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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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Scott O. Lilienfeld, Ashely L. Watts, and Sarah Francis Smith
Psychopathy may confer not only antisocial but socially positive traits, including superficial charm, a lack of anxiety, articulateness, and social poise. In recognition of this, research has recently begun to focus on "successful" psychopathy. However, ambiguity and inconsistency in operationalizations of "success" have made findings difficult to integrate. Lilienfeld, Watts, and Francis Smith outline three models of the construct, review evidence in support of each, and suggest directions for future research.
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Christopher F. Chabris, James J. Lee, David Cesarini, Daniel J. Benjamin, and David I. Laibson
Fifteen years ago, Turkenheimer put forth the "Three Laws of Behavior Genetics." To these laws, which still hold up today, Chabris et al. propose adding a fourth: "A typical human behavioral trait is associated with very many genetic variants, each of which accounts for a very small percentage of the behavioral variability." This law explains consistent patterns in gene-discovery research, including the failure of many studies to replicate. Chabris et al. review evidence for the fourth law, propose possible explanations for it, and suggest fruitful strategies for future research.
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Gesine Dreisbach and Rico Fischer
Classic models of conflict adaptation suggest that conflict triggers the need for increased cognitive control. In this article, Dreisbach and Fischer ask what it is about conflict that motivates the investment of cognitive resources. They suggest that conflict is inherently unpleasant and that this negative experience triggers cognitive processes that down-regulate the aversive signal. Conceptualizing conflict adaptation as a form of affect regulation opens up new ways of understanding the processes involved in the control of action.
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Catrin Finkenauer, Asuman Buyukcan-Tetik, Roy F. Baumeister, Kim Schoemaker, Meike Bartels, and Kathleen D. Vohs
Family violence is a risk factor for a host of negative outcomes, such as physical and mental illness, academic and professional failure, and substance use and suicide. Finkenauer and colleagues introduce the self-control strength model of family violence to explain how and why family violence leads to so many negative outcomes. In this model, family violence reduces self-control, leading to further increases in violence -- and the development of a host of negative personal and social outcomes.
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Patrik Sörqvist and John E. Marsh
Being in a state of deep concentration can make people fail to notice what's going on in the background, but why? First, concentration attenuates the processing of background information, and second, it makes attention harder to divert. Sörqvist and Marsh present evidence illuminating how these two processes work, including findings from research using cross-modal paradigms, in which distractors are presented in a different modality than are targets. The authors also discuss the influences of task difficulty, cognitive load, and individual differences in working memory capacity.
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Tanya R. Jonker, Paul Seli, and Colin M. MacLeod
Retrieval of information can lead to the forgetting of related nontarget information -- a phenomenon called retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF). Traditionally, researchers have explained RIF through inhibition or strength-based interferences accounts; however, Jonker, Seli, and MacLeod present a third explanation -- a context account. This account uses neither inhibition nor item-based interference to explain RIF, instead suggesting that it occurs because the context activated during testing leads to differences in the amount of context-retrieval benefits stimuli receive.
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Gary Lupyan and Andy Clark
The predictive-processing framework explains why it is optimal for the brain to let faulty predictions override bottom-up sensory input in some cases. According to this framework, perception is influenced by prior experience, which is weighted more or less heavily according to the task at hand. Lupyan and Clark discuss this framework and show how it can be used to explain the influence of language on cognition and perception.
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Erin A Heerey
A true understanding of the factors leading to successful social interaction requires an understanding of how face-to-face interactions lead to social outcomes. According to Heerey, the first challenge for researchers is identifying characteristics of asocial behavior that determine immediate outcomes of social interaction. Next, researchers need to identify these behaviors in individuals -- separate from the influence of their conversation partners -- and understand the underlying mechanisms driving these social behaviors.
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Garth J. O. Fletcher
Fletcher provides an outline of, and reviews the evidence on, two components of accuracy in judgments of romantic partners: directional bias, or differences in mean judgments across a sample compared with benchmark ratings, and tracking accuracy, or the association between a given judgment and a relevant benchmark. The author discusses the causes and consequences of bias and accuracy, changes in the accuracy of judgments across different stages of a relationship, individual differences, and the effects of context.
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Peter J. Gianaros and Tor D. Wager
Accumulated evidence suggests that physiological stress reactions confer risk for physical disease. Focusing on disease-related cardiovascular system reactions to stress in particular, Gianaros and Wager examine evidence on the relationship between brain-based appraisal systems and cardiovascular system reactivity. Further integration of health psychology and behavioral medicine may illuminate the pathways underlying the links between psychological stress and physical health.
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J. S. H. Taylor, Fiona J. Duff, Anna M. Woollams, Padraic Monaghan, and Jessie Ricketts
Most research on reading has focused on the connections between the sounds and spelling of words, but evidence shows that reading depends on a previously acquired foundation of mappings between words' sounds and meanings. To shed light on how semantic knowledge influences reading, Taylor integrates evidence from developmental, neuroimaging, neuropsychological, and computational studies, including findings on the role of semantics in reading acquisition, the activation of semantic information during word reading, and the influence of brain damage on semantic processing and reading deficits.
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Mariella Pazzaglia
Despite our heavy reliance on visual information, olfactory information also triggers and influences our perceptions and impressions. We use body odor to differentiate friends from strangers, men from women, and children from adults, as well as to gain clues about others' health, hygiene, fertility, and affective and motor states. Pazzaglia explains these processes, reviews the literature on the effects of olfactory interpersonal stimuli on the brain, and presents evidence on how visual and olfactory perception interact, including in the context of mate selection.
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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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