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How the Task Irrelevant Emotional Stimulus affect the Information Refreshing of Working Memory: An ERP Study 2016, 39(1): 2-7.  Abstract ( )   PDF (462KB) ( )   Previous studies have shown that the effect of emotional distractor on information storage in Working Memory (WM). The activity of fronto-parietal cortex related to WM is reduced when task irrelevant emotional stimuli presented. Furthermore, the interference effect of acute stress on WM is modulated by the WM load, and this effect was showed on the P3 component. However, how the emotional distractor affects the central executive function, i.e., information refreshing, of WM is not clear. To this end, an emotional N-back task was conducted combine with EEG technique. In this task, the WM load and valence of emotional distractor was manipulated. Participants were performed a digital 2-back or 0-back. In the 0-back task, participants were asked to detect whether the current digit is “1” or not. In the 2-back task, participants were asked to detect whether the current digit is presented two positions back or not. The neutral or negative emotional picture was presented under the digit in each trial. The behavioral results showed that there is a significant main effect of WM load, the participant response faster in the 0-back task than in the 2-back task, and they made less error in the 0-back task than in the 2-back task. For the P3 component, we found significant main effect of WM load, the amplitude of P3 for the 0-back task were larger than for the 2-back task. Furthermore, in the 0-back task, negative distractor elicited smaller P3 than the neutral distractor. However, in the 2-back, the difference between negative and neutral distractor is not significant. These results can easily explain by the recently proposed dual competition model which positing that emotional and cognitive processes, when operating simultaneously, compete with each other for limited neural resources. Specifically, processing of emotional stimuli may interfere with ongoing cognitive processes when cognitive resources are not entirely devoted to goal-directed processing under a lower task demanding condition. In contrast, the interference effect is attenuated due to the suppression of emotional processing under a high task demanding condition. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Emotion on Cognition Inhibition for Trait Anxiety Jing-Xin WANG 2016, 39(1): 8-12.  Abstract ( )   PDF (273KB) ( )   “Processing efficiency theory” considered that anxiety impaired attention control which was the core of the executive function and then anxiety people may have poor performance on executive function, while others found that anxiety did not have impact on executive function, It is still an open question whether the cognition of anxiety people was damaged. Anxious people are easily distracted by threat-related information and are impaired in their ability to regulate attention to threatening stimuli. This attentional bias in favor of threat-related information is well established for both clinical anxiety and trait anxiety in the nonpathological range. Consequently, emotion stimulus may affect the cognition of anxiety people than that of normal participants. The present study investigates how different emotions affect the cognition inhibition for trait anxiety participants. A 3 (emotion type: positive, negative, neutral) × 3 (task type: congruent, incongruent, irrelevant) × 2 (participant type: trait anxiety, normal) mixed experiment design was carried out. 144 pictures were selected from CAPS (48 positive, 48 negative, 48 neutral) to induce participants’ emotion, Stroop task was used to induce cognition inhibition. Fifty-seven participants selected from 1055 university students took part in the experiment, the students whose score on the trait anxiety questionnaire exceed 57 for girl and 56 for boy were labeled as trait anxiety participants and the students whose score on the trait anxiety questionnaire below 30 were labeled as normal participants. We found that the Stroop effect of trait anxiety was larger than that of normal participants. The Stroop effect after positive and negative emotion were larger than that after neutral emotion. The results illustrated that the cognition inhibition which was destroied of trait anxiety was impaired by positive and negative emotions for all the participants. Related Articles | Metrics

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How Accentuation Influences the Allocation of Temporally Selective Attention during On-line Spoken Language Comprehension 2016, 39(1): 13-21.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1067KB) ( )   Previous studies have found that accentuation plays a very important role in spoken language comprehension. However, the specific mechanisms of accentuation affecting spoken language processing remain matters of debate. One account is that accentuation is related to the focus distribution of the sentence, the other is that accentuation influences speech processing by modulating the allocation of selective attention. The purpose of the current study is to explore (1) how accentuation influences the allocation of temporally selective attention during on-line spoken language comprehension. In Chinese, different lexical tones’ pitch patterns are different when being accented, so we want to explore (2) how the effect of accentuation on attention allocation changes with lexical tones. To study temporally selective attention, the EEG technique and attention probe paradigm were used in the present study. A linguistic attention probe ‘ba’ was presented concurrently with the critical word in the sentence. The materials used in the present study were isolated Chinese spoken sentences, i.e. sentences presented without explicitly provided discourse-level contextual information. All the critical words were single Chinese words. The stimuli were presented through E-prime 1.1. The critical word in the carrier sentence was either accented (Accent) or de-accented (DeAccent). Meanwhile, its lexical tone was either tone three (Tone Three) or not (not Tone Three)（tone one or tone four）. Thirdly, the critical word in every sentence was added with a linguistic attention probe (a pure tone “ba” lasting 50ms) or not. Subjects were instructed to listen to the sentences carefully but ignore the probe. The brain electrical activity was recorded from 64 electrodes mounted on the participants’ heads with Neuroscan 4.3 software (NeuroScan, Herndon, VA, USA). Firstly, to estimate whether N1 effect was elicited by the attention probe, we analyzed the eight original ERP waveforms and found that, relative to the critical words without probe, the critical words with probe elicited a larger N1 effect. Secondly, to examine how accentuation and lexical tone modulated the N1 effect, difference waveforms (the condition with probe subtracts the condition without probe) in the four experimental conditions (Accent-Tone Three, Accent-not Tone Three, DeAccent-Tone Three, DeAccent-not Tone Three). The results showed that, relative to the DeAccent condition, the Accent condition elicited an earlier N1 effect [F（1,18）=7.75，P<0.001], and the N1 effect of accentuation was not changed with lexical tones. Furthermore, to examine how accentuation and lexical tone influenced the later stage of semantic processing, the original ERP waveforms elicited by the critical word that was not added with an attention probe was analyzed. The results showed that, in the time window of N400, accented critical words elicited a larger N400 than de-accented critical words [F(1，18)=27.84，P<0.001]. No significant interaction between accentuation and lexical tone was found. These results indicated that, during on-line speech processing, accentuation can modulate temporally selective attention （the information that was accented can attract more attention） and consequently influence the depth of subsequent semantic processing. The effect of accentuation on attention allocation was not affected by lexical tones. Combining the results of time window of N1 and N400 we speculate that accentuation can influence speech processing by modulating listeners’ selective attention. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effect of psychological distance on trend damping in judgmental forecating Xiu-Xin WANG Xiu-Fang DU 2016, 39(1): 28-35.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1166KB) ( )   Trend damping is one of the biases of judgmental forecasting, which means that when people forecast from time series with noises, they always damp trends in data so that forecasts lie below upward trends but above downward trends. In other words, they underestimate the steepness of the series. Previous researches mainly focused on the effect of the characteristic or presentation of series on trend damping, but rarely cared about the situational factors, such as psychological distance. Present research focus on the effect of psychological distance and series characteristics (trend and slope) on trend damping in judgmental forecasting. In term of construal level theory(CLT), general trends convey a high-level, abstract rule about how the future will manifest itself, whereas deviation from trends represent a low-level, concrete exception to the rule. And CLT related researches suggested that different psychological distances may show similar influence on construal and psychological consequence. So we assumed that distant psychological distance may similar led to less trend damping, while near distance led to more trend damping. Three experiments was designed to explore the effect of psychological distance and series characteristics(trend and slope) on trend damping, while experiment 1 focused on spatial distance, experiment 2 cared about social distance, experiment 3 manipulated temporal distance. The materials were time series which were constructed using power-law functions, of the general form: y=100+300×（x/48）k, then add Gaussian noise with M=0, SD=10, where y represents number of pixels above the x-axis, x has the dimension time, and k controls the acceleration of the function. Downward trends were completely symmetric with upward ones, and the symmetry axis was y=250. The dependent variable was the D-value of predictive value and truth-value, true value minus predictive value for upward trend, predictive value minus true value for downward trend. When the dependent variable>0, trend damping was occurred, the bigger of the dependent variable, the larger of damping effect. The results showed that: 1) Individuals tended to damp trends when forecast. 2) The damping effect was greater when the trend was downward than upward, when the slope of time series was bigger. 3) The influence of different psychological distances on trend damping was different, the damping effect was not different between different spatial distances, but was smaller when forecast for others rather than for themselves, when forecast for temporal near situation rather than temporal distal. The no effect of spatial distance on trend damping may result from that spatial distance doesn’t affect the slope of prediction. As hypothesis showed, when forecasting for others rather than for themselves, individuals rely more on general trend, which result in less damping effect. But when forecasting for distant future, as the adaptation account of trend damping shows, individuals may rely more on the implicit negative acceleration mode which is the representation of the developing trend of natural series, which led to larger damping effect. In other words, the implicit negative acceleration mode of trend may be more abstract representation of the trend than the global trend, and when forecasting for distant future, individuals rely more on it. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effects of Logic-Belief Conflict and Problem Difficulty on Logic and Belief Judgment 2016, 39(1): 36-42.  Abstract ( )   PDF (428KB) ( )   Dual-process theories dominate contemporary research on human reasoning, although the various instantiations of dual-process theories differ somewhat in terms of their architectural assumptions, they all posit that reasoning reflects a sophisticated interplay between heuristic processes that are fast, automatic, require little cognitive capacity on the one hand, and analytic processes that are slow, controlled, draw heavily on working memory on the other hand. Despite dual process assumption have gained support from a wide range of sources, little consensus exists as to the details of interaction between the two kinds of operations. The Default-Interventional Model and the Parallel-Competition Model make different assumptions about the sequencing of heuristic and analytic process. Both models have gained some supports, but can not capture the full range of available data. The aim of the current study was to test the predictive power of the two models. The current study examined the impact of belief-logic conflict on accuracy and latency of responding for participants who were asked to solve simple transitive reasoning and difficulty syllogistic reasoning problem, in which participants were instructed to evaluate the conclusions of logical arguments on the basis of either their logical validity or their believability. Both transitive and syllogistic reasoning item included conflict problems and non-conflict problems. Each trial consisted of the presentation of the premises alone, participants then press the space bar on a key-board, the premises disappeared and was replaced by the instruction cue, the conclusion and the response options. Latency of response was recorded from the presentation of the conclusion on the screen until a response was provided. The results showed that belief-logic conflict influenced participants’ belief judgments when they solved simple problems, but belief-logic conflict had no effects on the participants’ logic judgments. The accuracy of participants’ belief judgments on conflict items was higher than that of participants’ belief judgments on non-conflict ones, the response latency of participants’ belief judgments on conflict items was longer than that of participants’ belief judgments on non-conflict ones. Moreover, when participants solved difficulty problems, belief-logic conflict had a significant much larger effect on latencies for logic judgments than for belief judgments. In short, the presence of a conflict between logic and belief had a much larger effect on belief judgments than on logic judgments of simple problems, while the belief-logic conflict had a larger effect on logic judgment than on belief judgment of difficulty problems. There was no evidence to the predictions which were derived from the principles that underlie the Default-Interventionist Model, but the Parallel-Competitive Model can capture the data pattern of the study. The results of the experiment suggest that the heuristic processes and analytic processes were activated simultaneously in the course of reasoning to compete for the final response, the process that completes first cues a response which may need to be inhibited in favor of an alternative less rapidly cued response, depending on task instructions, and task difficulty, and support the Parallel-Competitive Model. Related Articles | Metrics

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The animacy effect of the head nouns in Chinese relative clause processing he wenguang 2016, 39(1): 43-49.  Abstract ( )   PDF (637KB) ( )   Subject relative clauses (SRCs) and object relative clause (ORCs) are complex sentences with multiple embedded clauses in human language, so they are more useful materials for human to explore the inner relationships between syntax and semantic. As well, SRCs and ORCs are effective materials for exploring human cognitive mechanism. Many studies in Indo-European language literature have shown that SRCs were easier to process than ORCs at regions of the internal-relative-clause and the matrix verb. What’s more, the differences in processing SRCs and ORCs were mediated by the animacy configuration of the head noun phrases in the internal-relative clause and the matrix. There are few studies conducted to explore the processing difficulties of Chinese RCs, although these phenomena are prevalent in Chinese text. Moreover, very few studies aiming to explore the animacy effect of the head noun phrases due to the paucity of the field. This paper aimed to study the processing difficulties of Chinese SRCs or ORCs with different animacy configuration by eye-movement tracking paradigm. According to the syntactic locality dependency accounts, SRCs would be more difficulty to process than ORCs in Chinese at regions of the internal-relative-clause, the head noun phrases and the head verbs in matrix, for the syntactic distance between the filler and the gap in SRCs was longer than that in ORCs. While according to the thematic fit accounts, the difficulties in processing Chinese RCs would vary with the animacy configuration of the head noun phrase in the internal-relative-clause and the matrix. What’s more, the differences in RTs were mainly found at regions of the head noun phrases and the verb in matrix, in which arguments were constructed and semantics were integrated. A 2×2 within subjects design was adopted with independent variables of reaction time (RT) and mean accuracy on comprehension questions. The results showed that the animacy configuration of the head nouns indeed had effects on Chinese relative clause processing. Specifically, ORCs with animate-inanimate configuration were easier to process at the first two words, the relativizer (de), the head nouns, and the head verbs than SRCs, but no differences in processing ease were found between SRCs and ORCs at the head nouns and the head verbs under inanimate-animate configuration, which were partially consistent with predictions of the thematic fit accounts. Another aim of this paper was to explore the time course of the animacy effect of the head nouns in Chinese relative clause processing by eye-movement tracking paradigm based on the first-fixation time, the first-pass time, the regression path duration, the total time and the skipping rate. No differences were found in early eye-movements measures, such as the first-fixation time, the first-pass time, but significant differences were found in later eye-movements, such as the regression path duration, the total time. Which were different from findings from Indo-European language literature. The results showed that the animacy effect mainly took place in the late time course in processing Chinese relative clause, when retrieving semantic and constructing thematic relationships, which indicated some specials in processing complex sentences in Chinese. Related Articles | Metrics

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The modulation of background color on congruency sequence effect 2016, 39(1): 50-55.  Abstract ( )   PDF (761KB) ( )   Cognitive control is essential for human to adapt to rapidly changing environment. Performance on congruency tasks has long been considered a useful model for probing cognitive control processing. In particular, the congruency sequence effects provide a direct window onto online adjustments in cognitive control. The congruency sequence effects refer to that the interference effect is smaller after incongruent trials than after congruent trials in the congruency tasks. Previous studies have indicated that the congruency sequence effects are influenced by subject factors (e.g., motivation and emotion). However, there is little research on the effect of the direct environmental variables (e.g., the environmental color) on the congruency sequence effects. And lines of research have suggested that color can exert influence on cognition and behavioral performance. Therefore, we speculated that the effect of background color on the on-going adjustment of cognitive control is a critical but ignored issue. The present study employed the four-letter flanker task, which was presented by E-Prime software (Psychological Software Tools, Pittsburgh, PA, USA) and investigated whether the congruency sequence effects were influenced by the gray, blue, and red backgrounds. In each trial, a line of five letters was presented: the central one was the target, and the remaining letters were the flankers. Four letters (i.e., S, H, N, and P) were employed in the task, and each letter could be a target or a flanker. In the congruent trials, the flankers were identical to the target (e.g., NNNNN), and in the incongruent trials, the flankers were mapped onto a different response hand to the target stimulus (e.g., SSNSS). Participants were instructed to press the key corresponding to the central letter. Responses were made using one of four different fingers (i.e., left middle finger, left index finger, right index finger and right middle finger). The four responses corresponded to four keys (i.e., 1 key, 2 key, 9 key, and 0 key). The flanker task consisted of three blocks, and each block was set as one color and comprised 192 trials. Stimuli were presented in a pseudorandom order in which the numbers of CC, CI, IC, and II trial sequences were counterbalanced. In order to control for repetition priming and feature integration effects, target and flanker stimuli were always alternated across trials. The order of a trial was as follows. After a 300 ms fixation displayed, followed by a random blank presented for 300-500 ms, and the letter array was presented in the center of screen for 200 ms. Then, a blank screen was presented for 1, 500 ms, during which period participants were instructed to press the corresponding key as quickly and as accurately as possible. After another random blank screen, lasting for 800-1, 200 ms, the next trial started. The results showed that the background color type × previous trial × current trial congruency repeated-measures ANOVA on RT data revealed a significant three-way interaction effect (p < .05). The congruency sequence effects were significant on gray and red backgrounds (p < .01; p < .01), however the congruency sequence effect was absent within blue background (p > .05). Additionally, we found that there were significant flanker interference effects across the three backgrounds (p < .001; p < .001; p < .001), but there is no significant difference between them (p > .05). These results suggested that the blue background affected the congruency sequence effect; however, the interference effect was not be modulated by the background color. The present study, for the first time, reveals the impact of the background colors on the on-going adjustment of cognitive control and furthers our understanding of the congruency sequence effect. Related Articles | Metrics

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Reducing the vividness and emotional impact of autobiographical memories: The importance of Self-Regulation Depletion 2016, 39(1): 56-62.  Abstract ( )   PDF (536KB) ( )   According to previous research, the research thought of sad image motion of the individual spontaneous circulation, and interference, the content of these images is derived from the negative life events of the past. According to the autobiographical memory model, the study says it is because of people in the knowledge base of autobiography, these images are composed of many feel a particular event details of fragments rather than the overall storage, thus leading to extracting incomplete or inaccurate. Williams et al. (2007) has been confirmed after healthy individuals by the ego depletion, the vividness of autobiographical memory will be relatively reduced, and there were few studies have confirmed that ego depletion whether vividness of autobiographical memory. The purpose of the research study is to investigate that the ego depletion influent emotional vividness of autobiographical memory and emotional intensity. Andrade et al. concluded that interfering with the visuospatial slave system of working memory could potentially be used to blunt the emotional intensity of traumatic images during therapy, and thus provide an intervention tool for severely distressed patients. The therapeutic benefit of a visuospatial interference task during imaginal reliving rests on the assumption that traumatic images are visual in content. Although visual representations are indeed most common, intrusive images do occur in other modalities (e.g., sounds, smells, bodily sensations), and often comprise several sensory components (Ehlers et al., 2002; Hackmann, Clark, & McManus, 2000). Kavanagh et al. (2001) suggested that these patients might benefit from an auditory interference task during imaginal reliving treatment. Although Andrade et al. (1997) reported no effect of concurrent articulatory suppression on ratings of vividness and emotionality of distressing images, their null finding may well reflect the emphasis on the visual sensory modality in their methodology. In particular, they used visual stimuli (photographs) to elicit emotive images, and chose anchors for their vividness rating scale that encouraged participants to form specifically visual images. Hence the effect of a concurrent phonological load on emotive imagery has yet to be adequately tested. Theoretically, dual-task interference from concurrent visuospatial or auditory tasks should depend on the specific sensory modality of the image. Thus, the present experiments were designed to investigate the effects of concurrent visual and auditory interference on emotive imagery, but using stimulus materials and rating scales that were not a priori biased towards the visual sensory modality. If the disruption proves specific to the modality of the image, this would provide a far stronger test of the applicability of the working memory model. In experiment 1, the present study used a Color Stroop task and Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT), involving to test the hypothesis that deplete self-regulation resources could analogously reduce the vividness and emotional impact of autobiographical. Our hypothesis that depleted participants would retrieve fewer specific memories to cues on the AMT relative to controls was supported, even when levels of mood were covaried. The results indicate that self-regulation depletion can reduce vividness and emotional intensity of emotion-related autobiographical memory. In experiment 2, the present study used Working Memory Model and Dual task interference paradigm. The results indicate that concurrent articulation don’t reduce vividness and emotional intensity ratings of auditory images to a greater extent than did eye movements, whereas concurrent eye movement and articulatory suppression reduce vividness and emotional intensity ratings of auditory images to a less extent than The central executive system. Such modality-specific dual-task interference could usefully contribute to the treatment and management of intrusive distressing images in both clinical and non-clinical settings. Related Articles | Metrics

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Malevolent Creativity: Concept, Measurement, Influence Factors and Future Research 2016, 39(1): 63-68.  Abstract ( )   PDF (355KB) ( )   Abstract: Positivity bias existed widely in the research of creativity in the past. People believed that creativity is a good thing, so it can produce good results. While in the fact creativity has its dark side. In recent years researchers introspect the tendency of creativity worship. They begin to face up to the negative consequences of creativity and promote a series of studies about The Dark Side of Creativity. This paper reviews the study of malevolent creativity, including the concept, Measurement, Influence Factors and outlook of it. Clark and James (1999) used problem-solving tasks, which need the subjects to measure malevolent creativity. They asked the subjects to solve a negative problem. Problem-solving tasks pattern was the application of consensual assessments test in creativity measurement. It assessed the creativity products through expert evaluation. So this method emphasized the measurement of malevolent creativity products. It didn’t aim at the thinking process of malevolent creativity. Lee and Dow (2011) used divergent thinking test to measure malevolent Creativity. For example, they asked the subjects to think up the use of brick and pencil as much as possible. Harris et al. improved these two methods. They used Positivity versus Negativity Solution Evaluation Scale to evaluate the negative and original feature of the subjects’ answer. Harris et al. absorbed the negative and original feature into the evaluation standard, which make up the measurement shortage of Clark &James and Lee &Dow. Some researches show that the activation of creativity is related to situational factors, such as social climate, cultural environment and social complexity. Clark and James discovered that individual would produce malevolent creativity when they encounter unfair treatment in the organization. Some indicate that personality trait, especially aggressiveness has a close relationship with malevolent creativity. Aggressiveness may motivated malevolent creativity fundamentally. The others state negative correlation is found between emotional intelligence and malevolent creativity. Potential malevolent creators can be screened out by analyzing their emotional intelligence. Motivation and mood are also closely related to the generation of malevolent creativity, while the result needs to be verified further. As a new research topic in recent years, malevolent creativity has become more and more popular. While this area still has many undeveloped aspects and needs to be improved further. For example, there has some defects in the existing definition of malevolent creativity. Malevolent creativity emphasizes ‘intentional injuries’, while it is hard to discriminate intentional injuries and unintentional injuries objectively. Most researchers judge the purpose according to the malicious activity, which has no essential difference with negative creativity. There are also deficiencies in the measuring method. Firstly, we can not ensure that the subject’s malevolence is motivated, because the test can be accomplished in harmlessness state. Secondly, laboratory test may lead that the subjects are unwilling to express the true thought, so implicit measurement should be regarded as an important view in the future’ test designing. Beyond that, the existing creativity study experience should be used for reference to promote the empirical research of malevolent creativity, such as using ERP classical paradigm in insight problem study to investigate the neural mechanisms of malevolent creativity. Related Articles | Metrics

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Embodied theory of semantic representation: a key role of emotion in conceptual representation Zhao Yao 2016, 39(1): 69-76.  Abstract ( )   PDF (327KB) ( )   Conceptual representation is a hot topic of cognitive science, how abstract concepts are represented is one of the controversial issues for embodied cognition. Although much is known about the representation and processing of concrete concepts, knowledge of what abstract semantics might be is severely limited. Up to the present, research into semantic and conceptual representation has focused almost exclusively on how concrete word meanings and concepts are represented and processed, to the exclusion of abstract word meanings and concepts. However, the ability to communicate through language about abstract concepts, such as “courage,” “dignity,” and “revenge,” lies at the heart of what it means to be human, and no theory of semantic or conceptual representation is complete without an explicit account of how abstract knowledge is acquired, represented, and processed. The Metaphor Representation Theory proposed that abstract concepts are viewed as originating in ‘‘image schemas’’ (i.e. the use of a concrete conceptual domain of knowledge to describe an abstract conceptual domain). For example English consistently uses language concerning “throwing and catching” to describe “communication of ideas”. The Perceptual Symbols Theory proposed that abstract concepts are represented by multimodal mental simulations and are more likely than concrete concepts to be framed against events unfolding over time, to involve introspection, and to require focusing of attention on specific aspects of the event simulation. In short, these two theory suppose that ‘‘image schemas’’ or “situations” contributes to the representation and processing of abstract concepts. In contrast, Embodied Theory of Semantic Representation proposed by Vigliocco et al. (2009) supposes that “emotional experiential information” plays a crucial role in the representation and processing of abstract concepts. A core and novel element of this proposal is the idea that both concrete and abstract concepts bind different types of information: experiential information (sensory, motor, and emotional/affective) and also linguistic information. However, concrete and abstract semantic representations differ in terms of whether sensory, motor, or emotional information have the greatest weight, with sensory-motor information being more preponderant for concrete concepts and emotional information playing a greater role for abstract concepts. In a word, differences between concrete and abstract concepts arise as a result of the proportion and exact type of experiential and linguistic information from which they are derived. Concrete concepts are grounded in our sensory–motor experience, emotional experience is crucial in the grounding of abstract concepts. Recent studies provide evidences that abstract words contain more emotional information than concrete words. Some behavioral and fMRI results indicate that the processing of abstract words is facilitated by their more emotional associations and abstract words engage the affective system by virtue of having more affective associations than concrete words (Vigliocco et al., 2014).Crucially, Kousta et al. (2011) found that the processing advantage for abstract words was due to differences in emotional valence (whether the words have positive, negative, or neutral) between concrete and abstract words. These researches suggest that the critical role of emotional experiential information underlying abstract words is influenced by their emotional valence. Thus, future studies should focus on the factors of emotion experiential information in the processing of words, such as the richness of linguistic information, emotional arousal or individual's emotional state. Related Articles | Metrics

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The multi-sensory channel processing of face emotion 2016, 39(1): 77-82.  Abstract ( )   PDF (314KB) ( )   Abstract The recognition of face emotion in multi-channel processing means any effects involving in various channels, especially in vision, audition, and olfaction. In real life, faces are always recognized together with their corresponding environmental conditions. Considering the actual situation, researches bring in other potential factors affecting the processing procedure. Previous studies focused mainly on the role of body cues. For both of them are visual cues, the body languages and face emotions recognition may share same processing modes and adjacent brain area, so the interaction between each other is not surprising. As we know, a number of sounds and odors are also perceived as emotional stimuli, and they also contain some certain cognitive emotional elements. Even if these interactions exist in some certain conditions, a lot of researches are conducted to reveal the internal mechanism. We reviewed evidence from multiple research projects in numerous types, all providing support for the idea that multi-channel information plays an important role in processing emotional faces. The origin of the related context effects are elucidated in the introduction. Based on varied channels, we details body language, emotional sounds and particular odors systematically influence the face perception in part 2, part 3 and part 4, respectively. In each part, researchers learned interaction effects among the related factors by participants’ behavioral reaction. And their timing, potential mechanisms, related cortical activities are discussed in ERP and brain imaging technology studies. A set of extent problems and prospects on are raised in part 5. The information in each channel involved in face emotion recognition are used efficiently, and they influence on the procedure itself based on the certain condition. The effects work at the perceptual level instead of higher mental activity. It indicates that in “real life” what we see as angry, fearful, and so forth, is not the faces that we see, but is the result of combination of information from different channels. The early processing of body language is also automatic, and it has overlap with face emotion processing on the perception mode and nerve networks. Specifically, it shifts the scanning pattern of emotional faces when identification information is insufficient. Sounds contain not only human voice, but the artificial sounds also influence on emotion recognition. Olfactory stimuli often modulate face emotion processing under the condition of unconscious identification, but women are especially sensitive to subtle smells and so on. Researches in the future could bring in more interdisciplinary techniques to systematically build network modals for investigating the physical attributes of face perception. Key words facial expression, multi-channel effects, face emotion recognition, body language, emotional sounds, olfactory signals Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Psychological resilience on attachment among college students: The Mediating Role of emotion regulation strategies and meta-emotion 2016, 39(1): 83-89.  Abstract ( )   PDF (735KB) ( )   There is considerable evidence that attachment security is associated with many cognitive, emotional, and social benefits, one of the ways is by fostering an open flexible, and optimistic approach to life’s diverse and unpredictable challenges, which is the core concept of psychological resilience (Caldwell & Shaver, 2012). Psychological resilience is the ability of individuals in otherwise normal circumstances to maintain relatively stable, healthy levels of psychological and physical functioning, as well as the capacity for generative experiences and positive emotions (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2013). Ample evidence in the literature have found that individuals higher in psychological resiliency are better able to recover from negative emotional experiences and flexibly adapt to the fluctuating demands of stressful experiences. The attachment system is, in itself, an emotion regulation device and the effects of the attachment system on emotion regulation can be charted (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2010). Attachment-system activation and proximity seeking are integral parts of a person’s regulatory efforts, and they play an important role in shaping a person’s emotional responses. Beyond these normative links between attachment processes and emotion regulation, individual differences in attachment-system functioning affect how people appraise emotion-eliciting events and the regulation. A sense of attachment security promotes the regulatory processes that allow emotions to be experienced and expressed without defensive distortion, which contribute to higher level of meta-emotion and more positive emotion experience (Fullam, 2002). In contrast, attachment insecurities contribute to distortion or denial of emotional experience, which result in defective meta-emotion and more health problem and negative emotion experience (Laan, Van Assen, & Vingerhoets Laan, 2012). Individual with an avoidant attachment style may inhibit or suppress their emotion, and anxiety attachment individuals would intensify the undesirable emotions. Consider of the regulation of affect is central to resilience and attachment, the purpose of this study is to explore the unclear mechanism between attachment and psychological resilience. In this study, we used the structure equation model to investigate whether emotion regulation strategies and meta-emotion mediated the relationship between psychological resilience and attachment. Participants were 982 adolescents (471 boys and 511 girls) who attended high schools, and they completed the Experiences in Close Relationships Inventory (ECR), the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS) and the Ego Resilience Scale (ERS). The results indicated that: (1) Emotion regulation strategies (reappraisal and suppression) and meta-emotion could predict individuals’ psychological resilience significantly. (2) Reappraisal and meta-emotion mediated the relationship between psychological resilience and attachment anxiety. (3) Attachment avoidance not only directly influenced psychological resilience but also indirectly influenced psychological resilience through reappraisal and meta-emotion. Therefore, we concluded that attachment anxiety, avoidance and emotion regulation strategies, meta-emotion were the crucial elements of psychological resilience, more importantly, emotion regulation strategies, and meta-emotion have a significant mediating effect on psychological resilience and attachment. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications of the findings from the study were discussed, the findings enriched the theory of attachment and psychological resilience, and the results could contribute to our understanding of the mental health for adolescents. Related Articles | Metrics

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Generalizabiltity Analysis of Teaching Level Evaluation for College Teachers 2016, 39(1): 90-96.  Abstract ( )   PDF (952KB) ( )   In order to improve the quality of college teaching, colleges in China have evaluation for college teachers teaching level every semester. Generally speaking, colleges have students evaluate each one of their curriculum teacher. Since each teacher teaches different classes, there will be a few results for each one of them and a concordant conclusion for each teacher cannot be drawn. On the other hand, factors which influence the results are multiple. For instance, too little students take part in the evaluation leads to low reliability of the result, students with different kinds of majors pay different attention to indexes, different kinds of curriculums gain disproportion grade and because of students focusing on different issues through different periods, time point is another factor that affects results. This study, based on generalizability theory, offers a method to solve the problem which is mentioned above and discusses the factors which affect results of Teaching Level Evaluation for college teachers. The data collected by the scale of Teachers’ Teaching Level Evaluation and collected from 19 curriculums, 7 of which are liberal arts curriculums and the other 11 are science curriculums. 558 data were collected at the beginning of the semester on March and 566 collected at the end of the semester on December, of which involved 5 liberal arts majors, 10 science majors and 4 engineering majors. All the data was saved to the txt format and analyzed with mGENOVA. According to the generalizability theory, evaluation taken by specific number of students is reliable enough to measure teaching level of one teacher. The generalizability theory uses index of dependability (Φ) instead of validity used in classical test theory to judge the reliability of results. In terms of needed number of evaluators, the D study result shows that reliability raises while the number increases and it is appropriate to have 20 students evaluate each teacher. The study also finds out that students major in engineering course, who pay more attention to practical issue, have higher reliability for five indexes of the scale than students major in liberal arts course or science course have. In addition, when students evaluate their teachers who teach science course, the result is more reliable than when they evaluate teachers of liberal arts. Last but not least, it turns out that the evaluation taken at the beginning of the semester is more reliable than the evaluation taken at the end of the semester. The conclusions are as follows: (1) Compared to the result taken at the end of the semester, the result taken at the beginning of next semester has a higher reliability. (2) Students with different kinds of major pay different attention on five indexes, which affects the reliability of evaluation. (3) Evaluation reliability for science curriculum is higher than evaluation reliability for liberal arts curriculum. (4) To ensure the reliability of evaluation, 20 students are needed to participate in the evaluation for each teacher. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Adolescents' Social Networking Site Use on Self-concept clarity: The Mediating Role of Social Comparison 2016, 39(1): 97-102.  Abstract ( )   PDF (455KB) ( )   With the rapid rise and popularity among people all over the world, social network sites have become an important mean and platform of interpersonal interaction, and the impact of social network sites’ use has also become a focus of attention of relevant research scholars. Social network sites, aiming at encouraging people to build and maintain a network of friends, provides a necessarily supplementary way to interact with others, which has an important effect on individuals’ psychological and social adaption. Researches has revealed that: the use of social networking sites could increase individual’s social capital, reduce individual’s loneliness, and promote life satisfaction and subjective well-being. But some researchers have also found inconsistent results - the use of social networking sites was significantly and negatively correlated with self-esteem and happiness, and significantly and positively correlated with depression. For these inconsistent results , researchers have pointed that the impact of social network sites’ use on individual was affected by other variables. At the same time, current researches are mainly focusing on the impact of social network sites’ use on individual’s psychosocial adaptation. But the core development task of adolescents, the formation and development of self, has not got enough attention. Previous studies have pointed that, individuals could construct themselves through self-presentation and self exploration on social network sites because social network sites could provide teenagers with an ideal self-exploration space. While Valkenburg and Peter (2011) outlined the self-concept fragmentation hypothesis: the opportunities that internet afforded individuals to interact with many different people in diverse online environments - in some cases adopting a different　personality in each one - undermined their ability to coordinate the multiple facets of themselves into a coherent whole, and this hypothesis has been confirmed by several researches. On this basis, the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of social network site on self-concept clarity, and further explored the effect of social comparison orientation. And a survey had been conducted to examine the relationship among social network site use, social comparison orientation and self-concept clarity of middle and high school students. The participants were 697 middle school students; and three questionnaires were used in this study: the Scale for Social Network Site Use Intensity, Iowa－Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure, and Self-concept Clarity Scale. The results indicated that: (1) Social network site use was positively correlated with social comparison orientation, but social network site use and social comparison orientation were negatively correlated with self-concept clarity. (2) The mediating effect of social comparison orientation was significant in social network site use’s effect on self-concept clarity. That’s to say, not only could social network site use significantly predicted self-concept clarity, but it could also affect self-concept clarity through the mediating role of social comparison orientation. This indicated that, though the social network site use has a positive effect on individuals’ psychological and social adaption, it also has a negative impact on individual’ self-development. This seemingly contradictory result reflects the different aspects of social networking site’s effect on individuals, and suggest we should attaches great importance to the variables affecting social network sites’ effect on individuals, and also guide teenagers to view friends’ information in social network sites objectively and reasonably. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Motivations and Influences of the Adolescents’ Online Presentation of Non-Suicidal Self-Injury 2016, 39(1): 103-108.  Abstract ( )   PDF (310KB) ( )   The Non-suicidal self-injury(NSSI)refers to purposeful acts (e.g., cutting, carving, burning) in which individuals damage their own body tissue for nonsuicidal reasons (e.g., to regulate affect, punish self, communicate a need to others). This is a type of dangerous behavior which could result in harms to individuals both physically and psychologically, and is most commonly seen in adolescents. With the widespread of the Internet, network has become an indispensable part of people’s life. Adolescents and young adults use the Internet more than any other age-groups; moreover, youth who self-injure may engage more in online activities compared with those who do not self-injure. Thus, the presentation of NSSI on the Internet has received increasing empirical attention. It has been revealed that most non-suicidal self-injurers who present their NSSI on the Internet were female of 12 to 20 years old. These adolescents show their NSSI on the Internet through words, pictures and videos. Researchers use content analysis to analyze these information and results showed that contents of the online NSSI presentation include the following aspects mainly: NSSI behaviors(e.g.: new wound, tools, bloody NSSI scene),treatment of the wound(e.g.: clean the blade before NSSI, clean up the wound after NSSI), methods of hiding scars; there are also the descriptions of the NSSI triggers, their addiction to NSSI, the professional help-seeking experience, etc. Although empirical research is rare, recent reports based on investigations of NSSI and online NSSI presentation suggest that the motivations of online NSSI presentation were considered as follows: 1) most Non-suicidal self-injure adolescents tend to feel themselves as worthless, and when their needs of self-esteem cannot be fulfilled in real life, they may try to win praise from net friends by showing their NSSI online; 2)non-suicidal self-injure adolescents are usually frustrated with emotional expression in everyday life, and the world of Internet is supposed to be a safety place for them to show their NSSI and express their bad feelings, through which those repressed negative emotions would be released; 3) by showing their wound and experiences online, they can get social support and acceptance from those who were able to understanding them. The online NSSI presentation may have both beneficial and detrimental influences on youth who are engaging in NSSI. Those who assume that the presentation of NSSI online have a positive impact on the NSSI individuals considered that by showing NSSI online, those repressed needs could be satiated and social support could be gained through the Internet. In addition, having the chance to establish contact with other NSSI individuals also can be beneficial. However, more researchers argued that despite these benefits, showing NSSI on the Internet might be harmful. They believed that the presentation of NSSI could activate the urges of NSSI for some individuals being exposed to the information. And repeated exposure to NSSI materials, especially for those claimed that NSSI behaviors were not as painful as expected, may reduce the fears and hesitation that help to protect individuals from NSSI. Related Articles | Metrics

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Cognitive Neural Characteristics of the Emotion Regulation Strategies in Different Attachment Styles Ying Liu Jing ZHAI Xu CHEN 2016, 39(1): 109-115.  Abstract ( )   PDF (310KB) ( )   How to regulate emotions and feelings is an important characterization of adult attachment. Adult attachment is a systematic pattern shaped by the interactive combination of the innate attachment behavior system and the special attachment experiences. Ainsworth firstly developed the Strange Situation test and identified three distinct patterns of attachment: anxious, avoidant and secure. Individuals with anxious attachment usually show a strong need for intimacy and are afraid of being refused. They chronically show overactivated emotional reactions that often cause concern among others. Individuals with avoidant attachment often suppress their emotions or deactivate their emotional expressions, which helps them to maintain a sufficient distance from others. They are both insecure attachment with poor emotion regulation abilities. Individuals who are securely attached can effectively deal with their emotional needs; they also frequently share their feelings with others, which can promote interpersonal communication and emotion regulation. The relationship between adult attachment styles and emotion regulation is also an important part of Bowlby’s researches. Integrating with Gross’s emotion regulation theory, this article discussed event- related potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging neural characteristics of emotion regulation among anxious attachment, avoidant attachment and secure attachment. Gross’s theory divides the emotion regulation strategies in accordance with emotional reaction. Before the emotional reaction, it’s the antecedent- focused emotion regulation, including situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment and cognitive reappraisal; after the emotional reaction, it’s the response- focused emotion regulation, including expression suppression. What’s more, it’s also helpful to clarify individual’s mental characteristics by discussing the regulation of negative emotion and positive emotion. First, this article discussed the emotion regulation strategies in anxious attachment. Through the study of the early compositions (C1, P2, P300), amygdala and other brain regions, it was found that anxious attachment had the advantage of attentional deployment strategy and the disadvantage of expression suppression strategy while dealing with negative emotion. They tended to be more open when regulating positive emotion, but it still needs to be clarified because the existing experimental materials were not uniform and the evidences from the ERP and fMRI conflict. Then, it was found that both the cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression strategies were adopted by the avoidant attachment. Expression suppression strategy is the main option of avoidant attachment when they processed negative and positive emotion, and the evidences from their reduction of subjective feelings and physiological responses also indicated avoidant individuals’ bias of cognitive reappraisal strategy in dealing with positive emotion. After that, we integrated the features of the positive and negative emotion regulation in the secure attachment due to many similarities in these two emotional scenarios. Results showed that they were in favor of attentional deployment, cognitive reappraisal and situation modification strategies. These strategies not only helped the secure attachment to process emotion more effectively, but also improved individual’s cognitive ability. At last, suggestions were given after systemizing the emotion regulation strategies of different attachment styles. It’s necessary to highlight the role of situational stimuli on the attachment studies and it’s also urgent to look for new evidences of automatic emotion regulation and control emotion regulation to complement the related researches in attachment. And from the practical point of view, it is significant to promote the improvement of emotion regulation strategies in insecure attachment. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Emotional creativity on Employees’ Innovative Behavior: Social Constructivist View of Emotion Perspective 2016, 39(1): 124-130.  Abstract ( )   PDF (757KB) ( )   With the development of research on emotion in organization, emotional creativity had been receiving more and more attention from scholars and practitioners, and had become an important theme in Management Psychology in foreign countries. At present, although scholars at home and abroad have begun to focus on the effects of emotional creativity on innovation, but most studies ignore the process mechanism between emotional creativity and innovative behavior. Based on the social constructivist theory of emotion, this study examined the relationship between employees’ emotional creativity and their innovative behavior, as well as the role of leader encouragement of creativity and employees’ creative role identity. The sample populations used for our analyses consisted of employees and their immediate supervisors from 26 enterprises in the area of Changsha, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Shanghai. Surveys consisted of two parts, an employees’ survey and a supervisors’ survey. The two parts of the survey had a common serial number, which was latterly used to match the employees’ completed surveys and supervisors’ completed surveys. Items measuring emotional creativity, and leader encouragement of creativity and creative role identity, were included in the employee survey. Items measuring employees’ innovative behavior were included in the supervisors’ survey. A total of 1000 surveys were administered. The response rate was 82.50 percent, and 708 matched-employee-supervisor surveys were obtained finally. Data analysis included: Firstly, factor analysis were conducted to examine the common method bias; Secondly, correlation analysis was conducted to examine the intercorrelations among all the variables; Finally, multiple regression analysis were used to test the meditating effect of creative role identity, and to test leader encouragement of creativity acting as a mediated-moderator. The results showed that, when employees’ emotional creativity was high, the probability of their innovative behavior was also increased, and this relationship was mediated by creative role identity. Leader encouragement of creativity positively moderated the relationship between employees’ emotional creativity and creative role identity. In other words, the main effect was stronger when the moderator was high. In addition, leader encouragement of creativity acted as a mediated-moderator which moderated the relationship between employees’ emotional creativity and innovative behavior. Finally, the implications and future research were drawn from the findings. This study theoretically contributes to the comprehension of “black box” between the employees’ emotional creativity and their innovative behavior, and enriches the social constructivist theory of emotion. Moreover, this study provides guidance for supervisors in helping them encourage the innovative emotion of their employees to improve innovative behavior in the actual operation of enterprises. Firstly, in the management practice of selection, employment, training, and retaining of employees, organizations should effectively use and develop employees’ emotional creativity to improve their leverage on the innovative behavior of employees. Secondly, the organization should strengthen the emotional management of employees in its systems and policies to encourage employees to improve their emotional creativity. Finally, to improve employees’ innovative behavior, the supervisors of organizations should improve their leadership abilities, and create a competitive, mutually-supportive, tolerant, and harmonious environment to encourage employees to improve their emotional creativity. Related Articles | Metrics

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Long-run Effect of Heterosexual Rejection on Mating Behavior for College Students：Based on the Sociometer Theory ZHANG LIN Shen LIU Lu-Jun Ruan 2016, 39(1): 131-136.  Abstract ( )   PDF (490KB) ( )   Mate choice has been a hot topic in sociology and psychology for a long time. Lots of researchers studied on mating behavior by establishing and verifying hypotheses. Theoretical frameworks of mating preference have been continuously improved after decades of development，such as the complementary theory and the social exchange theory and so on. Mate choice is not only a static phenomenon，but also a dynamic process. Many researchers always aimed at static characteristics of mate choice，such as mate-selection preference. However，when a man or a woman lost his or her heart to a woman or a man，he or she may be rejected. That is，mating is more of an interactive process. In recent years，Sociometer Theory，which was put forward by Leary opened up a new perspective for researches into mate choice，and it provided a theoretical basis to study the dynamic process of mating. The sociometer theory emphasized the extent of social inclusion or exclusion of an individual from the perspective of self-esteem. It argued that self-esteem was the most important component of self-concept and played a critical role in psychological adaption system which was the intrinsic reflection of mate choice and other behaviors. This present study aims to explore the interactive feedback from both sexes on their mating behavior in the mating process based on the sociometer theory，and to further explore the inner mechanism of mating behavior. The present study used the method of questionnaire survey. A total of 339 participates were recruited in this survey. The questionnaire used in the study were：mate-rejection experience scale，self-perceived mate value questionnaire，mate-selection preference questionnaire，and mating behavior tendency scale. The results were as follows：(1) The experiences in rejection of opposite sex of male were higher than that of female. (2) The criteria in mating of female were significantly higher than that of male. (3) The mating behavior tendency of male was slightly higher than that of female. (4) For males，there were significant negative correlations between self-perceived mating value(r=-.550，p<.01)，criteria in mating(r=-.006，p>.05)，mating behavior tendency(r=-.398，p<.01) and the experiences in rejection of opposite sex. There were significant positive correlation between criteria in mating(r=.054，p>.05)，mating behavior tendency(r=.471，p<.01) and self-perceived mating value. (5) For males，there were significant negative correlations between self-perceived mating value(r=-.590，p<.001)，criteria in mating(r=-.18，p<.01)，mating behavior tendency(r=-.39，p<.001) and the experiences in rejection of opposite sex. There were significant positive correlation between criteria in mating(r=.21，p<.001)，mating behavior tendency(r=.40，p<.001) and self-perceived mating value. (6) As for males，the experiences in rejection of opposite sex had a negative effect on mating behavior of college students. And self-perceived mate value partially mediated the relationship between mate-rejection and mating behavior. (7) As for females，there were not significant effect of the experiences in rejection of opposite sex on mating behavior of college students. And self-perceived mate value did not mediate the relationship between mate-rejection and mating behavior. Finally，the theoretical and practical implications of the findings from the study were discussed. It was argued that the findings enriched the theory of sociometer by confirming the mediating role of self-perceived mate value in the relationship between mate-rejection and mating behavior. It suggests，based on the findings，that we can decrease the experiences in rejection of opposite sex by increasing the self-perceived mate value，lowering the criteria in mating，and promoting the mating behavior tendency. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Role and Effect of Motivation in the Relation Between Trait Self-control and Subjective Well-being 2016, 39(1): 137-143.  Abstract ( )   PDF (508KB) ( )   The relationship between self-control and subjective well-being is far from conclusive. Some argue that self-control is positively correlated with subjective well-being because people high in self-control are more adaptive and more successful in their lives. Other scholars argue that people high in trait self-control may not be high in subjective well-being, as those people usually experience emotional cost for the sake of rational purpose in their goal-attainment processes. Past researches indicate that motivation is an important mediator in the relation between trait self-control and subjective well-being. According to regulatory focus theory, there are two motivational orientations which lead people to utilize different ways to pursue their goals, resulting in distinct experiences. As such, the present study aimed at exploring the role of the two motivational orientations in the relation between trait self-control and subjective well-being. Participants were college students who voluntarily took part in this research. They completed a package of questionnaires measuring their trait self-control, regulatory focus, positive and negative affect, and life satisfaction. The score of trait self-control, promotion motivation and prevention motivation directly obtained from the measurement of the corresponding scales. The scores of subjective well-being were the sum of the z-scores of positive affect and negative affect (recode score), as well as life satisfaction. The results showed that trait self-control was positively correlated with subjective well-being (β = .64), consistent with existing literature. Results also showed that both promotion motivation and prevention motivation were positively correlated with trait self-control and subjective well-being. Then we analyzed the mediating effects of promotion and prevention motivation in the relation between trait self-control and subjective well-being. The results showed that (1) the correlation between trait self-control and subjective well-being is reduced from .64 to .23; (2) promotion motivation positively correlate with both trait self-control (β = .44) and subjective well-being (β = .88), thus it partially mediated the two variables (effect size is .39 which accounted for 60.5% of the total effect); (3) prevention motivation was positively correlated with trait self-control (β = .31), but was not correlated with subjective well-being (β = .07). Thus the results from mediating analysis indicated that promotion motivation is a key variable influencing people’s subjective well-being. Further analysis showed that: (4) even controlling the effect of trait self-control, promotion-dominant people reported higher subjective well-being than prevention-dominant people; (5) people low in trait self-control but dominanted by promotion motivation had no difference in subjective well-being than people high in trait self-control but dominanted by prevention motivation. Taken together, the present study suggested that though trait self-control positively correlated with subjective well-being, as the role of motivation , people high in trait self-control even had the equal subjective well-being with people low in trait self-control. Thus the main contribution of this study is that these results further confirm the relationship between trait self-control and subjective well-being. More importantly, the present study provided evidence explaining why some people high in self-control were happier but some people high in self-control were not. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Mechanisms of How Inclusive Leadership Impacts on Employee Whistle-blowing Intention 2016, 39(1): 144-150.  Abstract ( )   PDF (808KB) ( )   In today’s economic society, moral anomie in organizations occurs frequently. Wrongdoing causes substantial negative consequences for the organization and its members, thus provides motivation for organizations to rely on dispersed employees to detect and blow the whistle on it. However, although whistle-blowing has been recognized as an important tool to timely correct unethical behaviors, many employees are not willing to engage in this inhibitory and challenge behavior because it may result in taking great personal risk of retaliations. Researchers have explored the factors which influenced employees’ whistle-blowing, however, seldom research has linked whistle-blowing to leadership. In this study, we tried to examine the effect of inclusive leadership on employee’s whistle-blowing intention, and investigate the mediating role of perceived organizational support as well as the moderating role of supervisor’s organizational embodiment playing in the linkages between inclusive leadership and employee whistle-blowing intention in the context of Chinese organizations. Data was collected from 332 dyads of on-the-job MBA students in Soochow University in interval time of two months. The first time, the on-the-job MBA students were asked to assess inclusive leadership, perceived organizational support and supervisor’s organizational embodiment, and the second time they were asked to assess their whistle-blowing intention. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of all measurements showed acceptable measurement reliabilities. Results of CFA suggested the measurement’s discriminant validity was satisfactory as well. Correlation analysis, hierarchical regression modeling and bootstrapping analysis were used to test the hypotheses proposed. In line with our hypotheses, regression results revealed that: (1) inclusive leadership had a significant positive influence on employee whistle-blowing intention. (2) Perceived organizational support partly mediated the relationship between inclusive leadership and whistle-blowing intention. This result highlights the importance of inclusive leadership for promoting perceived organizational support, thereby facilitating employee whistle-blowing intention. (3) Supervisor’s organizational embodiment significantly moderated the relationships between inclusive leadership and perceived organizational support such that it was stronger for supervisor high rather than low on organizational embodiment. (4) Supervisor’s organizational embodiment moderated the mediation role of perceived organizational support between inclusive leadership and employee’s whistle-blowing intention, that is, the more organizational embodiment the supervisor is, the mediation effect was stronger, and weaker conversely. The present study offered robust evidence for the role of supervisors’ inclusive leadership in facilitating employees’ intention of whistle-blowing and the mediating effect of organizational support as well as the moderating effect of organizational embodiment. As to the practical implications, this study suggested that more efforts should be made to encourage managers’ inclusive leadership. Meanwhile, the mediating influence of perceived organizational support implied that organizations should strengthen employees’ perceived organizational support in order to motivate whistle-blowing. Meanwhile, in developing and recruiting practice, organizations should pay attention on the organizational embodiment of managers, especially the consistency of ethics and values between managers and the organization. Related Articles | Metrics

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Self- and Major-Reference Effects on Memory in Chinese College Students: The Role of Major Identity 2016, 39(1): 151-157.  Abstract ( )   PDF (529KB) ( )   Although a substantial body of research has supported that social identity and in-group identity play an important role in group-reference effect (GRE) on memory, there is still a need to continue the exploration of processing characteristics of memory with reference to some other social identities (Johnson et al., 2002). College students’ multiple social identities, for example, schools or nationalities they belong to, were usually investigated in previous studies, however, their major identity, an effective and vital group classification criteria, was often overlooked. Besides, typically researchers have looked at SRE (self-reference effect) and GRE in a relatively isolated way, which possibly goes against discovery of relationship between the self of individual and group levels (Bennett et al., 2010). Moreover, in-group identity has been proved to be an important influential factor of GRE. Through two experiments, combining paradigms of SR (self-reference) with GR (group-reference), the aim of present study was to examine whether there was a self- or major-reference effect (MRE) in college students’ memory and to compare the strength of them, then to explore the role of major identity and to contrast the differences of personal self and collective self. In experiment 1, there were three reference conditions (self, major, semantic) with 28 Chinese undergraduates who majored in psychology as participants. All of them had no experience of minor. Each condition was assigned 20 trait words with a total of 60. In study phase, participants were asked to determine to what extent the current word was suited to describe the referential object. For instance, “To what extent the word is suited to describe myself?” or “To what extent the word is suited to describe people who major in psychology?” and so on. Participants needed to complete a 5-point Likert assessment by pressing the keyboard. In recognition phase, 120 words were presented one by one and half of them had appeared in study phase. The participants’ task was to judge whether each word had been presented before. If it had, then they were instructed to make a ‘‘remember” or “know” response (R/K response) according to their retrieve levels. In experiment 2, participants who majored in economics and an out-group condition were added. Accordingly, trait words in both study and recognition phases increased to a total number of 160, and 64 Chinese undergraduates who majored in psychology and economics participated in this experiment. There were four reference conditions, namely self, in-group, out-group and semantic. Ultimately, a questionnaire was used to measure the level of participants’ major identity. The procedure of experiment 2 was akin to experiment 1. Total recognition rate, recognition rate on R response and discrimination index d＇were acted as dependent variables. A one-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted on these three dependent variables. The results showed that, when encoded with reference to self, the words in both experiments were better remembered than any other condition. The performances in GR encoding tasks were also better than out-group condition (experiment 1) and semantic conditions (experiment 1 and 2). Besides, major identity affected the memory performance with reference to in-group, rather than self, out-group, and semantic conditions. When the score of major identity was high, a better score on memory of in-group referential words was obtained than out-group ones. However, when it was low, there was no difference between them. These results demonstrate that as a result of elaborative and organizational processing (Klein, 2012b), there is a robust SRE with respect to Chinese college students’ memory, as well as a MRE. In contrast, SRE is stronger than MRE. Furthermore, the level of college students’ major identity might play an important role in MRE. Related Articles | Metrics

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The recognition of upright and inverted threat-related body expressions Zhen-Hong HE TING ZHAO 2016, 39(1): 158-165.  Abstract ( )   PDF (873KB) ( )   Like human face, human body is a reliable tool to convey emotional information in social interaction. Previous studies on human body have two important findings: (1) Threat-related body expressions gain more attention and processing than other body expressions. (2) The inversion effect for faces has been found for bodies, indicated that both faces and bodies are processed configurally. The configural processing of facial expression has also been confirmed. However, we don’t know whether body expressions are also processed configurally, given that only one problematic study combined threat-related body expressions and body-inversion effect. In addition, the time course of body expression processing is still unclear. Given all that, we employed the event-related potential (ERP) technique to investigate the time-course of perceiving threat-related body expressions (fear and anger). We also try to find out whether body expressions can be processed configurally. In the current study, neutral, fear and anger body expression pictures chose from The Bodily Expressive Action Stimulus Test (BEAST) (de Gelder & Van den Stock, 2011) were uprightly or inversely presented to 50 participants aged around 19 to 25. They were instructed to make an emotional categorization (neutral, fear or anger) to these pictures as rapid and accurate as possible. In the meantime, the ERP data was recorded from 64 scalp sites using Ag/AgCl electrodes mounted in an elastic cap. In the ERP data analysis, components such as P1, N1, N170, P3 and LPP were mainly concerned. Behavioral results confirmed the body-inversion effect, meaning that body expressions are recognized configurally. Moreover, the result showed that threat-related body expressions elicited a larger inversion effect, which proved our hypothesis. An interesting phenomenon was that even the recognition of emotion was impaired by inversion, the performance was still more accurate than chance level, demonstrated that featural processing can approximately convey emotional information. ERP results verified the configural processing of body expressions and revealed the distinct time course of threat-related body expressions processing from three cognitive process stages: (1) The P1 amplitude was increased to threat-related body expressions instead of neutral body expression, indicated that threat-related expression was rapidly processed and distinguished from neutral expression in the first stage. Moreover, the N1 was enhanced and delayed to inverted bodies, indicated that body-inversion effect existed in early process stage (N1) instead of later processing stage (N170). (2) The N170 in inverted condition was larger and more delayed than that in upright condition, demonstrated that body expressions are configurally processed. We can also see that the behavior result (a larger inversion effect to threat-related body expressions) was confirmed by the ERP result (a larger and more delayed N170 to threat-related body expressions). (3) In the third stage, threat-related information from the body gained more attention in upright condition than that in inverted condition, reflected by more pronounced P3 and LPP effects. Taken together, the current finding suggested a distinct time-course processing of threat-related body expressions. We also provide behavioral and electrophysiological evidence that the recognition of human body expressions is mainly based on the configural information. Related Articles | Metrics

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The influence of Homo economicus belief on trust: The moderating effect of trust domains LIU GuoFang 2016, 39(1): 166-171.  Abstract ( )   PDF (480KB) ( )   Researchers found that economics has a negative effect on students’ trust and cooperation. It is proposed and found that homo economicus belief, the most basic humanity hypothesis of economics, inhibits trust. However, individual’s real trust level was affected by trust domains. It is reasonable to hypothesize that the effect of homo economicus belief on trust was moderated by trust domains. This study proposed that the categories (social vs. economic) that trust domains belonged and the risk extent of trust domains are two possible factors may influence the proposed moderating effect. According to the two factors, this study investigated the moderating effect of trust domains on the influence of homo economicus belief on trust. Four domains were selected, that is, trust in borrowing (high risk, economic interactions), consumption (low risk, economic interactions), donation (high risk, social interactions), and election (low risk, social interactions). A prior study supported our analysis of the four trust domains. Study one investigated the effects of direct learning of homo economicus belief on trust in four domains. One hundred and thirty-five college students (57 females) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: experimental or control condition. Before testing participants’ trust in four domains, participants in experimental condition had to transcribe an introduction of homo economicus belief while those in control condition had to transcribe a passage about psychological methods (the activation effect was supported by a prior study). After then, participants’ trust in four domains was tested. Repeated measurement ANOVA showed a significant interaction effect between study conditions and trust domains, F(3, 393) = 2.66，p < .05, ?2 = .02, which supported the moderating effect of trust domains on the influence of homo economicus belief on trust. In consumption domain, trust of participants in experimental condition was significantly lower than that of participants in control condition. That is, homo economicus belief inhibits trust in consumption domain only. Study two investigated the effect of indirect activation of homo economicus belief on trust in four domains. One hundred and thirty-eight college students (85 females) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: experimental or control condition. To activate the homo economicus belief of participants in experimental condition, they were required to unscramble 10 five-word sentences, dropping an extraneous word from each to create a grammatical four-word sentence. Five of 10 sentences in experimental condition contained words that related to economy: profit, market, trade, economy, and consumption. Ten sentences in control condition were consisted in economy-free words. After then, participants’ identification with homo economicus belief and trust in four domains were evaluated. Results showed that participants in experimental condition were higher identified with homo economicus belief than participants in control condition (t(136) = 2.43, p < .05, Cohen’ d = .41), the homo economicus belief of participants in experimental condition was activated. Repeated measurement ANOVA showed a significant interaction effect between study conditions and trust domains, F(3, 408) = 4.51, p < .05, ?2 = .03. Post hoc tests revealed that homo economicus belief inhibits trust in consumption domain, which supported the moderating effect of trust domains on the influence of homo economicus belief on trust too. In sum, trust domains moderate the influence of homo economicus belief on trust. That is, homo economicus belief inhibits trust in low risk economic domains such as consumption. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Perceived Social Support on Social Anxiety: The Mediating Role of Rumination and the Moderating Role of Social Undermining 2016, 39(1): 172-177.  Abstract ( )   PDF (685KB) ( )   Social anxiety is becoming a worldwide mental health problem and in-service staffs are one of several subgroups most vulnerable to this problem. According to the causality model, the lack of social support can lead to social anxiety. Empirical studies have found that perceived less social support may lead to higher social anxiety. But most of the studies pay more attention to individual factors such as personality to explore the influence mechanism on social anxiety. Far too less attention was paid to the point of interpersonal interaction. Rumination, passively and repetitively dwelling on and questioning negative feelings in response to distress, is a risky factor for the development of psychopathology (Hilt & Pollak, 2012). Social undermining is defined in a work context as behavior intended to hinder, over time, a worker’s ability to establish and maintain positive interpersonal relationships, work-related success, and favorable reputation (Duffy, Ganster & Pagon, 2002). In real life, individuals are affected by both social support and social undermining. Social undermining weakens the role of social support by adding pressures and lowering self-efficacy. The recent study has brought in social undermining and rumination to explore the influential mechanism of the perceived social support on social anxiety and aim to provide the basis for improving and alleviating the extension of social anxiety. Questionnaires are used as methodology to test the hypotheses in this essay. A total of 471 in-service staff (259 males & 212 females), aged from 24 to 55, participated in the study. This study has translated the social undermining scale and used PSSS, RRS, IAS. Bootstrap of Mplus is used as the analytic method to analyze and process the data. The result indicated that: (1) Rumination mediates the relation of perceive social support to social anxiety. Perceived social support predict rumination(β = -.256，P = 0.008) and rumination predicted social anxiety. (2) Social undermining moderate the effect of perceived social support to rumination. The interaction terms(perceived social support x supervisor social undermining) predict the rumination explicitly(β = 0.289, P < 0.001) and the interaction terms (perceived social support x coworker social undermining) also predict a rumination obviously (β = 0.289，P < 0.001). When the levels of social undermining are low, the relation of perceived social support to social anxiety is crucial, while the relation is not crucial with a high social undermining. This study shows a new theoretical and practical view to clarify the social anxiety. It has argued that the findings enrich the causality model by confirming the mediated role of rumination in the relation of perceived social support to social anxiety. This study also confirms that social undermining moderate the impact of perceived social support on rumination. The participants of this study, however, from a variety of professional group, there may be heterogeneous. But this study did not focus on the difference and assume them as homogeneous. More studies should use diverse methods and create diverse models to explore how a professional difference could lead to a difference of the social anxiety. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Impact of Different Intensity Negative Life Events on Affective Reactions and Behavior Options of Individual 2016, 39(1): 178-184.  Abstract ( )   PDF (480KB) ( )   Regarding the impact of life events on individual’s affective reactions and behavior options, there is a big dispute among existing studies. It is generally believed that more negative events were worse. But studies have inconsistent conclusions: more negative events were better when events have different affective intensities (Seta, Haire, & Seta, 2008).Thus, the affective intensity of negative life events may be a crucial variable. In addition, no satisfactory explanations were given by averaging and summation model, peak-end rule and mental accounting models. The main purpose of this study is to explore the impact of different intensity negative life events on individual’s affective reactions and behavior options, then find its internal processing mechanism and establish a satisfactory theory explanation. 144 college students participated in three experiments. The study applied research paradigm from Seta, Haire, & Seta (2008), the experimental materials for Chinese college students' negative life events. Participants were told that the experimenter was interested in their reactions to different events. After that, they were given packets that contained the experimental manipulations. Participants indicated how negative they felt after thinking about the events that happened to them on a 101-point scale where “0” indicated “low negative” and “100” indicated “super extremely negative.” And, they also were asked to choose between the two options (the highly negative event versus the highly negative plus mildly positive one) by placing a circle around the letter (either A or B) that appeared in front of each option. Order of options and event presentations were counterbalanced. The results showed that individual would use different processing mode to the negative life events of different attribution, which was shown in the difference of affective reactions and behavior options. Experiment 1 found that participants had a more intense negative affective reaction when they were exposed to a highly negative life experience rather than exposed to two negative events: a highly negative and a mildly negative life event. This supports averaging effect. There were no significant order effects. The lack of order effects in this experiment demonstrates that averaging effects can be obtained over and above sequence effects, such as those predicted by the peak-end rule. Experiment 2 showed that summation effects were obtained when the different intensity negative life events were same types, however, averaging effects were obtained when the different intensity negative life events were different types. Experiment 3 found that the peak-end rule was obtained when the negative life events have obvious temporal sequence. The results showed that the individuals’ processing of negative life events was not invariable, but had different processing mode and strategy, which depended on the attribution of life events. The study supports the multiple-processing hypothesis of life events, in which individuals’ processing may be averaging or summation according to the attribution of negative life events. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Interpersonal Communication Differences in Gender Stereotype -- Based on Social Identity Theory or Social Dominance Theory? Hang LV 2016, 39(1): 185-190.  Abstract ( )   PDF (447KB) ( )   Abstract: In order to examine social identity theory and social dominance theory, which are the most suitable theories for the study on difference of gender stereotype communication single reiteration paradigm was used to explore gender difference between stereotype consistent and stereotype inconsistent in social communicative context among communicator, target and audience. The result demonstrated that male prefer to communicate man’s stereotype consistent information to maintain high hierarchy. Female prefer to communicate man’s stereotype inconsistent information to change existing hierarchical situation. The different communicative types support the hypothesis of social dominance theory. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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History of Development and the Newest Reconstruction of Schwartz’s Theory of Basic Human Values Ling LI 2016, 39(1): 191-199.  Abstract ( )   PDF (890KB) ( )   Schwartz’s theory of basic human values is undoubtedly the most influential theory in value research area. In 2015, according to the citation rates, the main research reports of the theory were rewarded by Web of Science as “the top 1%” articles in psychological fields. The central assumption of the theory is that values exist as a circular motivational continuum. In past 25 years’ refining and reconstruction, the theory had changed from the original seven basic personal values(1987), to the expanded ten(1992),and finally the refined nineteen basic human values(2012).The newest reconstruction of the theory divides the motivational continuum of values into a series of well defined, conceptually distinct values, namely self-direction-thought, self-direction-action, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, power- dominance, power-resources, face, security-personal, security-societal, tradition, conformity-rules, conformity-interpersonal, humility, benevolence-caring, benevolence-dependability, universalism-concern, universalism- nature, and universalism-tolerance. Above those first-tier values, there exists a second-tier value dimension, namely openness to change verses conservation, self-enhancement verses self- transcendence, social focus verses personal focus, and growth verses self-protection. The present paper aims to clearly overview the developmental vein of Schwartz’s theory. Firstly, it clarified the different construction stages of Schwartz’s circular structure of values and meanwhile provided detailed information on the main thoughts and methods he devised for theory formulation and modification. Second, due to the previously imprecise translation and subsequent messy usage among domestic value research, we systematically examined and modified the extant translations of core definitions and markers of each value in Schwarz’s value theory. In addition, we minutely depicted both compatible and incompatible motivations underlying each value, and offered dimensions that could be devised to group values contingent on the specific research question. Third, the paper also introduced and discussed the characteristics of and differentiations between the two major instruments, the Schwartz Value Survey (SVS) and the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ), which had been extensively used in value research fields. Of great significance, current paper elucidated the principles on how and when to utilize the theory and key points of data processing. Last but the least, the paper also outlined the newest research findings devising Schwartz’s value theory in multiple study fields, such as values and behavior, values and personality, values and cognitive features, etc. To conclude, the present paper systematically reviewed the formulation and incremental modification of Schwartz’s value theory as well as its measurement and application, enhancing researchers’ understanding of the potential and fundamental significance of the Schwartz’s value theory, and hopefully draw much more attention and hence more in-depth research, especially in the Eastern cultural background. Related Articles | Metrics

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The explanation of personality differences from the perspective of evolutionary psychology 2016, 39(1): 200-206.  Abstract ( )   PDF (598KB) ( )   Personality, from an evolutionary perspective, represents a meta-category of the output of a suite of species-typical, relatively domain-specific, evolved psychological mechanisms designed in response to the social adaptive problems recurrently faced by our ancestors. This conceptualization of human personality provides for novel and valuable reinterpretations of several areas of personality psychology including personality consistency, individual differences in personality, sex differences and similarities, and contextual determinants of personality. The personality commonality has always been discussed in evolutionary psychology, but some researchers hold that the personality differences also need to be focused because commonality and differences are two inseparable sides of personality. The founder of the personality psychology, Allport has put forward common traits and personal traits for a very long time, underlying the dual nature of personality: the commonality and diversity. And he paid much attention on the difference between personal traits and personality diversity, on the basis of distinguishing personality traits into cardinal traits, central traits, secondary traits, while early evolutionary psychologists focus on common traits with their thoughts that is the major products or byproducts and personal traits is the accessory during the evolution process. However, more and more evidence from evolutionary psychology researches suggest that the diversity of personality is not the supplementary, but the necessity with reasonable background and rationality. Thus, theories to explain the diverse personality have come up. The evolutionary explanations to personality differences can be divided into three categories: Life-history Theory, Genetic Diversity Theory and Costly Signaling Theory. Life-history Theory considers that personality differences are the product of the evolution of different life and history strategies (strategy K and strategy R) resulted from different environments (stable and unstable). Genetic Diversity Theory explains the personality differences from the perspective of gene mutation and balancing selection. The former emphasizes on the “contending and confrontation” between mutant gene and natural selection, and the remaining mutant gene provides the basis of personality differences; the latter contains two aspects－Frequency-dependent Selection and Environmental Heterogeneity in Fitness Optima, whose commonality stresses the “harmony and friendship” between mutant gene and natural selection and whose difference is: Frequency-dependent Selection means that there are many existent and progenitive strategies in the same context and a variety of selection strategies will retain at last because their adaptive value will be overturned by the change of proportion of each strategy in the group; Environmental Heterogeneity in Fitness Optima is that the partial existent and progenitive strategies lie in each natural environment. In all, selection strategy, to some extent, can maintain the diversity. Costly Signaling Theory holds that everyone has the motivation to transfer the signal to the outside world, which can present one’s gender, age, health, fertility, social status and gene quality, but due to the different ranks of transferring signals resulted from the natural endowment or resources differences, which drives individual to choose different behavioral strategies. The research in the future needs to focus on three directions: (1) to reinforce the research on genetics; (2) to increase the evidence from physiology research, especially the brain science; (3) to innovate the research methods and to overcome the three logic flaws of the current research paradigms. Related Articles | Metrics

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Recovery from Work: A Necessary Process Helps Regain the Good Work Condition 2016, 39(1): 207-213.  Abstract ( )   PDF (381KB) ( )   Recovery from work is a recovery process when one′s physical and mental energy is consumed after work. Resources theory says that recovery from work is a process that complements physical and psychological resources which have been consumed, and this process can be explained by Effort-Recovery model (ER) and Conservation of Resources theory (COR). Both ER model and COR theory can explain the occurrence of recovery from work, and they are mutually complementary. Based on ER model, if one want to gain recovery from work, he/she ought to be aloof from job demands, i.e., not to do something which consumes the same internal resources with the same functional system. However, in the view of COR, the reduced resources will be recovered as to the newly-gained internal resources such as energy, self-efficacy or positive emotions. Recovery from work concerns the transition from workday to nonworkday, thus previous studies tend to use the method of self-report diary. The elementary procedure is as the following. The psychological and behavioral instruments are sent to the subjects by post or web. The subjects are required to fill in a general demographic form. Afterwards, every subject should fill in the other questionnaires at specific time and place according to the instruction. In the end of the study, the subjects send all the questionnaires to the researchers. In order to enhance the stability and accuracy of self-report, researchers have developed recovery from work instruments with high reliability and validity, including ‘the recovery experiences measures’, ‘state of being recovered in the morning’, ‘Recovery opportunities’ and so on. What’s the most important is not the behavior of recovery from work, but the latent psychological process. Researchers distinguished four psychological processes such as psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery experiences and control. The four processes help recover the emotion and control resources, thereby improve the level of recovery from work. As to the outcomes of recovery from work, it not only helps reduce work pressure, but also improves happiness, health and performance. While those influence recovery from work include respite, nonwork activities and social environment. Many studies show that, proper respite makes people enjoy positive emotions and performances during work. Nonwork activities influence recovery from work, but the influence depends on the level of responsibility. Nonwork activities with low responsibility make individuals recover from work through relaxation and psychological detachment. On the contrary, those with high responsibility will reduce individuals’ vigor, because those activities reduce relaxation and psychological detachment. As far as the social environment is concerned, researchers pay increasing attention upon the effect on recovery from works of significant others, job demands, job resources, et al. This paper indicates that future researches on recovery from work will break through in the following ways. Firstly, researchers can use the index of rating and physical signs combined with self report. Secondly, researchers are welcome to use the method covering short and long period of time. Thirdly, research designs of recovery from work can be broaden in aspects like its mediating or moderating effects. Finally, China researches of recovery from work should take the cultural, social, and economic backgrounds into account. Related Articles | Metrics

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Formulation and Expectation of GRM- Based Multilevel Facets Rater Model 2016, 39(1): 214-223.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1663KB) ( )   Open-ended items or Constructed-response items (CR items) are widely used in educational and psychological test. When score these CR items, additional facet and rater facet are needed. However, differences are existed between different raters, how to ensure the consistency between raters is a critical problem. Wang and Liu (2007) formulated a generalized multilevel facets model based on Generalized Partial Credit Model (GPCM) to deal with this problem. However, Tutz (1990) found that in Rasch family models, category from j to j+1 is not scored strictly stepwise, that means Rasch family models belong to simultaneous processing rather than successive processing (Andrich, 1995). Therefore, if PCM was used to simultaneous processing task, it may be lead to lower item information than the GRM (Cook, Dodd, & Fitzpatrick, 1999). Thus, a new model is needed to handle this situation. The purpose of this paper is to formulate an IRT-based model that can deal with the items which step difficulties are monotonously increasing and also can detect a variety of rater effects precisely and effectively. The model named Grade Response Multilevel Facets, which combines the IRT model, multilevel analysis technology and many facets model and consists of three facets (person, item, and rater facets) and a slope parameter. The model contains two levels, the first level is an item response model, and the second level includes two regression models, one of which is related to variables that may affect the abilities of person. The rest regression model is devoted to illustrating the rater effects that included in the level 1 model. To examine the recovery of the parameters when the model was used in different situations, two simulations were conducted. Simulation 1 is a rater fixed-effects model, only the ability was modeled as random-effects, both items and raters were set fixed, which means raters will keep the same attitude (e.g., give high scores for all people) when rate test-takers, and the thresholds of these items are fixed all the time. In simulation 2, both examinee ability and raters were set to random-effects; raters can hold different standards to different test-takers. The R software was adopted to generate examinee’s responses for 4 items, and the parameters of the model were estimated by the SAS NLMIXED procedure based on the marginal maximum likelihood estimation. To reduce the sampling error, 50 replications were accepted in simulation 1 and 30 replications were used in simulation 2. 3 indices, Bias, RMSE, and Absolute value of relative bias (ARB) were devoted to evaluate the recovery of parameters. Results show that: (1) There is a little difference between the estimates and the true value in both conditions, the procedure can recover these estimates fairly well; (2) In both simulations, the model can detects the rater effects precisely; (3)The random-effect model of rater is more suitability and stability than fixed-effect model. In summary, this model will have a great prospect in open-ended ratings. Related Articles | Metrics

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Competency Model of Group Counsellors and Group Psychotherapists 2016, 39(1): 223-238.  Abstract ( )   PDF (353KB) ( )   With development of group counseling and psychotherapy, more and more qualified group leaders are needed. However, there is lack of specific study on what qualified group leader in group counseling and psychotherapy is, especially in Chinese culture. At present there are only some views of qualified group leaders in group counseling and psychotherapy from influential psychologists in this area, but lack of empirical support on this topic. Even in the field of counselor’s competency, which focuses on the research of abilities a counselor needs in psychological counseling process, restricted its studies on individual counseling ability, thus lacks pertinence. Meanwhile, psychologists agreed that group counseling ability is not exactly the same as individual counseling ability. For these reasons, this study sought to explore which abilities group leaders need in group counseling and psychotherapy, and construct “The Competency Model of Group Leaders” via a qualitative approach. This model is aimed to provide a reference standard for evaluating the capability of group leaders, and it can be used to guide the training and evaluation of group leaders. Fourteen Chinese group leaders from university counseling centers, hospital and corporation participated in the study, out of which thirteen were valid. Five of these people belonged to the “excellent group”, and the other eight belonged to the “average group”. Two were male and eleven were female. The average age was 40.64 [Age range was from 26 to 58]. We collected qualitative data by using Behavior Event Interview (BEI). Every group leader was interviewed face to face at least two hours. Then we convert the recording into text. There was no statistically significant difference between the excellent group and the average group in terms of the length of the interview and the coding frequencies. And then referencing the coding protocol, we coded the text from the interview materials and analyzed the most critical coding words and built the competency model for group leaders in China with this data. Validity and reliability of this model are reported. The primary competency model of group leaders was established, which consisted of benchmark competency characters and distinctive competency characters. The benchmark competency characters conclude professional knowledge, change detection, environmental monitoring, judgment, discernment, observation, rational thinking, analytical thinking, comprehensive thinking, flexibility, initiative, clear objectives, problem solving, the ability of reflection, ability under pressure, emotional expression, self-awareness, honest, positive self-evaluation, focus on others’ positive side, interpersonal understanding, communication skills, empathy, care about others, desire for help, respect for others, tolerance of others, influence, guidance and training others, dedicated and responsible. Besides the common features, the distinctive competency characters also conclude courage to attempt, strong willed, stability, optimistic, patience, listening skills, the ability to control, rule consciousness. The reliability of the model (category agreement) was between 57.0%~72.1%. In addition, the coding results of behavioral interviews and their subjective capability cognition were analyzed. There are differences between the competencies they show and the competencies they thought to be the most important, between the new group leaders and the experience ones, and between the male group leaders and the female group leader. Reasons as to why these differences exist are discussed. Related Articles | Metrics

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Abnormal Structures and Function of the Brain in Depression Evidence from Resting-State Multimodal Brain Imaging 2016, 39(1): 224-232.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1231KB) ( )   With the development of the brain imaging and the analysis methods, it is obvious that there are more and more limitations for the unimodal brain imaging or a single analysis method to be used to reveal the brain mechanisms of the major depressive disorder patients. However, instead of the use of the unimodal brain imaging or a single analysis method, the combination of the multimodal brain imaging and a variety of analysis methods might promote the exploration of the depressive brain structures and function, and could be used into the diagnosis, intervention and treatment more effectively as well. This paper firstly introduced some indexes or technologies of the multimodal brain imaging and the analysis methods briefly, such as the voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis, the diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) for the brain structure analysis, the functional connectivity (FC) analysis, the independent component analysis (ICA), the small world network (SWN) analysis for the brain function analysis, and the amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (ALFF) analysis and the regional homogeneity (ReHo) analysis for the brain regional activity analysis. Then, it summarized some researches about the brain structures and function in the major depressive disorder patients in the perspective of the fusion of the brain structures, the fusion of the brain function, the fusion of the brain structures and function, and the disease identification and classification based on multimodal indices. It was found that the major depressive disorder was related with abnormal structures and function of many brain regions and loops. More specifically, these brain regions are the frontal lobe area [e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), orbital frontal cortex (OFC), ventrolateral prefrontal cortex(VLPFC), superior frontal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus(IFG)], the parietal lobe area (e.g., supramarginal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule), the occipital lobe area (e.g., middle occipital gyrus, cuneus, precuneus), the temporal lobe area [e.g., fusiform gyrus, superior temporal gyrus (STG)], the limbic system (e.g., amygdale, cingulate cortex, hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus), the striatum (e.g., caudate nucleus, putamen, globus pallidus), the thalamus, the insula cortex, the cerebellum. Meanwhile, these brain circuits refer to the default mode network (DMN), the frontal-limbic circuits, the frontal-subcortical circuits and the limbic-cortico-striato-pallido-thalamic loops mainly, via the summary. And the major depressive disorder almost has an effect on the structures and the function in whole brain areas and many of the brain regions and loops play a crucial role in the cognitive and emotional processes, such as the emotional processing, the cognitive emotion regulation, the processing of the attention bias, the reward mechanism and so forth. Through the review above, combined with our previous relevant studies, we also put forward some outlook and ideas concerning the further researches in depression and other emotional disorders. For instance, the studies about the cognitive emotion regulation in the healthy or the subthreshold depression participants may contribute to the prediction of the major depressive disorder onset, as well as the researches about the major depressive disorder course, the subthreshold depression-early onset depression-current depression-remitted depression or refractory major depression, may be beneficial to the improvement of the major depressive disorder diagnosis, intervention and treatment. Last but not least, the combination of the brain imaging, the genetic studies and the molecular imaging could give assistance in our more in-depth understanding of the neurobiological basis of the major depressive disorder. Related Articles | Metrics

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Muscle Dysmorphia: a New Form of Psychological Disorder? 2016, 39(1): 239-244.  Abstract ( )   PDF (382KB) ( )   Muscle dysmorphia (MD) is a preoccupation with the idea that one’s body is insufficiently lean and muscular, which has newly become a prominent issue in the psychological and psychiatric literatures. MD is a collection of the extreme attitude and behavior for getting more muscular and has newly been categorized as a form of body dysmorphic disorder occurring almost in males, who usually participate in weightlifting and bodybuilding. The purpose of the present study is to introduce and discuss the existing studies on the MD, so as to highlight the essence and the importance of exploring MD in Asian environment, especially in China. Symptoms of individuals with MD were found by earlier researches, in terms of the aspects of cognition, behavior and social activities. Although MD is now introduced as a subcategory of body dismorphic disorder, due to the relationship and co-morbidity with eating disorder and other disorders, there are still disputes in the category of MD. Some researchers suggest that MD might be a new form of psychological disorder. According to the criteria suggested by Blashfield, Sprock and Fuller (1990), in the present state, MD only meet two criteria of five and could not been listed as a new disorder yet. Therefore, it is an essence for further studies conducted to examine the unique characteristics of MD. Moreover, these years, various questionnaires assessing symptoms of MD have been developed by researchers in several western countries, and cultural diversity of MD is still on study. Nowadays, researchers have outlined two main theoretical models in the previous studies, i.e. six-factor psychobehavioral model and conceptual model (Grieve, 2007; Lantz, Rhea, & Cornelius, 2002). However, there is a lack of empirical research related to these theories, and the predictive validity of these models has not been verified yet. And some studies have argued that other cognitive factors excluding in these two models, such as attention bias, cognitive mode etc., may also contribute to the pathogenesis of MD. The mechanism of MD is not well understood and it is necessary for further studies. With the development of globalization, the pursuit for the “big” appearance prominent in western cultures has appeared to grow among men in Asia. A recent study also revealed that insufficient muscle was the third most frequently mentioned concern among Chinese male students (Liao et al., 2010). Coincidentally, the population of weightlifters and bodybuilders has been increasing rapidly in China. The increasing popularity of weightlifting in Chinese men suggests the presence of MD. It is therefore important to investigate this new syndrome in China. Nevertheless, MD is still lack of enough attention in China, even in Asia. As a relatively new syndrome presently, many aspects, for example, the relationship between MD and other disorders, specific clinical diagnosis, the mechanisms, and cultural difference of MD are disputed. So, we suggest that, in the future researches, researchers could further explore the MD in the following ways: (a) further examine the guidelines of categorizing a new disorder; (b) make clear the relationship of MD and body dismorphic disorder, eating disorder or other co-morbidity; (c) explore the mechanisms of MD, especially the roles of cognitive factors; (d) pay attention to the characteristics of cultural differences; and (e) focus more on the high risk population (such as bodybuilders and weightlifters) and develop some effective intervention studies. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Psychological Analysis of Courage in Chinese Ancient Books Cui-Ping CHENG 2016, 39(1): 245-250.  Abstract ( )   PDF (850KB) ( )   “Yong” (courage) is an old moral quality in Chinese traditional culture. Together with benevolence and intelligence, courage makes up the Chinese perfect personality. This personality construct has abundant explanations and most of the meanings remain to the present day. The purpose of this study is to explore the connotations, classifications and functions of courage in ancient Chinese books from a psychological perspective and find out the developmental characteristics of courage in Chinese culture. Through the retrieval of 830 ancient Chinese books from two famous Chinese classical works databases, 427 ancient books in the proportion of 51.4% about courage were found. These books consisted of 20 on Confucian classics, 132 on historical records, 217 on philosophical writings and 58 on miscellaneous works. The retrieval rates of them were 86.9%, 61.6%, 50.6% and 35.3% respectively. Based on three clear criteria, these linguistic data were simplified. By means of simplification, 836 sentences and paragraphs describing courage had been collected so as to construct a corpus of courage. In the corpus, there were 160 on Confucian classics, 220 on historical records, 252 on philosophical writings and 204 on miscellaneous works. The method of content analysis was applied to analyze the linguistic data. Every sentence and paragraph was classified by three experienced sorters in three respects. After that, the indexes of category agreement among three sorters were assessed, and all the indexes were more than 0.95. The results showed that (1) “Yong” could be found firstly in inscriptions on ancient bronze objects. From the lexicology sense, its original nominal meaning was “a container”, and then evolved into verbal meaning “execute” or “use” and adjective meaning “courageous” or “resolute”. The connotation of courage mainly contained six dimensions: being bold and powerful, feeling fearless when confronting danger, persevering with ambitions, making decisions resolutely, devoting himself to moral responsibility, being ashamed of behaviors and endeavoring to break through. The proportion of each dimension was 43.3%, 12.4%, 4.4%, 8%, 13% and 3% in sequence. (2) Chinese courage could be generally divided into two kinds. One kind was called brute courage, and people who had brute courage seemed to be always reckless or impulsive. The other kind was moral courage, with which people’s courageous behaviors were out of kindness or rationality. The former accounted for 29.5% and the latter was 54.6%. (3) The functions of courage in ancient Chinese books could be viewed from both social and individual perspectives. In the social aspect, courage had a positive effect on defending state security, but it would do harm to social stabilization if it was improper or unnecessary. In the individual aspect, courage would be helpful to promote the psychological harmony and enhance the ability to innovate, however it might cause a fatal disaster for ordinary people. The social functions of courage accounted for 41.1% and the individual ones were 43%. Finally, this paper discussed the heritage and modernity of courage, and analyzed the cross-cultural similarities and differences of this concept. These results indicated that (1) courage had complex connotations, two types as well as social and individual functions in ancient Chinese books. (2) Courage was a psychological trait which inherited the Chinese cultural tradition and adapted to the needs of the development in modern society. It had distinct features of Chinese culture and some consistency with western cultures as well. Related Articles | Metrics