Subfields Of Psychology Research Articles

A Theory of Moral Praise.

How do people judge whether someone deserves moral praise for their actions? In contrast to the large literature on moral blame, work on how people attribute praise has, until recently, been scarce. However, there is a growing body of recent work from a variety of subfields in psychology (including social, cognitive, developmental, and consumer) suggesting that moral praise is a fundamentally unique form of moral attribution and not simply the positive moral analogue of blame attributions. A functional perspective helps explain asymmetries in blame and praise: we propose that while blame is primarily for punishment and signaling one's moral character, praise is primarily for relationship building.

Hotspots in Psychology – 2020 Edition

Abstract. This editorial gives a brief introduction to the six articles included in the fourth “Hotspots in Psychology” of the Zeitschrift für Psychologie. The format is devoted to systematic reviews and meta-analyses in research-active fields that have generated a considerable number of primary studies. The common denominator is the research synthesis nature of the included articles, and not a specific psychological topic or theme that all articles have to address. Moreover, methodological advances in research synthesis methods relevant for any subfield of psychology are being addressed. Comprehensive supplemental material to the articles can be found in PsychArchives ( https://www.psycharchives.org ).

Community psychology and urban studies: Common connections and missed opportunities

ABSTRACT Community psychology is an international subfield of psychology that focuses on encouraging well-being by examining transactions between individuals and larger social systems including organizations (e.g., schools, workplaces), local neighborhoods, and cities. Although the fields of community psychology and urban studies both address metropolitan problems, urban social change, and urban policy, it is unclear to what extent these fields inform each other. In this paper, I first trace the history and development of community psychology in three localities to urban issues such as access to community mental health services, unemployment, and urban poverty. Second, I describe how contemporary community psychologists have focused their research on a range of urban topics including urban education, homelessness and housing policy, and local politics. Third, using a network analysis of journal citations, I explore the extent to which community psychology and urban studies have informed each other over the past 10 years. Finally, I explore future directions for encouraging interdisciplinarity between community psychology and urban studies.

POLICING, ‘SCIENCE’, AND THE CURIOUS CASE OF PHOTO-FIT

AbstractThis article analyses the curious development and subsequent refinement of the Photo-FIT system for the identification of criminal suspects, used by police forces around the world from the 1970s. Situating Photo-FIT in a succession of other technologies of identification, it demonstrates that, far from representing the onward march of science and technology (and the way in which both were harnessed to the power of the state in the twentieth century), Photo-FIT was the brainchild of an idiosyncratic entrepreneur wedded to increasingly outmoded notions of physiognomy. Its adoption by the Home Office was primarily determined by the particular context of the later 1960s, and its continued use owed more to vested interest and energetic promotion than to scientific underpinnings or proven efficacy. It did, however, in the longer term, provide the impetus for the development of a new sub-field of psychology and pave the way for the development of increasingly sophisticated facial identification technologies still used today. Overall, the article demonstrates the long persistence of physiognomic thinking in twentieth-century Britain, the way in which new technology is socially constructed, and the persuasive power of ‘pseudo-science’.

How much is research in the top journals of industrial/organizational psychology dominated by authors from the U.S.?

Industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology, the subfield of psychology applied to the context of work, has been criticized for being dominated by U.S. authors because this dominance could prevent the generalizability of results and the enrichment of theories, paradigms, and approaches by researchers from other parts of the world. Previous estimates on the extent of the U.S. dominance are, however, likely restricted in scope, outdated, and likely biased by non-U.S. researchers who were socialized in the U.S. or received help by U.S. co-authors. As such, we measured the level of U.S. dominance by analyzing 5626 papers published from the top ten journals of the field of I/O psychology in the last eleven years and their authors. The results show that the U.S. dominance continues, although the internationalization of I/O psychology has steadily increased. An additional analysis of the gender distribution across our sample revealed that female first authorship is slightly more common among authors with no U.S. affiliation. We suggest several steps to further increase the level of internationalization.

The Effects of Questionnaire Length and Behavioral Consequences on Careless Responding

Abstract. The current paper reports the results of two randomized experiments designed to test the effects of questionnaire length on careless responding (CR). Both experiments also examined whether the presence of a behavioral consequence (i.e., a reward or a punishment) designed to encourage careful responding buffers the effects of questionnaire length on CR. Collectively, our two studies found (a) some support for the main effect of questionnaire length, (b) consistent support for the main effect of the consequence manipulations, and (c) very limited support for the buffering effect of the consequence manipulations. Because the advancement of many subfields of psychology rests on the availability of high-quality self-report data, further research should examine the causes and prevention of CR.

Tek Maddeli Narsisizm Ölçeği’nin Kısıtları ve Eleştirileri

Narcissism has recently been widely studied in the various subfields of psychology and in organizational behavior research. Narcissism is a structure that is studied under different classifications and related to this with various dimensions. In this context, it is examined at level of personality disorder or pathological narcissism in clinical research and at the subclinical level in social psychology and organizational psychology research. In addition, there are classifications of vulnerable, grandiose, normal, hypersensitive, collective narcissism. Within each classification, different aspects of narcissism are examined. Therefore, it is difficult to measure narcissism with a single item. In this study, it is aimed to obtain further findings on the psychometric properties of the Turkish version of Single Item Narcissism Scale (SINS-T) which was developed by Konrath, Meier, & Bushman (2014), and adapted into Turkish culture by Ozsoy et al. (2017). In this direction, psychometric properties of SINS-T were investigated in two separate studies (study 1 n = 349, study 2, n = 236, Total N = 585). In study 1, with Dark Triad components (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) on sample group of academicians; In the study 2, with five factor personality traits and NPI-16, on a heterogeneous employee group, the psychometric properties of SINS-T has been examined. With those variables the convergent and discriminant validity of SINS-T (with nomological networks and multi-method multi-method approach) were examined. In both studies, the score of SINS-T of men was higher than women. In both studies, the psychometric properties of SINS-T met the expectations of validity at a certain level. However, based on the limitations of single item scales, narcissism-specific constraints and the limitations of current research, it thought that SINS-T should not be considered as a competitor to current narcissi scales but it can be used as an alternative scale. In the discussion section, the findings of the study were interpreted and the limitations and criticisms of the study and SINS-T were emphasized. Key words: Narcissism, Single Item Narcissism Scale, Psychometric Properties, Limitations, Criticisms

Setting an Agenda for Positive Psychology in SLA: Theory, Practice, and Research

AbstractIn this article we introduce Positive Psychology (PP), a relatively new subfield of psychology, and outline its development since the year 2000. We describe ways in which PP represents an exciting addition to the Second Language Acquisition (SLA) literature and the ways it is already influencing trends in education generally, thus creating promising expectations of its impact on language teaching and learning. After reviewing the progress made thus far under the rubric of PP in SLA, we offer suggestions for an agenda to move forward with theory, research, and practice.

Current conceptualizations of narcissism.

Definitions of narcissism have traditionally differed across psychiatry and subfields of psychology. This review aims to highlight emerging points of consensus and suggest further directions needed to obtain a more comprehensive and cohesive conceptualization of the construct. An emerging consensus is that stable individual differences in the phenotypic expression of narcissism are best captured with a taxonomy that includes the core traits of entitlement, grandiosity, and vulnerability. Recent work has also begun to conceptualize and assess narcissistic states matched with these dimensions. We combine emerging taxonomic knowledge with principles from Whole Trait Theory to propose a multilevel conceptualization of narcissism that focuses on its manifestation at the trait level, state level, and within-situation level. Efforts to understand the phenotypic structure of the core traits associated with narcissism have been successful. As the field moves forward, it will become critical for researchers studying narcissism at multiple levels to align and integrate these perspectives so that a more comprehensive and cohesive conceptualization of the construct can be developed.

The sampling precision of research in five major areas of psychology.

After obtaining a sample of published, peer-reviewed articles from journals with high and low impact factors in social, cognitive, neuro-, developmental, and clinical psychology, we used a priori equations recently derived by Trafimow (Educational and Psychological Measurement, 77, 831-854, 2017; Trafimow & MacDonald in Educational and Psychological Measurement, 77, 204-219, 2017) to compute the articles' median levels of precision. Our findings indicate that developmental research performs best with respect to precision, whereas cognitive research performs the worst; however, none of the psychology subfields excelled. In addition, we found important differences in precision between journals in the upper versus lower echelons with respect to impact factors in cognitive, neuro-, and clinical psychology, whereas the difference was dramatically attenuated for social and developmental psychology. Implications are discussed.

Beyond Representation of Women in I-O to Producing Gender-Inclusive Knowledge

Gardner, Ryan, and Snoeyink (2018) provided an excellent and much-needed analysis of the status of women in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. Although others have produced overall assessments of the status of women in psychology (Eagly & Riger, 2014; Kite et al., 2001), these are not sufficient to identify conditions within the subfields of psychology. As shown by statistics on the divisions of the American Psychological Association (http://www.apa.org/about/division/officers/services/profiles.aspx), the subfields differ greatly in their gender balance, with some being male dominated (e.g., experimental and cognitive science), others female dominated (e.g., developmental psychology), and still others representing women and men more equally (e.g., social and personality psychology). I-O psychology is among the more gender-balanced fields, with an increasing proportion of women over time. It would seem that I-O's gradual inclusion of more women should have changed aspects of research and discourse in this field. In this comment, we argue that these women have produced impressive changes.

Dual Process Theory of Thought and Default Mode Network: A Possible Neural Foundation of Fast Thinking.

The notion of default mode network (DMN) and the dual process theory of thought, topics within different cognitive neuroscience and psychology subfields, have attracted considerable attention and been extensively studied in the past decade. The former originated from experimental evidence on the brain function obtained when an individual is not involved in a specific task, and recent research suggests that the DMN plays a role in mental and neurological disorders (Buckner et al., 2008). A distinction is made according to the psychology of thinking in the dual process theory of thought between fast, effortless associative processes and slow, deliberative ones (Kahneman, 2011). This theory has been exploited both theoretically, to better understand human thought, and in many applications of behavior modification (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008). This paper proposes that an amalgamation of the aspects of these two topics could be of mutual benefit to scientists within the respective fields. The discovery of the DMN has stimulated several hypotheses regarding the neural basis of the self and the theory of the mind. However, with few exceptions, these hypotheses lack reference to current research on thought processes like reasoning and decision-making. A role of the DMN in the organization and expression of preplanned, reflexive behaviors characteristics of fast thinking has been mentioned by Raichle (2015). Moreover, a link between fast and slow processes and the activity of neural circuits including the DMN, has been proposed in the framework of the Predictive And Reactive Control Systems (PARCS) theory (Tops et al., 2014). More recently, the contribution of the DMN to automated processing has been also suggested (Vatansever et al., 2017). In contrast, the dual process theory of thought is the most shared explanation of how thoughts arise but does not adequately address the neural basis of thought, although an attempt has been made to determine the relationship between ego depletion and biological parameters (Elkins-Brown et al., 2016). Thus, in our opinion the DMN may provide a neural foundation for the associative, fast, and effortless form of thinking elucidated by the dual process theory.

Forensic psychology and correctional psychology: Distinct but related subfields of psychological science and practice.

This article delineates 2 separate but related subfields of psychological science and practice applicable across all major areas of the field (e.g., clinical, counseling, developmental, social, cognitive, community). Forensic and correctional psychology are related by their historical roots, involvement in the justice system, and the shared population of people they study and serve. The practical and ethical contexts of these subfields is distinct from other areas of psychology-and from one another-with important implications for ecologically valid research and ethically sound practice. Forensic psychology is a subfield of psychology in which basic and applied psychological science or scientifically oriented professional practice is applied to the law to help resolve legal, contractual, or administrative matters. Correctional psychology is a subfield of psychology in which basic and applied psychological science or scientifically oriented professional practice is applied to the justice system to inform the classification, treatment, and management of offenders to reduce risk and improve public safety. There has been and continues to be great interest in both subfields-especially the potential for forensic and correctional psychological science to help resolve practical issues and questions in legal and justice settings. This article traces the shared and separate developmental histories of these subfields, outlines their important distinctions and implications, and provides a common understanding and shared language for psychologists interested in applying their knowledge in forensic or correctional contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record

Involuntary Entry Into Consciousness From the Activation of Sets: Object Counting and Color Naming.

High-level cognitions can enter consciousness through the activation of certain action sets and the presentation of external stimuli (“set-based entry,” for short). Set-based entry arises in a manner that is involuntary and systematic. In the Reflexive Imagery Task, for example, subjects are presented with visual objects and instructed to not think of the names of the objects. Involuntary subvocalizations arise on roughly 80% of the trials. We examined whether or not set-based entry can also occur in the case of involuntary counting. Subjects in Experiment 1A were instructed to not count the number of objects presented in an array. Involuntary counting arose on a high proportion of the trials (a mean proportion of ∼0.90) for stimulus arrays having 2–5 objects, and such counting arose less frequently across trials when the array consisted of 6–10 objects (a mean proportion of ∼0.21). The data from Experiment 1B revealed that, when people choose to perform Set X, they also experience thoughts about an unselected Set (Set Y). Subjects were trained on one set (e.g., to “color name”) and then, when presented with stimuli, were given the choice to perform the trained set or a novel set. Consistent with theories proposing that the conscious contents represent several potential action plans, subjects were equally likely to experience set-related imagery or set-unrelated imagery. Our findings regarding set-based entry are relevant to many subfields of psychology and neuroscience (e.g., the study of high-level mental processes, attention, imagery, and action control).

Why Is Working Memory Performance Unstable? A Review of 21 Factors.

In this paper, we systematically reviewed twenty-one factors that have been shown to either vary with or influence performance on working memory (WM) tasks. Specifically, we review previous work on the influence of intelligence, gender, age, personality, mental illnesses/medical conditions, dieting, craving, stress/anxiety, emotion/motivation, stereotype threat, temperature, mindfulness training, practice, bilingualism, musical training, altitude/hypoxia, sleep, exercise, diet, psychoactive substances, and brain stimulation on WM performance. In addition to a review of the literature, we suggest several frameworks for classifying these factors, identify shared mechanisms between several variables, and suggest areas requiring further investigation. This review critically examines the breadth of research investigating WM while synthesizing the results across related subfields in psychology.

Les représentations philosophiques de la relation entre l’« esprit » et le cerveau des enseignants-chercheurs de psychologie : quelques implications

The history of psychology has been marked by strong methodological, theoretical and epistemological controversies. In this paper, we evaluate the hypothesis that these well-known controversies are often implicitly supported by philosophical, metaphysical and probably religious oppositions. The focus of our investigation concerns the classical opposition in philosophy between dualism and physicalism, more specifically the complex relationship between the brain and the mind. One hundred and sixty-six teachers and researchers (30 in clinical psychology, 37 in cognitive psychology, 31 in development psychology, 38 in social psychology and 30 in neurosciences) from 8 French universities have accepted to participate in this survey by responding to a questionnaire made of 17 questions. Data were analyzed using factor analysis technique and the results of the principal component analysis (PCA) revealed four main factors that are more likely to define accurately the philosophical profile of each sub-discipline. The main result of this survey is that philosophical and metaphysical positions, at the foundations of psychology, clearly distinguish and oppose the five studied sub-disciplines. At one extreme, there are cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists who are strongly physicalist. To the contrary, clinical and social psychologists exhibit more dualistic representation. Developmental psychologists occupy an intermediate position between these two extremes. Finally, we analyzed the implications of the participants’ philosophical representation differences, from an epistemological and clinical/practical point of view. The important point is that these philosophical and metaphysical oppositions are largely implicit. Indeed, inside our community, it is very rare, if not exceptional, that they are explicitly involved in the theoretical or epistemological conflicts, which exist inside our discipline. However, it is probable that they play a massive role in our debates, a role all the more important, as we are largely unconscious of them. The current study is the first to tackle such an important topic by describing more accurately the philosophical representation of scholars in major sub-fields of psychology. By revealing such deep metaphysical oppositions, we hope to shed a new light on the origins of these persisting conflicts in psychology.

Becoming part of me: Examining when objects, thoughts, goals, and people become fused with the self‐concept

AbstractFusion refers to the sense that a construct is integrated into the self‐concept. When a person feels fused with a construct, there is a perceived “oneness” with the construct, and as a result, the construct is treated as an extension of the self. This concept of fusion has been explored across a wide range of constructs and within a number of subfields in psychology. The goal of this article is to provide a comprehensive view of the fusion process and to connect these disparate areas of literature underneath a single unifying theme. Specifically, we focus on five constructs that researchers have explored in terms of fusion: objects, thoughts, goals, significant others, and groups. In our review, we discuss the ways that fusion is typically measured and highlight the consequences that occur as a result of such fusion. We conclude by highlighting questions that remain unanswered and suggest potential areas of future development.

A systematic review of Bayesian articles in psychology: The last 25 years.

Although the statistical tools most often used by researchers in the field of psychology over the last 25 years are based on frequentist statistics, it is often claimed that the alternative Bayesian approach to statistics is gaining in popularity. In the current article, we investigated this claim by performing the very first systematic review of Bayesian psychological articles published between 1990 and 2015 (n = 1,579). We aim to provide a thorough presentation of the role Bayesian statistics plays in psychology. This historical assessment allows us to identify trends and see how Bayesian methods have been integrated into psychological research in the context of different statistical frameworks (e.g., hypothesis testing, cognitive models, IRT, SEM, etc.). We also describe take-home messages and provide "big-picture" recommendations to the field as Bayesian statistics becomes more popular. Our review indicated that Bayesian statistics is used in a variety of contexts across subfields of psychology and related disciplines. There are many different reasons why one might choose to use Bayes (e.g., the use of priors, estimating otherwise intractable models, modeling uncertainty, etc.). We found in this review that the use of Bayes has increased and broadened in the sense that this methodology can be used in a flexible manner to tackle many different forms of questions. We hope this presentation opens the door for a larger discussion regarding the current state of Bayesian statistics, as well as future trends. (PsycINFO Database Record

Is semantic activation from print capacity limited? Evidence from the psychological refractory period paradigm.

A widely accepted belief across a range of subfields in psychology is that print activates semantics "automatically" in some sense. One such sense is that activating semantics does not require capacity. This view is assessed here in the context of the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) paradigm because it provides a way of determining whether semantic activation requires a form of capacity. Task 1 was tone classification. Task 2 was Stroop color naming. The distractors consisted of color words on some trials (e.g., BLUE), and semantic associates on others (e.g., TOMATO). Both types of distractors yielded a pattern of data inconsistent with the widespread view that semantic activation is capacity free.

Making decisions about modeling decision-making when analyzing speech perception data

Speech perception researchers are typically interested in, well, perception. But perception is not directly observable. An experimental participant hears (and maybe sees) a stimulus, but the researcher only observes the listener’s response (e.g., which button is pushed, how long it takes to push the button). Crucially, a listener’s response doesn’t directly, or solely, reflect perceptual processing; listeners’ responses also reflect what we might call response selection or decision-making. While there is a sizable sub-field in psychology devoted to the study of judgment and decision making, these issues are of more peripheral concern for speech perception researchers. Nonetheless, I will argue that it is important to take response selection into account when analyzing perception data. Terry Nearey is one of a small number of speech researchers who has consistently taken decision-making seriously when analyzing speech perception data. I will discuss a number of mathematical approaches to simultaneously modeling perception and response selection and how changes in modeled perception and decision-making predict distinct observable patterns in data. The importance of decision-making in the study of perception will be discussed and illustrated via a number of Terry Nearey’s studies as well as my own.