The appraisal similarity effect: how social appraisals influence liking

The effects of cognitive appraisals on interpersonal relationships have hardly been studied. Three experiments examined how empathic social appraisal could influence liking. We tested for the appraisal similarity effect in which perceived similarity in appraisals boosts liking. In Experiment 1, perception of appraisal similarity led participants to express liking by disclosing personal contact information. This effect was replicated using a selfreport measure of liking in Experiments 2 and 3. Also, by independently manipulating attitude similarity, the appraisal similarity effect was deactivated under perceived attitude dissimilarity. Likewise, the robust attitude similarity effect was invalidated under perceived appraisal dissimilarity. In Experiment 3, the perception of validated personal beliefs mediated this interactive effect in a moderated mediation scenario, and the appraisal similarity effect

Global-local visual processing impacts risk taking behaviors, but only at first

We investigated the impact of early visual processing on decision-making during unpredictable, risky situations. Participants undertook Navon’s (1977) task and attended to either global letters or local letters only, following which they completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). It was observed that global-focused individuals made more balloon pumps during the BART (i.e., took more risk), whereas local-focused individuals took less risk, albeit only initially. The theory of predictive and reactive control systems (PARCS) provides an excellent account of the data. Implications and future directions are discussed

Putting adversity in perspective: Purpose in life moderates the link between childhood emotional abuse and neglect and adulthood depressive symptoms

Background: Childhood emotional abuse and neglect is linked with a host of adverse outcomes later in life, including depression. However, potential psychological resources that may mitigate the adverse outcomes of childhood emotional abuse and neglect are not well-understood. Aims: Drawing from the insight that having a sense of purpose can help individuals deal with setbacks and difficulties better, we propose that purpose in life can also help sufferers of childhood maltreatment cope more effectively and reduce the onset of depressive symptoms. Methods: Participants were drawn from two large, nationally representative studies comprising a total of 3664 respondents. Purpose in life, childhood emotional abuse and neglect, and depressive symptoms were measured with validated scales. Results: We found convergent evidence that purpose in life attenuates the effect of childhood emotional abuse and neglect on subsequent depressive symptoms across a range of measures of mood and depression. Conclusions: The current study highlights the important role played by purpose in life in building resilience, coping against adverse life events, and psychological well-being

‘Look not at what is contrary to propriety’: A meta-analytic exploration of the association between religiosity and sensitivity to disgust

Previous research has suggested that disgust sensitivity contributes to moral self-regulation. The relationship between religiosity and disgust sensitivity is frequently explored as a moderator of moral-regulating ideologies, such as conservative and traditional ideologies. However, religiosity is suggested to differ from these in moral attitudes against social dominance and racial prejudice. Psychological theories, such as the societal moral intuition and the evolved hazard-perception models, have proposed that there could be reasons to support a distinct relationship between religiosity and disgust sensitivity. These reasons relate to the intuitive pursuit of spiritual purity and the non-secular transcendental emotional-reward value of moral behaviour for religious individuals. In the present manuscript, we conducted the first dedicated meta-analytic review between religiosity and disgust sensitivity. We analysed a summary of forty-seven experimental outcomes, including 48,971 participants. Our analysis revealed a significant positive association (r = .25) between religiosity and disgust sensitivity. This outcome suggests that sensitivity to disgust could have distinct spiritual purity and moral self-regulatory response value for religious individuals

Classifying and scoring of molecules with the NGN: new datasets, significance tests, and generalization

<p>Abstract</p> <p/> <p>This paper demonstrates how a Neural Grammar Network learns to classify and score molecules for a variety of tasks in chemistry and toxicology. In addition to a more detailed analysis on datasets previously studied, we introduce three new datasets (BBB, FXa, and toxicology) to show the generality of the approach. A new experimental methodology is developed and applied to both the new datasets as well as previously studied datasets. This methodology is rigorous and statistically grounded, and ultimately culminates in a Wilcoxon significance test that proves the effectiveness of the system. We further include a complete generalization of the specific technique to arbitrary grammars and datasets using a mathematical abstraction that allows researchers in different domains to apply the method to their own work.</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Our work can be viewed as an alternative to existing methods to solve the quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) problem. To this end, we review a number approaches both from a methodological and also a performance perspective. In addition to these approaches, we also examined a number of chemical properties that can be used by generic classifier systems, such as feed-forward artificial neural networks. In studying these approaches, we identified a set of interesting benchmark problem sets to which many of the above approaches had been applied. These included: ACE, AChE, AR, BBB, BZR, Cox2, DHFR, ER, FXa, GPB, Therm, and Thr. Finally, we developed our own benchmark set by collecting data on toxicology.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Our results show that our system performs better than, or comparatively to, the existing methods over a broad range of problem types. Our method does not require the expert knowledge that is necessary to apply the other methods to novel problems.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We conclude that our success is due to the ability of our system to: 1) encode molecules losslessly before presentation to the learning system, and 2) leverage the design of molecular description languages to facilitate the identification of relevant structural attributes of the molecules over different problem domains.</p

A 32-society investigation of the influence of perceived economic inequality on social class stereotyping

International audienceThere is a growing body of work suggesting that social class stereotypes are amplified when people perceive higher levels of economic inequality-that is, the wealthy are perceived as more competent and assertive and the poor as more incompetent and unassertive. The present study tested this prediction in 32 societies and also examines the role of wealth-based categorization in explaining this relationship. We found that people who perceived higher economic inequality were indeed more likely to consider wealth as a meaningful basis for categorization. Unexpectedly, however, higher levels of perceived inequality were associated with perceiving the wealthy as less competent and assertive and the poor as more competent and assertive. Unpacking this further, exploratory analyses showed that the observed tendency to stereotype the wealthy negatively only emerged in societies with lower social mobility and democracy and higher corruption. This points to the importance of understanding how socio-structural features that co-occur with economic inequality may shape perceptions of the wealthy and the poor

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Mixed Emotions, But Not Positive or Negative Emotions, Facilitate Legitimate Virus-Prevention Behaviors and Eudaimonic Outcomes in the Emergence of the COVID-19 Crisis

We report four studies (N=1419) examining emotional reactions from March to April 2020, when COVID-19 exhibited exponentially increasing infections and fatalities. Specifically, we examined associations between emotions with self-reported intentions to enact virus-prevention behaviors that protect oneself from COVID-19 and eudaimonic functioning. Study 1A, 1B, and Study 2 provided naturalistic evidence that mixed emotions predicted legitimate virus-prevention behaviors and eudaimonic functioning in the United States and Singapore, and Study 2 also supported receptivity as a mediator. Finally, Study 3 provided experimental evidence that mixed emotions causally increased legitimate virus-prevention behaviors relative to neutral, positive emotion, and negative emotion conditions, whereas eudaimonic functioning was increased only relative to the neutral condition. Across all studies, positive and negative emotions were unrelated to legitimate virus-prevention behaviors, while relationships with eudaimonic functioning were inconsistent. While self-reported measures do not represent actual behaviors, the findings suggest a potential role for mixed emotions in pandemic-related outcomes

Gratitude and Adaptive Coping Among Chinese Singaporeans During the Beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic

10.3389/fpsyt.2020.628937Frontiers in Psychiatry1162893

Meal-time smartphone use in an obesogenic environment: Two longitudinal observational studies

10.2196/22929Journal of Medical Internet Research951-1