Giving or Taking: The Role of Dispositional Power Motivation and Positive Affect in Profit Maximization?

Socio-economic decisions are commonly explained by rational cost vs. benefit considerations, whereas person variables have not usually been considered. The present study aims at investigating the degree to which dispositional power motivation and affective states predict socio-economic decisions. The power motive was assessed both indirectly and directly using a TAT-like picture test and a power motive self-report, respectively. After nine months, 62 students completed an affect rating and performed on a money allocation task (Social Values Questionnaire). We hypothesized and confirmed that dispositional power should be associated with a tendency to maximize one’s profit but to care less about another party’s profit. Additionally, positive affect showed effects in the same direction. The results are discussed with respect to a motivational approach explaining socio-economic behaviour.economic decision-making, rational choice theory, personality, implicit power motive, positive affect, operant motive test

Adaptive and Maladaptive Pathways of Self-Development: Mental Health and Interactions Among Personality Systems

The developmental precursors of the “fully functioning person” (Rogers) have not received much systematic attention neither in psychological research nor in theories of personality and its development. Likewise, the developmental conditions for maladaptive personality functioning and the  formation of psychological symptoms have not been the primary target of research in clinical psychology during the past decades (Castonguay, 2011). On the basis of a theory of personality that specifi es a functional architecture of personality (i.e., personality systems interactions theory: PSI theory) developmental pathways are described that promote successful or impaired development of the integrated self which plays a pivotal role in PSI theory. Adaptive developmental pathways are described in terms of the developmental conditions promoting the ability to initiate unattractive instrumental  activities (action control) and the integration of self-alien and painful experiences into an ever growing personal knowledge base (self-development). Maladaptive pathways are proposed to describe the developmental conditions for two major forms of psychological disorders: symptoms related to impaired action control (e.g., procrastination, eating disorders, depression) and symptoms related to impaired self-growth (e.g., rigidity, failure to learn from mistakes, psychosomatic symptoms).Any theory of personality should be able to explain adaptive and maladaptive forms of personality development. However, this issue does not belong to the prime targets of research efforts made in personality, developmental, or clinical psychology. Instead, competing hypotheses are derived from  global constructs such as self-effi cacy, irrational thinking, poor self-esteem and the like. Typical questions arising from this globalconstruct approach are: Does a man who has problems initiating simple activities at home (despite his efficient performance at his work) suffer from impaired self-effi cacy, poor selfesteem, or does he simply have chauvinistic attitudes against his wife? Global constructs are also offered by the two major schools of thinking in psychology: From a psychoanalytic point of view, a woman’s overeating may be caused by an “oral regression” which dictates her behavior to eat as impulsively as oral needs drive baby’s feelings during the oral stage of development? In contrast, behavioristic learning theory would attribute those and other symptoms such as disturbed sleep, impaired immune function and stress-dependent pain like headache or backpain to the acquisition of irrational thinking or maladaptive behaviors that can be remedied by rewarding more appropriate behaviors

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements