Newcomer conformity: How self-construal affects the alignment of cognition and behavior with group goals in novel groups.

The present research is the first to examine the impact of self-construal on newcomers’ motivation to conform with the goals of a novel group.We argue that when social identity (i.e., individuals’ concern for a specific group) has not yet been developed, newcomers rely on self-construal (i.e., individuals’ chronic concern for ingroups and connectedness with others in general) to derive norms for group-serving vs. self-serving behavior. Results of an experiment (N = 157) supported this prediction: Self-construal moderated the relationship between group goals and individual goals (cognitive conformity) as well as the relationship between group goals and members’ effort (behavioral conformity). Specifically, low independent and high interdependent self-construal was associated with greater cognitive and behavioral alignment of the self with the group compared to high independent and low interdependent self-construal. Findings are discussed regarding the role of self-construal as a precedent of conformity

A Motivational Determinant of Facial Emotion Recognition : Regulatory Focus Affects Recognition of Emotions in Faces

Funding: The research was supported by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO, project 452-07-006). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Items from Psychometric Tests as Training Data for Personality Profiling Models of Twitter Users

Machine-learned models for author profiling in social media often rely on data acquired via self-reporting-based psychometric tests (questionnaires) filled out by social media users. This is an expensive but accurate data collection strategy. Another, less costly alternative, which leads to potentially more noisy and biased data, is to rely on labels inferred from publicly available information in the profiles of the users, for instance self-reported diagnoses or test results. In this paper, we explore a third strategy, namely to directly use a corpus of items from validated psychometric tests as training data. Items from psychometric tests often consist of sentences from an I-perspective (e.g., "I make friends easily."). Such corpora of test items constitute 'small data', but their availability for many concepts is a rich resource. We investigate this approach for personality profiling, and evaluate BERT classifiers fine-tuned on such psychometric test items for the big five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) and analyze various augmentation strategies regarding their potential to address the challenges coming with such a small corpus. Our evaluation on a publicly available Twitter corpus shows a comparable performance to in-domain training for 4/5 personality traits with T5-based data augmentation.Comment: accepted for WASSA 2022 at ACL 202

The Relation of Attitude Toward Technology and Mastery Experience After an App-Guided Physical Exercise Intervention: Randomized Crossover Trial

Background Physical exercise has been found to assert a positive impact on many muscular conditions. Exercise under face-to-face supervision is the gold standard, but access to it is limited, for instance, for economic reasons. App-guided therapy is an intervention that is more affordable and easily accessible. However, attitude toward technology is a key predictor for media adoption and is therefore expected to shape user experience during app-guided therapy. This might be of particular importance for mastery experience, which is crucial for promoting exercise-related self-efficacy and perceived usefulness of the interaction. Both should empower patients to continuously exercise. Objective This study sought to test whether attitudes toward technology predict mastery experience and perceived usefulness of the interaction after an app- versus a physiotherapist-guided treatment. We expect that attitudes toward technology positively predict both outcomes in case of the app-guided but not in case of the physiotherapist-guided treatment. Methods Patients (n=54) with clinically diagnosed hip osteoarthritis participated in 2 training sessions with the same exercise intervention, once guided by an app on a tablet computer and once guided by a physiotherapist in a German university hospital. The order of the sessions was randomized. Attitude toward technology was assessed as predictor before the first session, while mastery experience and the global perceived usefulness of interaction as self-reported outcomes after each session. Results In line with our hypotheses, attitude toward technology predicted mastery experience (b=0.16, standard error=0.07, P=.02) and usefulness of interaction (b=0.17, standard error=0.06, P=.01) after the app-based training but not after the training delivered by a physiotherapist (P>.3 in all cases). Mastery experience was lower for the app-based training but reached a very similar level as the physiotherapist-guided training for those holding a very positive attitude toward technology. Conclusions The attitude toward technology predicts the extent of mastery experience after app-guided exercise therapy. As mastery experience is highly important for self-efficacy and future exercise behavior, attitudes toward technology should be considered when delivering app-guided exercise treatments

Regulatory focus, coping strategies and symptoms of anxiety and depression: a comparison between Syrian refugees in Turkey and Germany

Civil war, flight, escape and expulsion are extremely stressful and assert a negative impact on refugees’ mental health. However scientific research about resilience and coping of refugees is scarce. Especially in the recent refugee crisis, calls have been made to consider factors contributing to coping and resilience in this vulnerable population. Therefore, the current research sought to investigate individual differences that could serve as antecedents of coping and contextual factors that might moderate these effects. Specifically, it took into account individual’s self-regulatory differences in terms of regulatory focus (i.e., a promotion focus on nurturance needs, ideals and gains vs. a prevention focus on security needs, oughts and losses). It furthermore explored contextual influences by considering Syrian refugees in Turkey (Sample 1, N = 273) and Germany (Sample 2, N = 169). Compared to Syrian refugees in Turkey, those in Germany had a stronger promotion focus. They also reported more problem-focused and less maladaptive coping, as well as less symptoms. Both promotion and prevention focus were positively related to problem-focused coping. Problem-focused coping, in turn, predicted more symptoms in Turkey but not in Germany. Furthermore, a stronger promotion focus was associated with less symptoms and maladaptive coping was associated with more symptoms in both samples. These results contribute to the coping literature in demonstrating that under certain conditions problem-focused coping can be maladaptive and extend the scarce previous work on self-regulation and coping. Most importantly, they highlight a promotion focus as a clear resilience factor and the role of maladaptive coping in increasing vulnerability. As such, they might inform the design of effective interventions among Syrian refugees and beyond

Positive and Negative Emotions Predict Weight Loss Intentions and Behaviors beyond Theory of Planned Behavior Constructs

Acknowledgements: This study was funded by the ScienceCampus Tuebingen (TP7.1) awarded to Devin G. Ray and Kai Sassenberg.Peer reviewedPostprin

The Reputational Consequences of Failed Replications and Wrongness Admission among Scientists

Scientists are dedicating more attention to replication efforts. While the scientific utility of replications is unquestionable, the impact of failed replication efforts and the discussions surrounding them deserve more attention. Specifically, the debates about failed replications on social media have led to worry, in some scientists, regarding reputation. In order to gain data-informed insights into these issues, we collected data from 281 published scientists. We assessed whether scientists overestimate the negative reputational effects of a failed replication in a scenario-based study. Second, we assessed the reputational consequences of admitting wrongness (versus not) as an original scientist of an effect that has failed to replicate. Our data suggests that scientists overestimate the negative reputational impact of a hypothetical failed replication effort. We also show that admitting wrongness about a non-replicated finding is less harmful to one’s reputation than not admitting. Finally, we discovered a hint of evidence that feelings about the replication movement can be affected by whether replication efforts are aimed one’s own work versus the work of another. Given these findings, we then present potential ways forward in these discussions