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More recent materials are closer to the top.
Beliefs, biology, health, and humanity
There’s this brand new book (published 1/8/16) that I’m really interested in reading and I am wondering if anyone would like to join me. The book is called “Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body.” The reviews so far are great, the author is a Nature and New Scientist author and editor, who I hear is writing from a skeptics point of view. Among other mind-body topics the book covers the science behind placebos, meditation, and the use of virtual reality for treatments. What more could you ask? (I’ve included links at the bottom to some book-related resources if you have more to ask.)
If you have any questions don’t hesitate to email me.
PS. Everyone is invited. I don’t care what area you are in. The book is about a biopsychosocial approach to health and should have something for everyone.
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SPRING 2016
FALL 2013
Thursday, April 3rd, 2014
For the next Health/Social Psychology Reading Group meeting I thought we’d check in with a health-intervention related topic that this group last discussed in the Fall of 2009. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) continues to be a hot topic in psychological, medical, and other health-related fields. At a recent conference I attended, I saw one of the leading researchers in this area (who was just a grad student when I was a post doc) give a talk on the paper linked to in this email. My questions include, are we convinced that mindfulness is the way to go? Why or why not? And is this the type of research we need to see more of to convince us (and others)?
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Article for the next HSPRG meeting:
Creswell, J.D., Pacilio, L.E., Lindsay, E.K., Brown, K.W. (2014). Brief mindfulness meditation training alters psychological and neuroendocrine responses to social evaluative stress. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 44, 1-12.
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Thursday, February 27th, 2014
Professional Development Topic: A Grant Writing Primer for Graduate Students
Unless your advisor’s lab has included you in writing and submitting a number of grants already, you probably have a lot of questions about grants right now. I know I did! So, in the next H-SPRG Career Development discussion, we will provide some basic information about grants, including, where to get grants, what is available for graduate students, when you should be writing your first grant, and how to write a good grant (notice I didn’t say “funded” grant.) Please come with your questions and note pads. If it turns out grads want more informat
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Bargh, J. A., & Shalev, I. (2012). The substitutability of physical and social warmth in daily life. Emotion, 12(1), 154-162. doi: 10.1037/a0023527
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Thursday, February 13th, 2014
THERE IS A CRISIS IN EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY! In the past few years there have been research psychologists whose published research has been questioned, scrutinized, and discredited leading to some well-publicized disparagement of the field as a whole. Is this kind of criticism new? Is it deserved? What may come of it, if anything? For our first article of the spring semester I thought it might be fun to take a look at one of the articles that has recently received this kind of critical attention. Without doing a web search for other people’s perspectives (DON’T DO IT!) I ask you to form your own opinions about this article so that we may discuss the questions posed above and whether or not this article specifically deserves to be scrutinized, and why.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Bargh, J. A., & Shalev, I. (2012). The substitutability of physical and social warmth in daily life. Emotion, 12(1), 154-162. doi: 10.1037/a0023527
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SPRING 2014
FALL 2013
Thursday, December 12th, 2013
Professional Development Topic: Reviewing journal articles, what’s that about?
For the second Career Development in Psychology Hour sponsored by H-SPRG we are going to do a paper review exercise with everyone. For this exercise, a journal editor in our department has supplied an actual submitted manuscript for us to pick apart, dissect, demean, and otherwise decimate (and perhaps praise) on our own and then we will get together next Thursday to talk about what types of reviewer feedback would be appropriate and helpful to the editor and authors. Perhaps we can walk through a faculty member’s review of the same paper, or we can construct one together with everyone’s contributions. The goal of this exercise is for some experienced reviewers to help those of us who are less experienced understand the process and format for reviewing papers. So whether you are an expert or novice your participation in this meeting will be helpful.
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Thursday, November 14th, 2013
This week I asked Leah Irish if she would suggest an article for H-SPRG, specifically an article that would introduce us the the kind of sleep research she likes reading about. She happily obliged (Thanks Leah!).
Take a little time off to visit with us on Thursday! Bring your own coffee and I will bring fruit and snacks.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Yoon, S. Y., Jain, U., & Shapiro, C. (2012). Sleep in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children and adults: past, present, and future. Sleep Med Rev, 16(4), 371-388.
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Thursday, October 31st, 2013
Professional Development Topic: What I should have when I finish graduate school?” and “should I find a faculty position, post doc, or other, and how?”
This week will be the first Career Development in Psychology Hour sponsored by H-SPRG. The top 2 topics selected by students for this meeting will be “What I should have when I finish graduate school?” and “should I find a faculty position, post doc, or other, and how?” We have prepared some remarks pertaining to these topics from health-social, clinical, and visual-cognitive-neuroscience perspectives. In addition to myself other faculty members, including Leah Irish (who just completed the application process – successfully!), Katie Gordon (who still remembers what she had to do to get here), and others have agreed to join us to answer questions. I am really looking forward this and hope it can be a benefit to all of our grad students. Please come and be sure to provide feedback afterwards so we can continue to offer helpful sessions like this in the future.
Thursday, October 17th, 2013
Continuing our look at body-mind links as they pertain to obesity and its comorbidities, this week H-SPRG will focus on an article highlighting some of the effects of obesity on cognitive function (rather than the link from cognition to obesity as we read last week). Instead of choosing a single study that isolates one pathway (e.g., hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functioning) linking obesity to cognitive deficits, I chose a discussion/review article from Lancet that provides a nice foundation in this area by focusing on how diabetes is linked to cognitive dysfunction and how differences between Types I and II may help us understand the elusive pathways research continues to search for.
Take a little time off to read this interesting paper and come to H-SPRG on Thursday!
ALSO, please watch for a follow-up email with some candidate topics for an upcoming professional development H-SPRG meeting.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
McCrimmon, R. J., Ryan, C. M., & Frier, B. M. (2012). Diabetes and cognitive dysfunction. Lancet, 379(9833), 2291-2299.
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Thursday, October 3rd, 2013
Right now there is a rapidly growing area of research considering connections among the brain, obesity, and diabetes. In fact the American Psychosomatic Society is hosting a meeting on this issue in Washington DC on Oct 11. Not long after that the chair of this meeting will be giving colloquium at NDSU (Sue Everson-Rose). Therefore I was looking for an article that would get people thinking about this topic. So with this article I am more interested in what people are thinking about these links and what type of research might be interesting to do here with students (if any) than I am interested in the study methods or SEM analyses. If there is sufficient interest in this topic I now have a collection of recent articles I am interested reading.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Chandola, T., Deary, I. J., Blane, D., & Batty, G. D. (2006). Childhood IQ in relation to obesity and weight gain in adult life: the National Child Development (1958) Study. International Journal of Obesity, 30(9), 1422-1432.
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FALL 2013
SPRING 2013
Thursday, April 25th, 2013
For what is likely to be our last meeting of the 2012-13 school year I chose a Theoretical/Methodological/Review Article rather than an empirical one (Don’t worry it’s less than 13 pages of text – and it has pictures!). I did this because it introduces a topic that has been recurring in the group readings and I think there is interest in epigenetic processes everywhere in health-fescience these days. This paper kind of fell into my lap, as I was about to start looking for an article for next week I received an email for the new issue of the new APS journal Clinical Psychological Science. The last paper is by two guys introducing “The emerging field of human social genomics.” Perfect! So I hope you can join us to talk about this emerging field and to consider what it would take to include the variables they talk about in our research.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Slavich, G.M. & Cole, S.W. (2013). The emerging field of human social genomics. Clinical Psychological Science. Preprint ahead of publication.
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Thursday, April 4th, 2013
One of the reasons I like to attend journal group meetings is because papers we discuss have the potential to inspire new ideas and new directions. This paper represents a growing body of literature that has done this for me. As I suspected, my recent trip to my favorite health psychology conference (the American Psychosomatic Society) confirmed that psychologists are starting to turn their focus on a new outcome – metabolic syndrome. In case you are not familiar with Syndrome X (aka metabolic syndrome), it is a group of symptoms that together increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Additionally, each symptom increases the risk of developing the other symptoms. These symptoms are:
1. high triglycerides
2. low HDL cholesterol
3. central obesity
4. high blood pressure
5. high blood sugar (fasting glucose)
It is estimated that 25% of Americans have metabolic syndrome and this number is growing. How do we research it? What psychosocial factors play a role in its development? These are largely unanswered questions that deserve our attention.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Midei, A.J. Matthews, K.A. (2009). Social relationships and negative emotional traits are associated with central adiposity and arterial stiffness in healthy adolescents. Health Psychology, 28(3), 347-353.
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Thursday, February 28th, 2013
I had to miss last week’s colloquium on epigenetics, but I did get to meet the speaker afterwards and our conversation inspired me. More and more in biobehavioral sciences, including health psychology we are seeing evidence of the impact of early life experiences on risk of developing chronic health problems later in life. What is not completely clear is how these childhood events are impacting adulthood health. These links are likely multidimensional including psychological, biological (epigenetic?), social factors. The paper for next week’s SPRG explores how early life financial stress may systematically impact health-related behavior and biology later in life.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Griskevicius, V., Ackerman, J. A., Cantu, S. M., Delton, A. W., & Robertson, T. E., Simpson, J. A., Thomson, M. E., & Tybur, J. M. (2013). When the economy falters do people spend or save? Responses to resource scarcity depend on childhood environments. Psychological Science.197-205.
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SPRING 2013
FALL 2012
Wednesday, November 28th, 2012
At our last meeting Kevin McCaul mentioned recent research looking at the impact of smoking in the movies. That’s right, although Joe Camel is gone, and we rarely see a smoker on TV (Madmen is an exception of course), it is still cool to smoke on the big screen. How does this affect our children if at all? Read next week’s article to find out.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Sargent, J. D., Tanski, S., & Stoolmiller, M. (2012). Influence of motion picture rating on adolescent response to movie smoking. Pediatrics, 130(2), 228-236.
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Wednesday, November 7th, 2012
The reading for the next H-SPRG meeting was provided by Rob Dvorak (Thanks Rob!) whose work on alcohol-related behaviors is well under way at NDSU. This paper deals with another health-related behavior, marijuana use, and it uses a popular framework in which health behaviors are studied in terms of expectancies and intentions. For those that are interested in behavior and not sure how to study that behavior this could be a valuable edition to your empirical repertoire.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Skenderian, J. J., Siegel, J. T., Crano, W. D., Alvaro, E. E., & Lac, A. (2008). Expectancy change and adolescents’ intentions to use marijuana. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, Vol.22(4), pp 563-569.
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Wednesday, October 24th, 2012
First, I want to thank everyone who joined us last week for a lively discussion concerning eating behavior and obesity research. I especially want to thank Katie Gordon and Nick Kuvaas for answering the myriad of questions we had about this interesting and very timely area of research. We had such an engaging discussion that we continue the theme this week with a great paper suggested by Nick (Thanks Nick!). As usual this paper gets extra points for being an experiment, double points for having amount of food eaten as the DV, but loses triple points for using North Dakota for the negative wine expectation manipulation (how do people know what North Dakota wine tastes like? Even if their prejudice is accurate…). Seriously though, I anticipate another likely discussion with this one.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Wansink, B., Payne, C. R., & North, J. (2007). Fine as North Dakota wine: Sensory expectations and the intake of companion foods. Physiology & Behavior, 90(5), 712-716.
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Wednesday, October 10th, 2012
For the next H-SPRG meeting an article has been provided by Katie Gordon (thanks Katie!). This 2012 Health Psychology article looks at the potential impact the media has on attitudes about obese individuals. I like this article for a number of reasons, e.g., it deals with timely topics including media portrayals and obesity, it considers not only negative, but also positive attitudes, the article does this using actual experiments, and it makes its point in less than 8 pages. So, this should be a lively discussion.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Pearl, R. L., Puhl, R. M., & Brownell, K. D. (2012). Positive media portrayals of obese persons: Impact on attitudes and image preferences. Health Psychology.
Katie Gordon sent me two additional interesting papers on related topics. If you are interested they are available here:
Puhl, R. M., & Luedicke, J. (2012). Weight-based victimization among adolescents in the school setting: Emotional reactions and coping behaviors. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Vol.41(1), pp.
Puhl, R. M., Schwartz, M. B., & Brownell, K. D. (2005). Impact of Perceived Consensus on Stereotypes About Obese People: A New Approach for Reducing Bias. Health Psychology, 24(5), 517-525.
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Wednesday, September 12th, 2012
Here’s a new and interesting paper from Health Psychology that might make you think of the placebo effect. How much of the link between stress and health could be attributed to placebo-like effects? Could be a lot. But ask yourself, what does it mean for a person to be stressed, and not know they are stressed?
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Keller, A., Litzelman, K., Wisk, L. E., Maddox, T., Cheng, E. R., Creswell, P. D., et al. (2012). Does the perception that stress affects health matter? The association with health and mortality. Health Psychology, Vol.31(5), pp.677–684.
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FALL 2012
SPRING 2012
SPRG will be on hiatus Fall 2011 & Spring 2012 but will return Fall 2012. See you then!
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FALL 2011
SPRING 2011
Wednesday, April 6th, 2011
You may have heard that physical pain and social pain have neurological similarities. Well, Nathan DeWall has taken this one step further and believes he has shown that Tylenol not only reduces physical pain, but also, social pain. In this Psych Science article Nathan provides behavioral and neural evidence of this effect. I saw him present this stuff a year ago, and there was more this year at the American Psychosomatic Society conference. I have been looking forward to discussing this with someone.
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Article for this week’s SPRG meeting:
DeWall C. N., MacDonald, G., Webster, G. D., Masten, C., Baumeister, R. F., Powell, C., Combs, D., Schurtz, D. R., Stillman, T. F., Tice, D. M., & Eisenberger, N. I. (2010). Acetaminophen reduces social pain: Behavioral and neural evidence. Psychological Science, 21(7), 931-937.
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Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tim Smith has made a name for himself in health and social psychology by observing couples as they interact in the lab and assessing how their style of interaction might lead to an early, possibly painful death. Here is his latest offering that considers gender differences in how affiliative and control styles of interaction predict coronary artery disease.
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Article for this week’s SPRG meeting:
Smith, T.W., et al. (2011). Affiliation and Control During Marital Disagreement, History of Divorce, and Asymptomatic Coronary Artery Calcification in Older Couples. Psychosomatic Medicine, 73, Published ahead of print.
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Wednesday, March 23, 2011
CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER
Short hiatus in the first half of this semester.
SPRING 2011
Fall 2010
Thursday, November 18th/December 2nd, 2010
This weeks reading was suggested by John Ranney (Thanks John). I know this is a topic of interest for him and it looks like it should be an interesting paper for all of us gendered internet users.
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Article for this week’s SPRG meeting:
Postmes, T., & Spears, R. (2002). Behavior online: Does anonymous computer communication reduce gender inequality?. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(8), 1073-1083.
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Thursday, November 4th, 2010
Sara has suggested an interesting article for next week. She apologizes for it being JPSP, but it’s pretty interesting stuff. Look around, what does your office say about you?
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Gosling, S. D., Ko, S. J., Mannarelli, T., & Morris, M. E. (2002). A room with a cue: Personality judgments based on offices and bedrooms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(3), 379-398.
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Thursday, October 21, 2010
Next week’s reading was suggested by Elizabeth. Thanks Elizabeth! It looks very interesting. I’ve only read the abstract, but it looks like the question is, does physical pain cause aggression or is being more pain tolerant associated with more aggression. I like it.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Reidy, D. E., Dimmick, K., MacDonald, K., & Zeichner, A. (2009). The relationship between pain tolerance and trait aggression: Effects of sex and gender role. Aggressive Behavior, 35(5), 422-429.
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Thursday, October 7, 2010
Would winning the lottery make you happy? For how long? Months? Years? Forever? Not according to the research. In this week’s paper the authors consider the negative effects of wealth (What negative effects?) using a laboratory manipulation.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Quoidbach, Dunn, Petrides, & Mikolajczak (2010). Money Giveth, Money Taketh Away : The Dual Effect of Wealth on Happiness. Psychological Science, 21(6), 759-763.
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FALL 2010
SPRING 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
The reading for our next meeting was suggested by Elizabeth (thanks Elizabeth!) who had it suggested to her by a recent visitor (note the second author). Looks like an interesting article concerning when dominant females take the lead when performing a masculine task. Operationalizations in these studies always provoke thought.
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Article for this week’s SPRG meeting:
Carbonell, J. L. & Castro, Y. (2008). The Impact of a Leader Model on High Dominant Women’s Self-Selection for Leadership. Sex Roles, 58, 776–783.
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Thursday, April 8, 2010
An issue we have been working on in our lab involves differences in how one person’s positive and negative attitudes differentially affect another person in terms of new attitude formation, affect, and cognitions about the attitude object. The point is, saying “I like it” and “I don’t like it” do not just have equal but opposite effects. This doesn’t seem all that surprising, as we know “Bad is stronger than good” (Baumeister et al., 2001). However, the effects that negative and positive information have are not always intuitive and the answer to the question, why? is a bit short of satisfactory. The article for this week deals with some relevant issues. I look forward to your input and a group brainstorming this Thursday.
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Article for this week’s SPRG meeting:
Zhong, C., Phillips, K.W., Leonardelli, G.J., & Galinsky, A.D. (2008). Negational Categorization and Intergroup Behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34; 793-806.
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Thursday, March 25, 2010
Is global warming real? Should we be worried? If yes, then how worried? Should we be worried about the actions that might be taken to deal with global warming? So many questions it can become overwhelming. It may just be that instead of getting overwhelmed we just convince ourselves that it’s not a big deal or perhaps that global warming isn’t even a real thing. This week’s SPRG reading was suggested by Dean McCaul and should make for an interesting conversation and idea generating catalyst.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Leiserowitz, A. A. (2005). American risk perceptions: Is climate change dangerous?. Risk Analysis, 25(6), 1433-1442.
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Thursday, February 25, 2010
With a few exceptions (cf. Cyberpsychology), the use of the popular social networking website Facebook has not found its way into “mainstream” psychology research journals as an object of study or a tool for research… until now. In the upcoming Psychological Science a group of researchers asked if Facebook profiles reflect ideal or real self. To compliment this I have chosen a second article which asked how self image was related to posting inappropriate information on Facebook. I know many of us are Facebook users but I’m not sure how many of us have posted inappropriate information, nor have I carefully studied all of my friends’ profiles… perhaps the next time I have no free time but am on Facebook anyway…
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Two articles for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Back, M.D. Stopfer, J.M., Vazire, S., Gaddis, S., Schmukle, S.C., Egloff, B., & Gosling, S.D. (in press). Facebook Profiles Reflect Actual Personality, Not Self-Idealization. Psychological Science.
Peluchette, J., & Karl, K. (2010). Examining students’ intended image on Facebook: ‘What were they thinking?!’. Journal of Education for Business, 85(1), 3037.
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Thursday, February 11, 2010
I know that some of the social psychology family here at NDSU are avid video gamers, others of us are less avid, but aware of the psychological impact these games have on people. In the latest JPSP a couple of researchers have been very creative in their study of how prosocial video games (what are these?) influence behavior. Lab manipulations, cover stories, and a little deception deception – looks like social psych to me!
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Greitemeyer, T. & Osswald, S. (2010) Effects of prosocial video games on prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(2), 211-221.
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SPRING 2010
FALL 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
This week the Health/Social Seminar is reading about intervention research. One intervention that has been pretty steadily gaining support and attracting research interest since the late 1970’s/early 1980’s is mindfulness meditation. This form of meditation is based on Buddhist insight meditation, Jon Kabat-Zinn says it’s Buddhist meditation without the Buddhism. Kabat-Zinn has developed an eight week course to teach this technique and it has been implemented in various medical settings to help people deal with physical pain (e.g., fibromyalgia), recover from surgery, and to cope with the psychological impact of disability and disease. Of course, among health psychologists the questions are, “does it work?” and “how does it work?” In this paper Jon Kabat-Zinn partners with Richie Davidson and others to see how mindfulness meditation training affects moods, brain activity, and immune system functioning in an effort to answer these questions.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Davidson, R. J., Kabat-Zinn, J., Schumacher, J., Rosenkranz, M., Muller, D., Santorelli, S. F., et al. (2003). Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation. Psychosom Med, 65(4), 564-570.
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Many racial minorities in the United States suffer severe health disparities in comparison to their non-Hispanic White country-men and women. These same health outcomes are not present in other countries, including those countries and cultures from which American racial minorities originated. Behavioral explanations for these disparities including access to good health-care, diet, and physical activity only explain some of this variance. Thus social and health psychologists have been focusing on psychosocial explanations. One such area of research has been trying to better understand psychological and health-related impacts of experiences of racial discrimination. This year, the paper we are reading for SPRG garnered quite a bit of attention from researchers interested in how racism impacts health in general, and in particular the large disparity in pregnancy outcomes experienced by African-American women. Words like “seminal,” “timely,” and “necessary” have been used to describe this one.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Parker Dominguez, T., Strong, E. F., Krieger, N., Gillman, M. W., & Rich-Edwards, J. W. (2009). Differences in the self-reported racism experiences of US-born and foreign-born Black pregnant women. Social Science and Medicine, 69, 258-265.
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Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Gotta love it when results are “opposite to that which would be expected.” Knowing what we know about stress, cardiovascular reactions to stress, heart disease, and depression, a distinct model is hypothesized in this article. But the outcomes do not support it. A perfect example of how good science sometimes (often) leads to more good questions than answers.
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Articles for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Carroll, D., Phillips, A. C., Hunt, K., & Der, G. (2007). Symptoms of depression and cardiovascular reactions to acute psychological stress: Evidence from a population study. Biological Psychology, 75, 68-74.
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Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Ever wonder just exactly what it means to be neurotic? How does someone high in neuroticism get through a day? …cope with stress? …deal with daily hassles? Is it all that different from the way you deal with your day? Could you or someone you know be neurotic? Suls & Martin use daily reporting methods to take a systematic look at the day in the life of those high in neuroticism. Who knows, this one might lead to some personal insight.
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Articles for this week’s SPRG meeting:
Suls, J., & Martin, R. (2005). The daily life of the garden-variety neurotic: reactivity, stressor exposure, mood spillover, and maladaptive coping. Journal of Personality, 73, 1485-1509.
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Tuesday, September 15, 2009
So, you think your personality, at least in part, determines your behaviors, your attitudes, your health…? Social psychologists would add that your environment has a lot to do with these things as well. But have you considered how other people’s personalities might influence you? John Ruiz, Karen Matthews and colleagues take a social/personality/health perspective in this JPSP article. Perhaps they will answer the question, “which is more important, your personality, your environment, or personalities in your environment?” Perhaps they won’t.
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Article for this week’s SPRG meeting:
Ruiz, J. M., Matthews, K., et al. (2006). Does who you marry matter for your health? Influence of patients’ and spouses’ personality on their partners’ psychological well-being following coronary artery bypass surgery. J Pers and Soc Psyc, 91,255-267.
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FALL 2009
SPRING 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009 – Canceled
This weekend while looking for a SPRG article it occurred to me that we have never read a heart rate variability (HRV) article for one of our meetings. I know that there are a number of us interested in this measure as both a predictor and an outcome. So, I found an article that I think brings together a number of interests in our department including HRV, emotion control, personality, and conflict. The one thing I was a bit disappointed about was that the researchers didn’t look at HRV, control, and personality factors during an actual conflict. But, they do include information about how they validated their conflict scale by spying on couples in conflict – not bad.
I look forward to seeing everyone at our last regular meeting of Spring 2009. We will discuss the possibility of a SPRG BBQ at this meeting.
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Article for this week’s SPRG meeting:
Gyurak, A. & Ayduk, Ö. (2008). Resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia buffers against rejection sensitivity via emotion control. Emotion, 8(4), 458-467.
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Wednesday, April 22, 2009
As promised, I’ve picked a stress and pregnancy paper. Because this area is relatively new to most, I chose an article that (I hope) will provide a little background as well as a link to social psychology. I have been thinking about doing a stress responses during pregnancy study here in Fargo, so I look forward to your questions and comments.
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Article for this week’s SPRG meeting:
Nierop, A., Wirtz, P. H., Bratsikas, A., Zimmermann, R., Ehlert, U. (2008). Stress-buffering effects of psychosocial resources on physiological and psychological stress response in pregnant women. Biological Psychology, 78(3), 261-268.
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Wednesday, April 8, 2009
This week, one of our newest members, Katie Gordon, has suggested an interesting gender differences article from Psych Science. Using multiple methods (including a manipulation!) the researchers ask who is more tolerant of same-sex friends’ stresses and strains? That is, do guys put up with other guys problems more or less than women put up with other women’s problems? The results may surprise you. Or not.
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Article for the next SPRG meeting:
Benenson,J. F., Markovits, H., Fitzgerald, C., Geoffroy, D., Flemming, J., Kahlenberg, S.M., & Wrangham, R.W., (2009). Males’ greater tolerance of same-sex peers. Psychological Science 20(2), 184-190.
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March 25th Meeting Postponed
Due to the state of emergency in the Fargo area there will be no SPRG this week. We will stay on schedule and regroup in two weeks. Good luck to everyone and be safe.
Clayton
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
I thought I’d stick with a couple of topics that have “visited” our group and our department this semester with a brand new Psychological Science article regarding the neuroscience of religious beliefs. I have long been interested in the psychology of religion, and I have seen a lot of not-so-good research on this topic over the years. Recently I’ve been seeing more psychology of religion research and, IMO some of it has promise. This year Constantine Sedikides visited us with a rather interesting pre-conference talk about religion and self concepts. Combining a similar topic with neuroscience (the topic that recently “visited” our group discussion) the authors of this paper show that strong religious beliefs are associated with particular brain activity. Are they really? And if they are, what does it mean? It should be interesting to consider alternative interpretations of these findings at our meeting this week.
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Article for this week’s SPRG meeting:
Inzlicht, M., McGregor, I., Hirsh, J.B., & Nash, K. (2009). Neural markers of religious conviction. Psychological Science 20(3), 385-392.
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Wednesday, February 25, 2009
A very young and rapidly growing area in social psychology is social cognitive (and sometimes affective) neuroscience. In the past few years two new journals have been devoted entirely to research concerning social neuroscience. A great deal of funding has been provided to help this new and exciting area develop and move forward. Remarkable findings have been reported linking brain activity to social pain, fairness, and emotions. BUT WAIT… In an upcoming issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, Edward Vul and some colleagues at UCSD argue that many of the methods and statistics being employed by researchers in this field are “Voodoo,” and they have some rather harsh things to say about the “remarkable” findings being reported. In the same upcoming issue, a leader in the area and editor of the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Matthew Lieberman responds to the accusations, arguing that the methods are not all that Vul and colleagues claim them to be, and the methods they suggest would seriously underestimate correlations.
In my mind (and I admit my mind is no expert in neuroscience), a lot of neuroscience seems to involve a little bit of “voodoo.” So my question is, is that voodoo that they do any more voodoo than is already done? And if Vul et al. are just recommending another type of voodoo we can also ask, whose voodoo is better voodoo? Should be an interesting read and discussion.
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Articles for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Vul, E., Harris, C., Winkielman, P., & Pashler, H. (2009). Voodoo correlations in social neuroscience. Perspectives on Psychological Science, in press.
Lieberman, M. D., Berkman, E. T., & Wager, T. D. (2009). Correlations in social neuroscience aren’t voodoo: A reply to Vul et al. Perspectives on Psychological Science, in press.
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Wednesday, February 11, 2009
One of first Psychological Science issues of 2009 starts off with two articles on faces. The first topic is currently near and dear to my heart, having to do with the cuteness of baby faces and psychophysiology (these are two of my favorite things!). Turns out cuteness may be more than just in the eye of the beholder. The second article, though having to do with faces and having a prominent psychophysiologist as a co-author has nothing to do with cuteness or blood pressure. Instead, these researchers look at fear responses to out-group faces. They ask if fear responses extinguish over time. Without giving away the punch-line, I’ll just say that there is a gender effect in both articles… Should be a good discussion!
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Article for next weeks SPRG meeting:
Lobmaier, J.S. Sprengelmeyer, A. Aasheim, H.B.M. Black, I.M. Cameron, L.M. Crow, S. Milne, N. Rhodes, E.C. and Young A.W. (2009). The cutest little baby face: A hormonal link to sensitivity to cuteness in infant faces. Psychological Science (X), XXX-XXX.
Navarrete, C. D., Olsson, A., Ho, A.K., Berry Mendes, W., Thomsen, L., and Sidanius, J. (2009). Fear extinction to and out-group face: The role of target gender. Psychological Science (X), XXX-XXX.
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SPRING 2009
FALL 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008
I hope everyone had a nice, filling holiday. If you had egg salad as part of your Thanksgiving holiday, this article might make you think about omitting it from next year’s meal (I know, who has egg salad on Thanksgiving? I was just looking for a nice transition). Dana suggested this article for SPRG back in October and we never got to it. I thought now would be a good time. It’s from Elizabeth Loftus’ lab and so has to do with false memories, specifically, false memories for experiences with food – Perhaps a new weight loss intervention should be considered?
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Article for next weeks SPRG meeting:
Geraerts, E., Bernstein, D. M., Merckelbach, H., Linders, C., Raymaekers, L., & Loftus, E. F. (2008). Lasting false beliefs and their behavioral consequences. Psychol Sci, 19(8), 749-753.
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Thursday, November 20, 2008
Keywords: gender differences, personality, aggression… what more could you ask for? How about a developmental perspective and a conclusion that personality is a complex interaction between individual and environment. Elizabeth has provided SPRG with next week’s article and it looks like a good one, tapping into a number of fundamental issues in social, personality, and development psychology using data from children around 11 (± about 3?) years old. I always find it fascinating to see how data like this is gathered. I have patience for a number of research-related issues, but gathering data from children is not one of them. Should make for an interesting discussion – hope to see you there!
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Article for next weeks SPRG meeting:
Zakriski, A. L., Wright, J. C., & Underwood, M. K. (2005). Gender similarities and differences in children’s social behavior: Finding personality in contextualized patterns of adaptation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88(5), 844-855.
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Thursday, November 6, 2008
This week we continue our discussion of culture in psychology by taking a look at a rather interesting article suggested by Keith Donahue. In this article the argument is made that the bulk of psychology published in American journals is too American, and that we (American research psychologists) have neglected the other 95% of cultures in the world. This seems to be a rather important omission. However, I ask if, with all of the complex cultures within America that deserve more in depth inquiry (e.g., African-American culture, Latino-American culture) should we be making international research a priority, or is it enough to acknowledge our shortcomings and continue to move forward with baby-steps toward incorporating more worldly perspectives into our “American” research? (not that I have any strong opinions either way…)
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Article for next weeks SPRG meeting:
Arnett, J. J. (2008). The neglected 95%: Why American psychology needs to become less American. American Psychologist, 63(7), 602-614.
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Thursday, October 23, 2008
Jared has provided us with a rather interesting article concerning the significance of culture in contemporary social psychological research. In this article the author suggests how we might best approach culture in research. I think this is a very timely topic and quite appropriate for our group – especially because the question of culture as a moderator has been explicitly asked at our last two meetings (maybe more than that, but I definitely remember it coming up at the last two).
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Article for next weeks SPRG meeting:
Kashima, Y. (2008). A Social Psychology of Cultural Dynamics: Examining How Cultures Are Formed, Maintained, and Transformed. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2(1): 107-120.
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Thursday, October 9, 2008
Jacob has supplied our group with an article this week that explores system justification theory. The idea here is that we all, to some extent, have a need to justify and defend the status quo. Exactly why we have this need and the consequences of our justifications are the focus of the article. Given that a major platform upon which the current political campaigns have been run is “change,” it should be interesting to consider the types of predictions system justification theory makes about the upcoming elections.
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Article for next weeks SPRG meeting:
Jost, J. T. & Hunyady, O. (2005). Antecedents and consequences of system-justifying ideologies. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(5): 260-265.
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Thursday, September 25, 2008
This next article was suggested by Dasha and it is clearly relevant to one of her interests in psychology: creativity. I’ve always thought that creativity was an interesting topic for psychologists – is creativity heritable? can it be learned? what is it really? This meta-analytic paper focuses primarily on the last question, considering if the ability to screen out previously irrelevant information is negatively correlated with creativity. Not surprisingly (or perhaps surprisingly), not being able to screen out previously irrelevant information has also been associated with psychoses. I think this paper will lead to some interesting discussion regarding creativity and it’s relationship to other principles investigated in our department as well as some discussion of meta-analytic technique. Should be a good one.
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Article for next weeks SPRG meeting:
Carson, S. H., Peterson, J. B., & Higgins, D. M. (2003). Decreased latent inhibition is associated with increased creative achievement in high functioning individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (85)3: 499-506.
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Thursday, September 11, 2008
One thing that SPRG meetings afford is the opportunity to discuss social psychology articles relevant to your own research. That is, because everyone who attends is invited to suggest reading material for the group, it’s nice when our discussion has the potential to help the suggester develop a new study, write a paper, or just consider a new idea. The article I’m suggesting for this first meeting is just such an article for one of my labs. Amber and I are working on social influence processes that appear to interact with social norm information (ala deviance regulation). So I thought a discussion about this article might be helpful to us and hopefully it will be interesting to the rest of the group. And hey, how often do you see a contemporary social influence article with a field experiment?
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Article for next weeks SPRG meeting:
Nolan, J. M., Schultz, P. W., Cialdini, R. B., Goldstein, N. J., & Griskevicius (2008). Normative social influence is underdetected. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(7), 913-923.
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FALL 2008
SPRING 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
It’s been more than a semester since we read something about evolutionary theory of mate attraction and selection (See October 22, 2007). I think that’s about average for a social psychology reading group – not quite one a semester but probably one per year. This one looks pretty interesting too (thanks Desiree and Amber!). Sarah Hill and David Buss ask in what social context do women find a man attractive and do men find a woman attractive, when the target is surrounded by men or surrounded by women. For some reason, the results didn’t seem all that surprising, but I’m interested to see what you all think is the answer to the question “Why?”
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Article for this week’s SPRG meeting:
Hill, S. E., & Buss, D. M. (2008). The mere presence of opposite sex others on judgments of sexual and romantic desirability: Opposite effects for men and women. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(5), 635-647.
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Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Well, after two intriguing, somewhat cumbersome JPSP article discussions, there has been a suggestion that we discuss something a little short, sweeter, and to the point next week. A number of suggestions were sent my way (Thank you Minard 104C!) and I picked one I thought was apropos. Not only does this article use Major League Baseball as a context (appropriate as we are currently in the first month of regular season baseball) but it is also about names that may make or break someone’s success (appropriate as Kish and I are deciding on a moniker for our July junior). Should be fun!
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Nelson, L. D, & Simmons, J. P. (2007). Moniker maladies: When names sabotage success. Psychological Science,18, 1106-1111.
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Tuesday, April 1, 2008
In this week’s article Wendy Berry Mendes and Jim Blascovich continue their productive line of research considering factors that moderate threat and challenge responses to laboratory stressors. Here they consider interactions between participant-evaluator race and feedback (rejection versus acceptance). Thanks to Verlin for finding this one with a little bit of something for everyone, including behavioral, physiological, and emotional outcomes.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Berry Mendes, W., Major, B., McCoy, S., & Blascovich, J. (2008). How attributional ambiguity shapes physiological and emotional responses to social rejection and acceptance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(2), 278-291.
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Tuesday, March 18, 2008
With conferences, graduate students getting invitations to interview and offers (congratulations Renee!), and spring break, it seems like it’s been forever since SPRG has met and discussed an article. Therefore, I don’t want to put it off anymore and I am sending this rather late announcement and article for a meeting this Tuesday. I hope everyone can make it.
I ran across this JPSP article and thought it looked interesting. In the spirit of SPRG, it’s a bit different than what most of us are used to and I thought it might not only potentially provide us with some inspiration for new research but could also provide guidance in how to be a good leader (or how not to be a bad one).
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Article for next weeks SPRG meeting:
Ames, D. R. & Flynn, F. J. (2007). What breaks a leader: The curvilinear relation between assertiveness and leadership. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(2), 307-324.
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Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Special Meeting of SPRG: Practice Job Talk for Renee Magnan
This week I found out that one of our senior graduate students is diligently preparing a job talk to be presented in about 2 weeks time. Therefore I invited Renee to use our group meeting next week to get some feedback on her talk . Renee has accepted this invitation. So next week SPRG will become SPTG, the Social Psychology (job) Talk Group.
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Talk to be presented at next week’s SPTG meeting:
Magnan, Renee (2008, February). Verlin suggested: “Content and process of emotion and health behavior,” but Renee said that probably won’t be the title. Talk presented at the NDSU Social Psychology Reading Group meeting, Fargo, North Dakota.
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Tuesday, January 29, 2008
I always found Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s theory of flow to be quite interesting. I think most of us can relate to the idea of flow, an experience of being completely absorbed with an activity that is accompanied by feelings of freedom or enjoyment while concerns about time and everything else outside of the situation become unimportant. A flow experience can last anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours (perhaps days?) and can occur during a wide variety of activities including when one is playing an instrument or a sport, or perhaps when meditating. Typically (theoretically) flow occurs when there is a perfect balance between the demands of a situation and the skills of the performer. In the article I have chosen this week, with help and feedback from some of you, the researchers present an experimental manipulation of the flow experience. If it looks like it works, I’d be surprised if we didn’t see “Flow at Home” instructional videos sometime soon.
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Article for next weeks SPRG meeting:
Keller, J. & Bless, H. (2008). Flow and Regulatory Compatibility: An Experimental Approach to the Flow Model of Intrinsic Motivation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 196-209.
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Tuesday, January 15, 2008
On Friday Dr. Kathryn Gordon is coming to interview for the clinical psychologist faculty position. Her areas of research cover topics such as suicide, depression, and eating disorders. This is one of her most recent first author papers.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Gordon, K. H., Brattole, M. M., Wingate, L. R., & Joiner, T. E. (2006). The impact of client race on clinician detection of eating disorders. Behavior Therapy, 37, 319-325.
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SPRING 2008
FALL 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
Thanks to Amber for suggesting this week’s article on relationships and sacrifice. Although this article is concerned with intimate relationships, I think it’s interesting how “relationships” and “sacrifice” in general seem to be on many minds as the holidays approach. Questions may enter our heads such as should we sacrifice? How much should we sacrifice? And, perhaps, as this article suggests we should be asking should we sacrifice to make others happy and/or should we sacrifice to avoid conflict with others? My instincts say, “Both!” But Emily Impett found that the approach and avoidance sacrifices are not necessarily beneficial to intimate relationships and in fact may bare some important costs. Should be an interesting read and discussion.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Impett, E.A., Gale, S. L., & Peplau, L.A. (2005). Giving up and giving in: The costs and benefits of daily sacrifice in intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, (89)3, 327-344.
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Monday, October 22, 2007
Occasionally, though rarely I must admit, social psychologists who seem to always keep their cool get worked up about something. I have been witness to such an occasion when the topic was evolutionary theories of mate selection and attraction. As you might have guessed, I like to see people passionate about their work (no pun intended). So, as we traverse the midpoint of this semester, a time when some of us (myself included) occasionally need to work hard to muster up that passion, I thought we could take a look at a recent PSPB article asking why women are attracted to muscular men. This one has pictures!
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Frederick, D., & Haselton, M. G. (2007). Why Is Muscularity Sexy? Tests of the Fitness Indicator Hypothesis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, (33)8, 1167-1183.
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Monday, October 8, 2007
On Monday there will be a special edition of SPRG which will highlight the newest member of our department Health/Social family. In my absence (I must don a tux and stand up in a wedding next weekend), Dr. Routledge has graciously accepted an invitation to propose and discuss an article of his choosing. This one looks like it’s going to be interesting… Having just received it I’ve only perused the abstract and note a couple key words: “the self,” “right-wing authoritarianism,” “vermin,” and “dust mites.” Can’t beat a JPSP paper that includes these ingredients.
Please join Clay this Monday at the Turf and I’ll be thinking of you as I fly back from NYC.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Burris, C. T. & Rempel, J. K. (2004). “It’s the end of the world as we know it”: Threat and the spatial-symbolic self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86(1), 19-42.
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Monday, September 17, 2007
Thanks to everyone who attended the inaugural Fall 2007 meeting earlier this week. Because of a scheduling conflict, those present at the last meeting voted to meet again this coming Monday, Sept. 17th. The paper we will be discussing was proposed by Renee and Dana last semester and, I agree with their assessment, it looks like it will be *fun* to discuss. The idea is that what you wear affects both other’s perceptions of you and your own behavior. The authors do a nice job of showing how wearing black makes people *bad*. Next time, I’m blaming it all on my clothes.
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Article for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Frank, M. G., & Gilovich, T. (1988). The dark side of self- and social perception: Black uniforms and aggression in professional sports. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(1), 74-85.
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Monday, September 10th, 2007
Monday afternoon meetings bring me back to my time in grad school when me and some friends would get together to talk shop over beers and fish tacos down by the beach… ahhhhh… the beach. Well, we don’t have a beach, but we have the Bison Turf and a couple of articles Renee has suggested for the group to discuss. These articles focus on a relatively under-studied concept that I believe is important to our general understanding of social cognition and related processes, namely, positive stereotypes. Often falling under the rubric of “Positive Psychology,” positive stereotypes have, as yet, not received a lot of attention. So, there are many unanswered questions about the form and nature of pos. stereotypes: e.g., are they really “stereotypes” per se? Do they develop in a similar way as negative stereotypes? And is their impact equal but opposite that of negative stereotypes? Both articles are related to Renee’s dissertation and I know she’d be grateful if we could come up with the answers to these and other questions when we meet on Sept 10th. 🙂
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Two articles for Sept 10th’s SPRG meeting:
Levy, B.R., Hausdorff, J. M., Hencke, R., & Wei, J. Y. (2000). Reducing cardiovascular stress with positive self-stereotypes of aging. Journal of Gerontology, 55B(4), 205-213.
Shih, M., Ambady, N., Richeson, J. A., Fujita, K., & Gray, H. M. (2002). Stereotype performance boosts: The impact of self-relevance and the manner of stereotype activation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(3), 638-647.
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FALL 2007
SPRING 2007
Thursday, May 17th, 2007
Final Spring 2007 Meeting and BBQ
As requested, the final SPRG meeting and BBQ of the spring is Thursday, May 17th. Given the impending summer “vacation” and the times we will spend sharing our hedonic moments with friends and family I have chosen an article that I thought looked apropos and interesting. I’d like to have our normal discussion for about an hour or so and then I will have brats, burgers, drinks, and snacks (including guacamole, as Desiree requested) for all to enjoy. If we’re in the mood a game of badminton may be in order as well. So, good luck on finishing up the rest of the semester and I’ll see you on Thursday!
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Article for the next SPRG meeting:
Raghunathan, R. & Corfman, K. (2006). Is happiness shared doubled and sadness shared halved? Social influence on enjoyment of hedonic experiences. Journal of Marketing Research, 43 (August), 386-394.
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Thursday, April 19th, 2007
An informal vote at the previous SPRG meeting was in favor of a meeting next week to discuss a reading to prepare for the clinical faculty applicant who will be visiting us next Friday. Her name is Khytam Dawood, she will be visiting from Chicago and there is a good chance the weather will be beautiful! Our previous social/health search meetings were informative and I thought prepared us well for the visitors. Although this work may not be social psychology-related in the strictest sense, it is certainly of relevance to social psychological phenomena and therefore appropriate for our reading group.
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Article for this week’s SPRG meeting:
Bailey, J.M., Pillard, R.C., Dawood, K., Miller, M.B., Farrer, L.A., Trivedi, S., & Murphy, R.L. (1999). A family history study of male sexual orientation using three independent samples. Behavior Genetics, 29(2), 79-86.
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Thursday, April 12th, 2007
So much for spring springing… Well, hopefully by next week’s SPRG meeting spring will have re-sprung and we will have reason to celebrate kind weather once again. SPRG will be celebrating with an article suggested by Verlin. I think it looks quite interesting, and timely (published in last month’s PSPB). The stimulus is the American flag and words like egalitarian, nationalism, hostility, and intergroup relations pop up throughout. The power of symbolism can be awesome (cause one to be filled with awe), and can motivate feelings and behaviors which have significant impacts on our lives. But you probably already knew that. This article shows us how, in 2007, a symbol we see every day (even subliminally!) might be influencing us to feel certain things.
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Article for this week’s SPRG meeting:
Butz, DA, Plant, EA, & Doerr, CE (2007). Liberty and justice for all? Implications of exposure to the U.S. flag on intergroup relations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(3), 396-408.
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Thursday, March 29th, 2007
Well, spring has sprung and although I’ve been warned that it could still get chilly again, I refuse to believe it. For our first reading of spring 2007 I thought we’d take a look at what the Baumeister lab has been working on. This is one of two papers from the lab in a recent JPSP. The focus on social exclusion seems to be quite trendy these days. Hopefully they’ve done something interesting with it here.
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Article for this week’s SPRG meeting:
Maner, J.K., DeWall, N., Baumeister, R.F., Schaller, M. (2007). does social exclusion motivate interpersonal reconnection? Resolving the “porcupine problem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(1), 42-55.
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Thursday, March 1st, 2007
Now that there are no more Social/Health applicants scheduled to visit we are back to our old ways… Dana had suggested what I feel is an apropos article for our group earlier this year and I think now is the time to read it. It’s a short Psychological Science article about… you guessed it: “Preferences for Beer” (I’ll bring some balsamic vinegar to the meeting so we can do our own little taste test – you’ll see what I’m talking about after you read the article). I am also including a link to a second, very short, related article about the impact of food labels that say “low-fat” on preferences for food (personally I can’t stand “low-fat” but that’s because it doesn’t taste good… right?… RIGHT?).
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Two articles for next week’s SPRG meeting:
Wardle, J. & Solomons, W. (1994). Naughty but nice: A laboratory study of health information and food preferences in a community sample. Health Psychology, 13(2), 180-183.
Lee, L., Frederick, S., & Ariely, D. (2006). Try it, you’ll like it: The influence of expectation, consumption, and revelation on preferences for beer. Psychological Science, 17(12), 1054-1058.
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Thursday, Feb 15th, 2007
Social/Health candidate reading
Our next Social/Health job candidate arrives in a week and it looks like he’s going to be here during a warm spell. Forecasts call for highs anywhere from 10-29 degrees! Yes, I’ve already been here long enough to appreciate highs in the 20’s in February… This one looks like we will all be able to sympathize and perhaps take away a lesson or two about our health as it relates to the stress of being a college student. And here’s the reference and a direct link to the paper:
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Hall, N. C., Chipperfield, J. G., Perry, R. P., Ruthig, J. C., & Goetz, T. (2006). Primary and secondary control in academic development: Gender-specific implications for stress and health in college students. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 19, 189-210.
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Thursday, Feb 1st, 2007
Social/Health candidate reading
Our next meeting is in about a week and a half, but I thought a number of our regular attendees might want to print this out and take it with them so they have something to read on their way to or from SPSP. Have a great trip to Memphis and I’ll see you next week!
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Routledge, Clay; Arndt, Jamie; Goldenberg, Jamie L. (2004). A time to tan: Proximal and distal effects of mortality salience on sun exposure Intentions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30(10), 1347-1358.
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Thursday, Jan 18th, 2007
Social/Health candidate reading
I apologize for the late email, but it took me a little while to get my hands on the article for our next meeting. It looks like Dr. Kiviniemi’s talk will be based on a couple of in press articles (at least in part) and this is one of them. This is an uncorrected proof that was included in his application file, so please do not quote, cite, or distribute this beyond our department. The affect-behavior link looks pretty intriguing, particularly as it applies to health-relevant behaviors. Should be another good discussion to prepare for our candidate’s visit.
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Kiviniemi, M.T., Voss, A.M., & Seifert, A.L. (in press). How do I feel about the behavior? The interplay of affective associations with behaviors and cognitive beliefs as influences on physical activity behavior. Health Psychology, 26(2), 152-158.
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Thursday, Jan 11th, 2007
Social/Health candidate reading
I haven’t had a chance to look at this one yet, but this is the article provided by our first Social/Health Job candidate Dr. Tamlin Conner.
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Conner, T., & Feldman Barrett, L. (2005). Implicit self-attitudes predict spontaneous affect in daily life. Emotion, 5(4), 476-488.
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Visiting Social/Health Candidate Reading Series
SPRING 2007
FALL 2006
Wednesday, Dec 13th, 2006
So I really wanted a holiday-related article for the SPRG Holiday Party 2006 and I think I found the perfect one. It’s short, sweet, and to the point. I included the one page editorial that opened the journal to give us a little background and then the article itself. The lead author (David Phillips) is in many Introduction to Social Psychology books with the work he did on increases in violent crime following well-publicized boxing matches. This is also the guy that Nicko Christenfeld (our recent colloquium visitor) did some work with on how initials and NYC can kill you. This article shows us how the holidays can kill us! But wait… it turns out it’s not so bad in the northern states, just don’t let those southerners know. I do know there have been holidays where I would’ve rather been dead, but it will be fun to discuss why the holidays might be so deadly.
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Kloner, R. A. (2004). The “Merry Christmas Coronary” and the “Happy New Year Heart Attack” Phenomenon. Circulation, 110, 3744-3745.
Phillips, D. P., Jarvinen, J. R., Abramson, I. S., & Phillips, R. R. (2004). Cardiac mortality is higher around Christmas and New Year’s than at any other time: The holidays as a risk factor for death. Circulation, 110, 3781-3788.
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Wednesday, Nov 29th, 2006
I was flipping through the latest JPSP and found this relatively short article about the hedonic principle and voicing your opinions – so I thought it was appropriate for this family-fun holiday season. We also had a recent request for an article in which something is manipulated, so I thought it fit the bill. And finally, I don’t think we’ve read an approach-avoidance motivation paper yet and I used to know a number of social psychologists who really like these ideas. So, after Thanksgiving I’ll see you at the Turf…
Have a great Thanksgiving Holiday!
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van Prooijen, JW, Karremans, JC, & van Beest, I. Procedurel justice and the hedonic principle: How approach versus avoidance motivation influences the psychology of voice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, (91)4, 686-697.
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Wednesday, Nov 15th, 2006
To prepare for this paper I recently watched the movie “Shallow Hal.” Okay, it was really just a coincidence, but that 2001 movie and a classic 1980 movie with Dom Deluise called “Fatso” (one of his few dramatic roles) show us that stigmatization of overweight individuals is not something new. These movies also show us that Hollywood thinks we should give fat people a break, but I get the feeling that a lot of other people think fat people don’t deserve a break until they lose some weight. I’m interested to find out if we see a value judgment in this paper. According to the abstract, being near fat people makes non-fat people look bad. I can see the authors walking a thin line between “blaming fat people” and “blaming those who judge fat people.” Thanks for the interesting article Renee!
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Hebl, M. R. & Mannix, L. M. (2003). The weight of obesity in evaluating others: A mere proximity effect. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(1), 28-38.
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Wednesday, Nov 1st, 2006
Special thanks to Scott Ode and Sara Moeller for suggesting next week’s SPRG article. This will be our second article in a single semester that quotes Ernest Becker! I think one Ernest Becker quotation per year is the last record. I’m noticing a trend here… this article is about how thoughts of one’s mortality in general and the 9/11 attack specifically can be overtly and subliminally stimulated thus causing a more supportive attitude toward Bush and (in 2004) a less supportive attitude toward his opponent, John Kerry (like that was so hard to do – I always thought, if only Kerry had kept his mouth shut…). This one should be another interesting discussion.
(Oh! and notice that the word “evil” is in the title… See you all Saturday!)
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Landau, M. J., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Cohen, F., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., Miller, C. H., Ogilvie, D. M.,& Cook, A. (2004). Deliver us from evil: The effects of mortality salience and reminders of 9/11 on support for president George W. Bush. Personality And Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1136-1150.
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Wednesday, Oct 18th, 2006
Our next article comes from Psychological Science and was suggested to the group by Dana. Thanks Dana! So far I like it – the article refers to what was affectionately known in my house as the “clean-your-plate” rule. I wonder how we decide what a single unit is (in my house growing up 1 unit = everything on your plate) and why we feel consuming whole units is better than consuming partial units. I also find myself asking, why might a unit bias “heuristic” be a good thing – I mean don’t most heuristics have some adaptive quality? Perhaps this one will explain why some people like little beers and others order BIG beers… perhaps not.
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Geier, A.B., Rozin, P., & Doros, G. (2006). Unit bias: A new heuristic that helps explain the effect of portion size and food intake. Psychological Science, 17(6), 521-525.
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Wednesday, Sept 27th, 2006 (moved to Oct 4th)
A new member of our motley crew, Brian Ostafin, has suggested an article I am sad I will not be able to discuss with you. In identifying motivations behind political conservatism I am intrigued by the findings that political conservatism is strongly and positively related to “death anxiety,” and negatively related to “openness to experience,” among other things. Knowing other work by Jost and Kruglanski, I am interested to see if they give conservatism a fare shake. If they don’t, I know you all will. So, I will be reading this, and though I cannot be with you in body, I will be there in spirit (maybe I shouldn’t have said that)… I’ll be at home, laying in bed thinking of you….
PS I suggest you do not wait until an hour before the meeting to start reading this one…
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Jost, J.T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129(3), 339-375.
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Hello all,
Here’s a follow-up on the discussion of Jost et al. yesterday. The first 2 are conservative columnists weighing in on the Jost et al. article and the 3rd is the authors’ reply.
Ann Coulter: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2003/07/31/closure_on_nuance
George Will:http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GeorgeWill/2003/08/10/conservative_psychosis
Kruglanski and Jost: http://www.sulloway.org/PoliticalOpinionNotPathology.htm
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Wednesday, Sept 13th, 2006
So for our first article of fall 2006 I am proposing an article from PSPB published this year that I know is already popular with some members of our department. The key words here are “emotion,” “regulation,” and “anger.” Should make for a good discussion as it involves the ever popular James Gross and friends…
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Mauss, I. B., Evers, C., Wilhelm, F. H., & Gross, J. J. (2006). How to bite your tongue withough blowing your top: Implicit evaluation of emotion regulation predicts affective responding to anger provocation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(5), 589-602.
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FALL 2006
SPRING 2006
Thursday, May 11th, 2006
I am proposing that we spend some time discussing two articles that are at odds with one another over issues that are potentially central to social psychology. The first is a published article by Arie Kruglanski. In it, Dr. Kruglanski discusses the state of social psychological theory, which he thinks isn’t very good. Some of my mentors at UCSD put together an article to respond to the Kruglanski article. However, they have been unable to publish it. But why? If we can figure it out, we may be able to save social psychology from itself.
After our discussion, please plan to stay for food, drink, and fun to celebrate the inaugural year of the NDSU Social Psychology Reading Group.
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Kruglanski, A. W. (2001). That “vision thing”: The state of theory in social and personality psychology at the edge of the new millennium. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(6), 871-875.
Christenfeld, N., Ebbesen, E. B., Kulik, J. A., & Konecni, V. J. (unpublished manuscript). Psychological naturalism and the limits of theory.
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Thursday, May 4th, 2006
Kevin has provided us with an article that touches on three of my favorite things: social influence, health, and deviance (not necessarily in that order). Notice that the first author is recent visitor Hart Blanton. I’ll bet you a $1 there is no IAT in this study.
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Blanton, H., Stuart, A. E., & VandenEijnden, Regina J. J. M. (2001). An introduction to deviance-regulation theory: The effect of BEhavioral Norms on Message Framing. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(7), 848-858.
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Thursday, March 30th, 2006
Ben Wilkowski suggested this article from a relatively new APA journal called “Emotion.” This article fits well with our group’s social psychology theme as it involves emotions during social interactions. I particularly like how the experimenters used real interactions – or maybe it was because they measured blood pressure. In any case, enjoy, and I’ll see you next Thursday!
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Butler, E. A., Egloff, B., Wilhelm, F. H., Smith, N. C., Erikson, E. A., Gross, J. J. (2003). The social consequences of expressive suppression. Emotion, 3(1), 48-67.
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Thursday, March 9th, 2006
Wendy and Elizabeth have proposed an interesting paper published in JPSP a few years ago. It’s got social cognition, aggression, and relationships – a little something for everyone – should be a good one.
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Hubbard, JA, Dodge, KA, Cillessen, AHN, Coie, JD, Schwartz, D. (2001). The dyadic nature of social information processing in boys’ reactive and proactive aggression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(2), pp. 268-280.
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Thursday, February 16th, 2006
I thought for our first meeting we’d take a look at a strong area of social psychology that is still evolving in many ways (some good, some not so…). This paper does a decent job at catching us up on some of the recent work done on stereotyping and what we might be able to learn about stereotyping from Richard Petty’s attitudes research.
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Wegener, D. T., Clark, J. K., & Petty, R. E. (2006). Not all stereotyping is created equal: Differential consequences of thoughtful versus nonthoughtful stereotyping. Journal of personality and social psychology, 90(1), 42-59.
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SPRING 2006
Hilmert Lab 