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Current Directions in Psychological Science is a publication of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Editor
Randall W. Engle Georgia Institute of Technology
Advisory Board
Marie T. Banich
University of Colorado Boulder
Martha Ann Bell
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Valérie Camos
Université de Fribourg
Sheldon Cohen
Carnegie Mellon University
Frank Durso
Georgia Institute of Technology
Joseph P. Forgas
University of New South Wales, Australia
Chris Fraley
University of Illinois
Isabel Gauthier
Vanderbilt University
David Myers
Hope College
James Nairne
Purdue University
Thomas Oltmanns
Washington University in St. Louis
Howard Weiss
Georgia Institute of Technology
Steve West
Arizona State University
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Current Directions in Psychological Science |
The links below take you to the journal via the APS website. If not already logged in, you will be redirected to log-in using your last name (Garcia) and Member ID (81665).
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When Younger Learners Can Be Better (or at Least More Open-Minded) Than Older Ones
Alison Gopnik, Thomas L. Griffiths, and Christopher G. Lucas
Several studies have shown that despite their lower levels of knowledge and experience, younger learners are better than older ones at inferring unusual abstract causal principles from evidence. Gopnik, Griffiths, and Lucas offer two explanations for this surprising finding: First, younger learners are less biased by their existing knowledge, and second, their brains and minds are inherently more flexible. Older learners lack the flexibility and exploratory nature of their younger counterparts, which may constrain their interpretation of new data.
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Brandon J. Schmeichel and David Tang
Emotional states have long been known to affect cognitive performance, but recent research has begun to investigate the opposite issue: How does cognitive ability help to shape people's emotional lives? Schmeichel and Tang look at evidence from a wide range of studies that have examined both executive functioning and emotion regulation. These studies provide evidence for the contributions of executive functioning -- such as inhibition, working memory capacity, and updating -- to emotion and emotion regulation.
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Does Language Do More Than Communicate Emotion?
Kristen A. Lindquist, Ajay B. Satpute, and Maria Gendron
A growing literature suggests that language may not only communicate emotion but actually help to constitute emotion by consolidating sensory information into perceptions of specifically labeled emotion categories. Lindquist, Satpute, and Gendron review social-cognitive, neuropsychological, cross-cultural, and neuroimaging research revealing this link between language and emotion. According to their constructionist approach, emotion category knowledge supported by language is essential to the perception, and perhaps even the experience, of emotion.
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David A. Sbarra, Karen Hasselmo, and Kyle J. Bourassa
Seemingly contradictory research findings have shown that marital separation increases the risk of poor outcomes in life satisfaction, health, and even mortality, but that most people fare well after divorce. Sbarra, Hasselmo, and Bourassa propose that individual differences -- such as a history of depression, attachment anxiety, and high levels of rumination -- can account for this discrepancy. Research aimed at identifying which people are most likely to suffer after divorce may help us to understand how divorce confers risk for negative outcomes.
David A. Sbarra will be speaking in a special event sponsored by PCSAS titled "The Legacy of Richard R. Bootzin: A Memorial Symposium" at the 27th APS Annual Convention in New York, NY, USA.
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"Mixed" Results: Multiracial Research and Identity Explorations
Sarah E. Gaither
Existing frameworks for understanding racial identity distinguish between distinct racial in-groups and out-groups. However, these models may not always apply to multiracial individuals, who constitute a growing segment of the population. Gaither describes obstacles and advantages that are unique to multiracial people, highlights the importance of recognizing identity flexibility and social context, and delineates moderators of multiracial identification, including racial background, racial phenotypicality, and gender.
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Contamination of Eyewitness Self-Reports and the Mistaken-Identification Problem
Laura Smalarz and Gary L. Wells
Findings from laboratory-based studies have indicated that there is an association between the confidence of an eyewitness in the identification of a target subject and the accuracy of that identification. How then do we account for instances in which highly confident eyewitnesses have been mistaken in their identifications? Smalarz and Wells describe real-world practices that boost the confidence of mistaken eyewitnesses and suggest procedural changes that can protect against eyewitness contamination.
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Self-Serving Justifications: Doing Wrong and Feeling Moral
Shaul Shalvi, Francesca Gino, Rachel Barkan, and Shahar Ayal
Research has shown that people are invested in maintaining a positive moral self-concept and find unethical behavior aversive even when it will benefit them. So what accounts for people's knowing commission of everyday immoral acts? Shalvi and colleagues propose a framework delineating how people can use justifications to maintain their moral self-image despite their unethical behavior and describe specific justifications that may be used before and after the unethical acts.
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Individual Differences in Negotiation: A Nearly Abandoned Pursuit Revived
Hillary Anger Elfenbein
Despite early pessimism about the possibility of proving that specific individual characteristics are tied to success in negotiation, interest in the topic has recently resurged. Elfenbein presents new approaches for studying the topic and reviews existing research on how a broad range of characteristics influence negotiation success. Thus far, the strongest and most reliable predictors of performance are those that are the most changeable, which indicates that much of negotiators' effectiveness may be under their control.
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Rigidity of the Economic Right? Menu-Independent and Menu-Dependent Influences of Psychological Dispositions on Political Attitudes
Ariel Malka and Christopher J. Soto
The "rigidity of the right" hypothesis posits that high needs for security and certainty predict adherence to right-wing sociocultural views and economic policies. However, conflicting findings and differing right-wing economic policies across countries call this account into question. According to Malka and Soto's Menu-Independent and Menu-Dependent Influence model, people's psychological dispositions predict their sociocultural views, but their adherence to an economic ideology may be driven by other factors, such as political engagement, ideological identification, and political discourse.
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The Interpersonal Consequences of Processing Ease: Fluency as a Metacognitive Foundation for Prejudice
David J. Lick and Kerri L. Johnson
Because disfluent processing is, by definition, slow and effortful, it tends to elicit negative evaluations, including social evaluations. Lick and Johnson review research showing that this pattern holds across a broad range of target groups, operationalizations of fluency, and levels of analysis. In addition to illuminating how experiential cues may fuel prejudice, this literature raises questions about the mechanisms underlying fluency effects, whether these effects can be ameliorated, and whether fluency can lead to negative evaluations in some contexts.
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On Means and Ends: The Role of Goal Focus in Successful Goal Pursuit
Alexandra M. Freund and Marie Hennecke
In the pursuit of a goal, one can focus primarily on the means -- adopting a process focus -- or the ends -- adopting an outcome focus. Freund and Hennecke review research suggesting that taking a process-focused approach can be more beneficial to goal attainment than taking an outcome-focused approach. They examine the adaptiveness of process and outcome foci for goal attainment and potential moderators to this relationship.
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Social Sensing for Psychology: Automated Interpersonal Behavior Assessment
Marianne Schmid Mast, Daniel Gatica-Perez, Denise Frauendorfer, Laurent Nguyen, and Tanzeem Choudhury
Social sensing is the unobtrusive capture and real-time analysis of both verbal and nonverbal interactions. Schmid Mast and colleagues examine the ubiquitous nature of social sensing platforms, such as smartphones, smartwatches, and wearable microphones, and how these devices work to collect, extract, and analyze social interaction data. By working together, psychological scientists and computer scientists can harness the power of these new technologies to advance research and influence real-world behavioral change.
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Current Directions in Psychological Science is a publication of the Association for Psychological Science. Please contact APS by email or by telephone at +1 202.293.9300 with questions or comments.
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