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Articles 1 - 13 of 13

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Say Syrah, Syrah: Savoring The Rewards Of Patience, Contemplation, And Tlz, Thomas G. Plante Oct 2009

Say Syrah, Syrah: Savoring The Rewards Of Patience, Contemplation, And Tlz, Thomas G. Plante

Psychology

My family and I fondly say that we have the best syrah Menlo Park has to offer. (Although to our knowledge, it is the only syrah grown in Menlo Park.) While that doesn’t put us in the league of prominent winemaking alumni and friends of Santa Clara—including Michael Mondavi ’66, the Sebastianis, and Fess Parker—it is the result of a decade of growing grapes at our home on the Peninsula.


Cognition And Leisure Time Activities Of Older Adults, Patricia M. Simone, Amie L. Haas Oct 2009

Cognition And Leisure Time Activities Of Older Adults, Patricia M. Simone, Amie L. Haas

Psychology

Older adults have much more leisure time today than they have had in the past. Evidence points to the connection between engagement in physical exercise, a leisure time activity, and the overall health of older adults. Because health is an important issue, especially as we age, it is helpful to know that we have some control over it as we age. Cognition, i.e., our ability to remember, to pay attention, and to think, is also a concern in aging. Is it possible that the choices we make about leisure time activities may influence our cognitive abilities in old age? This …


How Does One Become Spiritual? The Spiritual Modeling Inventory Of Life Environments (Smile), Doug Oman, Carl E. Thoresen, Crystal L. Park, Philip R. Shaver, Ralph W. Hood, Thomas G. Plante Jul 2009

How Does One Become Spiritual? The Spiritual Modeling Inventory Of Life Environments (Smile), Doug Oman, Carl E. Thoresen, Crystal L. Park, Philip R. Shaver, Ralph W. Hood, Thomas G. Plante

Psychology

We report psychometric properties, correlates and underlying theory of the Spiritual Modeling Index of Life Environments (SMILE), a measure of perceptions of spiritual models, defined as everyday and prominent people who have functioned for respondents as exemplars of spiritual qualities, such as compassion, self-control, or faith. Demographic, spiritual, and personality correlates were examined in an ethnically diverse sample of college students from California, Connecticut, and Tennessee (N=1010). A summary measure of model influence was constructed from perceived models within family, school, religious organization, and among prominent individuals from both tradition and media. The SMILE, based on concepts from Bandura's (1986) …


Participation In Prevention Programs For Dating Violence: Beliefs About Relationship Violence And Intention To Participate, Tara L. Cornelius, Kieran T. Sullivan, Nicole Wyngarden, Jennifer Milliken Jun 2009

Participation In Prevention Programs For Dating Violence: Beliefs About Relationship Violence And Intention To Participate, Tara L. Cornelius, Kieran T. Sullivan, Nicole Wyngarden, Jennifer Milliken

Psychology

This study utilizes the Health Belief Model to examine the factors related to the intention to participate in prevention programming for dating violence. Perceptions of susceptibility to future violence and the benefits of prevention programming appear to be the strongest predictors of participation in prevention programs. Perceptions of the severity of dating violence do not appear to be related to intentions to participate. There were no differences in intention between those reporting psychological or physical violence in their dating relationship, although some of the HBM factors were associated with a history of violence. Contrary to hypotheses, psychological and physical violence …


Characteristics Of Spontaneous Musical Imagery, Mike Wammes, Imants Barušs Jan 2009

Characteristics Of Spontaneous Musical Imagery, Mike Wammes, Imants Barušs

Psychology

This study follows upon Steven Brown’s 2006 article in The Journal of Consciousness Studies about the “perpetual music track,” a form of constant musical imagery. With Brown’s assistance, a Musical Imagery Questionnaire was developed and administered to 67 participants with the intention of establishing relevant scales for quantifying the presence and extent of spontaneous musical imagery in individuals. In addition to the Musical Imagery Questionnaire, the Six Factor Personality Questionnaire, as well as the Transliminality Scale, which is a measure of openness to psychological material, was used in order to explore the correlations of spontaneous musical imagery to personality constructs. …


Speculations About The Direct Effects Of Intention On Physical Manifestation, Imants Barušs Jan 2009

Speculations About The Direct Effects Of Intention On Physical Manifestation, Imants Barušs

Psychology

A possible mechanism by which mental acts may be synchronized with physical states is postulated. It is argued that a layer of deep consciousness, similar to David Bohm’s implicate order, underlies and gives rise to both subjective, intentional consciousness and objective, physical manifestation. The influence of volition at the level of intentional consciousness can be conceptualized in the context of the Kochen-Specker theorem as the exercise of the unconstrained choice of observables, and, at the level of deep consciousness, as modulation of the activity of the creation and annihilation operators of a quantum field. The discrete nature of observations …


Head Direction Cell Activity In Mice: Robust Directional Signal Depends On Intact Otolith Organs, R.M. Yoder, J.S. Taube Jan 2009

Head Direction Cell Activity In Mice: Robust Directional Signal Depends On Intact Otolith Organs, R.M. Yoder, J.S. Taube

Psychology

The head direction (HD) cell signal is a representation of an animal's perceived directional heading with respect to its environment. This signal appears to originate in the vestibular system, which includes the semicircular canals and otolith organs. Preliminary studies indicate the semicircular canals provide a necessary component of the HD signal, but involvement of otolithic information in the HD signal has not been tested. The present study was designed to determine the otolithic contribution to the HD signal, as well as to compare HD cell activity of mice with that of rats. HD cell activity in the anterodorsal thalamus was …


Reconciling Findings Of Emotion-Induced Memory Enhancement And Impairment Of Preceding Items, Marisa Knight, M Mather Jan 2009

Reconciling Findings Of Emotion-Induced Memory Enhancement And Impairment Of Preceding Items, Marisa Knight, M Mather

Psychology

A large body of work reveals that people remember emotionally arousing information better than neutral information. However, previous research reveals contradictory effects of emotional events on memory for neutral events that precede or follow them: in some studies emotionally arousing items impair memory for immediately preceding or following items and in others arousing items enhance memory for preceding items. By demonstrating both emotion-induced enhancement and impairment, Experiments 1 and 2 clarified the conditions under which these effects are likely to occur. The results suggest that emotion-induced enhancement is most likely to occur for neutral items that: (1) precede (and so …


Genetic And Environmental Contributions To Body Mass Index: Comparative Analysis Of Monozygotic Twins, Dizygotic Twins And Same-Age Unrelated Siblings, Nancy Segal, R. Feng, Shirley Mcguire, D. Allison, S. Miller Jan 2009

Genetic And Environmental Contributions To Body Mass Index: Comparative Analysis Of Monozygotic Twins, Dizygotic Twins And Same-Age Unrelated Siblings, Nancy Segal, R. Feng, Shirley Mcguire, D. Allison, S. Miller

Psychology

Background—Earlier studies have established that a substantial percentage of variance in obesity-related phenotypes is explained by genetic components. However, only one study has used both virtual twins (VTs) and biological twins and was able to simultaneously estimate additive genetic, non-additive genetic, shared environmental and unshared environmental components in body mass index (BMI). Our current goal was to re-estimate four components of variance in BMI, applying a more rigorous model to biological and virtual multiples with additional data. Virtual multiples share the same family environment, offering unique opportunities to estimate common environmental influence on phenotypes that cannot be separated from …


A Longitudinal Investigation Of The Relationships Amongst Antibody Response To Influenza Vaccination, Affect, And Stress In The Elderly, Joanne Hash-Converse Jan 2009

A Longitudinal Investigation Of The Relationships Amongst Antibody Response To Influenza Vaccination, Affect, And Stress In The Elderly, Joanne Hash-Converse

Psychology

We examined the cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships amongst affect, stress exposure, and antibody (Ab) response to influenza inoculation in a healthy, elderly sample. We explored both efferent (CNS on immune activity) and afferent (immune activity on CNS function) pathways. Negative (NA) and positive (PA) affective states were examined in relation to Ab response, positing that high baseline NA (State, SNA, but not Trait, TNA) would predict reduced Ab response and that PA would predict enhanced response, and that the reduced Ab response in individuals displaying high baseline SNA would associate with decreases in NA. Moderator (for psychogenic and systemic stress) …


Fighting Conflict: Violent Splits Or Healthy Divides?, Katerina Bezrukova, Chester Spell Jan 2009

Fighting Conflict: Violent Splits Or Healthy Divides?, Katerina Bezrukova, Chester Spell

Psychology

In this study, we develop a theory to understand how groups with strong divisions may, paradoxically, help members to cope with conflict and injustice. We test our theoretical predictions using a survey methodology and the data from 72 work groups across different industries. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that group faultlines weakened the positive relationships between injustice and psychological health.


Transition To Marriage, Tara L. Cornelius, Kieran T. Sullivan Jan 2009

Transition To Marriage, Tara L. Cornelius, Kieran T. Sullivan

Psychology

One of the most sign ificant psychosocial adjustments in adulthood is the transition to marriage. Although most men and women in the United States will marry at some point in their lives and most look forward to this event with anticipation and excitement, the transition to marriage also involves adaptation to a variety of tasks that may fundamentally alter spouses' view of themselves and their alliances.


The Shaping Of A Saint-President: Latent Clues From Nelson Mandela's Autobiography, Abdulrazaq Imam Jan 2009

The Shaping Of A Saint-President: Latent Clues From Nelson Mandela's Autobiography, Abdulrazaq Imam

Psychology

Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom provides evidence organized in the form of antecedent-behavior-consequence units, which suggest that a shaping process effected during his many years of incarceration best describes the origins of the outcome represented by the political order in South Africa following his release. The analysis shows that Mandela's radicalism at the start of his imprisonment on Robben Island changed into a saintly presidential aura in the end, through a systematic selection process that actively involved Mandela himself and his political aspirations. The saintly qualities ascribed to Mandela after his release by many around the world are consistent …