Archive

20 May 2019, Volume Issue 3 Previous Issue    Next Issue

---

For Selected:

Download Citations EndNote Ris BibTeX

Toggle Thumbnails

Select

The Effect of Different Virtual Scenes Information Types on Path Integration Efficiency 2019, (3): 514-520.  Abstract ( )   PDF (849KB) ( )   Path integration refers to the process that people integrate the distance and orientation information depending on their current position and the starting point. Previous studies found that participants could use landmark information to promote the efficiency of path integration during spatial navigation. However, it was inconclusive that whether the optic flow (also used as the texture) could also help to improve the path integration efficiency and whether participants could combine the landmarks and the optic flow to promote the path integration efficiency. In order to explore these issues, the current study used the dynamical 3D-max technology to create the virtual space scenes and explored the difference in the path integration efficiency among 4 kinds of visual scene (pure, texture, landmark and double-clue (texture + landmark)) in the modified homing task. Participants were required to walk from the starting point and reached the end throughout 5 outbound paths. Then they needed to make orientation judgments accurately and get back to the starting point directly. There were 3 kinds of errors when they came back to the starting point (see Figure 2). (1) Angle error, the absolute value of the difference between the correct angle (Ac) and the wrong angle (Ar); (2) Distance error, the absolute value of the difference between the correct distance (Dc) and the wrong distance (Dr); (3) Position error, the distance between the starting point (H) and the homing position (Hr). For the 3 kinds of errors, the smaller the value was, the better the task was accomplished and the higher the path integration efficiency was. In addition, the response time, referred to the time interval between the complication of the walking and making the orientation judgement, was also used to evaluate the path integration efficiency. The shorter the response time, the higher the path integration efficiency. The results showed that the main effect of the visual environment were significant in the response time (F（3, 87）=211.60, p<.001, ηp2=.873), the distance error (F（3, 87）=131.89，p<.001，ηp2=.820) and the position error (F（3, 87）= 10.15, p < .001, ηp2 =.259). The Post Hoc test revealed that the path integration efficiency in the texture condition was significant higher than in the pure clue condition (all p< 0.05), which suggested that the optic flow could improve the path integration efficiency. For the angle error, the main effect of the visual environment was not significant (F（3, 87）=1.52, p=.214). There was no significant difference between the pure condition and the texture condition, suggesting the texture might play little role in the judgement of the angle. Besides, the response time was shorter in the landmark condition than the texture condition (p< 0.05), and the distance error in the landmark condition than in the texture condition (p< 0.05). It reflected an advantage of the landmark in the path integration compared to the texture. But compared to texture condition, the landmark did not show significant advantage for the angle error and the position error, which might attribute to the different landmark types. In addition, the performance in the double clue (texture + landmark) condition was better than the single clue (pure, texture or landmark) condition for the response time and the distance error, suggesting that the participants could combine the two kinds of clues to improve the path integration efficiency. The current study has 2 conclusions: (1) Both the landmark and the texture visual information can promote the path integration, and the landmark had an advantage; (2) The combination of the landmark and the texture can promote the path integration. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Specifically Inducing Fear and Disgust Emotions by Using Separate Stimuli: The Development of Fear and Disgust Picture Systems 2019, (3): 521-528.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1366KB) ( )   Fear and disgust are different kinds of basic emotion. They differ in several ways, such as facial expressions, behavioral responses, biological responses, and subjective feelings. Considering these differences, it is expected that the stimuli to induce fear and disgust should be distinguished. Thus far, however, researchers have used the same stimuli to induce the two different emotions: The stimuli to induce fear can also induce disgust. And this is problematic, as the emotion of interest may not be properly induced, which can weaken the conclusions obtained. Therefore, it is necessary and valuable to develop materials to uniquely induce fear and disgust. In the current research, we conducted two experiments to develop a system of pictures that can specifically induce fear and disgust as experimental stimulus. In Experiment 1, we recruited 105 college students as participants. We first introduced them the definitions of fear and disgust and explained how they were differentiated. Thereafter, we asked them to write down as many things and scenes as possible that can induce their fear and disgust, separately. The responses should be concrete nouns that can only be associated with fear (e.g., snake) or disgust (e.g., vomit) but not both. For both fear and disgust, the responses were consolidated and classified into six categories by meaning. Thereafter, we selected 90 suitable pictures of the responses. The pictures were grouped into three categories: animals, scenes, and objects, there were 30 pictures in each category. In Experiment 2, eighty-four college students rated the pictures that were created in Experiment 1. A group of participants rated the pictures on valence and arousal, and the others rated the pictures on fear and disgust, on 9-point scales. Fifteen pictures were excluded based on preset criteria. The inter-rater reliabilities of the remaining 165 pictures were good to excellent. The 81 fear pictures and the 84 disgust pictures differed in the extent they induced fear or disgust: People rated the fear pictures more fearful than the disgust pictures, and they rated the disgust pictures more disgusting than the fear pictures. And, the system of pictures is identical in valance, but differed in arousal—people rated the fear pictures more arousal than the disgust pictures. Moreover, the three categories of pictures—animals, scenes, and objects—were compared between each other on how well they induced the different emotion. The results showed a significant effect of category on fear: People rated the animal pictures more fearful than the scene pictures. A significant effect of category was also found on disgust: The scene pictures induced more disgust than the animal and the object pictures. When inducing fear or disgust, past research failed to use appropriate stimuli: The stimuli used were able to induce both emotions instead of a particular one. Therefore, new, reliable stimuli that can uniquely induce fear or disgust should be established, which is beneficial and vital to the study of fear and disgust emotions as well as the treatment of the corresponding emotional disorders. In this research, we developed a system of pictures that can effectively specifically induce two kinds of different emotion: fear and disgust. As far as we know, the picture system we built up is the first stimulus system that can separately induce fear or disgust emotion. We believe that we have offered a useful tool to the research on fear and disgust, and we hope our stimuli can be validated and further improved in the future research. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Effect of Aging on the Aftereffects of Prospective Memory Ying-Xiu GUO You-zhen CHEN 2019, (3): 529-535.  Abstract ( )   PDF (358KB) ( )   Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to execute a delayed intention in the appropriate context. Everyday examples of PM tasks are remembering to buy bread on the way home, to take medication every evening at the same time, and to join a meeting at a specific time. More and more researchers begin to focus on the aftereffects of PM. It is defined as the phenomenon that an individual repeatedly performed an already completed PM intention, or the completed intention has an influence on the performance of the ongoing task. Researchers usually use the Repeated PM Cue Paradigm to investigate the aftereffects of PM. It contains two phases: active-PM phase and finished-PM phase. In the active-PM phase, participants are instructed to make a response whenever they encounter a target cue, which occurs very infrequently during an ongoing task. Following an active-PM phase, participants engaged in a finished-PM phase. Importantly, prior to the finished-PM phase, the participants had been instructed that the PM task was finished and that they would no longer need to press the designated key in response to target cues. The target cues continued to be presented during the finished-PM phase, and commission errors were observed. The aftereffects of PM have a negative impact on daily life, such as an individual accidentally taking an important medication twice. Most studies have found that this phenomenon is particularly prominent in the elderly. Older adults may be at a higher risk of making commission errors than young adults, although the sparse evidence to date is mixed. In recent years, researchers have discussed the factors that influence the aftereffects of PM between the old and the young from both internal and external perspectives. It has been learned that the decline of the inhibitory control ability and short-term memory deficit brought about by cognitive aging are the main factors which result in the different aftereffects of PM between the young and the old. In addition, other internal and external factors also exacerbate the age difference in the aftereffects of PM. Although the existing researches have discussed the factors affecting the age difference of the aftereffects of PM, these do not reveal the mechanism of it between the young and the old. From what have been mentioned above, cognitive aging leads to the age difference in the aftereffects of PM, and the discussion of related contents about the aftereffects of PM are not enough. Future studies are required to expand the understanding of the mechanism of cognitive aging and inhibitory control ability. In addition to this, there are many researches using brain imaging techniques such as ERPs and fMRI to explore the PM. So far, these techniques have not been used to investigate the aftereffects of PM. Researchers should use the brain imaging techniques such as ERPs and fMRI to reveal the neural mechanisms underlying the aftereffects of PM in different age. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Influences of Word Frequency and Motion Fluency on Judgement of Learning：A Perspective from multiple cues WANG QIANYU Yan Liu 2019, (3): 536-542.  Abstract ( )   PDF (563KB) ( )   The influence factors of judgment of learning (JOL) have been the focus in this field for many years. Koriat (1997) proposed cue-utilization model to explain several cues that affect JOL, and pointed out the possible roles of these cues. Based on this model, Koriat and Bjork (2006) proposed a dual-processing theory of metacognitive monitoring, which suggested that metacognitive monitoring was an experience-based and theory-based dual-processing process. The former is an unconscious, non-analytic process, and the latter is a conscious, analytical process. The interaction model between these two processes, though, has been proposed since last century, it is difficult to directly manipulate the non-analysis process till now. In?the?early?stages?of JOL reseach, there were many studies focusing on theory-based analytical processing. Recently, more and more research has been concerned about the impact of processing fluency, emphasising the metacognitive experience on JOL. Some studies have verified the processing fluency effects of JOL in visual and auditory modalities. The motoric fluency effect has also been confirmed recently. Compared with visual and auditory fluency, motoric fluency is less influenced by beliefs, and more involved in non-analytic processing. This provides a new perspective for us to examine the non-analytic process. The purpose of the present study is to examine the effects of experience-based motoric fluency and theoretical-based word frequency on JOL and their possible interactions, exploring the roles of non-analytic processing and analytical processing in metacognitive monitoring. Some researchers believe that there may be interactions between conscious and non-conscious processes. To explore the role of non-analytic processing in memory monitoring, we further added cognitive load to weaken the possible advantage of analytical processing. ? In the present study, participants were asked to write words with their handedness or non-handedness to achieve different motoric fluency. And word frequency (high frequency/low frequency) was also manipulated in both experiments. Participants were required to learn words and to complete the JOL without (Experiment 1) or with cognitive load (Experiment 2). After a arithmetic distractor task, participants completed a 5-minute recall test. Results showed that: (1) when participants wrote words with their handedness, their JOLs were higher than those with their non-handedness, and JOLs on high-frequency words were higher than those on low-frequency ones. (2) The influence of motoric fluency on JOL changed due to the increasing of word frequency. Under the cognitive load condition, the influence of word frequency on JOL was different due to the change of motoric fluency. The results support the fluency effect and word frequency effect on JOL. More importantly, it suggests that analytical processing and non-analytic processing could work together in the process of memory monitoring. From the perspective of the dual-processing theory of metacognitive monitoring, the present study reveals the pattern of analytical and non-analytic processing on JOL, which plays an important role in exploring the mechanisms underlying JOL. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Effect of Negative Emotion and Delay on Time-based Prospective Memory 2019, (3): 543-549.  Abstract ( )   PDF (523KB) ( )   Prospective memory refers to the ability to remember to carry out the planned event or activity in a given time or situation in the future. According to the nature of the clue, prospective memory is generally divided into event-based prospective memory and time-based prospective memory. We focus on time-based prospective memory. The time-based prospective memory needs to be executed at a specific time period or a specific time point. Prospective memory is easily influenced by external factors, such as negative emotion. Negative emotion is an unpleasant state, which usually disintegrates our cognitive processing. A large number of studies have found that negative emotion interferes with prospective memory performance. Some evidence shows that interference of negative emotion to prospective memory may be influenced by cognitive resources. However, some studies argued that delay could provide participants more cognitive resource for processing prospective memory tasks. Our aim was to explore that whether the interference of negative emotion to prospective memory can be eliminated through adding the delay . We directly explored two problems: (1) whether negative emotion had an impact on prospective memory; (2) whether the delay could eliminate the interference effect. Emotional pictures were selected from Chinese Affective Picture System (CAPS). The procedure was written in E-Prime 1.0. Ongoing task was n-back (n=1) tasks. we adopted multiple indicators as a basis for judgment. Firstly, the comparison of the results of prospective memory indicated that whether negative emotion interfered with prospective memory. Secondly, comparing the difference of time monitoring, to a certain extent, reflected the cognitive processing degree of prospective memory tasks. In addition, the number of attention in the later period of time monitoring reflected the effectiveness of time monitoring. The results of experiment were as follows: (1) The score of prospective memory in negative emotional group was worse than that in neutral emotional group when there was no delay, but in the delay condition, there was no difference between the negative emotional group and neutral emotional group. (2) The number of time monitoring in total in negative emotion group was less than that of neutral group. (3) The number of time monitoring in the later period of negative emotion group was worse than that of neutral emotional group when there was no delay, but in the delay condition, there was no difference between neutral emotional group and negative emotion group in the same index.（4）The reaction speed of negative emotion group was slower than that of neutral emotion group in ongoing task. The above analysis shows that negative emotion can interfere with time-based prospective memory, but delay can eliminate the interference effect. The interference of negative emotion on prospective memory is mainly influenced by the attention input and effectiveness of monitoring. The elimination of interference effect through adding the delay is mainly due to the improvement of monitoring effectiveness. However, delay does not eliminate the interference of negative emotions on ongoing task. In conclusion, negative emotion interferes with prospective memory, the setting of delay can eliminate the interference effect through improving the effectiveness of time monitoring. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Effect of Automatic Emotion Regulation on Attentional Bias for Negative Facial Expression 2019, (3): 550-555.  Abstract ( )   PDF (379KB) ( )   Attentional bias towards negative faces means that, compared to positive or neutral faces, negative faces could guide attention to themselves more efficiently. Attentional bias helps people adapt more successfully in response to danger, and also contributes causally to anxiety or depression vulnerability. Therefore, there is necessity to find out an efficient way to affect attentional bias. However, most previous study about attentional bias examined whether attentional bias depend on perceptual or emotional differences, while little is known about the mechanism of how to affect attentional bias using top-down strategies. Previous studies have found that automatic emotion regulation can affect attention allocation, cognition, emotional experience, and behavior during process through which emotions are generated, without making much effort. Studies also showed that automatic emotion regulation affect emotion by a top-down way. The present study aims to examine whether automatic emotion regulation, a top-down and effortless strategy, could influence attentional bias towards negative faces, by adopting emotional flanker task and the idiom matching task. A 2 (priming type: neutral, emotion regulation) × 2 (target face emotion type: positive, negative) × 2 (congruency: congruent, incongruent) between-subject experiment design was carried out. There were 10 blocks in total and each block consisted of 2 successive trials of the matching task and 16 successive trials of emotional flanker task. Five successive blocks used idioms concerned with emotion regulation and the other half of the blocks used neutral idioms. The sequence of priming types was counterbalanced between subjects. In the idiom matching task, three Chinese four-character idioms were presented until participants made their choice between the lower two idioms to match the meaning of the upward idiom. In the emotional flanker task, a fixation cross was presented for 500 ms, immediately followed by a target face with 2 flanking faces beside it. Participants were instructed to indicate which kind of emotion the target face expressed. The faces would disappear until participants made the choice or after 1500 ms. Then the screen went blank for an inter-trial interval of 1000 ms. The result showed that in neutral priming condition, participants responded faster to congruent trials than incongruent trials with positive target; however, when the target was negative, the RTs in congruent trials than incongruent trials showed no difference. In emotion regulation priming condition, for both positive and negative targets, RTs in congruent trials and incongruent trials showed no difference. These results suggested that automatic emotion regulation, primed by the idiom matching task, could affect attentional bias toward negative faces, and extended previous studies suggesting that faces expressing negative emotion can capture attention more efficiently. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Direction Deviation and Flight Inertia in Motion Spatial Orientation 2019, (3): 556-562.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1257KB) ( )   Motion perception refers to the effect of the characteristics of the motion on the human’s brain, which was perceived and recognized by the individual. It is the result of a variety of sensory coordination activities, such as vision, kinesthesis and equilibrium sense. Researches about representational momentum have indicated that the forward displacement of the final position of a moving target is not only along its moving direction, but also along the direction of orthogonal axis, demonstrating that motion spatial orientation shows both distance and direction deviation. The present research was to explore the direction deviation under different situations, and the cognitive penetrability of motion perception by changing the meaning of the stimuli, direction of movement, and motion patterns of the stimuli. The experiment 1 adopted circle image while experiment 2 adopted the airplane image, which was designed as a simple line-drawn image. Both experiment 1 and 2 obeyed a full factorial design: 2(motion pattern: take-off, landing) × 2 (direction: rightward, leftward) × 3(moving position: same, higher, lower trajectory). Our research showed the following results. First, motion pattern significantly affected the accuracy steadily when asking to determine whether the actual trajectory of the stimulus was same with the preset one. When the object landed, people made more wrong decision. However, the effect of moving direction on accuracy depended on the meaning of stimulus. Only when the object was meaningless in experiment 1, rightward movement led to more wrong decision. When the object was the airplane image, the accuracy wasn’t different between the rightward and leftward motion. Second, moving position had an influence on participants’ judgement. We found that when actual trajectory was slightly higher than the preset one, participants were more likely to made wrong decision compared to that when the actual trajectory was lower than the preset one, p<.05, which demonstrating direction deviation in experiment 1. However, when stimulus was airplane, we found that the direction deviation occurred differently compared which was observed in experiment 1. Third, the form of direction deviation depended on the relationship between the animacy of the object and the flying scene. When the object was the airplane image, and the landing motion was performed, it was more likely for participants to make the same response when the actual trajectory was lower than the preset one. However, when take-off motion was performed for the airplane, it was more likely to make the same response when the actual trajectory was higher than the preset one. The results above indicated that participants were more likely to consider the airplane to fly lower and lower when landing movement was performed, and to fly higher and higher when take-off movement was performed. The different form of direction deviation was in accordance with the phenomena of the flight inertia. We demonstrate that when object is moving, it does deviate from its preset trajectory. However, the direction deviation isn’t always the same for take-off and landing movement, which can be influenced by the animacy of object, gravity, and motion pattern. Our results suggest that the motion perception is cognitively penetrable. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Influence of Unconscious Self-control Goal Priming on Overcoming Ego Depletion Li-Wei ZHANG 2019, (3): 563-569.  Abstract ( )   PDF (744KB) ( )   Self-control refers to one’s capacity to change, modify or inhibit dominant impulses, competing urges, or behaviors. The self-control strength model proposes that exerting self-control consumes self-control strength and thereby reduces the amount of strength that is available for subsequent self-control. Unconscious goal is a mental representation of the satisfactory state or outcome of the behavior. Researchers found that unconscious process could change cognition and behavior as the way of conscious process. This has caused an interest in using unconscious goal priming as an intervention tool to influence behavior in line with an individual's long-term goal. The present study hypothesized that unconscious goal priming that embodies the automatic process can overcome ego depletion. Previous studies have been mainly used supraliminal priming to activate self-control goal. Basing on the studies about the role of the unconscious goal priming in ego depletion, this study complements subliminal priming, using supraliminal and subliminal priming to explore the influence of unconscious goal priming on overcoming ego depletion. Experiment 1 was aimed at testing the hypothesis that supraliminal goal priming could overcome ego depletion. In Experiment 1, we used 2-factor between-subject design, ego depletion and unconscious goal priming as between-subjects factors; 73 subjects were randomly divided into 4 groups. We used the Stroop task to induce ego depletion, then subjects completed a scrambled sentence task to active the self-control or neutral goal. At last, they completed the isometric handgrip squeeze. It was found that the main effect of ego depletion was significant, and the unconscious goal priming had remarkable effect, subjects primed with persistent goal performed better than non-primed subjects. The interaction effect was not significant. Experiment 2 was aimed at testing the hypothesis that subliminal goal priming could overcome ego depletion. In Experiment 2, we used 2-factor between-subject design, ego depletion and unconscious goal priming as between-subjects factors; 71 subjects were randomly divided into 4 groups. We used the Stroop task to induce ego depletion, then subjects completed the subliminal priming paradigm to prime self-control goal. At last, they completed the isometric handgrip squeeze. Experiment 2 had found that the main effect of ego depletion was significant, the main effect of goal priming was also significant, and the interaction effect was significant. In the absence of unconscious goal priming, the performance of the depleted subjects was reduced, which was consistent with the definition of ego depletion. However, after the unconscious goal priming, there was no significant difference between the depleted and non-depleted subjects. This study suggests that unconscious goal priming can overcome ego depletion through supraliminal and subliminal priming. The influence of supraliminal goal priming didn’t depend on the depletion conditions. But subliminal goal priming works only in depletion conditions. Ego depletion can be overcome when self-control goal becomes activated without conscious awareness. The present study suggest that activating self-control goal through unconscious priming can overcome the ego depletion. Subjects join in this process without conscious engage. Future research may proceed from the delayed effects of unconscious priming and explored the continuity and reliability of unconscious goal priming effects in long-term training. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Word Segmentation by Alternating Colors Facilitate Text Reading for Senior Deaf Students in Primary School: Evidence from Eye Movement 2019, (3): 570-576.  Abstract ( )   PDF (460KB) ( )   Word segmentation is an important process of reading. Unlike most alphabetic writing systems, such as English, Chinese is written without spaces between successive characters or words. There is no obvious visual cue to demarcate words except punctuation marks. Thus, it is necessary to word segmentation during Chinese reading. As shown by Perea & Wang (2017) , alternating-color words were an effective way of word segmentation and it facilitated reading aloud a text for developing readers. Similar to developing readers, deaf readers have difficult in Chinese reading, for, deaf readers know and process language via different sensory channels due to auditory deprivation (Bélanger & Rayner, 2015). There were few studies to investigate how to improve the reading efficiency of deaf readers in Chinese so far. Thus, the present study used eye tracking technique to explore the influence of the alternating-color text on text reading of senior deaf students in primary school. This paper aims to study an effective way to improve the reading efficiency of deaf students. The present study adopted a one-way (text types: alternating-color text, mono-color text) within-subjects design. Participants were composed of 29 forth-sixth graders recruited from a deaf elementary school in Tianjin. Their eye movements were recorded with the SR Research Eyelink 1000 plus with a sampling rate of 1000HZ. The experiment provide two sets of analyses. In the global analyses, we computed the reading rate, average fixation duration and average saccade length. In the local analyses, we used the following eye movement measures: single fixation duration, first fixation duration, gaze duration and total reading time. There were 6 texts in total. They were chosen from different versions of Chinese textbook for 2 grade. Every text, evaluated by teachers from deaf school, can be used as experimental material. In the formal experiment, all texts were randomly divided into two groups (three texts per group) : the alternating-color text and the mono-color text. For the multicolored texts, the color of the words alternated between red, green, brown and blue. For the mono-color texts, the characters were presented in red, green, brown or blue. Participants read all texts in the two group. The results showed that compared to the mono-color text, when deaf students read the alternating-color text, they read faster and cost shorter average fixation duration for global analyses. Similar results were observed in the local analyses. The local analyses of eye movement measures showed that deaf students required shorter gaze duration and total reading time in the alternating-color text than in the mono-color text. In conclusion, these data indicated that the alternating-color text did facilitate deaf students text reading supported by both the global analyses and the local analyses. At the moment, the experiment provides evidence to demonstrate that alternating-color is an effective way of word segmentation. That is, when reading Chinese text, color information may provide an extra visual cue to help to segment the words and to facilitate word recognition. In addition, the result of the present study can be used to improve deaf students’ reading teaching in the primary school. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Discrimination perception, Academic Achievement in Rural Left Behind Children: Longitudinal Mediation Role of Depression 2019, (3): 584-590.  Abstract ( )   PDF (566KB) ( )   Since China's reform and opening up in 1980s, large numbers of rural laborers left their homes in the countryside to pursue better job opportunities in urban areas. As a result of the direct influence of the large-scale immigration, millions of children became left communities and were taken care by their grandparents or other relatives. A long family separation, lacking of face to face communication and the relative absence of parents affection, all these factors have a negative impact on left-behind children. Discrimination is relatively frequent in the lives of left-behind children, and with the continuous impact, it can increase the risks of maladjustment in adulthood. Left-behind children’s discrimination perception and academic achievement has been identified correlative in cross-sectional research. Nonetheless, there are few longitudinal studies involving these two constructs, so the direction of the association between discrimination perception and academic achievement is somewhat unclear. What’s more, depression has been proved as an important predictor of discrimination perception and academic achievement, which could potentially influence the development of the two constructs. In this paper, we investigate the longitudinal associations among discrimination perception, depression and academic achievement of left-behind children. Besides, we particularly do some research on the possibility of bidirectional associations between discrimination perception and academic achievement, and the mediation role of depression between these two constructs. A total of 1147 rural children (630 boys, 517 girls; M age=12.94 years, SD =0.88) were recruited from a rural area in Shandong province, including 428 children (228 boys and 200 girl)from two-parent-migrant families, 719 children (401 boy and 318 girl) from father-migrant families completed measures of perceived discrimination, depression and academic achievement at baseline, 6 months and 12 months. In addition, This study controlled left-behind children’s family socioeconomic status (SES) as a covariate because?previous?studies?showed was significantly associated with adolescents' discrimination perception. SES was computed by creating a composite of children' reports of perceived family economic pressure and parents’ highest level of education. Repeated measurement analysis showed that left-behind children’s perceived discrimination and academic achievement. at baseline were significantly higher than those at 12 months, left-behind children’s depression at baseline was higher than that at 6 months and 12 months , and there was also significantly differncece between depression at 6 months and 12 months . But,no significant were found for gender and left-behind?status on perceived discrimination, depression and academic achievement.. Cross-lagged analysis showed a significant one-way relationship between perceived discrimination and academic achievement when controlling for key demographic variables (SES). Specifically, baseline academic achievement predicated perceived discrimination at 12 months, baseline perceived discrimination did not predict academic achievement at 12 months. Moreover, academic achievement predicated increases in depressive 6 months later, which in turn, predicated increases in perceived discrimination 12 months later. Perceived discrimination predicated increases in depressive 6 months later, but, it did not predict increases in perceived discrimination 12 months later. Compared with girls and boys, father-migrant families and two-parent-migrant families, there were no differences in their modeling paths. The results of the cross-lagged model comparisons indicated a unidirectional relation between academic achievement and perceived discrimination: academic achievement appeared to be a predictor of perceived discrimination but not vice versa. The longitudinal mediation modeling shows that academic achievement not only directly affected discrimination perception, but also indirectly increase the influence on discrimination perception through depression. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Social comparison and depression in college students: the role of interpersonal self-support coming from gender difference 2019, (3): 591-597.  Abstract ( )   PDF (637KB) ( )   Social comparison is a common phenomenon in human living. By investigated 701 university students, the study analyzed the interaction among social comparison, depression, interpersonal self-support, and gender. The results showed: the depressive symptom level was positively correlated with the ability dimension of social comparison, and negatively correlated with the interpersonal self-support. Furthermore, the multilevel moderated analysis indicated that interpersonal self-support moderated the relationship between ability dimension of social comparison and depressive symptom significantly, and there was a remarkable gender difference. Compared to male university students with high score of interpersonal self-support, for the male university students with low score of interpersonal self-support, their social comparison was positively influence their depressive symptom remarkably, but there was no the same effect in female university students. The study suggested that we should focus on the male university students with low personal self-support, help them to resolve their negative emotion caused by social comparison ly, in order to make them free from being caught in depressive “morass”. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Influences of Conflict with Parents and Friends on Loneliness in Middle School and Its Gender Difference: A Cross-Lagged Analysis 2019, (3): 598-603.  Abstract ( )   PDF (528KB) ( )   Loneliness refers to a kind of negative emotion experience, which comes from the perceived discrepancies between desired and actual social relationships. It almost exists through people’s whole life, and individuals could be likely to experience the highest level of loneliness in adolescence. Therefore, the loneliness of middle school students is worthy to be discussed. Previous researches pointed out that the loneliness could be associated with parent-child relationship, also the friendship quality and the number of friend were likely to relate to the sense of loneliness negatively. However, these researches tended to explore the protective factors of the loneliness, such as parental support and positive friendship quality. Hence, this research aimed to use a longitudinal research to explore the effect of two risk factors on loneliness, including the conflicts with parents and friends. In addition, there were rare researches examining gender differences in the influence of interpersonal conflicts on loneliness in adolescents. Based on Gender Schema Theory, boys could differ from girls in terms of the effects of the relation with parents or friends. For example, some girls might have stronger emotional needs than boys, and interpersonal conflicts could affect girls to a larger extent than boys. Hence, to explore the influences of the conflicts with parents and friends on loneliness in middle school, as well as its gender difference, a cross-lagged study was conducted. The participants, 1130 middle school students from Grade 7 to Grade 8(ages 13 years 5 months, SD = 7 months), were recruited from urban and rural areas of Beijing in 2015 and 2016, consisting of 565 girls and 565 boys. They were required to complete Parent-child Conflict Questionnaire in Chinese version, Loneliness Inventory and Friendship Quality Questionnaire, in order to assess the conflict with parents, the sense of loneliness and the conflict with friends once a year. We used multi-group cross-lagged models to examine the causal relationships between the conflicts with parents and friends, as well as loneliness. The model fitted well and there was a significant difference between the male model and female model. The results indicated that: (1) The conflict with parents, the conflict with friends and the loneliness of boys were significantly higher than those of girls; (2) There was a significant gender difference in terms of the relationships among the conflict with parents, the conflict with friends and loneliness. For boys, the conflict with friends and loneliness could predict each other significantly, otherwise, the conflict with parents could not predict subsequent loneliness. Moreover, the conflicts with parents and friends could not predict each other. For girls, the conflict with parents could predict subsequent loneliness significantly, but the conflict with friends could not predict loneliness. Additionally, the conflicts with parents and friends could predict each other; (3) Compared to the conflict with parents, boys’ loneliness was likely to be affected by the conflict with friends to a larger extent, while girls’ loneliness was likely to be affected by the conflict with parents more than the conflict with friends. The research implied that the interventions for loneliness of adolescents should be differentiated across gender. References | Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Social Avoidance in Childhood: Predictors, Measurements, and Adjustment Functioning 2019, (3): 604-611.  Abstract ( )   PDF (327KB) ( )   For a long time, the need for belongingness has been considered as one of the most important basic human needs. Peer interactions make important and unique contributions to children's social, emotional, cognitive, and moral development (Rubin, Bukowski, & Bowker, 2015), and Lacking it may cause mental illness and maladjustment (Rubin, Coplan, & Bowker, 2009). However, socially withdrawn children habitually remove themselves from opportunities for peer interaction. In order to better understand this group of children, Asendorpf (1990) proposed a conceptual model postulating different child psychosocial outcomes as a function of social approach and social avoidance motivations. According to this model, avoidant children were portrayed as both desiring being solitude and actively seeking to avoid social interaction, whom were consequently at the most risk for social and emotional maladjustment. Although very little is known about social avoidance in childhood (Coplan et al. 2015), three postulations hypothesize the processes that may underlie the development of avoidant children (Asendorpf, 1990; Bowker & Raja, 2011; Chen, 2010; Coplan & Armer 2007; Coplan et al., 2015; Rubin et al., 2009; Schmidt & Fox, 1999), which are social anxiety, negative peer experiences and depression. However, there has been very limited empirical study of social avoidance to compare those three conceptual models directly. To our knowledge, only one study using short-term longitudinal design examined those hypotheses, and provided evidence supporting depressive symptoms as a salient predictor of social avoidance (Ding et al., 2018). Two approaches are available to measure social avoidance. One indirect approach is to select avoidant children based on the model of social motivations. Researchers speculated that children characterized by low approach motivation and high avoidance motivation would be defined as socially avoidant children according to Asendorpf (1990) before. The other direct approach for measurement on social avoidance, researcher used self-reported or parental-reported Social Avoidance Scale to test the level of avoidance directly. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Context cue influenced the inference between social cognition contents BIN ZUO wen fangfang 2019, (3): 612-618.  Abstract ( )   PDF (561KB) ( )   Warmth and competence are two basic dimensions in social judgment. Warmth having traits related to perceived intention such as friendliness, helpfulness, sincerity, trustworthiness and morality, while competence having traits related to the ability to achieve the intention, such as intelligence, skill, creativity and efficacy. Recent researches suggested that warmth dimension could be divided into sociability and morality. Previous researches showed much evidences for both positive and negative inferences between warmth and competence. Previous researches also indicated that context cues played important role in the social inferences between warmth and competence. The present study tested how context cues influenced the references between different social cognition contents. Study 1 tested the positive inferences between warmth and competence under conditions regardless of context. In study 1, 38 university students participants were assigned to a 2 (description：warmth vs. competence) × 2 (valence: positive vs. negative) within-participant design. Participants needed to rate four types of targets, whom were descripted as either positive or negative on one dimension of warmth and competence. The results of study 1 showed that the positive descriptions on one dimension would trigger positive inferences on the other dimension, which suggested the positive inferences between warmth and competence under the conditions without context cue. Study 2 furthermore explored the references between warmth and competence under two different context conditions. 40 participants were recruited on campus and assigned to a 2 (context cue: point to high competence vs. do not point to high competence) × 2 (description：high warmth vs. high competence) within-participant design. The results showed that, when the context cue pointed to the high competence clearly, which suggested that this situation need a target with high competence, the positive description on warmth elicited a negative inference on competence and negative behavioral reactions toward the target, whereas the positive description on competence elicited a correspondently positive inference on warmth dimension and positive behavioral reactions toward the target. However, when the context cue didn’t point to the high competence, both warmth and competence descriptions could elicit positive inferences on the other dimension. In study 3, 74 female participants were randomly assigned to a 2 (target occupation: nurse vs. judge) × 2 (description：high sociability vs. high morality) between-participant design. The results showed that the targets would get better evaluations if descript the sociability of nurse or descript the morality of judge. Together, the present study found that: 1) When lack of context cues or the context cues were ambiguous, participants would make positive halo inferences between warmth and competence dimensions; 2) When the context cues point to clear cognition contents, the positive descriptions on the corresponding cognition content would elicit positive social inference. The present study suggested that context cues played important role in social inference and the targets would get better evaluations if the descriptive information matched the context expectations. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Effect of Episodic Future Thinking on Procrastination:the Dissection Effect of Contents of task 2019, (3): 619-625.  Abstract ( )   PDF (568KB) ( )   Abstract Procrastination, which refers to the behavior of voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay, is a prevalent problematic behavior that diminish procrastinators’ fitness, work efficiency, academic performance and psychological well-being across different time and situations. A recent study indicating that procrastination is linked to difficulties in the ability to form vivid mental images raised the question of whether procrastinators present particular difficulties with episodic future thinking (EFT) or display a more general deficit in constructing complex mental images and subsequent study also found that lower EFT score was related to trait procrastination. According to the decision model of procrastination, people compare aversiveness of engaging tasks and rewards from the task by episodic future thinking. Specific EFT triggers corresponding emotions which are in line with valence of contents in EFT and then these emotions affect decision making by influencing evaluation. However, it is still inconclusive how the EFT influenced the procrastination when different types of expecting were presented in mental image. Here, we hypothesized that expecting for aversiveness of engaging tasks would generate negative emotions, like anxiety and dislike, and increase procrastination. On the contrary, expecting for rewards of completing tasks would generate positive emotions and attenuate procrastination. In present study, we used self-designed experimental paradigm to prove assumptions above-mentioned. 67 healthy right-handed undergraduate subjects free of ophthalmic diseases (mean age, 20.3 years; 51 females) were recruited. The experimental materials are scatter plots in three difficulty levels generated by MATLAB R2014a. Participants were asked to point out the amount of dots in plot and they would get credits (for exchanging Renminbi) after completing tasks. If the error between answer and actual number was less than 2, participant could engage next trial. Firstly, we asked participants did some exercises for knowing well tasks and, importantly, insuring participants could expect content of tasks completely when they were told what tasks they would engage. All participants should complete tasks in three conditions: no EFT, expect the process of completing tasks before engaging tasks, expect the rewards of completing tasks before engaging tasks. When participants have completed all tasks in EFT conditions, they should tell us how vivid they envision and how they feel when they envision in 7 points scale. Before the scatter plot presented, we told participant what kind of tasks they would engage and how credits they could get. And then, participants autonomously decided to engage task immediately or put off task and have rest first. From the state perspective, the results shown that: (1) compared with no EFT condition, all participants procrastinated more in expecting the process of completing tasks before engaging tasks; (2) compared with no EFT condition, all participants procrastinated less in expecting the rewards of completing tasks before engaging tasks; (3) expecting the process of completing tasks would trigger negative emotions and expecting the rewards of completing tasks would trigger positive emotions. Negative emotions predicted the increase of procrastination and positive emotions predicted the decrease of procrastination. In conclusion, the present study indicated that expecting specific content of tasks could triggered corresponding emotions and then affected procrastination compared with no EFT condition for all procrastinators and non-procrastinators. Our results broaden the scope of procrastination study and have important scientific values for intervention of procrastination: we could adjust our emotions and evaluation properly by EFT for tasks in order to attenuate procrastination. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The effects of decision maker’ role and social pressure on helping decision-making among persons with different interpersonal sensitivity Qing-Lei LI Huai-Yong WANG 2019, (3): 626-632.  Abstract ( )   PDF (454KB) ( )   Previous research has identified several factors that may affect individuals’ helping decisions, including personality traits, character traits and situational factors. In recent years, the most important and fascinating goal in psychology is to understand and explain human helping behavior. Some research found that individuals were driven to help others by egoism motivation so as to attract their attention and receive high praise. This motivation may be reflected by one important personality trait--interpersonal sensitivity, it refers to individuals’ levels of sensitivity to others’ opinion. However, the relationship between interpersonal sensitivity and helping decisions has not been studied yet. The purpose of this study is to examine the differences in helping decision-making among individuals with different interpersonal sensitivity. Meanwhile, two situational factors (decision maker’s role and social pressure) are introduced into the experiment to explore the impact of the interaction between personality trait (interpersonal sensitivity) and situational factors on helping decision-making. The present study included 2 experiments. The first experiment employed 2(interpersonal sensitivity: high/low) × 3(decision maker’s role: self/friend/stranger) mixed design with interpersonal sensitivity as a between-subjects variable. Participants were divided into two groups by interpersonal sensitivity scores, and asked to make helping decision about time for different roles. The second experiment employed 2(interpersonal sensitivity: high/low) × 3(decision maker’s role: self/friend/stranger) × 2(social pressure: high/low) mixed design with interpersonal sensitivity and social pressure as a between-subjects variable. Participants were divided into four groups by interpersonal sensitivity and social pressure scores, and asked to make helping decision about money for different roles. Based on two experiments, we found that: (1) Compared to low interpersonal sensitivity, participants with high interpersonal sensitivity were more likely to help others. (2) When individuals made help decisions for themselves, friends, and strangers, their willingness of helping decreased in turn, and the difference between the three of them was significant. (3) Under high social pressure condition, compared to individuals with low interpersonal sensitivity, individuals with high interpersonal sensitivity were more willing to help others, whereas the difference between two groups was not significant under low social pressure condition. (4) Compared to making decisions for their friends, individuals in high social pressure condition were willing to donate more money to others when making decisions for themselves, whereas the difference between the two roles was not significant under low social pressure condition, meanwhile, compared to making decisions for strangers, individuals with the other roles were willing to donate more money to others. (5) Under high social pressure conditions, compared to individuals with low interpersonal sensitivity, individuals with high interpersonal sensitivity were more willing to help others when making decisions for friends or strangers. These results suggested that the interactions between personality traits and situational factors affected individuals’ helping decision-making. Interpersonal sensitivity appeared to be an important personality trait which had important effect on helping decisions, and situational factors, such as decision maker’ role and social pressures played the moderate role in this effect. These findings also proved the interpersonal sensitivity could be a personality trait that was linked with some egoistic motivations of helping. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The mental representation of the self in the implicit association test：The role of the other 2019, (3): 633-638.  Abstract ( )   PDF (394KB) ( )   Self-bias reflects a fundamental cognitive ability that human beings can distinguish the self from others. There are many instances in which People seem to be biased towards information related to themselves compared with other people in perception, memory and attention. One major account of self -bias effect is that self-related information is intrinsically reward, some recent neuroscience studies demonstrated that self -related stimuli induce neural activity changes in regions recruited during reward. The apparent overlap between self and reward may tell us that the self-related stimuli equaled to those things that have high degrees of value for us, both of them could facilitate the cognitive processing. Therefore, in the present study, we aim to investigate whether the self is similar to high-reward or not. Twenty-three and thirty college students were selected randomly to participant in Exp.1 and Exp.2. The two experiments were divided into two successive sessions separately. Firstly, the participants were asked to associate the geometric figures ellipse or triangle with themselves or the others such as "Ellipse represents yourself and triangle represents a stranger(Exp.1) or your best friend(Exp.2)", then they completed a perceptual matching task in which to decide whether the figure and the label are matched or not. Secondly, they were asked to conduct an Implicit Association Test (IAT) in which to press two response keys to classify the stimuli including four categories (the compatible task refers to the same response key to self-figure and high reward and the incompatible task refers to the same response key to the other-figure and low reward). The results showed that there was a robust self-bias in perceptual matching task-- higher accuracy and faster responses to the figures associated with self than to the figures associated with the other (stranger in Exp.1, friends in Exp.2). In the IAT task, the results showed that neither the RTs between the compatible task and the incompatible task nor the D value was significant when the others was a stranger in Exp.1, which means that there was no similarity between the self and the high-reward. However, both the RT between the compatible task and the incompatible task and the D value were significant when the other was one's best friend in Exp.2, which means that self was similar to the high-reward. To summarize, the similarity of self and high-reward was affected by the other to self, the similarity increased when the other was the friend compared to the stranger. This is due to the context of the reward, when the same response key was assigned to the friend and the high reward, it seemed that the friend was assigned to more money, which made the participants feel being to threaten, but it didn't make too much sense to me when the same response key was assigned to the stranger and the high reward. In conclusion, the similarity of self and high-reward was important for individual survival , and supported the Self-evaluation Maintenance Model proposed by Tesser et al(1988). Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The influence of social cooperation information on distance perception 2019, (3): 639-645.  Abstract ( )   PDF (436KB) ( )   The ability of distance perception enables us to estimate the distance between objects and thereby interact efficiently with the world. Theoretically, the vision should perceive the distance accurately. While it has been largely found that the perceived distance is distorted, to adapt to act on the objects. Previous studies have revealed that the physical relation between objects and the categorical relation between objects can influence the perception of distance. Nevertheless, due to that individuals are always socially interact, the social relation is always perceived between two objects, and how this information modulate distance perception is still unknown. The present study is aimed to explore how the social cooperation information influence the distance perception, given that this kind of social relation is core to dominate our interaction. To address the above question, we manipulated the cooperation information by presenting two chasers and one common target to perform cooperative or individual chases. Subjects were required to estimate the distance between two chasers when the agents stopped moving. The perceived distance of cooperative chases was compared with the individual chases. To assess whether the perceived distance was expanded or compressed by the cooperation information, the perceived distance of both cooperative chases and individual chases were also compared with that of the random motion, wherein the two chasers moved randomly (Experiment 1). In our used chasing scenes, the behaviors of chasers responded to those of the target continuously, and thus it is critical to take into consideration of the target (or goal) when understanding the interactions. That is to say, if the prey becomes invisible, the observer will be hard to get the intents of the chasers though they are still moving in exactly the same way with the presence of target. Hence, we also established a direct manipulation of the goal-directedness of one chaser’s movements to disrupt cooperation information (Experiment 2), to control for possible low-level physical properties and further examine whether the observed effect in Experiment 1 was reasoned by the social information. It was found that: (1) The perceived distance was influenced by the social cooperation information, and the perceived distance of cooperative chases was farther than both individual chases and random motion, but there was no different between individual chases and random motion; (2) When the social cooperation information was disrupted through making the target invisible, even the physical relation between two chases was kept the same as before, no significant defense was found across cooperative chases, individual chases and random motion; namely, if the social cooperation information is not present, the above effects vanishes. Therefore, the current study indicated that the perceived distance between two objects with social cooperation is expanded and such effect can’t be explained by the low-level properties, suggesting that the social relation information also modulates the perception of distance between objects. This finding is consistent with the view in which the high-level information can penetrate into low-level processes. In addition, the current finding could help us understand more about how the social information interacts with the perception of distance. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Effect of Paradoxical Leadership on Employee Work Engagement: A Moderated-Mediating Model 2019, (3): 646-652.  Abstract ( )   PDF (617KB) ( )   As organizational environments become increasingly turbulent and complex, there is need to focus on leadership effectiveness in addressing intensified paradoxical demands. Paradoxical leadership in people management, referring to seemingly competing, yet interrelated, behaviors to meet structural and follower demands simultaneously and over time, includes five dimensions: (1) combining self-centeredness with other-centeredness; (2) maintaining both distance and closeness; (3)treating subordinates uniformly, while allowing individualization; (4) enforcing work requirements, while allowing flexibility; (5) maintaining decision control, while allowing autonomy (Zhang et al., 2015). Because the construct and the measurement of paradoxical leadership have been proposed recently, several studies in China have tested whether and how paradoxical leadership affects team innovation, and current research has not yet focused on the influence of paradoxical leadership on follower work engagement and the mechanism underlying the relationship between paradoxical leadership and work engagement. The aim of this study is to investigate “how” paradoxical leadership influences employee work engagement, and to find out “when” this influence is stronger or weaker in Chinese workplace. Drawing on the individual level, therefore, this study examined the effect of paradoxical leadership on employee work engagement and tested the mediating role of psychological empowerment as well as the moderating role of job complexity playing in the linkages between paradoxical leadership and follower work engagement. The present study tested the hypotheses using a sample of 320 employees from three state-owned enterprises in Tianjin across various sectors and collected data at three times. Established measures with high reliability and validity were used to capture the key variables. Hierarchical regression analysis was mainly conducted for data analysis. Consistent with hypotheses, it was found that: (1) paradoxical leadership is positively related to follower work engagement; (2) psychological empowerment plays a part mediating role in the relationship between paradoxical leadership and work engagement; (3) job complexity positively moderates the relationship between paradoxical leadership and psychological empowerment. When job complexity is high, paradoxical leadership is more positively related to psychological empowerment. (4) job complexity positively moderates the mediating role of psychological empowerment in the relationship between paradoxical leadership and work engagement. Specifically, when job complexity is high, psychological empowerment mediates the relationship between paradoxical leadership and work engagement; when job complexity is low, however, the mediating effect is not significant. In conclusion, by investigating the effect of paradoxical leadership on follower work engagement and the mechanism and moderating condition in the process, our study extends the current literature in three ways. First, we examined the influence of paradoxical leadership on follower work engagement, extending the research scope of paradoxical leadership study. Furthermore, we found that the mediating role of psychological empowerment in the relationship between paradoxical leadership and psychological empowerment, providing extra knowledge to understand the mechanism in paradoxical leadership effectiveness. Finally, this study helped to understand the moderation condition of the paradoxical leader effectiveness through job complexity, which induced the different level of psychological empowerment indirectly affecting the relationship between paradoxical leadership and work engagement. And the conclusion of the study has important reference value for enhancement of employee work engagement for enterprise leaders. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Effect of Social Exclusion on Social Anxiety of college students in China: The Roles of Fear of Negative evaluation and Interpersonal Trust 2019, (3): 653-659.  Abstract ( )   PDF (555KB) ( )   Starting from people's strong demand for belonging, social exclusion will hinder its realization and bring great harm to people's physical and mental health. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the influence of social exclusion and its intervention factors. Previous studies have shown that social rejection leads to social anxiety. In addition, fear of negative evaluation is an important predictor of social anxiety. And interpersonal trust is the lubricant of interpersonal relationship.So the purposes of the present study is to explore the relationship between social exclusion of college students, fear of negative evaluation, interpersonal trust and social anxiety as well as the mechanism the effect of social exclusion of college students on social anxiety of college students. A total sample of 425 college students from some universities was selected, with 150 males. The questionnaires included the Social Exclusion Questionnaire for Undergraduate(SEQU), Social Anxiety Subscale for the Self-Consciousness Scale (SASSCS), Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (BFNES), and Interpersonal Trust Scale(ITS). Data was collected and analyzed with Spss 24.0 and Amos17.0, and the bias-corrected percentile bootstrap method was used to analyze the role of interpersonal trust and fear of negative evaluation between social exclusion and social anxiety of college students.A single factor model was calculated to test the common method variance.Results showed that the study was inexistent common method variance. The results show that: (1)The structural equation model(SEM)reveals that the data fits the theoretical model well(2/df=2.61,GFI=.90,AGFI=.87,RMSEA=.06); (2) Social exclusion of college students has?a?significant direct?effect on social anxiety(β=.20，p<.01), and its confidence interval of 95% is[.06, 0.32]; Social exclusion of college students has?a?significant direct?effect on fear of negative evaluation (β=.37，p<.01), and its confidence interval of 95% is?[.24, .49]; Fear of negative evaluation has?a?significant direct on social anxiety (β=.56，p<.01), and its confidence interval of 95% is[.41, .71]; interpersonal trust has?a?significant direct?effect on social anxiety (β=-.13，p<.01), and its confidence interval of 95% is?[.03, .24]; Social exclusion of college students has a significant indirect?effect on social anxiety through fear of negative evaluation, and its confidence interval of 95% is [.12, .32]; (4) Interpersonal trust moderates the relation between social exclusion of college students and social anxiety, that is, there is a significant positive relation between social exclusion of college students and social anxiety under the low interpersonal trust level, however, there is a non significant relation between social exclusion of college students and social anxiety under the high interpersonal trust level. It is concluded that in the structural equation model of social exclusion of college students on social exclusion, fear of negative evaluation plays a partial mediating role and interpersonal trust moderates the indirect effect.These findings suggest some measures of prevention and treatment for college students’ aggression should be taken. Schools and families should set up a good core self-evaluation system in order to help them improve their social support level and eradicate aggression.These findings suggest some measures of prevention and treatment for college students`social exclusion should be taken. Schools and families should set up a good trust system in order to help them improve their interpersonal trust level and eradicate the influence of social exclusion. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Impact of Power on Purchase Intention of Anthropomorphic Products 2019, (3): 660-666.  Abstract ( )   PDF (769KB) ( )   Anthropomorphism is a brand strategy often adopted by enterprises. Anthropomorphism can bring positive effects, such as alleviating the psychological pressure of consumers in contact with brand（汪涛, 谢志鹏, 周玲, 周南, 2014）, increasing brand trust (Visser et al., 2016), reducing the perception of risk (Hassanein & Head, 2006) and so on. But inappropriate anthropomorphism can also bring negative effects (Puzakova et al., 2013; 刘笛, 王海忠, 2017). Therefore, it is necessary to examine the implementation strategy of brand Anthropomorphism. Although some scholars have made a useful discussion on the anthropomorphism of brand based on the needs of consumer social belonging (陈增祥, 杨光玉, 2017) or product type (谢志鹏, 2014), few studies have paid attention to the influence of consumer information processing fluency. One of the reasons for anthropomorphic is that it can make people's cognitive processing more fluent（Epley, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2007）, so it is necessary to discuss anthropomorphic implementation from the perspective of information processing fluency. Based on the theory of “agentic—communal” orientation of power and the “accessibility—diagnosis” model of attitude, from the perspective of information processing fluency, this study tries to explore whether people with high and low sense of power differ in the purchase intention of different types of anthropomorphic products, and what is the mechanism behind this difference. 168 undergraduate students are recruited to verify the research hypothesis through the group experimental design of 2 (power: high vs. low) 2 (anthropomorphic type: warmth vs. competency). The results show that: (1) Powerful and powerless people have different preferences for anthropomorphic products. (2) For people with a high sense of power, they are more willing to buy the competency anthropomorphic product than the warmth; on the contrary, for people with a low sense of power, they are more willing to buy the warmth anthropomorphic products than the competency. (3) Information processing fluency plays a complete mediating role in the relationship between power and anthropomorphic type interact influence purchase intentions of anthropomorphic products. The research enriches and deepens the existing research on the anthropomorphism by confirming the difference in the purchase preference of the anthropomorphic product by consumers with different sense of power as well as revealing the mechanism behind the difference. The conclusion is also instructive to the anthropomorphism of enterprises. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Impact of Subgroup' structure and Group Affect on Team Creativity Yan-Zhe ZHOU 2019, (3): 667-673.  Abstract ( )   PDF (537KB) ( )   Previous study of team creativity focused more on individual- or team-level factors. Because of the deep research of team diversity and team faultlines, researchers realized that it is worthy to shift their focus to subgroup-level because subgroups can strongly influence team processes and outcomes (e.g., creativity). However, previous studies findings about the influence of subgroups and subgroups’ configurational properties on the team were mainly negative. In order to explore positive findings, this study focuses on knowledge-based subgroups and combines subgroup balance (balance or imbalance) with team affective dimension (from the homogeneous aspect; e.g., group positive affect) to explore their influence on team creativity, illustrating that influence from the angle of information processing. We proposed that: the subgroup balance and group affect will interact with each other to influence team creativity; moreover, the balance of subgroup and group positive affect will have benefit on team creativity simultaneously. Data were obtained from 56 teams, 333 students, in a university via lab experiments. Each of the teams was asked to design a public service announcement by taking “Education” as the theme. Team creativity was assessed by five independent experts, with scope from 1 to 10 (1 stands for least creative and 10 stands for most creative). As this study focuses on knowledge-based subgroups’ balance, we controlled participants’ majors to design whether subgroups are balance or not. When it comes to the group affective dimension, participants in the same team were induced to experience positive (or neutral) emotion/mood by recalling their success stories (or doing an easy math test) because this study values group homogeneous state affect. The simple version of PANAS (Bledow, Rosing, & Frese, 2013) was adopted to measure their affect after induction. This study’s main results are as follows: a) subgroup balance and group affect (positive/neutral) will interact with each other to influence team creativity; b) balanced subgroups and group positive affect will have benefit on team creativity simultaneously; c) when imbalanced subgroups exist in teams, compare with group neutral affect, group positive affect will lead to a larger volatility of team creativity. There are several theoretical implications of this study. Firstly this study’s results prove that it is necessary to combine knowledge-based subgroups’ configuration properties with group affect to research their impacts on team creativity or even team outcomes. Secondly, this study’s results emphasize that group affect can be more specifically studied in the future by shifting research focus from team-level to subgroup level. To sum up, this paper not only enriches existing research and broadens research directions, but also provides practical guidance and relevant value for the modern enterprise management to some degree. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

An Experimental Study on the Influence Mechanism of Accountability on Unethical Behavior 2019, (3): 674-680.  Abstract ( )   PDF (498KB) ( )   In recent years, commercial scandals have emerged in an endless stream and the universality and seriousness of corporate unethical behavior has become increasingly prominent. This has aroused widespread concern in various sectors of society. Hannah (2013) found that monitoring employees through accountability mechanisms could reduce their unethical behavior. However, different types of business scandals suggest that accountability could also have a malfunction. In order to better curb corporate unethical behavior, we must clarify the boundary conditions and causes of failure of accountability. We believe that in the face of accountability, individuals with promotion focus are more prone to unethical behavior in the state of self-depletion. This paper confirms these conjectures through one pre-experiment and two formal experiments. In the preliminary experiment, we recruited 30 undergraduate students to participate. We determined the appropriate number of questions in the formal experiment by using three sets of word confusion test tasks with different amounts of questions to ensure the reliability of the experimental materials. Experiment 1 was based on the pre-experimental materials and had 120 undergraduates who were randomly divided into four groups using a 2 (accountable/non-accountable) × 2 (promotion focus/prevention focus) inter-group experimental design. It is to examine the effect of the interaction between accountability and regulatory focus on unethical behavior. Participants can receive a reward of two Chinese Renminbi for each correct answer. If the participant takes more than they earned, it means that they have engaged in unethical behavior. Experiment 2 added the measurement of ego-depletion to examine the mediating effect of ego-depletion between accountability and unethical behavior under promotion focus. Meanwhile, we changed the manipulation method of adjustment orientation to examine the relationship between accountability, regulatory focus and unethical behavior. Through analyzing experimental data by SPSS 19.0, we have reached the following conclusions: (1) The relationship between accountability and unethical behavior was positive/negative under promotion/prevention focus. (2) The relationship between accountability and ego-depletion was positive under promotion focus. (3) Under promotion focus, accountability of individuals would increase their ego-depletion and therefore promote unethical behaviors; which meant ego-depletion played a mediation role in the relationship between accountability and unethical behavior. Different from the previous study of stable personality traits, such as Machiavellianism as a research variable (Greenbaum, Hill, Mawritz & Quade, 2017), we selected the variable regulatory focus, which is situational control in the process of exploring the relationship between accountability and unethical behavior. It is not only theoretically but also impractically meaningful. After we figured out the moderation role of regulatory focus and mediation role of ego-depletion, it helped us find a way to reduce the occurrence of unethical behavior that is to provide a less promotional focused environment. When the employee shows signs of fatigue, burnout, etc., superiors should supplement his psychological resources, such as proper rest. Afterwards, managers should reward employees who have achieved their goals through ethical measures. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Impact of economic status on Female Mating Preferences from the Perspective of evolutionary psychology Qian TIAN Shijin Sun 2019, (3): 681-687.  Abstract ( )   PDF (861KB) ( )   Abstract As a complex social, cultural and psychological phenomenon, Mating Preference has become a hot topic in sociology and psychology in recent years. The studies of mating preference, which first commenced in western countries, are in order to explore its internal significance and mechanism from the perspective of sociology and psychology. Theoretical frameworks of mating preference have been continuously improved after decades of development; as a new research perspective, evolutionary psychology has been widely welcomed in this field because its better cross-cultural explanatory power. Through the specific and rigorous measurement methods, foreign psychologists integrated different research paradigms to study human’s mating preference behavior sys-tematically. Since the late 1970s, Chinese scholars initiated the relevant studies of mating preference in China. However, their main research methods were content analysis of marriage personals and self-report questionnaires; and due to their underdeveloped theoretical frameworks, their empirical studies were lacking convincing theoretical support. Therefore, on the basis of the in-depth studies of the evolutionary psychology, the present study learns from the western research paradigms and measurement methods in order to conduct in-depth researches and discussions on the issue about Chinese female mating preference. Under the theoretical framework of evolutionary psychology, there are three dimensional factor structure of female mating preference. They are Good-Genes, which refer to the good innate qualities of the male, such as good looking, strong body and clever mind; it represent male’s characteristics and clues of good genes. Good-Provider, which refer to the good socio-economic status of the male; it represent male’s capacity and resources to provide good parental investments to the future generations. Good-Father, which refer to the gentle and loyal personality traits of the male; it represent male’s good character bases and willingness to provide parental investments to the future generations. Few males can have all the three factors, so females need to balance during Good-Genes, Good-Provider and Good-Father. The mating preference of female can be influenced by their ages, ed-ucational statuses, relationship statuses, health statuses, household incomes, fertility willing, and so on. The present research starts from the theory of mating in the evolutionary psychology and conducts the research on the preference of females mating preference under the economic pressure. In order to further clarify the influential mechanism of the economic, the present study was carried out two experiments to ex-plore the influences of the states of economy. The result shows that (1) the females with lower economic status prefer the males with “Good-Provider”. (2) The experiment results also showed there are slight difference between above-threshold and sub-threshold. Females in explicit measurements often showed preference in males with “Good-Father”, but in implicit measurements, females of all groups attach more importance to the socio-economic status of males. The result of research shows that the mate selection of females focus more on the clues of resources in a general way, under the economic pressure, this kind of preference for mate selection is more obvious. References | Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Does Organizational Identification Really Promote Unethical Pro-organizational Behavior? The Role of Socially Responsible Human Resource Management Ken CHENG 2019, (3): 688-694.  Abstract ( )   PDF (624KB) ( )   Organizational identification is widely deemed as an important antecedent of unethical pro-organizational behavior. Yet, extant empirical research has not drawn consistent conclusions about the relationship between them. For this, we propose one potential cause that the conceptual understanding of organizational identification is a fuzzy set which not only includes the core of identity (i.e., self-definition, importance and affect) but also includes the content of identity (e.g., values, beliefs and goals) while the narrowly-defined organizational identification scale only captures the core parts. To verify this conjecture, we draw on social identity theory and choose socially responsible human resource management as the identity cues related to the organizational morality to examine the moderating effect of socially responsible human resource management on the relationship between organizational identification and unethical pro-organizational behavior as well as the direct effect of socially responsible human resource management on unethical pro-organizational behavior. Multilevel and multisource data were obtained in a two-wave questionnaire survey conducted in the eastern coastal areas of China, namely Shanghai Municipality, Zhejiang Province and Shandong Province. At Time 1, 60 HR managers from 60 companies were invited to answer questions relating to socially responsible human resource management and to randomly selected 5 employees to participate in this survey. The 300 selected employees were invited to answer questions relating to organizational identification. We also measured some control variables at this time. After one month, at Time 2, employees who attended the Time-1 survey were invited to rate their willingness to engage in unethical pro-organizational behavior. The final valid sample included 60 companies and 277 employees (4.62 employees per company), with the response rates of 100% and 92.3%, respectively. Multilevel linear modeling technique was applied with Mplus7.4 to test the research hypotheses. In line with the theoretical arguments, results showed that socially responsible human resource management significantly moderated the relationship between organizational identification and unethical pro-organizational behavior. Specifically, when socially responsible human resource management was low, organizational identification was significantly and positively related to unethical pro-organizational behavior; when socially responsible human resource management was high, organizational identification negatively influenced unethical pro-organizational behavior though this effect was not significant. In addition, we found that socially responsible human resource management could directly inhibit unethical pro-organizational behavior. This study contributes to the literature in two aspects. Firstly, this study provides a new and in-depth interpretation for the inconsistent conclusions of the relationship between organizational identification and unethical pro-organizational behavior by choosing socially responsible human resource management as the organizational morality-related cues and examining the moderating role of socially responsible human resource management. Secondly, this study enriches the literature on the inhibitors of unethical pro-organizational behavior by verifying the negative effect of socially responsible human resource management on unethical pro-organizational behavior, considering that less attention has been paid to the inhibitors of unethical pro-organizational behavior in comparison with the inducers although the former might have greater practical value and that the majority of research on the inhibitors of unethical pro-organizational behavior focuses on the individual level rather than the organizational level. Managerial implications, research limitations and suggestions for future studies are also discussed. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Location and Syllabic Length Interact on Consumers’ Price Magnitude Perception 2019, (3): 695-701.  Abstract ( )   PDF (586KB) ( )   Consumers cannot make rational purchase decisions based on their own needs, prices and characteristics of the products. They can only rely on their own subjective perception of the product to make judgments. Therefore, the subjective perception of prices by consumers plays an important role in the purchase decision (Han, 2005). Previous studies confirmed that the spatial position of product can affect individual's numerical estimate (Cai, Shen, & Hui, 2012), and the syllabic length of the price will influence he consumers’ perceptions of its numerical magnitude (Coulter, Choi, & Monroe, 2012). Above all, the present study is to test whether the location of product and the syllabic length of price can influence consumers’ price magnitude perceptions. The present study included three experiments. In Experiment 1a, participants were first presented with visual (the location of product; right/left) single-channel stimulus; In Experiment 1b, participants were presented with auditory (the syllabic length of price; 12 syllables/5 syllables) stimulus; In experiment 2, participants were presented with the above stimuli simultaneously. Then they evaluated the product’s price on 10-point semantic differential scales anchored by “small” (0) and “large” (9) after stimulus or stimuli exposure immediately. There were 43 undergraduates in Experiment 1a, 34 undergraduates in Experiment 1b and 63 undergraduates in Experiment 3. All stimulations were presented by E-prime 2.0. Results showed that: (1) Experiment 1confirmed the spatial position and syllabic length of price can affect customers’ judgement of the price, when the product was presented on the right side or its verbal price contained 12 syllables, customers’ perceptive price was higher than that when the product was presented on the left side or 5 syllables’ price. (2) In Experiment 2, when visual and auditory stimuli were presented at the same time, there were significant interactions between the two. Specifically, when the 5 syllables’ price was played, the price perceived by the subject of the product presented on the right side was significantly higher than that on the left side. As for reaction time, when the 5 syllables’ price was played, the subjects’ response time to the product presented on the right side was significantly longer than that when product was presented on the left side, but the situation was opposite under 12 syllables’ condition. Moreover, we associated the results of Experiment 1with Experiment 2 for further analysis, the results revealed that the reaction time under inconsistent audio-visual information condition were slower than consistent condition and audio/visual condition, in addition, the reaction time under audio/visual condition were slower than consistent audio-visual information condition. These findings confirmed and extended previous results suggesting that both the location of product and the syllabic length of price can affect individual’s price perception. And number-location associations may be restricted by auditory stimulation. Furthermore, when the two stimuli have the same contents, they can emerge redundant signal effect. On contrary, if the two stimuli’ contents are inconsistent, individual’s response will be hindered. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

A commentary on empirical study of self-deception Luo-Jin 2019, (3): 709-714.  Abstract ( )   PDF (303KB) ( )   Self-deception has always been the focus of academic discussion. Because there are two familiar puzzles: First of all, one cannot intentionally execute any strategy for deceiving oneself (dynamics puzzle); Second, one is not possible simultaneously believing that p is true and believing that p is false (state puzzle). However, self-deception is a common psychological phenomenon in real life. Therefore, self-deception provides fertile ground for the study of biologists, philosophers and psychologists. Philosophers theoretically concern about the intentionality and reality of self-deception, Biologists and evolutionary psychologists focus on the applicability of the evolution of self-deception, whereas psychologist interested in providing empirical evidence for the existence of self-deception and studying the mechanism of self-deception. However, existing psychological empirical researches have a controversy on the operational definition, classifications and research methods, which slow down the progress study of self-deception. In order to clarify the nature of the previous research controversy, we firstly reviewed the existing literature and believed previous operational definition can be summarized into three categories. There are cognitive conflict orientation definition, cognitive stratified orientation definition and cognitive bias orientation definition. In the current study, we compared the good points and problems of three orientation definitions and recommended that a widely accepted scientific definition of self-deception should be established in the future study. Secondly, on the basis of existing self-deception classification, two new classification methods are proposed. After careful analysis of Interpersonal self-deception and Intrapersonal self-deception, we suggest that self-deception can be divided into conscious self-deception and unconscious self-deception, based internal motivation self-deception and based external motivation self-deception. Those two definitions can facilitate the future empirical study the psychological mechanism of self-deception. Thirdly, we also analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of the paradigms of existing researches. Through the analysis of previous studies, we found that the previous experimental research paradigm of self-deception mainly adopted the comparative paradigm. The comparison between before test and after test, the comparison between the test group and the control group, as well as the comparison between the oral report and the actual behavior, was used to determine the self-deception. In the three comparison paradigms of self-deception, the comparison between the group and the group is the comparison between the subjects, and the other two comparison paradigms are the comparison of within the subjects. The self-deception found in the comparison paradigm between subjects can only be a group behavior, while the comparison paradigm within subject can determine whether the individual has self-deception. The comparison within subject was better than that of between subjects. The comparison between before test and after test is delayed, but the oral report and actual behavior are almost simultaneous. The synchronous comparison is better than the delay comparison. Therefore, the experimental research paradigm of self-deception should be synchronous comparison within subject. Finally, we made a recommendation on future empirical study of self-deception. Firstly, there should have a well-received, scientific and normative definition of self-deception. Standard definition is beneficial to self-deception in academic exchange. Secondly, more indicators are needed in empirical study of self-deception. Behavioral indicators, Physiological indicators and cognitive neuroscience indicators simultaneously used in the same experiment can be monitoring self-deception in real-time. At last, the mechanism of self-deception should be study from multiple perspectives, because different types of self-deception have different psychological mechanisms. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Taking Charge in Organizations: A New topic of Positive Organizational Behavior Research 2019, (3): 715-721.  Abstract ( )   PDF (311KB) ( )   In recent years, change-oriented organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) have received a great deal of attention from scholars in the field of managerial psychology. There has been growing emphasis on extra-role behavior or employee behavior that goes beyond role expectations in the organizational behavior literature. Scholars have argued that this phenomenon is critical for organizational effectiveness because managers cannot fully anticipate the activities that they may desire or need employees to perform. Although these extra-role activities are important, they are not sufficient for ensuring the continued viability of an organization, and organizations also need employees who are willing to challenge the present state of operations to bring about constructive change. Hence, in this study, we focused on a form of extra-role behavior that has been largely neglected, namely taking charge. Taking charge refers to voluntary and constructive efforts, by individual employees, to effect organizationally functional change with respect to how work is executed within the contexts of their jobs, work units, or organizations. This paper introduced taking charge’s definition, measurement, and relationships with relevant variables, and then summarized the antecedents and consequences of such behavior. Taking charge is conceptually distinct from these more traditional forms of extra-role behavior, such as OCB, models that have been advanced to explain those behaviors are inappropriate for explaining taking charge, and scholars suggest that it is motivated by factors that have not previously been studied in the context of these more traditional forms of extra-role behavior. Taking charge may be viewed as threatening by peers or supervisors. Thus, an employee who is trying to bring about improvement may actually incite disharmony and tensions that will detract from performance. The factors that positively affect taking charge can be classified into two categories: (1) individual-level factors, such as proactive personality, perceived organizational support, and positive emotions; and (2) contextual factors, such as job autonomy, management openness, and innovative climate. The consequences of taking charge that past research has examined include in-role performance evaluation, job satisfactory, affective commitment, and perception of transformational leadership. Finally, the paper recommended that future research should focus particularly on the following four aspects: (1) improving the measurement of taking charge; (2) examining the impact of factors outside the organizations (e.g., environment dynamism and industry competition); (3) investigating more contingencies that moderate the consequences of taking charge, and (4) exploring the issue of leader taking charge in Chinese organizational context. This study expands current understanding of extra-role behavior and suggests ways in which organizations can motivate employees to go beyond the boundaries of their jobs to bring about positive change. Despite a growing body of work in this area, existing research has provided a limited view of extra-role behavior by neglecting activities aimed at changing the status quo. We provide insight into more challenging, risky, and effortful forms of discretionary employee behavior. It thereby broadens current conceptualizations of extra-role behaviors within organizations, going beyond the more mundane cooperative and helping behaviors that have been the focus of existing research. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Characteristics of Chinese People’s System of Values and it’s “Dialectical Focus” Feature: Applicability of the Schwartz’s Value Theory (2012) with Chinese People 2019, (3): 722-730.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1957KB) ( )   Values, as guiding principles of human life, are influential in human’s attitudinal and behavioral decisions. Schwartz’s theory of values is a milestone and has been frequently cited and adopted in most values study during the past two decades. This study is to verify applicability of the Schwartz’s value theory (Schwartz et al., 2012) with Chinese people. The latest version of Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ) was translated into Chinese version and 2569 Chinese people from diverse regions were measured with PVQ Chinese version. The results showed that the values structure of Chinese people fit well with the theoretical pattern of the Schwartz’s theory. The average Cronbach’s ? of 19 values is 0.66, ranging from 0.54 for power-dominance to 0.80 for security-societal. The results of confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) well fit the Schwartz’ theoretical model. Moreover, the study aimed at describing the characteristics of Chinese people’s system of values, especially dynamic relations among the different types of values. The results suggested that Chinese people ranked conformity-rules, benevolence-caring, benevolence-dependability, security-societal, and security-personal at the forefront, while power-resources and power-dominance were put at the end. On the second-tier value dimensions, Chinese people expressed more openness and social focus values than conservation and personal focus values, emphasized on self-transcendence and growth values than self-enhancement and self-protection values. These tendencies show that rapid economic development has already influenced values of Chinese. These findings are consistent with Inglehart’s prediction about economic development is coherent with cultural change. It is worth noting that on the “personal focus-social focus” dimension, the positive correlations among personal focus values are not strong as prediction based on Schwartz’s theory, but correlations among social focus values are pretty high, which well fit with the theory’s assumption. The most impressive results are correlations among social- and personal- oriented values. There is a hypothesis in Schwartz’s theory that the more any two distant values at either direction in the value circle, the more antagonistic they are. Interestingly, some values that emerge in opposite direction in the circular order which supposed the most conflict relations appeared strong positive correlations, such as self-direction-thought ( belongs to personal focus values) vs. tradition/conformity-rules ( belongs to social focus values), and achievement ( belongs to personal focus values) vs. benevolence ( belongs to social focus values). In Chinese people’s rank order of values, power-dominance and power-resources are right at the bottom, and it had nothing to do with other values at the same time. It is not only against presumed value relations of the Schwartz’s theory, but also different from many ideas about Chinese people’s features proposed by distinguished scholars. One reasonable explanation about the contradiction is that the items to measure power values are not good for Chinese people due to subtle cultural tradition. The author suggests that values about power in China have a nature of duality, which means that there are inconsistent between value expressed and value selection in action. So there is a challenging task to find a way to measure people’s real value orientation with behaviors. On the other hand, Chinese people show some integration among social- and personal-oriented values, which is a particularly typical feature announced by many well-known experts. This feature is most pronounced in the achievement value, which showed a stronger correlation with benevolence-caring and benevolence-dependability. It is reasonable to believe that it comes from Confucianism beliefs about the Doctrine of the Mean. The author proposed a new concept of “dialectical focus” to emphasize such tendencies of Chinese people with relationship of values. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Estimation of Variance Components of Sparse Data Due to Different Rating Plans Based on Generalizability Theory Guang MingLI 2019, (3): 731-738.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1608KB) ( )   As for performance-based measurements which include but are not limited to writing tests and speaking tests, it is inevitable that every answer is only rated by a fraction of raters due to the limitation of time and resources. And it will be caught in a dilemma when trying to analyze data under the framework of Generalizability Theory, because data cannot be characterized as any type of design. Therefore, this kind of data should be considered as sparse data. During the tests, examiners always specify how raters paired to rate each answer, and that is what they call rating plan. It regulates how the rater facet associated with any other facets and the object of measurement, hence it determines the structure of sparse data. But domestic researches have not introduced this definition and merely used unbalanced designs to describe structures. Mixture of Connected Rating Plan, Disconnected Cross Rating Plan and Fixed Rater Rating Plan are three most commonly used rating plans. The sparse data from these rating plans differ in structure. Mixture of Connected Rating Plan is easy to operate but its data structure is the most intricate. Disconnected Cross Rating Plan and Fixed Rater Rating Plan both need to divide raters into groups at first, and their data structures are much simple. This study expounded these rating plans in detail, as well as three estimation methods, analogous-ANOVA, rating method and subdividing method. Then followed a simulation study which aimed to investigate the estimation accuracy of variance components of three estimation methods under three rating plans of different numbers of raters and different levels of rater related effect. The number of raters was set to three levels: 8 raters, 14raters and 28 raters, and rater related effect was set to two levels: low and high. The number of examinees was 3000 and the number of items was 2, and they were both fixed. Results indicated that: (1) Theoretically, analogous-ANOVA was easy to understand, but its estimation accuracy at all conditions under all rating plans was unsatisfactory. This method should not be considered in empirical studies. (2) Rating method ignored the complicated combinations of raters, treating ratings from every answer as the same random effect. Regardless the data from which rating plan, computational process of this method was exactly the same. Estimation accuracy of this method was barely influenced by the number of raters, and when rater related effect was low, its estimated values were relatively accurate compared to analogous-ANOVA. (3) Subdividing method expected to make the best use of the current data and its procedure was rather complex. But among all three methods, this method could get the most accurate variance component estimates, and both factor, the number of raters and rater related effect, hardly had any impact. Only in Fixed Rater Rating Plan, researchers need pay attention to the ratio of the number of raters and examinees. When it is lower than 0.0047, it is still safe to use subdividing method. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Q matrix and its applications in cognitive diagnosis Shu-Liang DING 2019, (3): 739-746.  Abstract ( )   PDF (652KB) ( )   In this paper, the concept of Q matrix and its application in cognitive diagnosis are summarized, analyzed and discussed. This paper mainly includes five parts. The first part introduces the Q matrix and its related concepts. The Q matrix can represent the relationship between the items and the attributes, it can also represent the relationship between the examinees' knowledge states and the attributes, the construction of the Q matrix also has a significant impact on the performance of the cognitive diagnostic model. Considering the hierarchical relationship between attributes, there exists some transformation relations among the adjacency matrix A, the reachability matrix R and the Q matrix: A can be obtained from the cognitive model, we can get R by exponentiation of A or Wallshell algorithm, the potential Q matrix can be obtained by using the augment algorithm on R. If the potential Q matrix is the necessary Q matrix, we can implement a cleaning algorithm on it to get R in turn. The test Q matrix, obtained by picking several columns from the potential Q matrix, is a blueprint of a cognitive diagnostic test that can be used to guide the repertoire. Given the hierarchy of attributes, the more rows of R have, the more columns of potential Q matrices obtained based on R using the augment algorithm would have. The second part introduces the important role of Q matrix in cognitive diagnosis: (1) The important role of Q matrix in cognitive model and CDM: From the cognitive model point of view, R is a special Q matrix, also the presentation of cognitive model, and the attribute hierarchy that is mined from the "retrofitting" data does not necessarily coincide with the theoretical hierarchy structure; From the CDM point of view, Q matrices represent cognitive blueprints, the item attribute vector and the examinees’ KS (vector) are under the same "gauge", which making it possible to "compare" them under a partial order relationship, under certain conditions we can use Qs and the necessary Qt to calculate the ideal response pattern (IRP), we can define operators of union and intersection on the Qs column set, and thus construct a lattice. (2) The role of Qp in cognitive diagnosis and the union representation of its column: Firstly, R can generate Qp, so R is a good "representative" of Qp, which has an important influence on the design of cognitive diagnostic test; Secondly, each column of the Qp matrix can be represented as a union of the R column, and the representation is not unique, which allows us to define a redundant expression and a concise expression for Qp columns, and the redundant expression has its special effects. The third part introduces several recent advances related to the Q matrix theory: To start with, we point out that Leighton, Gierl, and Hunka (2004) have some problems in the discussion of convergent structure paths. With the augment algorithm, we reveal that there is only one top-down path in the convergent structure. Next, we construct a test containing three independent attributes and three items, when a different column is selected from the set of columns augmented by R and added to the given test Q matrix, the theoretic construct validity ( TCV ) of resulting Q would vary accordingly, thus we found that there is a discrepancy between Q's columns which came from the augment of R. Finally, Lee, Park, and Taylan (2011) conducted a cognitive diagnosis of TIMSS2007 in Massachusetts, Minnesota and the United States. We further analyzed the results and found that there exists big difference between the knowledge states derived from R and the knowledge states based on DINA model used in the article. The fourth part points out some possible research directions related to the Q matrix, including the problem of Q matrix calibration, the measurement of the goodness and the unreasonable of test Q matrix's design, the properties and applications of polytomous Q matrices. The fifth part summarizes this paper and discusses some extra problems to be studied relate to the necessary Qt matrix, polytomous Q matrix and item attribute calibration. We expect that this paper can provide reference and help for people to use the Q matrix more flexibly. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Methods for Measuring and Controlling Response Styles Ying-Bin ZHANG 2019, (3): 747-754.  Abstract ( )   PDF (931KB) ( )   Response styles are one of the major sources of common method bias. They refer to the tendency to select specific categories of rating scale. The most common types of response styles include acquiescence response style, disacquiescence response style, extreme response style and midpoint response style. They can cause subjects’ response to rating scale biased, and thus, they may lead to systematic measurement errors in test scores and influence the results of the analyses of test reliability and validity and the analysis of the covariation between constructs. It is hard to measure response styles directly with a psychological scale, and thus researchers usually use the counting procedure or the modeling procedure to measure it. The counting procedure mainly includes the traditional counting procedure, the method of representative indicators for response styles, and the method of counting double agreements on reversed items. The modeling procedure mainly includes the method of specifying acquiescence response style in confirmatory factor analysis, confirmatory latent class analysis, the mixed partial credit model, the item response tree model and the multidimensional nominal response model. When selecting appropriate methods to measure response styles, researchers need to consider the following questions. Firstly, what types of response styles they want to measure? Secondly, are response styles regarded as continuous or categorical variables? Thirdly, is the content-related trait regarded as a continuous or categorical variable? Fourthly, can researchers obtain a group of heterogeneous items? Fifthly, are there some pairs of items that examine similar content but are worded in opposite directions? Lastly, is the number of positively worded items equal to the number of negatively worded items? As for controlling the effects of response styles on data analysis, different procedures are appropriate in controlling different effects of response styles, and in some cases, it requires researchers to combine the measuring procedure and the regression residual method or the partial correlation method to control the effects of response styles. Firstly, to control the bias that response styles cause in test scores, researchers can apply the modeling procedure or the combination of the counting procedure and the regression residual method. Secondly, to control the effects of response styles on the analyses of test reliability and validity, researchers can apply the combination of the modeling procedure and the regression residual method or the combination of the counting procedure and the regression residual method. With respect to the control of the effects of response styles on the measurement invariance test, researchers can apply the procedure of specifying acquiescence response style in confirmatory factor analysis, confirmatory latent class analysis or the multidimensional nominal response model. Thirdly, to control the effect of response styles on the analysis of the covariation between constructs, researchers can apply the modeling procedure, the combination of the counting procedure and the regression residual method or the combination of the counting procedure and the partial correlation method. Future research needs to extend the existing methods for measuring and controlling response styles, examine the validity of them, and systematically investigate the effects of response styles on data analysis. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

More Than A ‘Talking Cure’: The Nonverbal Dimension in Psychoanalytic Therapy Wei ZHANG Rong SHI 2019, (3): 755-760.  Abstract ( )   PDF (344KB) ( )   Psychoanalytic therapy has been known as the ‘talking cure’ for a long time, because it suggests that the cure mechanism is to bring the repressed unconscious ideas and affects into the conscious system by a series of therapeutic techniques (e.g., free association, dream interpretation, transference analysis and resistance analysis). During this process, verbal interpretation plays a key role, which leads language to be the dominant factor in psychoanalysis. Although Freud and some other analysts have noted nonverbal information, the discussion of it is relatively scattered and has not been attached importance. At the end of 20th century, the findings of cognitive neuroscience, dynamic systems theory and infant research deeply revealed these unconscious and nonverbal communication between different individuals. With the significant contributions of the Boston Change Process Study Group (BCPSG), Beebe and her colleagues, and some other researchers, the role of nonverbal communication in treatment has been an important theme in contemporary psychoanalytic field. The possibility of nonverbal communication can be elaborated from two perspectives. The one is phylogenetic perspective, which shows that animals in natural world can communicate with each other, although they can not use language. The other is ontogenetic perspective: a preverbal infant does not have the capacity to use language, but he can communicate with his caregiver by nonverbal behavior. Correspondingly, the caregiver’s response recorded by the infant is also nonverbal. In a word, the capacity to nonverbal communication is early than verbal communication. Furthermore, nonverbal exchange will not weaken or vanish in the individual’s development process; instead, it functions as the basis of language. Therefore, adults’ nonverbal communication can been regarded as a bridge between infant research and adult psychotherapy. The meaning of nonverbal communication for psychoanalytic therapy can be mainly discussed at two aspects. Firstly, it can provide an effective approach by which the analyst and the patient can know more about each other. The mental states of the patient and analyst can be reflected in their nonverbal behaviors; transference and countertransference (including body reaction, emotional state and dream) can also be a reflection of the interaction between the therapeutic alliance. Secondly, nonverbal interactions in treatment can effectively improve the patient’s mental and interpersonal problems. BCPSG proposed that the mechanism is to change the implicit relational knowing of the patient. During therapeutic process, the cooperation of the patient and analyst will build an intersubjective field, in which they share some subjective experiences. When a ‘moment of meeting’ happens, the analyst and patient can transcend their roles in treatment, open their minds, and construct a ‘real relationship.’ Then the intersubjective field and ‘shared implicit relationship’ will reorganize and change. At this crucial moment, nonverbal communication is more important than verbal communication, as the former functions more quickly and directly, and holds richer forms. It should be pointed out that the emphasis on nonverbal communication does not deny the role of verbal communication in treatment; instead, they can be complementary. Psychoanalytic research in the future should make a further discussion on nonverbal communication. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Are Wise Men Necessarily Benevolent? A Reflection upon the Relationship between Wisdom and Virtue 2019, (3): 761-767.  Abstract ( )   PDF (367KB) ( )   Wisdom and virtue are independent psychological structures interacting with each other. Based on personal and cultural experience, philosophers and psychologists have proposed many different theories about the relationship between wisdom and virtue (Aristotle, 350BC/2014; Jason et al., 2001; Yang, 2014; Whitcomb, 2010; Peterson & Seligman, 2004). However, no consensus is reached and three different types of relationship between wisdom and virtue are proposed: 1. “linear relationship”: wisdom-related abilities (such as wise reasoning) have a moderately or highly positive correlation with virtue-related abilities (such as moral reasoning); 2. “threshold relationship”: virtue is a necessary but not sufficient condition for wisdom, that is, an individual cannot achieve the highest level of wisdom without virtue; 3. “subordination”: wisdom is a sub-dimension of virtue; or, virtue is a sub-dimension of wisdom. However, these three models are simply based on the speculation of philosophers and psychologists, who focused on the theoretical discussion about the relationship between virtue and wisdom, rather than the empirical studies based on quantitative methods. Especially, experimental studies on the causal relationship between "Wisdom" (wisdom-related performance: creativity, self-reflection, profound knowledge, etc.) and "Virtue" (virtue-related performance: the pursuit of virtue, prosociality, etc.) (Hu, 2016). If we ask an important scientific question in the research field of Wisdom, it is that whether individuals who have a deep understanding of their own life experiences (with wisdom) are also more likely to care about others (with virtue)? Is there a causal relationship between wisdom and virtue? After the comprehensive review about the researches on the relation between wisdom and virtue, we consider there are still some deficiencies: (1) Although there are many psychologists discuss on the theoretical foundations of wisdom and virtue directly or indirectly, few empirical studies (only 6 articles) explored the relation between wisdom and virtue (Liu et al., 2014; Grossmann et al., 2017；Hu et al., 2017；Huynh et al., 2017；Kim, 2017；Pasupathi & Staudinger, 2001). (2) Strictly speaking, few empirical studies verified the bidirectional causal relationship between wisdom and virtue. There was only one paper (Huynh et al., 2017) which attempted to explore the causal relationship between pursuing virtue and wise reasoning, but they didn't manipulate the independent variables successfully. Moreover, there are differences in the concept of virtue between Western and Eastern cultures scholars (Takahashi & Overton, 2002; Takahashi & Overton, 2005; Hu, 2016; Hu et al., 2016). We suggest that wisdom and virtue are different psychological structures influencing each other. Wisdom is more about cognitive process, whereas virtue is more about value. Moreover, we support the "Threshold relationship" model. In the future, we could apply the paradigm of experimental ethics, focus on bidirectional causality between wisdom and virtue in specific contexts and explore potential cognitive neural mechanisms underlie causality between wisdom and virtue, and develop interventions that enhance personal wisdom and virtue. Moreover, we need to consider differences in the concepts of “wisdom” and “virtue” between eastern and western cultures, and design experiments that fit in Chinese native culture. Finally, how to unify the “Oughtness” and “Isness” on the relationship between wisdom and virtue is the challenge we need to face. Related Articles | Metrics