Perspectives on Psychological Science via MedWorm.com

Index

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

(Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

Speculation to Inform and Speculation to Explore: Response to Craig et al. (2009) and Turkheimer & Halpern (2009)

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

This article, a follow-up to an empirical article on the same subject, was written with both of these purposes in mind. Many researchers are interested in uncovering the genetic mechanisms underlying general intelligence, so no doubt the roles of genes on the X chromosome will one day be understood. Psychologists can contribute best to these developments by being informed about the genetic issues involved. (Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

Commentary on "A Role for the X Chromosome in Sex Differences in Variability in General Intelligence?" (Johnson et al., 2009)

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Johnson et al.'s (2009) article highlights the role of X-chromosomal genes in general intelligence and draws attention to their potential role in explaining the observed greater variance for this trait in males and their excess at both extremes of the distribution. We note that this would result from a simple additive effect of X-linked intelligence genes and also discuss the potentially important contribution of recessive deleterious loci. The buffering effect of heterozygosity in females will be partly constrained by the skewing of X-inactivation patterns increasing the variance of females beyond what is expected. Furthermore, escape of some X-linked genes from inactivation may also be relevant to male[ndash]female variance comparisons. We also comment on the difficulty of...

Sex Differences in Variability for Cognitive Measures: Do the Ends Justify the Genes? (Commentary on Johnson et al., 2009)

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Theories about the origin of cognitive sex differences must address differences in three portions of ability distributions: low-tail variability, high-tail variability, and mean values. In addition, genetic theories must provide evidence that these three types of differences are (at least in large part) caused by alleles that are located on the X chromosome. It is well established that there are more mentally retarded males than females, and this disparity is attributable to genes located on the X chromosome. By contrast, there are no known "intelligence genes" that can provide a parallel explanation for differences in variability in the high ability tail of distributions. Mean differences between males and females also defy any X-linked hypothesis about average intelligence...

A Role for the X Chromosome in Sex Differences in Variability in General Intelligence?

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]There is substantial evidence that males are more variable than females in general intelligence. In recent years, researchers have presented this as a reason that, although there is little, if any, mean sex difference in general intelligence, males tend to be overrepresented at both ends of its overall distribution. Part of the explanation could be the presence of genes on the X chromosome related both to syndromal disorders involving mental retardation and to population variation in general intelligence occurring normally. Genes on the X chromosome appear overrepresented among genes with known involvement in mental retardation, which is consistent with a model we developed of the population distribution of general intelligence as a mixture of two normal distributions. Using...

Ten Statisticians and Their Impacts for Psychologists

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Although psychologists frequently use statistical procedures, they are often unaware of the statisticians most associated with these procedures. Learning more about the people will aid understanding of the techniques. In this article, I present a list of 10 prominent statisticians: David Cox, Bradley Efron, Ronald Fisher, Leo Goodman, John Nelder, Jerzy Neyman, Karl Pearson, Donald Rubin, Robert Tibshirani, and John Tukey. I then discuss their key contributions and impact for psychology, as well as some aspects of their nonacademic lives. (Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

Monitoring Matters: Meta-Analytic Review Reveals the Reliable Linkage of Parental Monitoring With Adolescent Marijuana Use

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Parental monitoring is commonly accredited as an important protective factor against risky adolescent behaviors. In this meta-analytic review, associations of adolescents' perceptions of parental monitoring with adolescent marijuana use were collected and quantified across 25 independent samples from 17 empirical studies involving 35,367 unique participants. Applying a random-effects model, the average magnitude of effect was r=[minus].21. The association was significantly stronger in female-only samples (r=[minus].31 vs. r=[minus].19, p < .001) and when parental monitoring was defined purely in terms of parental knowledge of the child's whereabouts, activities, and relations (r=[minus].24 vs. r=[minus].19, p < .05). Cross-sectional (r=[minus].23) and longitudinal studies (r...

Educational Policy and Country Outcomes in International Cognitive Competence Studies

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Prior studies of students' and adults' cognitive competence have shown large differences between nations, equivalent to a difference of 5 to 10 years of schooling. These differences seem to be relevant because studies using different research paradigms have demonstrated that population-level cognitive abilities are related to a number of important societal outcomes, including productivity, democratization, and health. In this overview of transnational differences, we document a number of positive predictors of international differences in student competence, including the amount of preschool education, student discipline, quantity of education, attendance at additional schools, early tracking, the use of centralized exams and high-stakes tests, and adult educational attainme...

Two Is Not Always Better Than One: A Critical Evaluation of Two-System Theories

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

This article critically examines the scientific advance offered by these theories (in particular advances in the domains of reasoning, decision making, and social cognition) and questions their theoretical coherence as well as the evidence for their existence. We scrutinize the conceptual underpinnings of two-system models and explicate the assumptions underlying these models to see whether they are reasonable. We also evaluate the empirical paradigms used to validate two-system models and ponder about their explanatory strength and predictive power. Given the popularity of these models, we discuss the appeal of two-system theories and suggest potential reasons for their prevalence. We comment on the potential costs associated with these models and allude to the desired nature of potential...

Erratum

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100

(Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

Giving Psychological Science Away: The Role of Applications Courses

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]The applicability of basic research in psychological science is obvious to those in the field, but too often underappreciated outside of it. In this article, I suggest some reasons for that gap, including confusion between the relevance of psychological science and its actual application, which can lead to hype; the interdisciplinary nature of applied science, which can obscure the credit due to the field; and the considerable difficulty of moving basic research into application, including the potential for resistance to the products we deliver. I suggest that our own students constitute a relatively underutilized audience for demonstrating that psychological science has been critical to applications, and I describe an applied cognitive science course that is intended to mak...

Shared Reality: Experiencing Commonality With Others' Inner States About the World

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100

We present a new conceptualization of shared reality based on four conditions. We posit (a) that shared reality involves a (subjectively perceived) commonality of individuals' inner states (not just observable behaviors); (b) that shared reality is about some target referent; (c) that for a shared reality to occur, the commonality of inner states must be appropriately motivated; and (d) that shared reality involves the experience of a successful connection to other people's inner states. In reviewing relevant evidence, we emphasize research on the saying-is-believing effect, which illustrates the creation of shared reality in interpersonal communication. We discuss why shared reality provides a better explanation of the findings from saying-is-believing studies than do other formulations. ...

Rejoinder to Baumeister, DeWall, and Vohs (2009)

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100

(Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

Social Rejection, Control, Numbness, and Emotion: How Not To Be Fooled by Gerber and Wheeler (2009)

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Emotional numbness remains an empirically supported and theoretically intriguing pattern of response to social exclusion that warrants further research, and it would be a loss to the field if such research were prematurely terminated or hampered by the unwarranted conclusions from misleading meta-analyses. The meta-analyses by Gerber and Wheeler (2009, this issue) are based on a biased sample that omits much relevant work. Worse, the authors misinterpret what evidence they do assemble, even interpreting strong evidence for numbness as if it contradicted numbness. Their conclusions about control are similarly unfounded and misguided. (Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

On Being Rejected: A Meta-Analysis of Experimental Research on Rejection

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100

This article presents the first meta-analysis of experimental research on rejection, sampling 88 studies. The results are consistent with a needs account, which states that rejection frustrates basic psychological needs, but not with a numbness account, which states that rejection causes physical and emotional numbness. Rejection moderately lowers mood (d=[minus]0.50) and self-esteem (d=[minus]0.70), but does not decrease arousal or flatten affect. Both belonging (d= 0.69) and control (d= 1.16) are frustrated by rejection. Aggressive responses to rejection, considered paradoxical by some, appear to be due to attempts to gain control; measures that contrast belonging and control (d=[minus]1.17) cause antisocial responding, whereas measures that do not allow for control to be restored cause ...

Varieties of Perspectives on Creativity: Reply to Commentators

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]In this reply, I concentrate on two broad issues raised by the four commentaries in this issue: the hierarchical model of domains and individual differences in creativity. In the first case, I cite additional research to address the contrast between "hard" and "soft" domains and the application of this contrast to children, adolescents, and noneminent adults. In the second case, I introduce two recent studies to confirm the model's predictions regarding personal creative achievement. I hope that the original article, the commentaries, and this reply will inspire future inquiries into creativity in all its disciplinary varieties. (Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

Simplifying Theories of Creativity and Revisiting the Criterion Problem: A Comment on Simonton's (2009) Hierarchical Model of Domain-Specific Disposition, Development, and Achievement

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT Simonton's (2009, this issue) hierarchical model represents a useful contribution to studies of creativity and eminence. Simonton breaks all kinds of new ground by extrapolating the hierarchy to the arts and humanities, interpolating it within disciplines, and relating it to family background and disposition. This commentary poses a few questions about the hierarchical model and proposes an alternative. I also introduce a candidate for a simple theory of creativity that focuses on a universally shared capacity. This simple theory complements Simonton's hierarchical view, though his applies best to actual performance and the simple theory of creativity applies to creative potential. (Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

The Psychology of Simonton's Science: Commentary on Simonton (2009)

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]One key assumption of the psychology of science is that psychological factors make certain interests, talents, and abilities more likely and others less likely (Feist, 2006). The line of argument that Simonton (2009, this issue) puts forth[mdash]integrating and uniting the metaliteratures on dispositional and developmental influences on scientific and artistic creativity[mdash]is not only consistent with this assumption from the psychology of science, but it is also a breeding ground for a host of testable hypotheses and calls for future empirical investigations. Given Simonton's own extraordinary levels of scientific creativity, indeed it would be interesting to turn his ideas back on him to see how his science is a product of his own developmental and dispositional experie...

Sources of Scientific Innovation: A Meta-Analytic Approach (Commentary on Simonton, 2009)

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Innovations in science can be divided into at least four major types: radical revolutions (such as Copernican and Darwinian theory), technical revolutions (led by scientists such as Newton, Lavoisier, and Einstein), controversial innovations (for example, Semmelweis's theory of puerperal fever), and conservative innovations (eugenics and various vitalistic doctrines). Biographical predictors of support for scientific innovations are distinctly different depending on the type of innovation, as are the predictors of who initially engineers such innovations. A meta-analytic approach assessing each new scientific theory according to its salient features (including epistemological, ideological, and technical attributes) is required to make sense out of the varied predisposing fac...

Is One Dimension Enough? A Response to Simonton's Varieties of (Scientific) Creativity (2009)

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]We admire Simonton's valiant attempt to bring all of creativity under a single dimension. We offer a view that is sometimes complementary and sometimes distinct from Simonton's model: Our own multidimensional amusement park theoretical model, which tries to integrate domain-specific and domain-general points of view. We eagerly await future research on Simonton's model and are curious of how his hard[ndash]soft dimension can be included into the creativity pantheon. (Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

Varieties of (Scientific) Creativity: A Hierarchical Model of Domain-Specific Disposition, Development, and Achievement

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Prior research supports the inference that scientific disciplines can be ordered into a hierarchy ranging from the "hard" natural sciences to the "soft" social sciences. This ordering corresponds with such objective criteria as disciplinary consensus, knowledge obsolescence rate, anticipation frequency, theories-to-laws ratio, lecture disfluency, and age at recognition. It is then argued that this hierarchy can be extrapolated to encompass the humanities and arts and interpolated within specific domains to accommodate contrasts in subdomains (e.g., revolutionary versus normal science). This expanded and more finely differentiated hierarchy is then shown to have a partial psychological basis in terms of dispositional traits (e.g., psychopathology) and developmental experience...

What Kind of Empirical Research Should We Publish, Fund, and Reward?

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]When evaluating empirical papers for publication, grant proposals, or individual contributions (e.g., awarding tenure), the basic question one should ask is how much the contribution adds to understanding in psychology and not whether the contribution takes a particular form or represents one particular model of how to do empirical studies. Academic psychology has flourished with its mastery of the hypothesis[ndash]experiment model of science and its expertise in generating and eliminating alternative hypotheses and isolating causation. These accomplishments are a critical part of psychology, and they are well and appropriately taught by psychologists. However, they are only a part of science and should not comprise the almost exclusive criteria for evaluating research. In p...

Human–Android Interaction in the Near and Distant Future

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]In this article, a psychologist and an artificial-intelligence (AI) researcher speculate on the future of social interaction between humans and androids (robots designed to look and act exactly like people). We review the trajectory of currently developing robotics technologies and assess the level of android sophistication likely to be achieved in 50 years time. On the basis of psychological research, we consider obstacles to creating an android indistinguishable from humans. Finally, we discuss the implications of human[ndash]android social interaction from the standpoint of current psychological and AI research and speculate on the novel psychological issues likely to arise from such interaction. The science of psychology will face a remarkable new set of challenges in gr...

Achieving and Sustaining a Good Life

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]How can we live well? To answer this question, psychology must acknowledge and integrate its descriptive and prescriptive components. One of psychology's strengths has been its willingness to embrace different purposes, perspectives, and approaches, and this recommendation is in the spirit of the field's history. At present, psychology knows more about people's problems and how to solve them than it does about what it means to live well and how to encourage and maintain such a life. Moreover, what is known is often fragmented because of psychology's specialization. Our article calls for further discussion in psychological terms of what it means to live well; the study of actual people and how they behave; multivariate, multimethod, and longitudinal research; more sophisticat...

Why Do Different Individuals Progress Along Different Life Trajectories?

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]The core marker of progress in psychological science is the degree to which our work enhances the welfare of people. In order to effectively enhance human welfare, we must develop comprehensive models that explain why different individuals progress along different life trajectories. Exciting theoretical accounts that describe transitional processes from gene polymorphisms through moment-to-moment behavior are beginning to emerge. These early accounts highlight opportunities to investigate specific transitional steps along that long pathway, the need to understand the universal and the contextual aspects of psychological processes, and the need to define and measure psychological constructs with more precision and clarity. It is likely that creative new research in each of th...

Mechanisms of Gene–Environment Interaction Effects in the Development of Conduct Disorder

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]The gene[ndash]environment interaction effect in the development of conduct disorder is one of the most important discoveries of the past decade, but the mechanisms through which this effect operates remain elusive. I propose a model of these processes that focuses on the individual's response to a threatening stimulus in ongoing social interaction. The individual's response coordinates three interrelated systems: neural, autonomic, and information-processing. In each system, adaptive, evolutionarily selected response patterns characterize normal responding, but in psychopathology these patterns have gone awry. Antecedents of individual differences in these response patterns arise from genetic polymorphisms, adverse environmental experiences early in life, and their interact...

Perspectives on Preference Aggregation

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]For centuries, the mathematical aggregation of preferences by groups, organizations, or society itself has received keen interdisciplinary attention. Extensive theoretical work in economics and political science throughout the second half of the 20th century has highlighted the idea that competing notions of rational social choice intrinsically contradict each other. This has led some researchers to consider coherent democratic decision making to be a mathematical impossibility. Recent empirical work in psychology qualifies that view. This nontechnical review sketches a quantitative research paradigm for the behavioral investigation of mathematical social choice rules on real ballots, experimental choices, or attitudinal survey data. The article poses a series of open questi...

Unpacking Intuition: A Conjecture

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Can intuition be taught? The way in which faces are recognized, the structure of natural classes, and the architecture of intuition may all be instances of the same process. The conjecture that intuition is a species of recognition memory implies that human intuitive decision making can be enormously enhanced by virtual simulation. (Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

Giving Debiasing Away: Can Psychological Research on Correcting Cognitive Errors Promote Human Welfare?

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Despite Miller's (1969) now-famous clarion call to "give psychology away" to the general public, scientific psychology has done relatively little to combat festering problems of ideological extremism and both inter- and intragroup conflict. After proposing that ideological extremism is a significant contributor to world conflict and that confirmation bias and several related biases are significant contributors to ideological extremism, we raise a crucial scientific question: Can debiasing the general public against such biases promote human welfare by tempering ideological extremism? We review the knowns and unknowns of debiasing techniques against confirmation bias, examine potential barriers to their real-world efficacy, and delineate future directions for research on debi...

Know Thyself

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Self-knowledge has never been a central topic in empirical psychology. There are pockets of research on self-knowledge in different subdisciplines of the field, but until now there has been little communication between them. I believe that these areas will converge in the next few years into a cohesive study of how people form judgments about their past, current, and future selves and about the accuracy of these judgments. I discuss theoretical developments in this area, the costs of poor self-knowledge, how people can know themselves better, and some of the obstacles to the study of self-knowledge. (Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

How Can Decision Making Be Improved?

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

This article argues that the time has come to focus attention on the search for strategies that will improve bounded judgment because decision-making errors are costly and are growing more costly, decision makers are receptive, and academic insights are sure to follow from research on improvement. In addition to calling for research on improvement strategies, this article organizes the existing literature pertaining to improvement strategies and highlights promising directions for future research. (Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

Can We Improve Our Physical Health by Altering Our Social Networks?

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Persons with more types of social relationships live longer and have less cognitive decline with aging, greater resistance to infectious disease, and better prognoses when facing chronic life-threatening illnesses. We have known about the importance of social integration (engaging in diverse types of relationships) for health and longevity for 30 years. Yet, we still do not know why having a more diverse social network would have a positive influence on our health, and we have yet to design effective interventions that influence key components of the network and in turn physical health. Better understanding of the role of social integration in health will require research on how integrated social networks influence health relevant behaviors, regulate emotions and biological ...

How to Tell If a Particular Memory Is True or False

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]How can you tell if a particular memory belonging to you or someone else is true or false? Cognitive scientists use a variety of techniques to measure groups of memories, whereas police, lawyers, and other researchers use procedures to determine whether an individual can be believed or not. We discuss evidence from behavioral and neuroimaging studies and research on lying that have attempted to distinguish true from false memories. (Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

Psychoneuroimmunology: Psychology's Gateway to the Biomedical Future

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]How do stressful events and negative emotions influence the immune system, and how big are the effects? This broad question has been intensely interesting to psychoneuroimmunology researchers over the last 3 decades. Many promising lines of work underscore the reasons why this question is still so important and pivotal to understanding and other advances. New multidisciplinary permutations provide fresh vistas and emphasize the importance of training psychologists more broadly so that they will be central and essential players in the advancement of biomedical science. (Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

How Can Evolutionary Psychology Successfully Explain Personality and Individual Differences?

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

This article highlights some promising theoretical directions for tackling this question. These include life-history theory, costly signaling theory, environmental variability in fitness optima, frequency-dependent selection, mutation load, and flexibly contingent shifts in strategy according to environmental conditions. Tackling the explanatory question also requires progress on three fronts: (a) reframing some personality traits as forms of strategic individual differences; (b) providing a nonarbitrary, evolutionary-based formulation of environments as distributions and salience profiles of adaptive problems; and (c) identifying which strategies thrive and which falter in these differing problem-defined environments. (Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

The "Humpty Dumpty Problem" in the Study of Early Cognitive Development: Putting the Infant Back Together Again

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]In this article, I propose that the big question for the field of infant cognitive development is best characterized as the "Humpty Dumpty problem": Now that we have studied cognitive abilities in isolation, how do we put the developing cognitive system (and the infant) back together again? This problem is significant because cognitive abilities do not occur in isolation. Infants remember the items they have attended to and perceived, and their emotional state will influence their perception and representation of the events they encounter. Moreover, by examining the development of the whole cognitive system, or the whole child, we gain a deeper understanding of mechanisms developmental change. Thus, the big question for the study of infant cognition is like the question conf...

The Nature (and Nurture?) of Plasticity in Early Human Development

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]The effect of early experience is a long-standing concern in developmental psychology. Gaining further insight into the nature of human plasticity is central to efforts to prevent problems in development from arising and promote positive functioning. Evolutionary reasoning suggests that children should vary in their susceptibility to environmental influences, including parenting. Evidence indicates that rather than some children, such as those with negatively emotional temperaments or certain genotypes, being simply more vulnerable to the adverse effects of negative experiences, as commonly assumed, they may actually be more susceptible to both positive and negative experiences. In addition to raising questions about the nature of plasticity in human development, this articl...

Naive and Obvious Questions

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Psychology is the luckiest of the sciences because it owns the most interesting questions, the foremost being, "Why do people do what they do?" Naively, one might expect that research addressing this question would focus on the most important behaviors, but instead most studies choose behavioral dependent variables on the basis of their procedural feasibility and suitability for theory testing. The cumulative result is an uneven and unrepresentative map of the behavioral terrain. Situational variables are chosen in a similar manner with a parallel result. (Personality variables, in contrast, typically are designed to capture intrinsically important individual differences.) In this article, I proposes a simple research agenda that measures situational and behavioral variables...

The Future of Psychology: Connecting Mind to Brain

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Psychological states such as thoughts and feelings are real. Brain states are real. The problem is that the two are not real in the same way, creating the mind[ndash]brain correspondence problem. In this article, I present a possible solution to this problem that involves two suggestions. First, complex psychological states such as emotion and cognition can be thought of as constructed events that can be causally reduced to a set of more basic, psychologically primitive ingredients that are more clearly respected by the brain. Second, complex psychological categories like emotion and cognition are the phenomena that require explanation in psychology, and, therefore, they cannot be abandoned by science. Describing the content and structure of these categories is a necessary a...

Editor's Introduction

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100

(Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

Commentary on Vul et al.'s (2009)"Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition"

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]The article "Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition" (Vul, Harris, Winkielman, & Pashler, 2009, this issue) makes a broad case that current practice in neuroimaging methodology is deficient. Vul et al. go so far as to demand that authors retract or restate results, which we find wrongly casts suspicion on the confirmatory inference methods that form the foundation of neuroimaging statistics. We contend the authors' argument is overstated and that their work can be distilled down to two points already familiar to the neuroimaging community: that the multiple testing problem must be accounted for, and that reporting of methods and results should be improved. We also illuminate their concerns with standard statistical concepts...

Reply to Comments on "Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition"

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

(Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

Understanding the Mind by Measuring the Brain: Lessons From Measuring Behavior (Commentary on Vul et al., 2009)

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Throughout the history of psychology, the path of transforming the physical (muscle movements, verbal behavior, or physiological changes) into the mental has been fraught with difficulty. Over the decades, psychologists have risen to the challenge and learned a few things about how to infer the mental from measuring the physical. The Vul, Harris, Winkielman, and Pashler article (2009, this issue) points out that some of these lessons could be helpful to those of us who measure blood flow in the brain in a quest to understand the mind. Three lessons from psychometrics are discussed. (Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

Correlations and Multiple Comparisons in Functional Imaging: A Statistical Perspective (Commentary on Vul et al., 2009)

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Vul, Harris, Winkielman, and Pashler (2009, this issue) claim in their article that the correlations reported in fMRI studies are commonly overstated because researchers tend to report only the highest correlations or only those correlations that exceed some threshold. Their article has in a short time given rise to a spirited debate about key statistical issues at the heart of most functional neuroimaging studies. The debate provides a useful opportunity to discuss core statistical issues in neuroimaging and ultimately provides a chance for the field to grow and move forward. This commentary approaches the debate from a fundamentally statistical perspective. We begin by summarizing several of the key points under discussion, followed by our own commentary on these issues fr...

Discussion of "Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition" by Vul et al. (2009)

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]In their article, Vul, Harris, Winkielman, and Pashler (2009, this issue) raise the issue of nonindependent analysis in behavioral neuroimaging, whereby correlations are artificially inflated as a result of spurious statistical procedures. In this comment, I note that the phenomenon in question is a type of selection bias and hence is neither new nor unique to fMRI. The use of massive, complex data sets (common in modern applications) to answer increasingly intricate scientific questions presents many potential pitfalls to valid statistical analysis. Strong collaboration between statisticians and scientists and the development of statistical methods specific to the types of data encountered in practice can help researchers avoid these pitfalls. (Source: Perspectives on Psych...

Correlations in Social Neuroscience Aren't Voodoo: Commentary on Vul et al. (2009)

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Vul, Harris, Winkielman, and Pashler (2009, this issue) claim that many brain[ndash]personality correlations in fMRI studies are "likely [hellip] spurious" (p. 274), and "should not be believed" (p. 285). Several of their conclusions are incorrect. First, they incorrectly claim that whole-brain regressions use an invalid and "nonindependent" two-step inferential procedure, a determination based on a survey sent to researchers that only included nondiagnostic questions about the descriptive process of plotting one's data. We explain how whole-brain regressions are a valid single-step method of identifying brain regions that have reliable correlations with individual difference measures. Second, they claim that large correlations from whole-brain regression analyses may be the...

Big Correlations in Little Studies: Inflated fMRI Correlations Reflect Low Statistical Power—Commentary on Vul et al. (2009)

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Vul, Harris, Winkielman, and Pashler (2009, this issue) argue that correlations in many cognitive neuroscience studies are grossly inflated due to a widespread tendency to use nonindependent analyses. In this article, I argue that Vul et al.'s primary conclusion is correct, but for different reasons than they suggest. I demonstrate that the primary cause of grossly inflated correlations in whole-brain fMRI analyses is not nonindependence, but the pernicious combination of small sample sizes and stringent alpha-correction levels. Far from defusing Vul et al.'s conclusions, the simulations presented suggest that the level of inflation may be even worse than Vul et al.'s empirical analysis would suggest. (Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

Commentary on Vul et al.'s (2009) "Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition"

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition1

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of emotion, personality, and social cognition have drawn much attention in recent years, with high-profile studies frequently reporting extremely high (e.g., >.8) correlations between brain activation and personality measures. We show that these correlations are higher than should be expected given the (evidently limited) reliability of both fMRI and personality measures. The high correlations are all the more puzzling because method sections rarely contain much detail about how the correlations were obtained. We surveyed authors of 55 articles that reported findings of this kind to determine a few details on how these correlations were computed. More than half acknowledged using a strategy that computes separate correlati...

Editor's Introduction to Vul et al. (2009) and Comments

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

(Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

Patterns of Thinking in Militant Extremism

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

We examined extremist groups from a diverse range of continents, cultures, and political and religious orientations. We compared statements by (and, to some degree, statements about) these groups and formulated 16 themes common to the militant-extremist mind-set. Among these themes are perceptions of a crisis involving violations of posited sacred values, along with justifications for the use of violence to remediate such problems. There are indications that such themes are not infrequent in the general population. For example, research participants failed to strongly disassociate themselves from the sentiments and framings found in the fanatical items, which undercuts the notion that militant-extremist thinking represents bizarre ideation. Militant-extremist thinking appears to represent ...

Understanding the Links Between Social Support and Physical Health: A Life-Span Perspective With Emphasis on the Separability of Perceived and Received Support

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Social support has been reliably related to physical health outcomes. However, the conceptual basis of such links needs greater development. In this article, I argue for a life-span perspective on social support and health that takes into account distinct antecedent processes and mechanisms that are related to measures of support over time. Such a view highlights the need to distinguish measures of perceived and received support and its links to more specific diseases (e.g., chronic, acute) and stages of disease development (e.g., incidence). I discuss both the novel implications of these theoretical arguments for research on social support and physical health, as well as the potential intervention approaches that are apparent from this perspective. (Source: Perspectives on ...

The Founding of the Association for Psychological Science: Part 2. The Tipping Point and Early Years

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]The founding of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) occurred in the context of long-standing dialectical tensions within organized psychology. It represents the most recent breakaway effort from the American Psychological Association (APA), psychology's parent association in the United States. Beginning in the 1970s, numerous APA committees deliberated the Association's structure, making recommendations designed to appease the various constituencies within the changing organization; all but the last of these proposals were ultimately rejected by the APA Council. In 1987, the Assembly for Scientific and Applied Psychologists (ASAP) formed to encourage APA reorganization, and in early 1988, the APA Council approved a reorganization plan; that plan was, however, rej...

The Founding of the Association for Psychological Science: Part 1. Dialectical Tensions Within Organized Psychology

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Fri, 01 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]The founding of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) did not represent the first time a group of psychologists broke away from the American Psychological Association, the parent association of organized psychology in the United States. In fact, the history of organized psychology is replete with examples of splinter groups that sought to better represent the needs and interests of their specific constituencies. All of these breakaway efforts have occurred amid intradisciplinary tensions[mdash]the continual push and pull between unity on the one hand and autonomy on the other[mdash]that reflect some of the enduring challenges of the field. A historical examination of this dialectic provides a useful framework within which to understand the founding of the APS, its ...

The Origins of Face Processing in Humans: Phylogeny and Ontogeny

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Faces are crucial for nonverbal communication in humans and related species. From the first moments of life, newborn infants prefer to look at human faces over almost any other form of stimuli. Since this finding was first observed, there has been much debate regarding the "special" nature of face processing. Researchers have put forward numerous developmental models that attempt to account for this early preference and subsequent maturation of the face processing system. In this article, we review these models and their supporting evidence drawing on literature from developmental, evolutionary, and comparative psychology. We conclude that converging data from these fields strongly suggests that face processing is conducted by a dedicated and complex neural system, is not hu...

Investigating the Awareness of Remembering

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]There is a marked lack of consensus concerning the best way to learn how conscious experiences arise. In this article, we advocate for scientific approaches that attempt to bring together four types of phenomena and their corresponding theoretical accounts: behavioral acts, cognitive events, neural events, and subjective experience. We propose that the key challenge is to comprehensively specify the relationships among these four facets of the problem of understanding consciousness without excluding any facet. Although other perspectives on consciousness can also be informative, combining these four perspectives could lead to significant progress in explaining a conscious experience such as remembering. We summarize some relevant findings from cognitive neuroscience investig...

Using Language to Navigate the Infant Mind

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]How do infants represent objects, actions, and relations in events? In this review, we discuss an approach to studying this question that begins with linguistic theory[mdash]specifically, semantic structures in language. On the basis of recent research exploring infant cognition and prominent linguistic analyses, we examine whether infants' representations of motion events are articulated in terms of the components proposed by Talmy (1985; e.g., path, manner) and whether infants' event representations are defined in terms of broad semantic roles (agent, patient, source, goal) as proposed by Jackendoff (1990) and Dowty (1991). We show how recent findings in infant cognition are consistent with the idea that the infant's representation of events is a close reflection of the li...

Impulse and Self-Control From a Dual-Systems Perspective

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Though human beings embody a unique ability for planned behavior, they also often act impulsively. This insight may be important for the study of self-control situations in which people are torn between their long-term goals to restrain behavior and their immediate impulses that promise hedonic fulfillment. In the present article, we outline a dual-systems perspective of impulse and self-control and suggest a framework for the prediction of self-control outcomes. This framework combines three elements that, considered jointly, may enable a more precise prediction of self-control outcomes than they do when studied in isolation: impulsive precursors of behavior, reflective precursors, and situational or dispositional boundary conditions. The theoretical and practical utility o...

The Utility and Ubiquity of Taboo Words

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Taboo words are defined and sanctioned by institutions of power (e.g., religion, media), and prohibitions are reiterated in child-rearing practices. Native speakers acquire folk knowledge of taboo words, but it lacks the complexity that psychological science requires for an understanding of swearing. Misperceptions persist in psychological science and in society at large about how frequently people swear or what it means when they do. Public recordings of taboo words establish the commonplace occurrence of swearing (ubiquity), although frequency data are not always appreciated in laboratory research. A set of 10 words that has remained stable over the past 20 years accounts for 80% of public swearing. Swearing is positively correlated with extraversion and Type A hostility b...

Parental Divorce and Children's Adjustment

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100

This article reviews the research literature on links between parental divorce and children's short-term and long-term adjustment. First, I consider evidence regarding how divorce relates to children's externalizing behaviors, internalizing problems, academic achievement, and social relationships. Second, I examine timing of the divorce, demographic characteristics, children's adjustment prior to the divorce, and stigmatization as moderators of the links between divorce and children's adjustment. Third, I examine income, interparental conflict, parenting, and parents' well-being as mediators of relations between divorce and children's adjustment. Fourth, I note the caveats and limitations of the research literature. Finally, I consider notable policies related to grounds for divorce, child...

The Consequences of False Memories for Food Preferences and Choices

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]False memories, or memories for events that never occurred, have been documented in the real world and in the laboratory. In the real world, false memories involving trauma and abuse have resulted in real-life consequences. In the laboratory, researchers have just begun to study the consequences of false memories. We review this laboratory-based work and show how false memories for food-related experiences (e.g., becoming ill after eating egg salad) can lead to attitudinal and behavioral consequences (e.g., lowered self-reported preference for and decreased consumption of egg salad). (Source: Perspectives on Psychological Science)

A New Solution to the Recovered Memory Debate

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]The controversy regarding recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has been characterized by two perspectives. According to one perspective, some people repress their memories of abuse because these experiences have been so emotionally traumatic, and they become capable of recalling the CSA only when it is psychologically safe to do so many years later. According to the other perspective, many reports of recovered memories of sexual abuse are false memories, often inadvertently fostered by therapists. In this article, we provide evidence for a third interpretation that applies to a subset of people reporting recollections of CSA; it does not require the concepts of repression, trauma, or false memory. These people did not experience their CSA as traumatic; they eit...

Relating Psychology and Neuroscience: Taking Up the Challenges

Perspectives on Psychological Science — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0100

ABSTRACT[mdash]Advances in brain research have invigorated an ongoing debate about the relations between psychology and neuroscience. Cognitive science has historically neglected the study of neuroscience, although the influential subfield of cognitive neuroscience has since attempted to combine information processing approaches with an awareness of brain functioning. Although cognitive neuroscience does not necessarily support a reductionist approach, certain philosophers of mind have suggested that psychological constructs will eventually be replaced with descriptions of neurobiological processes. One implicitly popular response to this proposal is that neuroscience represents a level of implementation that is separate from a level of cognition. Although recent work in the philosophy of ...

A New Approach to Reducing Disorder and Improving Well-Being