over the past 2 decades, behavioral research in this population has produced two seemingly contradictory findings: After first-person experience with reaching via "sticky mittens" training, (a) infants come to expect that people reach efficiently, toward goal objects, but (b) under some conditions, they can express these expectations without training. We hypothesize that prereaching infants' understanding of other people's actions is driven by the representational demands of the tasks used to test their abilities, rather than by first-person motor experience per se. We conducted a qualitative review and a quantitative, preregistered "mega-analysis" of the original data from this past work (i.e., an analysis of looking responses from N = 650 infants, 30 conditions, and 8 articles). We found that the manipulations with the strongest effects (measured via effect sizes and Bayes factors) on infants' understanding of other people's goals and physical constraints, controlling for infant age, were abstract features of action: Whether the action produced an observable effect in the world on contact and provided unambiguous evidence for the actor's goal. We end by presenting a broad hypothesis about how young infants learn about other people's minds and actions, centered on an early intuitive theory of action planning, to be tested with future work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The problem of subjectivity in the health care of a pre-schooler

The article reveals subjectivity as a fundamental problem of developing and health-preserving education of preschool children, the dialectic of which reveals itself in the concept of joint subject activity; an attempt is made to approach the understanding of the fundamental question of health psychology, developmental psychology, developmental and health-preserving pedagogy: How to carry out pedagogical influences against the background of high rates of physical and mental development of preschool children, high sensitivity of the child’s body and psyche to environmental influences, rather low indicators of the child’s health? The answers to these questions are supposed to be obtained through the methodology of interdisciplinary research based on the ideas of evolutionism of scientific knowledge and cultural-historical approach aimed at creating a holistic picture of the health and development of the child through the prism of the formation of his or her subjectivity. The initial theoretical positions of scientific reflection are the idea formed in Russian psychology about health as a complex phenomenon associated with the spiritual growth of a person, their comprehension of the meaning of their existence and the practically achievable norm of child development (V. A. Ananyev, B. S. Bratus, V. T. Kudryavtsev, B. B. Egorov, Yu. I. Rodin); philosophical teachings about man in culture (M. K. Mamardashvili), about the ideal in the interpretation of E. V. Ilyenkov; provisions developed in cultural and historical psychology about activity as a process and result of socio-historical human development (L. S. Vygotsky, A. R. Luria, V. V. Davydov, etc.); E. V. Ilyenkov’s understanding of the jointly-divided objective activity as an objective reality and a unit of socio-historical production; D. B. Elkonin’s position on the movement of the child from the contextuality of objective comprehension of the world to comprehending the meaning of objective activity through the mediation of an adult and their development by D. B. Elkonin and V. V. Rubtzov. The conclusion is that the formation of the child subjectivity is an essential condition of joint developmental and health-care activity of an adult and a child.

A transition support system to build decarbonization scenarios in the academic community

A growing portion of scientists realises the need to not only alert about climate change, but also change their professional practices. A range of tools have emerged to promote more sustainable activities, yet many scientists struggle to go beyond simple awareness-raising to create concrete transition actions. Here we propose a game-based transition support system MaTerre180’, which has been designed to build scenarios of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions in the academic community. After providing a common scientific background about the context (global warming issue, its causes and consequences) and setting up a challenge (50% reduction of carbon budget by 2030), the participants belonging to the academic community and its governance bodies immerse themselves into fictional characters, to simulate the behaviour of real research groups. The game has been deployed during the year 2021, with six hundred participants from nine countries and 50 cities. Results explore clear pathways for GHG reductions between 25 and 60%, and a median reduction of 46%. The alternatives allowing the greatest reduction are video communication tools (36%), followed by mutualization of professional activities and voluntary cancellation or reduction, that represent 22 and 14% of reduction, respectively. The remaining 28% of reduction consists of transport alternative, relocation of professional activities, extended duration of some travels, etc. In addition, the analyses pointed out the importance of the guided negotiation phase to bring out some alternatives such as relocation, local partners and computing optimization. An added value of this transition support system is that the information it collects (anonymously) will be used to answer pressing research questions in climate change science and environmental psychology regarding the use of serious games for promoting changes in attitudes and behaviours towards sustainability, and including broader questions on how network structures influence “climate behaviour”, knowledge and the governance of the commons. Modestly, MaTerre180’ offers an innovative game-based transition support system to build scenarios of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions in the academic community. It is not simply a question of moving tokens on a virtual gameboard and a playful adjustment of practices, but rather a question of brainstorming about possible and desirable ways of remodelling research and teaching communities and embracing a new paradigm. After tens of workshops, our results show clear pathways for reaching up to 50% GHG reductions and stress the importance of guided negotiations to bring out alternatives to carbonized activities. This first attempt reinforces our belief that scientific engagement is at the heart of the international development agenda and a key approach to tear down the institutional barriers that inhibit the transformation needed to achieve a more sustainable society.

Reference-dependent preferences and probability judgments

This paper provides empirical evidence that probability judgments help explain a reference-dependent preference. It explains using the data for Tokyo Taxi drivers, which includes the respondents about psychological questions. Probability judgments based on a dual process to cognition means judgments and calculations of the probability when they determine something under uncertainty. It weakens the assumption that people have the same rationality. We permit the difference between cognition to rationality and probability judgments. These probability judgments relate to reference points and drivers' personalities and intuition, which influence decision-making and can explain several reference dependences. The difference of cognition to rationality also determines their reference dependence type. It uses Rational Experienced Inventory as the index of cognition to rationality. Frequentist type has different target variables with case type, subjective type, and fortune type. Each probability judgment type has each target as the reference point. Probability judgment types explain the type of cognition to rationality. This explains the endogeneity of reference dependence.

Analytic thinking as revealed by function words: What does language really measure?

AbstractUnderstanding how people think is a key interest in psychology, and recent advances in automated text analysis have used a verbal analytic thinking index to approximate Kahneman's System 2 (e.g., deliberate, rational thinking). That is, prior work used a style word index to assess university student admissions essays and observed that those who used more articles and prepositions relative to storytelling words (e.g., pronouns) had higher grades at the end of college. This work presumed that verbal analytic thinking represented one's cognitive ability or intellectual potential, but this presumption has remained untested. The current research evaluated if verbal analytic thinking is indeed a reflection of cognitive ability or one's interest and motivation to engage in thinking, called need for cognition. Across 500 participants and two writing samples, the most reliable link to verbal analytic thinking was need for cognition, addressing an unexamined empirical question in psychology of language research.

How sport teaches values? The specific ability of intense bodily commitment to enhance norm adherence

How sport teaches values? The specific ability of intense bodily commitment to enhance norm adherence

Rich and sparse figurative information in children's memory for colorful places.

The relation between perceptual and conceptual knowledge is a longstanding research question in developmental psychology. Here we tested children's dependence on figurative information with a reaction time/accuracy task. A sample of 151 children from 5 to 10 years were assessed from two multicultural and multiracial schools in the London (UK) boroughs City of London and Harrow. A quarter of children in both schools were eligible for free school meals (national average 18.5%). The same 3 × 3 grid with nine individually colored places and a uniform black star as placeholder was tested in three different retrieval conditions: (a) same array as during presentation, (b) one place at a time with placeholder, and (c) one place at a time without placeholder. In a (d) control condition, individual shapes were of the same color as the colorful places. Bayes Factor analyses showed a more unified response toward figurative placeholders in 5- to 6-year-olds. Independently of age, colorful places without a placeholder were hardest to remember. Places were better remembered when a placeholder was added and still better when the spatial context of the entire array was available. Yet unique shapes with distinctive contours and colors as placeholders optimized place memory the most. While place memory accuracy increased with age, reaction times did not become faster. Instead, latencies were longer, the more visual information was available in the retrieval array. A larger perceptual effect was caused by the dynamic where-delay interference task, the sparser the amount of visual information in the retrieval array. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Convergence between G and g in three monkey species (Sapajus spp, Ateles geoffroyi, and Macaca fascicularis).

An open question in comparative psychology is whether the source of correlations among different measures of ability (the g factor) is shared between species, or is distinct. This is examined using data on the performance of three monkey species (tufted capuchins, black-handed spider monkeys, and long-tailed macaques) on 16 cognitive ability measures. The differences between species pairs across measures are not generally strongly related to the degree to which the g factor loads on each subtest. Iteratively removing the subtests with the lowest coefficients of variance (CV), and recorrelating the species differences with subtest g-loadings was found to increase the association between the two. Across iterations, subtest pooled CV strongly and positively predicts the increase in the degree to which g-loadings are predictive of species difference in two comparisons, but is a weaker predictor in the comparison between tufted capuchins and black-handed spider monkeys. These associations were not related to phylogenetic distance but were very strongly related to species differences in the means of certain ecological factors. g-scores computed for each species on the basis of the three subtests with the highest CV values exhibited very-high magnitude (>.9) associations with species-level G-scores. G is simply the species-level equivalent of g, resulting from covariation among cognitive ability measures at the level of species differences. Finally, as with previous studies, subtests that show the greatest species differences seem to draw on executive functioning, and attention, suggesting that these may be a phylogenetically conserved source of g across many animal taxa. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

How does Working Memory Promote Traces in Episodic Memory?

A longstanding research question in cognitive psychology concerns how the underlying mechanisms of working memory impact long-term episodic memory. In this series of six experiments, we manipulated three different factors within a complex span task that interleaves memoranda and distractors to investigate the contribution of these factors to the creation of episodic traces: (1) the cognitive load of processing the distractors, (2) the number of distractors, and (3) the free time following the distractors. All three factors have been identified in the prior literature as important to maintenance in working memory and, consequently, later retrieval from episodic memory. Thus, it is important to understand their unique and joint effects to the long-term durability of memory traces. Across six experiments, delayed recall (i.e., episodic memory) of the items studied during the complex span tasks (i.e., working memory) was best accounted for by accumulated free time, whereas the effects of cognitive load and number of distractors were inconsistent or negligible. These results conflict with prior work suggesting that cognitive load and the number of distractors impact episodic memory. However, the current results replicate and extend those suggesting that time spent processing items in working memory promotes the creation of episodic memory traces.

У. Джеймс в русском академическом богословии нач. ХХ в. Часть II. От многообразия религиозного опыта к мистическому разуму

As we know, the publication of the translation of W. James’ “The Varieties of Re­ligious Experience” in 1910 gave rise to a well-known discussion that took place in the pages of the journal “Questions of Philosophy and Psychology”. However, the fact that James’s concept has been critically comprehended in the works of some academic theologians, such as M. Tareev, P. Minin, A. Tuberovsky, still remains in the shade. Relying on James as the author who “scientifically” con­firmed the existence of a religious-mystical experience, they sought to respond to the challenge that James’s pluralism posed before them. This challenge boiled down to the question of principles for distinguishing from the general diversity of religious and mystical experience its specifically Christian manifestations, which would be linked both with the content of Christian teaching and with the Christian action in the world arising from it. Such a complex formulation of the issue was determined both by the need to substantiate the significance of Chris­tianity as the only divinely revealed religion in relation to other “external” reli­gions, and by the desire to solve the internal problem, which was reduced to the monastic – worldly, individual – social opposition in the life of the Church, which was very typical for that era. Having considered the works of P. Minin, M. Tareev, A. Tuberovsky, we come to the conclusion about the formation of the concept, which was later actualized in the Diaspora as the concept of “mystical theology”. This concept integrates the ideas of a truly Christian experi­ence of communion with God, knowledge of God and activity in the world.

NFTs and digital IDs: Unexplored opportunities for psychological assessment?

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have received a great deal of attention over the past few years, with the most attention given to tradable tokens linked with digital art. The applications may seem limited because most of the discussion about NFTs has been about the superficial contents of the tokens (for example, why are people trading digital monkey pictures?) without a discussion of the underlying technology. This article addresses an important question for psychologists: what else could we use easily transferrable, unique digital signatures for?

Can ChatGPT Answer GRE Psychology Questions?

Can ChatGPT Answer GRE Psychology Questions?

Why the Cross-Lagged Panel Model Is Almost Never the Right Choice

The cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) is a widely used technique for examining reciprocal causal effects using longitudinal data. Critics of the CLPM have noted that by failing to account for certain person-level associations, estimates of these causal effects can be biased. Because of this, models that incorporate stable-trait components (e.g., the random-intercept CLPM) have become popular alternatives. Debates about the merits of the CLPM have continued, however, with some researchers arguing that the CLPM is more appropriate than modern alternatives for examining common psychological questions. In this article, I discuss the ways that these defenses of the CLPM fail to acknowledge well-known limitations of the model. I propose some possible sources of confusion regarding these models and provide alternative ways of thinking about the problems with the CLPM. I then show in simulated data that with realistic assumptions, the CLPM is very likely to find spurious cross-lagged effects when they do not exist and can sometimes underestimate these effects when they do exist.