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Validation of a New Measure for Commitment to Informational Privacy
No full textWith our study, we validate a newly developed Rasch scale measuring an individual's commitment to informational privacy. This measure targets behaviour that typically leaves some digital remnants (e.g., in e-commerce, e-banking, e-healthcare, etc.). The Commitment to Informational Privacy Scale (CIP) consists of 50 self-reports of behaviour that people can engage in to protect their informational privacy (e.g., "I pay cash" or "I use a search engine that promises more data security than Google").
In the early 2000s, people’s concern for their privacy was considered a main obstacle for the success of e-commerce (Malhotra et al., 2004). Whereas e-commerce is nowadays widely used, an individual's propensity to protect personal data and to control who has access to it, might still be an obstacle for technological innovations, such as smart-meters (see, e.g., Zeadally et al., 2013). As people seem, however, to profess personal opinions and views without acting upon these views—called the "attitude-behaviour gap", but also the "privacy paradox" (Norberg et al., 2007)—privacy concern measurement especially when based on opinion polls seems a rather futile endeavour. To overcome this attitude-behaviour gap, Kaiser and colleagues (e.g., Kaiser & Byrka, 2015; Kaiser et al., 2010) suggested to measure people’s commitment to a particular goal based on the behavioural means required for goal attainment. Accordingly, they grounded their measure of an individual's commitment to protecting the environment on behaviours that people supposedly engage in to protect the environment, such as commuting by bike, separating waste, and supporting green policies.
At the same time, any engagement in behaviour involves, figuratively speaking, costs. Voicing concern about data security violations is easy—it comes with little to no costs. Implementing and upholding behaviour to protect personal data (such as refraining from using social media or paying money for apps that ensure data protection) is arguably more demanding because it requires personal sacrifices (see also Kaiser & Wilson, 2004).
Such scales based on self-reports of behaviour that take advantage of the distinct costs of behaviour have been shown to reliably measure people’s commitment to environmental protection (i.e., people’s environmental attitude: see Kaiser & Wilson, 2019). In several studies, such measures of people’s environmental attitude have already been proven prognostic for manifest environmental protection behaviour (see, e.g., Kaiser et al., 2020; Taube et al., 2018). In our study, we develop a formally analogous attitude scale to measure people's commitment to informational privacy.
With our research, we test whether our newly developed instrument (i.e., the CIP) operates as a Rasch scale. In this study, we explore the scale's objectivity, reliability, and validity by investigating model fit, differential item functioning, the relationship with an established measure of privacy concern as well as an established measure of affinity for technology. Furthermore, we test whether people's commitment to informational privacy (assessed by the CIP) accounts for manifest behaviour (that is critical for goal attainment)
The Effect of Gender Ambiguity on Credibility Judgements: A Study of Cognitive Fluency (Experiment 0)
No full textThe current experiment is a replication of Winkielman et al.’s (2015) Experiment #4 with a few modifications. This experiment tests if we will obtain latent reaction times and relatively lower trust ratings for androgynous faces, compared to gendered faces, when participants are asked to gender categorize the face (male or female) and no difference in reaction times or trust ratings when categorizing the faces by race (White or Asian)
Word form generalisation across voices: the role of infant sleep.
No full textTo understand language, infants must form long-term memory representations of the sound patterns of words and recognise those patterns across different instances of the words heard. As it has been shown that humans retain linguistic, acoustic and indexical properties of speech (e.g., Goldinger, 1996, 1998; Pufahl & Samuel, 2014), recognising different heard tokens of the same word as such entails extracting constant acoustic features from a pool of variable auditory instances. Sleep has been shown to support similar processes of knowledge abstraction in other domains, e.g., the extraction of invariant visual features across similar-looking objects and the ability to recognise them under the label of the same object category (e.g., Konrad, Seehagen, et al., 2016), or the extraction of the underlying structure of continuous stimuli (e.g., Gomez et al., 2006). Crucially, in some instances, generalisation of meanings has only been observed when both a nap and nocturnal sleep followed children’s first exposure to the new objects and their labels, while neither alone sufficiently supported this form of generalisation (Sandoval et al., 2017; Werchan et al., 2021). Similar findings have been reported with respect to infants’ extraction of the core structure of continuous auditory stimuli (Hupbach et al., 2009). However, the effect of sleep on this extraction of constant acoustic features of word forms as described above, has not yet been studied.
Research suggests that infants retain detailed information about the acoustic properties of words and that their ability to extract and generalise invariant patterns across different auditory instances of the same word may evolve with age (Houston & Juszcyk, 2000; 2003). For example, 7.5-month-olds have been observed to recognise the same words only across voices of the same sex, whereas 10- month-olds could do so across speakers of different sexes (Houston & Jusczyk, 2000). Furthermore, after having heard the same talker produce different instances of words the day before, 7.5-month-olds recognised these words embedded in passages uttered by a novel speaker only when these were presented together with passages uttered by the original speaker (Houston & Juszcyk, 2003). In these studies, infants were not only tested on their ability to recognise the familiarised words in an unfamiliar voice but also on their ability to identify those words in running speech after having heard them only as individual tokens. Thus, the extraction of acoustic properties across different word tokens might have been made more challenging by the additional segmentation task that infants underwent at test (see Floccia et al., 2016).
Given the research briefly summarized above, we intend to shed more light on the potential role of sleep in the generalisation of newly learned word forms in infancy. Based on evidence suggesting that British English-learning infants have rarely been found to succeed in word segmentation paradigms (Floccia et al., 2016), we build on the design employed in Houston & Juszcyk (2003) but will use lists of nonwords, instead of passages, as stimuli. In addition to the original design, we will investigate the effects of sleep on infants’ word form recognition across voices. Although Houston & Juszcyk (2003) tested infants’ ability to recognise words across different voices after 24h from exposure to the words, they did not examine whether and how sleeping during this delay could have influenced infants’ recognition abilities. In our study, after familiarising infants to six nonwords (see below), we will test infants’ recognition of those nonwords across different voices, both after a nap (or a similarly long wake interval) and on the following day
Positivity, Well-Being and Complex Problem-Solving
No full textThe project investigates how being encouraged to think positively influence performance and effort on a complex problem-solving task, as well as mental fatigue and self-esteem. It also investigates wellbeing's relation to these variables. The assumption is that participants that are encouraged to think positively will have an impeded performance, reduced effort, feel increased mental fatigue, and have lower self-esteem, compared to participants receiving a more neutral instruction. We will test the assumption by randomly allocating the participants to either a positive condition (where they are encouraged to think positively), or a neutral condition (where they are told to not override thoughts and feelings). Before they are randomly assigned to one of these group they will be asked questions on overall wellbeing, and to complete a 5-minute long word-search puzzle. After they've received the instruction they are again asked to complete a word-search puzzle, this time they can stop whenever they want to, and maximum work on the task for 10 minutes. When they proceed, or time is up, they will be asked on whether they would like another puzzle. If they answer yes they will receive a new matrix, and if they answer no they will proceed to the next part were they are asked questions on overall wellbeing, mental fatigue, self-esteem, work load, and need for cognition. We will also ask about language skills, age and gender. This is one of two studies in this project
The socio-cognitive representation of vaccinated and unvaccinated Canadians and its effect on the integration of the other
No full textMany societies have seen a polarization in their social exchanges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals are frequently seen arguing online, and even in the real world. by understanding how to promote identity integration among polarized group members, we could contribute to the social harmony in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, reducing and defusing the "us vs. them" mindset could provide useful in promoting efficient health measures among those who remain skeptical. The present research is thus designed to further the understanding of the mechanisms behind identity integration
Children’s resilience to sibling bullying: the role of family, peer and neighbourhood factors
No full textThis project will use data from a longitudinal cohort study (MCS) to explore the relationship between childhood sibling bullying victimisation and later mental health and wellbeing. Specifically, it will investigate the risk and promotive factors at a family and neighbourhood level associated with better or worse mental health and wellbeing at age 17, following sibling victimisation at age 11 and/or 14
Transition of persons with intellectual and developmental disability from school to adulthood: protocol of a systematic review
No full textThis registration represents the protocol for a systematic review about the transition of persons with intellectual and developmental disability from school to adulthood. In accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P), we have addressed recommended items in preparation for conducting this systematic review
Age-Differential Associations between Personality and Life Event Experience
No full textSignificant life events have a clear time frame, interfere with everyday life, and are perceived as personally significant (Luhmann et al., 2020). Although significant life events have a major impact on our lives and well-being (Luhmann et al., 2012), studies of the experience and handling of significant life events across the lifespan are not yet sufficiently available.
People experience similar life events differently based on their personality traits because personality traits affect a person’s information processing and behavior (Fishman et al., 2011). Specifically, Agreeableness, Extraversion, Conscientiousness and (less consistently) Openness to Experience are positively, whereas Neuroticism is negatively associated with well-being and life satisfaction in life events (Anglim & Grant, 2016; Fishman et al., 2011; Ho et al., 2008; Mayungbo, 2016; Steel et al., 2008). Less is known about whether the relationship between personality and the experience of significant life events differs depending on age. On the one hand, the relationship could become weaker with age because older adults had already experienced many life events, which allows them to draw on past experiences rather than their traits (Caspi & Moffitt, 1993; Glück & Bluck, 2007). On the other hand, the relationship could become stronger because people make different experiences in life due to their personalities, which might accumulate with age (Costa & McCrae; Glück & Bluck, 2007). Finally, Costa and McCrae (1980) as well as Isaacowitz (2003) found that personality is a similar predictor of well-being at any age, meaning that age might not be a moderator of the association between personality and experience of significant life events. Thus, it is currently an open question whether age strengthens, weakens or at all affects the association between personality and the experience of significant life events. With the experience of significant life events, we refer to (a) subjectively perceived (positive and negative) influence of the life event on subjective well-being and physical and mental health; specifically, their positive and negative influence, as well as (b) perceived valence, strain, and control of the life event. On the one hand, life events can be experienced positively because they result in positive changes, for example more social contact or better financial position. On the other hand, life events can be experienced negatively because they deplete resources or do not meet the expected positive outcomes (Kettlewell et al., 2020). As personality traits are associated with how we perceive life events, they might result in a more positive or negative experience of the life event (e.g., Anglim & Grant, 2016)