Successfully navigating the norms of a society is a complex task that involves recognizing diverse kinds of rules as well as the relative weight attached to them. In the United States, different kinds of rules—federal statutes and regulations, scientific norms, and professional ideals—guide the work of researchers. Penalties for violating these different kinds of rules and norms can range from the displeasure of peers to criminal sanctions. We proposed that it would be more difficult for researchers working in the U.S. (...) who were born in other nations to distinguish the seriousness of violating rules across diverse domains. We administered a new measure, the evaluating rules in science task, to National Institutes of Health-funded investigators. The ERST assessed perceptions of the seriousness of violating research regulations, norms, and ideals, and allowed us to calculate the degree to which researchers distinguished between the seriousness of each rule category. The ERST also assessed researchers’ predictions of the seriousness that research integrity officers would assign to the rules. We compared researchers’ predictions to the seriousness ratings of 112 RIOs working at U.S. research-intensive universities. U.S.-born researchers were significantly better at distinguishing between the seriousness of violating federal research regulations and violating ideals of science, and they were more accurate in their predictions of the views of RIOs. Acculturation to the U.S. moderated the effects of nationality on accuracy. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of future research and education. (shrink)

This study examined the role of reflection on personal cases for making ethical decisions with regard to new ethical problems. Participants assumed the position of a business manager in a hypothetical organization and solved ethical problems that might be encountered. Prior to making a decision for the business problems, participants reflected on a relevant ethical experience. The findings revealed that application of material garnered from reflection on a personal experience was associated with decisions of higher ethicality. However, whether the case (...) was viewed as positive or negative, and whether the outcomes, processes, or outcomes and processes embedded in the experience were examined, influenced the application of case material to the new problem. As expected, examining positive experiences and the processes involved in those positive experiences resulted in greater application of case material to new problems. Future directions and implications for understanding ethical decision making are discussed. (shrink)

Researchers encounter challenges that require making complex professional decisions. Strategies such as seeking help and anticipating consequences support decision-making in these situations. Existing evidence on a measure of professional decision-making in research that assesses the use of decision-making strategies revealed that NIH-funded researchers born outside of the U.S. tended to score below their U.S. counterparts. To examine potential explanations for this association, this study recruited 101 researchers born in the United States and 102 born internationally to complete the PDR and (...) measures of basic personal values, values in scientific work, discrimination between the seriousness of rules in research, exposure to unprofessional research practices, and acculturation to American culture. Several variables were associated with PDR scores—discrimination between types of rules in research, exposure to unprofessional research practices, acculturation, and the basic personal values of power, security, and benevolence. However, only security, benevolence, acculturation, and rule discrimination were also associated with nation of origin. In multivariate models, the variance explained by these variables in accounting for the association of nation of origin and PDR scores was somewhat overlapping, thus, only security and benevolence remained as unique, statistically significant predictors. Thus, this study identified some important variables in the association of nation of origin and PDR, but more research is needed. In a secondary analysis to examine the “clinical significance” of scores on the PDR, this study examined aggregated PDR score data from the present sample and past samples of investigators. This analysis identified scores that may suggest a concern versus those scores that may be interpreted as excellent, proficient, or marginal. Implications for training and mentoring, along with considerations for future research are discussed. (shrink)

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, stay-at-home orders disrupted normal research operations. Principal investigators (PIs) had to make decisions about conducting and staffing essential research under unprecedented, rapidly changing conditions. These decisions also had to be made amid other substantial work and life stressors, like pressures to be productive and staying healthy. Using survey methods, we asked PIs funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation (N = 930) to rate how (...) they prioritized different considerations, such as personal risks, risks to research personnel, and career consequences, when making decisions. They also reported how difficult they found these choices and associated symptoms of stress. Using a checklist, PIs indicated those factors in their research environments that made their decisions easier (i.e., facilitators) or more difficult (i.e., barriers) to make. Finally, PIs also indicated how satisfied they were with their decisions and management of research during the disruption. Descriptive statistics summarize PIs’ responses and inferential tests explore whether responses varied by academic rank or gender. PIs overall reported prioritizing the well-being and perspectives of research personnel, and they perceived more facilitators than barriers. Early-career faculty, however, rated concerns about their careers and productivity as higher priorities compared to their senior counterparts. Early-career faculty also perceived greater difficulty and stress, more barriers, fewer facilitators, and had less satisfaction with their decisions. Women rated several interpersonal concerns about their research personnel more highly than men and reported greater stress. The experience and perceptions of researchers during the COVID-19 pandemic can inform policies and practices when planning for future crises and recovering from the pandemic. (shrink)

The education of students and professionals in business ethics is an increasingly important goal on the agenda of business schools and corporations. The present study provides a meta-analysis of 25 previously conducted business ethics instructional programs. The role of criteria, study design, participant characteristics, quality of instruction, instructional content, instructional program characteristics, and characteristics of instructional methods as moderators of the effectiveness of business ethics instruction were examined. Overall, results indicate that business ethics instructional programs have a minimal␣impact on increasing (...) outcomes related to ethical perceptions, behavior, or awareness. However, specific criteria, content, and methodological moderators of effectiveness shed light on potential recommendations for␣improving business ethics instruction. Implications for␣future research and practice in business ethics are discussed. (shrink)

This article demonstrates how instructors of professionalism and ethics training programs can integrate a professional decision-making tool in training curricula. This tool can help trainees understand how to apply professional decision-making strategies to address the threats posed by a variety of psychological and environmental factors when they are faced with complex professional and ethical situations. We begin by highlighting key decision-making frameworks and discussing factors that may undermine the use of professional decision-making strategies. Then, drawing upon findings from past research, (...) we present the “SMART” professional decision-making framework: seeking help, managing emotions, anticipating consequences, recognizing rules and context, and testing assumptions and motives. Next, we present a vignette that poses a complex ethical and professional challenge and illustrate how each professional decision-making strategy could or should be used by characters in the case. To conclude, we review a series of educational practices and pedagogical tools intended to help trainers facilitate trainee learning, retention, and application of “SMART” decision-making strategies. (shrink)

In this paper, we report on the development and validity of the Professional Decision-Making in Research measure, a vignette-based test that examines decision-making strategies used by investigators when confronted with challenging situations in the context of empirical research. The PDR was administered online with a battery of validity measures to a group of NIH-funded researchers and research trainees who were diverse in terms of age, years of experience, types of research, and race. The PDR demonstrated adequate reliability and parallel form (...) correlation. As hypothesized, the PDR was significantly negatively correlated with narcissism, cynicism, moral disengagement, and compliance disengagement; it was not correlated with socially desirable responding. In regression analysis, the strongest predictors of higher PDR scores were low compliance disengagement, speaking English as a native language, conducting clinical research with human subjects, and low levels of narcissism. Given that the PDR was written at an eighth grade reading level to be suitable for use with English as a second language participants and that only one-fourth of items focused on clinical research, further research into the possible roles of culture and research ethics training across specialties is warranted. This initial validity study demonstrates the potential usefulness of the PDR as an educational outcome assessment measure and a research instrument for studies on professionalism and integrity in research. (shrink)

The current study uses a sensemaking model and thinking strategies identified in earlier research to examine ethical decision making. Using a sample of 163 undergraduates, a low-fidelity simulation approach is used to study the effects personal involvement (in causing the problem and personal involvement in experiencing the outcomes of the problem) could have on the use of cognitive reasoning strategies that have been shown to promote ethical decision making. A mediated model is presented which suggests that environmental factors influence reasoning (...) strategies, reasoning strategies influence sensemaking, and sensemaking in turn influences ethical decision making. Findings were mixed but generally supported the hypothesized model. It is interesting to note that framing the outcomes of ethically charged situations in terms of more global organizational outcomes rather than personal outcomes was found to promote the use of pro-ethical cognitive reasoning strategies. (shrink)

In this paper we describe the development and initial psychometric evaluation of a new measure, the values in scientific work. This scale assesses the level of importance that investigators attach to different VSW. It taps a broad range of intrinsic, extrinsic, and social values that motivate the work of scientists, including values specific to scientific work and more classic work values in the context of science. Notably, the values represented in this scale are relevant to scientists regardless of their career (...) stage and research focus. We administered the VSW and a measure of global values to 203 NIH-funded investigators. Exploratory factor analyses suggest the delineation of eight VSW, including autonomy, research ethics, social impact, income, collaboration, innovation and growth, conserving relationships, and job security. These VSW showed predictable and distinct associations with global values. Implications of these findings for work on research integrity and scientific misconduct are discussed. (shrink)

Aaron Antonovsky, the medical sociologist, defined the sense of coherence as a pervasive sense that the events in one’s life are comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful or worthwhile. Research on the sense of coherence indicates that it is positively correlated with resilience and adaptive coping with disabilities and illnesses. The collection of first–person narratives published in Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics on genetic testing can be understood as expressions of the human effort to restore or sustain a sense of coherence in the (...) face of illness, uncertainty, or even curiosity about one’s origins and future wellbeing. While the medical usefulness of the genetic testing that was discussed in the collection of narratives was often modest, the contribution of testing to the sense of coherence was often greater. Understanding the sense of coherence as a possible motive for genetic testing might reshape the way that we conceive of the benefits and the burdens of genetic testing and the disclosure of incidental findings. (shrink)

In recent years, we have seen a new concern with ethics training for research and development professionals. Although ethics training has become more common, the effectiveness of the training being provided is open to question. In the present effort, a new ethics training course was developed that stresses the importance of the strategies people apply to make sense of ethical problems. The effectiveness of this training was assessed in a sample of 59 doctoral students working in the biological and social (...) sciences using a pre-post design with follow-up and a series of ethical decision-making measures serving as the outcome variable. Results showed not only that this training led to sizable gains in ethical decision making but also that these gains were maintained over time. The implications of these findings for ethics training in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

We argue that once a normative claim is developed, there is an imperative to effect changes based on this norm. As such, ethicists should adopt an “implementation mindset” when formulating...

Ethical decision making measures are widely applied as the principal dependent variable used in studies of research integrity. However, evidence bearing on the internal and external validity of these measures is not available. In this study, ethical decision making measures were administered to 102 graduate students in the biological, health, and social sciences, along with measures examining exposure to ethical breaches and the severity of punishments recommended. The ethical decision making measure was found to be related to exposure to ethical (...) events and the severity of punishments awarded. The implications of these findings for the application of ethical decision making measures are discussed. (shrink)

Scholars have proposed a number of courses and programs intended to improve the ethical behavior of scientists in an attempt to maintain the integrity of the scientific enterprise. In the present study, we conducted a quantitative meta-analysis based on 26 previous ethics program evaluation efforts, and the results showed that the overall effectiveness of ethics instruction was modest. The effects of ethics instruction, however, were related to a number of instructional program factors, such as course content and delivery methods, in (...) addition to factors of the evaluation study itself, such as the field of investigator and criterion measure utilized. An examination of the characteristics contributing to the relative effectiveness of instructional programs revealed that more successful programs were conducted as seminars separate from the standard curricula rather than being embedded in existing courses. Furthermore, more successful programs were case based and interactive, and they allowed participants to learn and practice the application of real-world ethical decision-making skills. The implications of these findings for future course development and evaluation are discussed. (shrink)

It is commonly held that early career experiences influence ethical behavior. One way early career experiences might operate is to influence the decisions people make when presented with problems that raise ethical concerns. To test this proposition, 102 first-year doctoral students were asked to complete a series of measures examining ethical decision making along with a series of measures examining environmental experiences and climate perceptions. Factoring of the environmental measure yielded five dimensions: professional leadership, poor coping, lack of rewards, limited (...) competitive pressure, and poor career direction. Factoring of the climate inventory yielded four dimensions: equity, interpersonal conflict, occupational engagement, and work commitment. When these dimensions were used to predict performance on the ethical decision-making task, it was found that the environmental dimensions were better predictors than the climate dimensions. The implications of these findings for research on ethical conduct are discussed. (shrink)

This study examined the role of key causal analysis strategies in forecasting and ethical decision-making. Undergraduate participants took on the role of the key actor in several ethical problems and were asked to identify and analyze the causes, forecast potential outcomes, and make a decision about each problem. Time pressure and analytic mindset were manipulated while participants worked through these problems. The results indicated that forecast quality was associated with decision ethicality, and the identification of the critical causes of the (...) problem was associated with both higher quality forecasts and higher ethicality of decisions. Neither time pressure nor analytic mindset impacted forecasts or ethicality of decisions. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Differences across fields and experience levels are frequently considered in discussions of ethical decision making and ethical behavior. In the present study, doctoral students in the health, biological, and social sciences completed measures of ethical decision making. The effects of field and level of experience with respect to ethical decision making, metacognitive reasoning strategies, social-behavioral responses, and exposure to unethical events were examined. Social and biological scientists performed better than health scientists with respect to ethical decision making. Furthermore, the ethical (...) decision making of health science students decreased as experience increased. Moreover, these effects appeared to be linked to the specific strategies underlying participants' ethical decision making. The implications of these findings for ethical decision making are discussed. (shrink)

This project examined the ethical issues faced by academics and professionals in the Humanities. We conducted focus groups to gather information about the ethical concerns in these fields and used the qualitative data arising from the discussions to create a taxonomy that represents the structure of ethical issues in the Humanities. A key implication of our findings is that while the focus of ethics research and interventions has been primarily on the sciences and engineering, academics and professionals in other fields (...) also encounter some unique critical ethical dilemmas that require further research and methods of intervention. (shrink)

In this paper, we report on the development and validity of the Professional Decision-Making in Research measure, a vignette-based test that examines decision-making strategies used by investigators when confronted with challenging situations in the context of empirical research. The PDR was administered online with a battery of validity measures to a group of NIH-funded researchers and research trainees who were diverse in terms of age, years of experience, types of research, and race. The PDR demonstrated adequate reliability and parallel form (...) correlation. As hypothesized, the PDR was significantly negatively correlated with narcissism, cynicism, moral disengagement, and compliance disengagement; it was not correlated with socially desirable responding. In regression analysis, the strongest predictors of higher PDR scores were low compliance disengagement, speaking English as a native language, conducting clinical research with human subjects, and low levels of narcissism. Given that the PDR was written at an eighth grade reading level to be suitable for use with English as a second language participants and that only one-fourth of items focused on clinical research, further research into the possible roles of culture and research ethics training across specialties is warranted. This initial validity study demonstrates the potential usefulness of the PDR as an educational outcome assessment measure and a research instrument for studies on professionalism and integrity in research. (shrink)

This study examined the role of temporal orientation and affective frame in the execution of ethical decision-making strategies. In reflecting on a past experience or imagining a future experience, participants thought about experiences that they considered either positive or negative. The participants recorded their thinking about that experience by responding to several questions, and their responses were content-analyzed for the use of ethical decision-making strategies. The findings indicated that a future temporal orientation was associated with greater strategy use. Likewise, a (...) positive affective frame was associated with greater strategy use. Future orientation may permit better strategy execution than a past orientation because it facilitates more objective, balanced contemplation of the reflected-upon situation and minimizes potential self-threat associated with past behavior. A positive affective frame likely improves strategy execution because it facilitates active analysis of the experience. Future directions and implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

An implicit goal of many interventions intended to enhance integrity is to minimize peoples' exposure to unethical events. The intent of the present effort was to examine if exposure to unethical practices in the course of one's work is related to ethical decision making. Accordingly, 248 doctoral students in the biological, health, and social sciences were asked to complete a field appropriate measure of ethical decision making. In addition, they were asked to complete measures examining the perceived acceptability of unethical (...) events and a measure examining perceptions of ethical climate. When these criterion measures were correlated with a measure examining the frequency with which they had been exposed to unethical events in their day-to-day work, it was found that event exposure was strongly related to ethical decision making but less strongly related to climate perceptions and perceptions of event acceptability. However, these relationships were moderated by level of experience. The implications of these findings for practices intended to improve ethics are discussed. (shrink)

Women Activating Agency in Academia seeks to create and expand safe spaces for scholarly, professional and personal stories and assemblages of agency. It provides readers with the opportunity to connect with the strategies women are using to navigate academe and the core values, linked to trust, relationship, wellbeing and ethics of care, they live by. The collection offers the stories of women academics from around the globe and across disciplines and showcases their efforts to meaningfully listen and converse in order (...) to resist self-audit and diminished identities. Reflections come from a range of responsive, personal and aesthetic techniques, including writing groups, guided autobiography, auto-ethnography, collective activism and slow scholarship. Chapters engage with themes and ideas such as agency, neoliberalism, ontological security, androcentricity, identity and collegial support, which manifest in unique ways for female academics. The focus in this volume is what really matters to women in the academy, as they share their efforts to 'be' themselves in their work, to 'care for themselves and others' and to 'count what isn't counted'. It aims to prove how collaborative storytelling and discussion can empower female academics to preserve and achieve these ambitions. (shrink)

This review article discusses the relationship between deference and the presumption of constitutionality, as discussed in Brian Foley’s book, Deference and the Presumption of Constitutionality. Foley argues for the rejection of the presumption of constitutionality as it operates in the Irish Constitution, proposing instead a ‘due deference’ approach. This approach would require courts to give varying degrees of weight to the legislature’s conclusions that particular legislative provisions are constitutional. The article praises Foley’s book, particularly its stronger justification of due deference (...) which focuses on its ability to foster a culture of justification which, in turn, facilitates popular sovereignty. The review also provides a criticism of the argument made in the book and discusses its application to the UK constitution. First, the review argues that the focus on constitutional as opposed to institutional factors to determine deference may, in practice, undermine Foley’s justification of due deference. Second it argues that Foley’s justification of deference may be best served in the UK constitution by a theory of democratic dialogue as opposed to the application of due deference. (shrink)

Subjective feelings of familiarity associated with a stimulus tend to be strongest when specific information about the previous encounter with the stimulus is difficult to retrieve . Recognizing: The judgment of previous occurrence. Psychological Review, 87, 252–271.]). When a stimulus has been encountered previously and the circumstances of the encounter cannot be recollected, additional cognitive resources may be directed toward recollection processes; this resource allocation is accompanied by autonomic arousal [Dawson, M. E., Filion, D. L., & Schell, A. M. . (...) Is elicitation of the autonomic orienting response associated with allocation of processing resources?. Psychophysiology, 26, 560–572]. One easily measurable index of autonomic arousal is the skin conductance response . In the present study, participants studied lists of words and then gave recognition ratings to briefly displayed and masked studied and nonstudied test words while their SCRs were monitored. Results revealed a relationship between recognition ratings and the temporal characteristics of the SCR, supporting the idea that feelings of familiarity are indeed “feelings” in that they stem from autonomic arousal associated with cognitive resource allocation. (shrink)

Power, Prose, and Purse is an edited collection of essays that draw connections between literature, economics and law. The essays discuss novels that explore the time period between the Industrial Revolution and the Great Depression and analyze the insights that novelists may offer to law and economics, while noting the tensions among these paradigms.

Writers of fiction have always confronted topics of crime and punishment. This age-old fascination with crime on the part of both authors and readers is not surprising, given that criminal justice touches on so many political and psychological themes essential to literature, and comes equippedwith a trial process that contains its own dramatic structure. This volume explores this profound and enduring literary engagement with crime, investigation, and criminal justice. The collected essays explore three themes that connect the world of law (...) with that of fiction. First, defining and punishing crime is one of the fundamental purposes of government,along with the protection of victims by the prevention of crime. And yet criminal punishment remains one of the most abused and terrifying forms of political power. Second, crime is intensely psychological and therefore an important subject by which a writer can develop and explore character. Athird connection between criminal justice and fiction involves the inherently dramatic nature of the legal system itself, particularly the trial. Moreover, the ongoing public conversation about crime and punishment suggests that the time is ripe for collaboration between law and literature in thistroubled domain.The essays in this collection span a wide array of genres, including tragic drama, science fiction, lyric poetry, autobiography, and mystery novels. The works discussed include works as old as fifth-century BCE Greek tragedy and as recent as contemporary novels, memoirs, and mystery novels. Thecumulative result is arresting: there are "killer wives" and crimes against trees; a government bureaucrat who sends political adversaries to their death for treason before falling to the same fate himself; a convicted murderer who doesn't die when hanged; a psychopathogical collector whose quitesane kidnapping victim nevertheless also collects; Justice Thomas' reading and misreading of Bigger Thomas; a man who forgives his son's murderer and one who cannot forgive his wife's non-existent adultery; fictional detectives who draw on historical analysis to solve murders. These essays begin aconversation, and they illustrate the great depth and power of crime in literature. (shrink)

Much of the discussion of the role of emerging technologies associated with AI, machine learning, digital simulacra, and relevant ethical considerations such as those discussed in the target article, take a relatively narrow and episodic view of a person’s healthcare needs. There is much speculation about diagnostic, treatment, and predictive applications but relatively little consideration of how such technologies might be used to address a person’s lived experience of illness and ongoing care needs. This is likely due to the greater (...) weight or priority given to acute care needs and the role of medical treatment in care provision, but it may also reflect the limitations of current technologies and our limited vision of their potential application. Such limitations are not surprising given that we are still grappling with the complexities and nuances of achieving the ethical and humanistic ideals of care, namely, care that addresses the hermeneutical, relational, contextual, temporal, and agential dimensions of a person’s health and wellbeing. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary volume of contributed essays focuses on issues of gender in the British novel of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly Hardy and Trollope. Approaching the topic from a variety of backgrounds the contributors reinvigorate the law-and-literature movement by displaying a range of ways in which literature and law can illuminate one another, and in which the conversation between them can illuminate deeper human issues with which both disciplines are concerned.

This volume features a distinguished, international group of scholars and practitioners who provide a comparative account of ethics regulations across four Western democracies: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Italy. They situate conflict-of-interest regulations within a broader discourse involving democratic theory; identify the structural, political, economic, and cultural factors that have contributed to the development of these regulations over time; and assess the extent to which these efforts have succeeded or failed across and within different branches and systems (...) of government. Collectively, they provide an invaluable survey of the development, function, and impact of conflict-of-interest regimes in public life. (shrink)

This article evaluates the experience of an extraordinary mental change of novice female runners that is connected to long-distance running. Two female participants were interviewed regarding their life-changing experience associated with endurance exercise. Descriptions of the lived experience from women who train for marathons were gathered and a phenomenological analysis of the data was conducted which suggests that the women underwent a mental change that improved their self-confidence and enhanced relationships with their selves and others. The six constituents that emerged (...) were: Participants Perception of an Enhancing Outdoor Environment, Life-Style Changes Resulting in More Openness to Others and Self, Discoveries Concerning Self-Improvements, Sustaining a Desired Mental Disposition, Empowerment in Considering New Possibilities, and Support for Encountering Future Challenges. This article demonstrates how a mental change associated with long-distance running positively impacts participants’ personal and professional lives. (shrink)

Social cognition refers to a discipline in which researchers seek to understand social phenomena in terms of models which emphasize the role of cognitive processes (e.g., attention, encoding, cognitive organization, storage, memory) in mediating social thought and action. Although social cognition is a relatively new field, it is important to note that social psychologists have long been concerned with many of the same issues that are central to cognitive science, such as how people store and retrieve information about their environment (...) in memory. Thus, it would be inaccurate to portray the emergence of social cognition as the first time that social psychologists have focused on the role of cognition in mediating social behavior. Nevertheless, it is true that in the mid‐to‐late 1970s, a branch of social psychology emerged which was unique in the extent to which it overlapped with the theoretical orientation of, and the methodological tools employed by, cognitive psychologists. It is this time period that most scholars peg as the era in which social cognition grew and matured as a discipline in its own right. (shrink)

Nursing policy and healthcare reform are focusing on two, interconnected areas: person‐centred care and fundamental care. Each initiative emphasises a positive nurse–patient relationship. For these initiatives to work, nurses require guidance for how they can best develop and maintain relationships with their patients in practice. Although empirical evidence on the nurse–patient relationship is increasing, findings derived from this research are not readily or easily transferable to the complexities and diversities of nursing practice. This study describes a novel methodological approach, called (...) holistic interpretive synthesis (HIS), for interpreting empirical research findings to create practice‐relevant recommendations for nurses. Using HIS, umbrella review findings on the nurse–patient relationship are interpreted through the lens of the Fundamentals of Care Framework. The recommendations for the nurse–patient relationship created through this approach can be used by nurses to establish, maintain and evaluate therapeutic relationships with patients to deliver person‐centred fundamental care. Future research should evaluate the validity and impact of these recommendations and test the feasibility of using HIS for other areas of nursing practice and further refine the approach. (shrink)

There have been recent concerns about an “epidemic of loneliness” during the pandemic, given the pervasiveness of loneliness in the population and its harmful effects on health and well-being. Therefore, it is important to establish the correlates of loneliness. The purpose of the current study was to explore how loneliness relates to a construct termed mattering, which is the feeling of being important to other people. Mattering was assessed with multiple measures in the current study (e.g., mattering in general, fears (...) of not mattering, and mattering to peers). A sample of 172 female psychology undergraduate students aged 18–25 years completed self-report measures of general mattering, mattering to peers, anti-mattering, fear of not mattering, and state and trait loneliness. As predicted, lower levels of both general mattering and mattering to peers were associated with higher state loneliness. Higher feelings of anti-mattering (feelings of being invisible and insignificant to others) and fears of not mattering were associated with greater trait loneliness, as well as a reduced sense of mattering to friends. The findings illustrate that feeling as though one does not matter to others (i.e., feeling insignificant and unimportant) is associated with increased state and trait loneliness among young women. Implications are discussed for loneliness theory and how these results can enhance both clinical understanding and practice. (shrink)

Background People who are at elevated risk of suicide stand to benefit from internet-based interventions; however, research in this area is likely impacted by a range of ethical and practical challenges. The aim of this study was to examine the ethical issues and practical barriers associated with clinical studies of internet-based interventions for suicide prevention. Method This was a mixed-methods study involving two phases. First, a systematic search was conducted to identify studies evaluating internet-based interventions for people at risk of (...) suicide, and information pertaining to safety protocols and exclusion criteria was extracted. Second, investigators on the included studies were invited to complete an online survey comprising open-ended and forced-choice responses. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyse the data. Results The literature search identified 18 eligible studies, of which three excluded participants based on severity of suicide risk. Half of the 15 suicide researchers who participated in the survey had experienced problems obtaining ethics approval, and none had encountered adverse events attributed to their intervention. Survey respondents noted the difficulty of managing risk in online environments and the limitations associated with implementing safety protocols, although some also reported increased confidence resulting from the ethical review process. Respondents recommended researchers pursue a collaborative relationship with their research ethics committees. Conclusion There is a balance to be achieved between the need to minimise the risk of adverse events whilst also ensuring interventions are being validated on populations who may be most likely to use and benefit from them. Further research is required to obtain the views of research ethics committees and research participants on these issues. Dialogue between researchers and ethics committees is necessary to address the need to ensure safety while also advancing the timely development of effective interventions in this critical area. (shrink)

When word pairs having a familiar order are sequentially flashed on a computer in their non-familiar order, , observers have a strong phenomenology of seeing them in familiar order . Reversal errors remained frequent even when participants obtained perceptual experience of reverse-display items by beginning with a block of longer-duration trials. A forced-choice order-detection procedure reduced but did not eliminate reversal errors, showing that “fast pairs” is a robust perceptual illusion. Even adjective + noun pairs showed reversal errors, and reversal (...) errors increased with the log frequency of the word pair, consistent with a strong role for statistical processing at the level of multi-word units. (shrink)

We examine how prior mental health predicts hopes and how hopes predict subsequent mental health, testing hypotheses in a longitudinal study with an Australian nation-wide adult sample regarding mental health consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak during its initial stage. Quota sampling was used to select a sample representative of the adult Australian population in terms of age groups, gender, and geographical location. Mental health measures were selected to include those with the best psychometric properties. Hypotheses were tested using generalized linear (...) models with random intercepts, with the type of GLM determined by the nature of the dependent variable. Greater anxiety, depression, distress, and loneliness predict less hope, but impaired quality of life and stress positively predict hopes of gaining new skills. Distress and loneliness predict hopes for social connectedness and an improved society, suggesting that predictors of hope depend on what is hoped for. These findings suggest the need for more nuanced theories of hope. Greater hopes for societal improvement predict lower anxiety, depression, distress, and impaired quality of life, but greater hopes for skills and better mental health predict higher levels of these covariates. Moreover, when relevant prior psychological states are more intense, the impact of hope state declines. These findings indicate that the consequences of hope are heterogeneous, and suggest a possible explanation for the seemingly inconsistent therapeutic effectiveness of raising hope. (shrink)

People are adept at inferring novel causal relations, even from only a few observations. Prior knowledge about the probability of encountering causal relations of various types and the nature of the mechanisms relating causes and effects plays a crucial role in these inferences. We test a formal account of how this knowledge can be used and acquired, based on analyzing causal induction as Bayesian inference. Five studies explored the predictions of this account with adults and 4-year-olds, using tasks in which (...) participants learned about the causal properties of a set of objects. The studies varied the two factors that our Bayesian approach predicted should be relevant to causal induction: the prior probability with which causal relations exist, and the assumption of a deterministic or a probabilistic relation between cause and effect. Adults’ judgments (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) were in close correspondence with the quantitative predictions of the model, and children’s judgments (Experiments 3 and 5) agreed qualitatively with this account. (shrink)

BackgroundResearchers are working to identify dynamic factors involved in the shift from behavioral initiation to maintenance—factors which may depend on behavioral complexity. We test hypotheses regarding changes in factors involved in behavioral initiation and maintenance and their relationships to behavioral frequency over time, for a simple vs. complex behavior.MethodsData are secondary analyses from a larger RCT, in which young adult women, new to both behaviors, were randomly assigned to take daily calcium or to go for a daily, brisk walk, for (...) 4-weeks. Factors were measured weekly. Multi-level modeling evaluated their change over time. Bivariate correlations and multiple regression determined the relationships between factors and the subsequent-week behavioral frequency.FindingResults were partly in-line with expectations, in that individuals’ intentions and self-efficacy predicted initial behavioral engagement for both behaviors, and habit strength increased for both behaviors, becoming a significant predictor of behavioral frequency in later weeks of the study in some analyses. However, results depended on whether the outcome was self-reported or objectively measured and whether analyses were bivariate or multivariate.DiscussionThe factors theorized to play a role in behavioral maintenance started to develop, but only habit strength predicted behavioral frequency by study-end, for both behaviors. Differences in initiation and maintenance between behaviors of differing complexity may not be as stark as theorized, but longer follow-up times are required to evaluate maintenance factors. (shrink)