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Control experiment for "Visual 'clicks' & sign language constituent structure"
No full textThis pre-registration describes a control experiment with hearing non-signers as participants for the experiment on "Visual 'clicks' & sign language constituent structure" with deaf signers described here (https://osf.io/n29az)
Barriers and facilitators to the professional integration of internationally qualified nurses in Australia: a mixed methods systematic review protocol
No full textThis systematic review will explore barriers and facilitators to the professional integration of internationally qualified nurses in Australia
Normal Order with German Experiencer-Object and Action Verbs with Two Indefinite Animate NPs.
No full textWhile German appears to have a rather free constituent order in the middle field from a strictly syntactic perspective, at least since (Lenerz, 1977) it is common to postulate a normal or unmarked order, deviations from which have to be motivated somehow and will often serve discourse functions. This normal order is predicate (class) specific.
The normal order with experiencer-object (EO) verbs in German has been subject to debate in the theoretical literature, with authors postulating different or the same orderings for accusative and dative EO verbs (and sometimes different normal orders for different readings of the verbs).
This is the second in a series of experiments in which we investigate the normal order with German experiencer-object verbs. It is a forced-choice study, in which participants choose one of two alternatives, sentences with either subject-object (SO) or object-subject (OS) order in the embedded verb-last clause containing the verb of interest. A question shown together with the alternatives is used to force an all-focus interpretation, under which scrambling due to discourse factors should not occur. Subject and object are both animate and indefinite full NPs.
The experiment has a 2 × 2 design with the two factors agentivity (action verb vs. EO verb) and object case (accusative vs. dative). Only accusative EO verbs scoring low on the agentivity tests reported in (Hirsch, 2018; Verhoeven, 2015) are considered, so that agentive readings the verbs may have do not interfere
Stress-buffering effect of physical activity in a transdiagnostic group suffering from depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder and/or insomnia
No full textEveryday people are confronted with the perception of stress caused by several problems and challenges. These so-called stressors reach from long lists of tasks at work over the car traffic at rush hour up to social conflicts at home. Furthermore, crises of world affairs such as the Covid-19 pandemic are additional stressors, associated with a high prevalence of stress among the general population (Salari et al., 2020). Stress is defined as situation “in which environmental demands, internal demands, or both, tax or exceed the adaptive resources of an individual, social system, or tissue system,” (Monat & Lazarus, 1991). Acute stressful life events or chronic levels of stress are a risk factor for a broad range of mental disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depressive disorder (MDD), Insomnia and anxiety disorders (Basta et al., 2007; Smoller, 2016). At the same time, people suffering from mental disorders are more sensitive to stress and experience higher levels of stress than healthy people (Connor et al., 2007; Zorn et al., 2017). Therefore, these mental disorders are also called stress-related disorder (Smoller, 2016).
Stress does not necessarily lead to the development of a mental disorder, but it is generally associated with a lower quality of life (QOL) (Chaudhury et al., 2018). QOL is defined as the “individuals' perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns” (WHOQOL, 1998, p. 1570). According to a systematic review the negative association between stress and QOL becomes even stronger if people also suffer from disorders such as sleep disorders, burnout or depression (Ribeiro et al., 2018). However, studies mainly compared stress and QOL from samples consisting of individuals with a specific mental disorder with healthy controls (Berghofer et al., 2020; Zorn et al., 2017). Although both constructs are shared relevant factors across all stress-related disorders, there is a gap in data from transdiagnostic analyses. One part of this study is therefore to fill this gap.
Physical activity (PA), which is “any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that results in energy expenditure” (Caspersen et al., 1985, p. 128), has a contrary effect to stress on mental health in that it directly reduces the experience of stress but also elevates mood and increases QOL not only in healthy people but also in people suffering from mental disorders such as depression or anxiety disorder (Penedo & Dahn, 2005; White et al., 2017).
The latter mechanism is attributed to the so-called stress-buffering hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, the increase, or a reduced decrease – compared to stronger decreases – in characteristics such as QOL is due to a reduction in the negative impact of stress (Gerber & Puhse, 2009). In one of the studies investigating the effect university students with more PA have been shown to be more satisfied in life and having higher positive affect than the group with lower levels of PA although they were confronted with the same academical stressors during this period (Wunsch et al., 2017). However, there is a lack of data on this hypothesis with regard to people suffering from mental disorders as – to our knowledge – it has only been tested on healthy people with provoked or naturally occurring stressors or people with physical diseases (Giessing et al., 2021; Klaperski & Fuchs, 2021; Schilling et al., 2020). Especially in terms of the underlying transdiagnostic mechanisms already mentioned, the idea of a stress buffer through PA does not seem to have been explored yet.
Hence, this context gives rise to tow objectives for this study. In a first step we want to show that stress and QOL can be seen as underlying transdiagnostic factors in people with stress-related disorders. We expect higher levels of stress among the transdiagnostic sample and we also suspect that this group shows lower QOL due to the negative association of these two factors than the matched healthy sample.
The second and also the main aim of this study is to shed light on the impact of PA on the association between stress and QOL in a transdiagnostic sample of people suffering from depression (mild, severe), insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder and/or panic disorder (with or without agoraphobia)
Study 2: Compassion Persists: The Effects of Repeated Exposure to Suffering on Compassion (12-video paradigm; subjective, expressive, and physiology measures)
No full textWhen we see others suffer, we often feel compassion. Repeated exposure to others’ suffering, however, can erode the compassion response, resulting in compassion fatigue. There is little consensus on how compassion fatigue unfolds and why. Scholars have debated between apathy and stress as being possible processes leading to compassion fatigue, though neither has been empirically tested and the explanations offered are insubstantial in explaining why either apathy or stress may emerge. We suggest that empathy, our capacity to resonate with the thoughts and feelings of other people, may offer some insight into how stress may emerge and contribute to compassion fatigue. Repeated exposure to other’s suffering may lead us to blur boundaries between the self and the sufferer and start feeling empathy with the sufferer, rather than compassion for them. Once this empathic response becomes too much to bear, stress systems may activate causing individuals to feel empathic distress, and ultimately lead to compassion fatigue. We have developed the first-ever laboratory paradigm to induce compassion fatigue by having participants watch a series of videos of others suffering. Using this paradigm, we are measuring whether compassion fatigue is marked by reductions in the compassion response. We are also exploring three different processes suggested to give rise to compassion fatigue, namely apathy, stress, and empathy, using their subjective, expressive, and physiological markers. Overall, this project offers insight into what compassion fatigue is and how it unfolds at the affective, perceptive, expressive, and physiological levels
Dealing with hair loss: A mixed method, experimental survey with bald men
No full textMale pattern hair loss or baldness is a common and physically benign occurrence in the lives of most adult men. Limited research has assessed how baldness is conceived and responded to. The exceptions to this tend to be research that has been influenced by businesses selling anti-baldness products (e.g., through funding or author links). For example, claims that baldness is severely psychologically distressing are not supported by the evidence (Huang, Fu & Chi, 2021; Frith & Jankowski, in prep) but have been made to medicalize baldness (depict it as a medical condition; Harvey 2013; Jankowski & Frith, 2021). It is important to assess what impact this medicalization has (experimental studies on other medicalized conditions suggest medicalized language can induce distress and push individuals to elect for more invasive ‘treatments’; Nickels et al., 2017). Furthermore it is not clear whether, as in the case of other bodily conditions, short anti-medicalization messages can help undo these impacts (e.g., Streuli et al., 2013). Finally, commercially independent research is needed to assess the psychosocial impact, responses and views about baldness from bald men
Systematic review for meta analysis: Positive and Negative Emotional Eating and BMI
No full textSystematic review of the relationship between emotional eating (to positive and negative emotions) and BM
Emotional memory and moral judgments about the U.S. Capitol breaching
No full textIndividuals can sometimes intend to take actions that, for one reason or another, they do not follow through on. Often, these actions would be expected to primarily impact the individual making the decision. For instance, in fall of 1999, many individuals planned to prepare for potential Y2K disruptions to electricity, banking, etc., yet they did not actually follow through with their intended actions of stocking up on batteries or visiting an ATM ahead of the New Year. The resulting consequences in this case, only impacted the individual who intended, but did not engage in these preparations for Y2K.
Other times, these decisions would be expected to have consequences for others, casting them into the domain of moral decision-making. For instance, in our more recent past, an individual may have planned on stocking up on toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and medical masks during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. As media outlets reported shortages for many of these goods, the individual could have followed through with their plans, making these goods even more difficult for others to obtain. Alternatively the individual could have purchased only the goods that they needed at that moment, rendering some of these goods available for others to purchase. In this case, the intentions, and actual behaviors of individuals impacted the livelihood of others.
On January 6, 2021, the day that the electoral college votes in the 2020 U.S. Presidential elections were slated to be certified, this latter type of example – when the decision to act, or not act, falls into the domain of moral decision-making – was on display.
Leading up to the certification of the electoral college votes, many Republican Senators made statements that they intended to oppose the counting of the electoral college votes from several states. The Senators who intended to oppose the electoral college did so to shed light on what they believed were irregularities in the ways that votes had been cast in the 2020 Presidential election. There is a history in the U.S. of members of the House opposing the electoral college votes, and in select elections in U.S. history, a member of the Senate has also endorsed these complaints, which triggers a debate before the votes can be counted.
The objections raised by these Senators can be seen from at least two perspectives. First, as many of the Senators suggested, they had a responsibility to represent the Americans who had concerns about widespread voter fraud, regardless of the actual evidence for such claims. Second, as suggested by Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader at the time, who also happens to be a Republican, “It would be unfair and wrong to disenfranchise American voters and overrule the court and the states. I will not pretend such a vote will be a harmless protest gesture, while relying on others to do the right thing. I will vote to respect the people’s decision and defend our system of government as we know it.”
These opposing points of view make the intentions of these Republican Senators morally ambiguous. On the one hand, it could be argued that these Republican Senators were intending to defend the United States system of government and the voice of the people. On the other hand, as individuals in positions of power promoting theories that had no factual basis at the time, these same intentions could have consequences that assisted the protesters’ attempts to undermine the United States government.
As the U.S. citizens who participated in the breaching of the Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021 were concerned that the Presidential election had been stolen from incumbent President Donald Trump, the intended behaviors of the aforementioned Republican Senators, although not causing the breaching, may have assisted in the conviction of those involved.
Following the breach of the Capitol Building, only a subset of the original Republican Senators raised objections to the certification of the electoral votes. These intentions versus behaviors place Republican Senators into four different categories: 1) Those who intended and did object to the electoral college votes; 2) Those who intended but did not object to the electoral college votes; 3) Those who established that they did not intend to object to the electoral college votes and did not object; 4) Those whose intentions were unclear, but also did not object. Given the moral ambiguity of objecting to the electoral college votes in the context of the breaching, it is possible that both the intentions and behaviors of these groups of Senators could be morally judged to varying degrees.
The psychological science literature on moral judgments of others in some cases presents participants with vignettes that contain an agent’s intentions, a behavior and the resulting outcomes (Young & Saxe, 2008). Following the outcome, participants are asked to make moral judgments about the agent in the scenario. In the moral updating literature, participants are asked to make multiple judgments, such that they are presented with some vignette information and then they make an initial judgment about the agent. Participants are then presented with the rest of the vignette and are asked to make a second judgment (Kim, Theriault, Hirschfeld-Kroen, & Young, 2020; Mann & Ferguson, 2015; Man & Ferguson 2017). In these types of paradigms, participants can be asked to make moral judgments about the agent’s behaviors, moral judgments about the agent, and judgments about whether participants learn more about the agent or the situation based upon the information presented (Kim, Theriault, Hirschfeld-Kroen, & Young, 2020).
Amodio (2019), highlights that although associative models of memory play an integral role in our understanding of social decisions, for the large part, memory models that focus on the intentional recollection of information have gone largely underexplored in this domain. Some highlight the connection between explicitly retrieved memory content and moral cognition (Knez & Nordhall, 2017; Stanley & De Brigard, 2019; Stanley, Bedrov, Cabeza, & De Brigard, 2020). However, to our knowledge, connections between memory content intentionally retrieved and subsequent judgments of others’ actions and persons have yet to be examined in the literature.
Despite the lack of an explicit connection between memory and moral judgment of others, the examination of narrative construction alongside questions related to other cognitive processes has precedence in the literature. For example, Knez & Nordhall (2017) asked participants to make moral judgments, and then asked them to report a self-defining memory. Similarly, scenes constructed using episodic simulation inductions are associated with changes in affective empathy (Vollberg, Gaesser, & Cikara, 2020) as well as willingness to engage in prosocial behavior (Fowler & Gaesser, 2020; Gaesser & Schacter, 2014). And finally, it has been demonstrated that individuals use memory of shared historical events to inflate their own sense of their ingroup’s historical influence (Churchill, Yamashiro, & Roediger, 2019). It is unclear, however, how the narratives intentionally constructed from memory relate to judgments of others following morally ambiguous intentions and behaviors of those others.
Finally, there are well observed age differences with regard to memory quantity and quality. Although advancing age is associated with poorer memory in general, the presence of social or emotional content can in some cases assist memory performance with respect to age-related declines (Duarte & Kensinger, 2019). Advancing age is typically associated with positivity biases, or reduced memory for negative information relative to younger adults (Mather & Carstensen, 2005). As such, it seems as though two possibilities may arise with regard to the breaching of the U.S. Capitol building. If participants report positive, negative, and neutral details surrounding these events, it is possible that advancing age would be associated with higher reports of positive, but lower reports of negative details relative to younger adults. However, if primarily negative and neutral details are reported, it is possible that advancing age may simply be associated with recall of fewer emotional details relative to neutral details, compared to younger adults.
Relatedly, more robust memories of the events related to the U.S. Capitol building may be more strongly associated with the activation of cognitive memory networks, resulting in the recall of a higher number of related events. The spreading activation theory of semantic processing (Collins & Loftus, 1975) suggests that recalling a semantic item (i.e. boot) activates a node within a larger semantic network (i.e. footwear). Conceptually this theory may lend credence to memory performance in the current investigation. That is, higher recall of details from a prioritized memory, may be associated with a “spreading” or higher recall of other events (general memory) that participants view as connected to their prioritized memory.
The events from January 6th, 2021 present a nuanced scenario compared to those previously presented in the literature. That is, the Republican Senators voiced intended behaviors, the breaching occurred, then the Senators either engaged in their intended behaviors or changed their course. These events raise the following questions: 1) How do people judge the intentions and actual behaviors of others, following a peripherally related event? 2) And how do these judgments relate to the information remembered prior to judging the morality of those intentions and behaviors?
That is, providing individuals with the details of the events from January 6th, 2021, and then asking them to make judgments about the behaviors of the Republican Senators, would be one method to discern how people make judgments about others beyond the laboratory. However, asking individuals about their own memory narratives of the event likely reflects a more commonplace way that individuals use memory content to make moral decisions, and fills a void in our understanding about how memory links with moral decision-making.
Approximately five months following the breaching of the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, we asked participants to report their memory for this event. Participants were first asked to describe in great detail as possible the first memory that comes to mind when they think back to the time window between November 3, 2020 and the breaching of the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 (prioritized memory). They were then asked to describe how they viewed the prioritized memory as being connected to other political events during that time period (general memory). We subsequently asked them to make a series of moral judgments about the aforementioned groups of Republican Senators based upon their reported memories.
As such, this study has 4 aims. The first aim is to characterize the emotional memory content produced following a national event that contains morally ambiguous details. The second aim is to determine whether age modulates these memories. The third aim is to determine whether the general availability or prioritization of retrieved details about the breaching of the capitol building can explain more of the variance in moral judgments of the groups of Senators. The fourth aim is to determine whether age modulates these relationships between general availability and prioritization of retrieved details in association with subsequent moral judgments
Responses to (Un)healthy Advice: Processing and Acceptance of Influencers’ and Celebrities’ Nutrition Misinformation by Youth
No full textIn this experiment, we investigate how nutrition misinformation on social media by influencers and celebrities — who are highly popular communicators among young people—is differentially processed and accepted by youth. Specifically, we investigate how nutrition misinformation in comparison to neutral information by three different endorsers - influencers, celebrities or magazine journalists (control group) - affects late adolescents' and emerging adults' (16 to 21 years) diet-related misbeliefs and corresponding diet-related behavioral intentions. As underlying mechanisms of these effects we investigate perceived facticity of the claim, as well as communicator-specific underlying mechanisms such as wishful identification and perceived authenticity, which may explain differential effects of misinformation by different sources. In addition, drawing from dual-process models, we explore whether these effects are contingent on individuals' nutrition-related involvement