Archive

20 March 2016, Volume 39 Issue 2 Previous Issue    Next Issue

---

For Selected:

Download Citations EndNote Ris BibTeX

Toggle Thumbnails

Select

Five-Factor Nonverbal Personality Questionnaire（FF-NPQ）: A Semi-Projective Test Review 2016, 39(2): 479-484.  Abstract ( )   PDF (504KB) ( )   Based on different item presentation modes, five-factor approach personality test can be divided into sentential self-report test, adjective checklist test and nonverbal test. At present, there are many sentential self-report tests and adjective checklist tests, however nonverbal personality tests are still rare. Five-Factor Nonverbal Personality Questionnaire (FF-NPQ) was developed by Paunonen and his partners in 2001 and it is the only nonverbal personality test that has been widely accepted and used. Most items of FF-NPQ were selected from NPQ based on the five-factor model. There are five dimensions including extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience, and they were classified to the five factors according to the correlation between NPQ and the five factors using the construct-based method. The third step was to select 12 items in four dimensions of NPQ respectively, which had the highest correlation coefficients with the corresponding factor in the five-factor dimensions, and then include them into the final questionnaire. The only exception was the neuroticism dimension, which included the 8-item of one dimension in the NPQ. At last, 13 new items of neuroticism were redrawn and were tested together with the existing 8 items to select 12 most correlated items with neuroticism. Finally, the FF-NPQ contains 60 items and each factor is tested with 12 items. Each FF-NPQ item is a black and white picture, showing a central person engaging in a personality-related behavior. There will be one or more people in a picture and the one with black hair is the central person. Respondents are asked to consider the behavior depicted in the item and rate the probability that they would engage in a similar behavior and record their responses by selecting a number from a 7-point scale. FF-NPQ has good psychometric properties. Its internal consistency has been verified in more than ten countries, and almost all the results are higher than the standard value of 0.7. In addition, its convergent validity with some verbal five-factor personality tests is acceptable. Moreover, the score of FF-NPQ can predict tobacco consumption, alcohol consumption, blood donations and many other complex behaviors. FF-NPQ enriches the forms of five-factor approach personality test. It can be applied to cross-cultural researches and can also be used to measure the personality of illiterate, the aged and people who have problems in verbal expression or reading comprehension. FF-NPQ is a semi-projective test which combines projective test and self-report test together. It is more objective than the projective test and can avoid the social desirability when compared with self-report test. However, little research about FF-NPQ has been done abroad so far and so has in China. It was developed in western culture, so some items may not be suitable for non-western culture and need to be carefully used in cross-cultural research. FF-NPQ represents a trend of semi-projective personality test. It shows good reliability and validity and can improve the accuracy of the cross-cultural personality research, so it is worth being introduced and revised. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Two《Science》 and《Nature》psychology papers published in 2015 2016, 39(2): 474-478.  Abstract ( )   PDF (553KB) ( )   In “Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science” published in 《Science》, the authors report the results of their replication of 100 experimental and correlational studies published in three prestigious psychology journals in 2008 (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). Whereas 97% of original studies had significant results (P<.05), only 36% of replications were so. The authors offer some explanations for these results and emphasise that this is not a defeat for psychology. They conclude that accumulating evidence is the scientific community’s method of self-correction and is the best available option for achieving the ultimate goal: truth. In this process, statistically significant innovations from the original studies would point out paths that are possible, whilst those that subsequently pass the test of replication would point out paths that are likely. Scientific progress relies on both innovations and replications — hence journals should not dismiss replication studies lightly. Whilst we are in broad agreement with the authors’ explanations and conclusions, we note, first, that the problem of irreproducibility is not unique to psychology. It has happened to other sciences such as oncology, haematology and genetics, sometimes to an even greater extent, and has led to better scientific tools such as double-blind procedures to reduce the risk of unconscious biases (Nuzzo, 2015). Second, many of the replications that fail to reach statistically significant P values are in the same trend as the original studies rather than contradictory. This raises the question of the real scientific significance of P values in the research process and its implications. In the second paper reviewed herein (“P values are just the tip of the iceberg” published in《Nature》), Leek and Peng (2015) criticise the decision made by the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology in 2015 to ban the use of P values and other methods of NHST (null hypothesis significance testing). The authors argue, first, that although P values are widely abused, banning it would open more doors to dubious game statistics for getting a paper accepted for publication. Second, and more importantly, they point out that a successful study has many stages in the making before reaching the P values stage. The latter stage is only the tip of the iceberg, and its impact on the eventual success of a study as a whole is much less critical than careful research design and analysis that lie below it. Hence the more fruitful debate should be on all aspects of the research process rather than on P values primarily. This conclusion has implications not only for the reproducibility study’s over-reliance on P values, but also for the training of psychology research students in contemporary China. Too often, the training has focused on the “tip of the iceberg” of the research process to the neglect of those parts of the process below. In this training culture, students learn the technicalities competently. They also learn to reduce their cognitive uncertainties about doing research by placing their trust in authorities, and can complete super-efficiently the “required” multiple studies in a bundle rather than in a programatic manner to build one study on the results of the one preceding. Then they blame the authorities for failures instead of taking personal responsibility for their own research. The combined take-home message of the two 《Science》 and《Nature》psychology papers is perhaps best summed up by Francis Bacon (1561–1626): “If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.” (Quoted in Sun, 2004, p. 581) Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Family income and adolescents’ sleep quality: The chain mediating effect of perceived discrimination and self-esteem Zhen-Zhou BAO Xue-Fen LAI 2016, 39(2): 350-356.  Abstract ( )   PDF (649KB) ( )   With the rapid growth of Chinese economic, the widening income gap and its detrimental effects on adolescents’ development has received substantial attention. A large body research has documented the negative association between low family income and adolescent adjustment. The present study aimed to examine the relationship between low family income and adolescents’ sleep quality. Sleep is especially important during adolescent. There is considerable evidence suggesting that sleep is a powerful predictor of adolescents’ mental, physical, and psychological consequences. However, the adolescents from low income family are at increased risk of low sleep quality, insufficient sleep, and low sleep efficiency. To our knowledge, most research has focused the negative association between low family income and adolescents’ sleep quality, however little is known about the mediating mechanisms (i.e., how does low family income relate to adolescents’ sleep?) underlying this relation. Determining the roles of mediators in the relationship between low family income and adolescents’ sleep would be important to provide guidance for interventions to improving sleep quality. Thus, the purposes of the present study were to examine the relationship between family income and adolescents’ sleep quality as well as the chain mediating effect of perceived discrimination and self-esteem in the relationship between family income and adolescents’ sleep quality. A sample of 1053 adolescents (mean age = 14.95 years, SD = 1.66) in Guangdong Province was recruited to participate in this study. Participants anonymously completed the questionnaire of family income, perceived discrimination, Self-Esteem Scale (SES), and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). We first calculated descriptive statistics for our variables of interest, followed by bivariate associations among these variables in SPSS 21.0 software, and follow-up structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted using Mplus 7.0. The total PSQI score of 8 was used as cutoff and the prevalence of poor sleep was 15.60%. The correlations among family income, perceived discrimination, self-esteem, and sleep quality were all significant. In addition, structural equation modeling showed that perceived discrimination and self-esteem played the chain mediating effect in the relationship between family income and sleep quality. In conclusion, family income not only has a direct effect on adolescents’ sleep quality but also influences sleep quality by the chain mediating effect of perceived discrimination and self-esteem. These findings contribute to understanding mechanisms underlying the relationship between low family income and adolescents’ sleep quality and have important implications for interventions aimed at improving adolescents’ sleep quality. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Spatial Representation of Symbolic Magnitude and Non-symbolic Magnitude: SNARC Effect and Distance Effect of 5 Years Olds Lin-Cheng HU 2016, 39(2): 364-370.  Abstract ( )   PDF (511KB) ( )   The original report of the SNARC effect (Spatial Numerical Association Response Code) (Dehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993 ) showed that in a parity judgment task, small numbers were responded to faster with the left hand while large numbers were responded to faster with the right hand. According to Dehaene et al. (1993), the SNARC effect depends on the quantitative representation of number, such as a left-to-right-oriented analog number line. Berch, Foley, Hill, and Ryan (1999) performed the first study to investigate SNARC effect in children by using a parity judgment task. SNARC effect was observed from 9 years on and it decreased with increasing age. As for the 7 years olds, there was no SNARC effect in number comparison task. Existing findings indicate that SNARC effect can be influenced by children's growing numerical skills and task demands. By using number comparison task and area comparison task that are relevant to magnitude，we set the main goal of current study as to exploring whether the children who could recognize Arabic numbers, but meanwhile have not familiar with numbers because of lacking in enormous amount of mathematical training, could demonstrate characteristics of spatial encoding in representation of numbers or area. We hypothesized that spatial representation could be automatically activated when 5 year-olds representing magnitude of circle area rather than magnitude of Arabic number. In order to decrease the influence of mathematical training, we selected the children in the middle class in kindergarten as subjects for they could discriminate Arabic numbers but not very familiar with them. There were two kinds of task. The first one was number comparison task which was adopted by van Galen & Reitsma（2008）who had found that 7 years olds could activate mental number line. We anticipated there would not SNARC effect in number comparison task for the children were far below 7 years old. The second task was area comparison task which was easier than number comparison task for the children were more familiar with area than numbers in their daily life. And we anticipated that in the second task, SNARC effect would appear. Rts data of number comparison task analysis indicated that there was no SNARC effect，but distance effect was found. The analysis of error rate indicated that there was no SNARC effect or distance effect. The analysis of Rts data of circle area comparison task indicated that there were SNARC effect and distance effect. Right hand responded faster to relatively larger circles than to relatively smaller circles, while left hand responded faster to relatively smaller circles than to relatively larger circles. Error rate analysis also indicated that there existed SNARC effect but no distance effect. We could infer from these findings that early before the spatial coding of Arabic number, children might have represented non-symbolic magnitude spatially. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Influence of Perceived Mathematics Homework Quality, Perceived Control and Homework Emotion on Homework Effort for Middle School Students Shaoying Gong Jun-Mei XIONG 2016, 39(2): 357-363.  Abstract ( )   PDF (532KB) ( )   Homework effort mainly includes students' compliance, investment, concentration and the number of tasks completed or percentage attempted. It has been proved in the researches that homework effort has an important influence on students' academic performance. But, homework environment is extremely comple x, for homework effort will be affected by factors from individual and environmental aspects. Though lots of studies have been done about homework effort, the mechanism of interactions between influential factors is not clear. Based on the control–value theory, expectancy–value theory, self–determination theory et al, individual factors such as gender, perceived control, homework emotion, as well as environmental factors such as homework quality may have important effects on homework effort. Besides, due to the domain–specificity of academic emotions and homework effort, it may be more targeted and practical to study the mechanism of interactions between influential factors from the single discipline perspective. Therefore, in order to investigate the relationship among mathematics homework quality, perceived mathematics control, mathematics homework emotion and mathematics homework effort, participants including 463 students from 7th, 8th and 9th grade of three schools in Guangdong were selected. The students were asked to fill several questionnaires concerning perceived mathematics homework quality, perceived mathematics control, mathematics homework emotion, and mathematics homework effort. The main findings of this study were as follows: (1) Both positive mathematics homework emotion and negative mathematics homework emotion had a complete mediating effect on the relationship between perceived mathematics homework quality and mathematics homework effort. (2) Perceived mathematics homework quality had an effect on mathematics homework effort by perceived mathematics control and by that via the multiple mediator effect of mathematics homework emotion. Perceived quality of mathematics homework selection had positive effect on mathematics homework effort by perceived mathematics control and by that via the multiple mediator effect of positive mathematics homework emotion and negative mathematics homework emotion.Perceived mathematics homework challenge had negative effect on mathematics homework effort by perceived mathematics control and by that via the multiple mediator effect of positive mathematics homework emotion and negative mathematics homework emotion. These results suggested that mathematics homework quality, perceived mathematics control, mathematics homework emotion had an important influence on mathematics homework effort of middle school students. Developing a high mathematics homework quality and mathematics control help middle school students experience more positive mathematics homework emotions, which in turn may improve their mathematics homework effort. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Effect of Parenting Style, Peer Acceptance and Teacher Expectations on Pupils’ Personality 2016, 39(2): 343-349.  Abstract ( )   PDF (760KB) ( )   Personality refers to those aspects of an individual that form the unique and stable psychological characteristics, an integrated system includes the ability to regulate, and natural tendencies and internal motivation that are based on biology and restrained by social living conditions. It plays a crucial role in individual life, being an important factor of individual health. Elementary school is an important period for the formation and development of personality. The ecology model of human development and the development context theory propose that individual development is the result of the interaction between the individual and the environment. Therefore, the development of pupils’ personality is inseparable from the family and school environment. Parenting style, one of the factors of the family environment, has a decisive influence on pupils’ personality. At the same time, with time in school increasing, peers and teachers also play a crucial role in pupils’ development. Recently, researchers have not only stressed the importance of family, teachers, peers and other factors of individual development, but have also paid increasing attention to the systemic effects of these factors, namely the interactive influence between different factors of individual development. Therefore, the primary purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationship amongparenting style, peer acceptance, student perception of teacher expectations and pupils’ personality. A total of 2150 pupils were selected by using questionnaire in three elementary schools in Dalian. A moderated mediation model was constructed. In this model, peer acceptance mediated the relationship between parenting style and pupils’ personality. Meanwhile, the first half of the mediation path was moderated by the student perceptionof teacher expectations. The results showed the following: (1) the democratic measure of parenting style positively predicted the development of extraversion and pro-sociality of pupils’ personality(β=.09, t=4.01, p<.001;β=.08, t=3.90, p<.001). (2) Peer acceptance mediated the relationship between the democratic measure of parenting style and the extraversion of pupils’ personality(β=.10, t=2.93, p<.01;β=.06，t=4.40, p<.001). The first half of the mediation path was moderated by the negative feedback measure of student perception of teacher expectations (β=-.07, t=-2.10, p<.01). (3) Peer acceptance mediated the relationship between the democratic measure of parenting style and the prosocialityof pupils’ personality(β=.10,t=2.93, p<.01; β=.13, t=9.21, p<.001). The first half of the mediation path was moderated by the negative feedback measure of student perception of teacher expectations(β=-.07, t=-2.10, p<.01). These findings suggest that the development of pupils’ personality is affected by the interaction between family and the school environment. This implies that if we want to improve the pupils’ personality，we must pay special attention to peer acceptance，because it is a key factor in the formation of personality．Peer interaction can provide children with more opportunities to develop their personality．Moreover, we should also be concerned with both the student perception of teacher expectations and parenting style. The study not only provides a more targeted theoretical basis for the research of child personality, but also offers a more precise indicator of when to intervene in the development of a healthy personality. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Impact of Social Support on Optimistic Tendency of College Students: The Mediating Effects of Sense of Coherence and Resilience 2016, 39(2): 371-376.  Abstract ( )   PDF (556KB) ( )   Positive mental health of university students was a hot topic among the fields of social sciences and psychological sciences under the background of positive psychology. It was found that optimistic tendency was highly correlated with mental health. And Social support was found to be able to predict optimistic tendency significantly. However, it was not clear how the mechanism between social support and optimistic tendency worked. The purposes of this study were: (1) to explore the basic situation of optimistic tendency, the social support, sense of coherence and resilience in college students, and (2) to examine whether sense of coherence and resilience could mediate the relationship between the social support and optimistic tendency. A total sample of 2979 college students from five different colleges was drawn in one university in Shanghai, with 2217 females and 726 males, the average age was 19.33-year-old. They were gathered in the computer labs and finished the questionnaires within about 10 minutes. The questionnaire included the Social Support Rating Scale, the Resilience Scale, the Sense of Coherence (SOC- L9) scale, and the Optimistic Tendency Scale. A confirmatory factor analysis was calculated to test the common method variance. Results indicated that four-factor model (χ2/df = 9.38, p <.001) was better than single-factor model (χ2/df = 25.33, p <.001), making sure the study is accurate enough in terms of common method variance. The results showed that: (1) for the Resilience scale, the optimistic tendency scale, the sense of coherence scale, the social support scale, the students generally scored over and above medium level. A significant gender difference was found for in the social support scale（t=10.38，p<0.01）, the sense of coherence scale（t=3.19，p<0.01）, the optimistic tendency scale （t=5.75，p<0.01, and the resilience scale（t=5.18，p<0.01）. More specifically, the girls always got higher scores than the boys. (2) The optimistic tendency scale was positively correlated with the social support scale（r=0.29, p<0.01, the sense of coherence scale（r=0.34, p<0.01, and the resilience scale（r=0.35, p<0.01）. (3) A structural equation model (SEM) revealed that the model fitted the data well (χ2 /df= 36.8, p <.001, NFI=.984, CFI =.984, IFI =.980). Social support significantly predicted sense of coherence and resilience in college students. Sense of coherence and resilience had multiple intermediary effects on social support and optimistic tendency. Sense of coherence mediated the relationship between social support and optimistic tendency. It was concluded that the social support had directly influence on optimistic tendency, and sense of coherence and resilience had multiple intermediary effects on optimistic tendency in college students. Optimistic tendency took an important role of on the improvement of students' mental health. These findings suggest that measures of resilience could be used along with measures of social support and sense of coherence to detect students at-risk for mental health problem and that intervention programs targeting resilience as well as social support could be developed to improve university students’ positive mental health. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Das-Naglieri Cognitive Assessment System (5-7) in Chinese Preschool Children 2016, 39(2): 377-383.  Abstract ( )   PDF (717KB) ( )   As a theory-driven intelligence test, Das-Naglieri Cognitive Assessment System (DN CAS) is widely used in the educational and clinician settings in North America. The DN CAS had been translated and revised into Chinese version, and it showed good reliability and validity among Chinese children in the elementary school and the middle high school. However, it was unknown whether DN CAS could be applied to Chinese preschool children considering a separated version of DN CAS used for ages 5-7. Therefore, this study aims to measure the psychometric properties of the DN CAS in a Chinese preschool sample. The participants were 246 normally developed children (101 boys and 145 girls) recruited from four kindergartens in Shanghai and their mean age was 66.18 months (SD = 3.92 months). They were assessed on twelve tasks of DN CAS for ages 5-7 and Test of Early Mathematics Ability 3rd (TEMA-3). Criterion-related validity was evaluated by examining the correlations between scores of subscales in DN CAS and the score on TEMA-3. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to examine the construct validity of DN CAS, and the model of Planning, Attention, Simultaneous processing, and Successive processing (PASS) was compared with other three competing models to determine which provided the best fittings in the present sample. The results showed all tasks in DN CAS had good internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s αs ranged from .70 to .89), and the subscale scores and full score of DN CAS moderately correlated with scores on TEMA-3 (rs ranged from .53 to .75, p<.001). The current Chinese preschool sample demonstrated a PASS four-factor solution for the children’s cognitive performance (χ2/df = 1.889, GFI = .940, AGFI = .902, CFI = .965, RMSEA = .060), and significant difference was found between PASS and a (PA)SS three-factor model (?χ2/df = 9.051, p<.05), although (PA)SS model was also fitted well in the present sample. These findings suggested that DN CAS had good reliability and validity, and could be applied to evaluate the cognitive performances of Chinese preschool children. The four-factor structure of the DN CAS was similar to the factor structure of the DN CAS version for ages 8-17. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Imaging Genetics of Major Depression Disorder: Exploring Gene-Environment Interactions 2016, 39(2): 490-496.  Abstract ( )   PDF (340KB) ( )   Major Depression Disorder(MDD) is a complex mental disorder that characterized by various symptoms including motor, vegetative, cognitive, and affective abnormalities. It is one of the world’s leading causes of disability, lifetime prevalence estimates vary from 8% to 12%. MDD is moderately heritable, identification of genes that underlie susceptibility to MDD would be a major advance in our understanding of its pathophysiological mechanisms, and lead to improved prevention and the development of new and more effective therapies. Although hundreds of behavioral and pharmacogenetic association studies had been performed, clinical association studies still suffer from a lack of replication. Effects of single genes that have been linked to MDD have proven to be much smaller than originally expected and their pathogenetic influence is far more complicated by gene–gene interactions, gene–environment interactions and disease heterogeneity. In order to address these issues, many have advocated for the use of intermediate phenotype approach. Intermediate phenotypes describe neurobiological or neuropsychological traits that are linked to both genetic heritability and clinical disorder, they are presumably not only more specific, quantifiable, and reliable than diagnostic phenotypes, but also more proximal to gene function. Neural intermediate phenotypes measured by modern neuroimaging techniques are thought to more directly index the underlying neurobiology of complex phenotypes and hence have the intrinsic potential to bridge the gap between genes and psychiatric diagnostic phenotypes. The rapidly growing field of imaging genetics utilizing neuroimaging as tool to detect the subtle neural impact of genetic variants. More and more researchers used imaging genetic approach to investigate how depression-related genetic polymorphisms influence neural activity. Recent research showed that variants of genes involve in serotoninergic function (i.e.5-HTTLPR, HTR1A, MAOA, TPH2) associated with alterations of emotion-related neural activity or structure in the amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, hippocampus, hypothalamus and functional connectivity between them. These regions are thought to be core regions in the pathophysiology of MDD. Other variants of genes that controlling biochemical like dopamine, CRH, BDNF, NPY, FKBP5 impacted the function of brain regions that underlie the reward processing and stress response. Research also found that most of these genes interact with life stressors, suggested that gene-environment interactions played an important role in the pathogenesis of MDD. Future studies should focus on the following aspects: (1)To address the complex nature of human genome, researchers should move beyond candidate gene studies, using genome-wide approach to overcome the selection bias. (2)At the neural level, future imaging genetics studies in MDD may want to combine biochemical measures (e.g. PET and MRS) with fMRI and genetic measures, and integrate structural and functional imaging data. (3)Researchers should attach great importance to the measurement of environmental factors, use observational measures and multiple well-validated measures to make the measurements more reliable. Moreover, future researchers may want to investigate G×E interaction under the framework of “differential susceptibility model”. (4)To further understand the causes and development of MDD, future studies should integrate neuroimaging, genetic, personality and social environmental factors, using longitudinal study paradigm to construct a comprehensive model of MDD. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Memory suppression in healthy and depressive individuals Yunzhe Liu 2016, 39(2): 485-489.  Abstract ( )   PDF (282KB) ( )   Negative memory bias is one of the prominent cognitive deficits in depression. Previous studies mainly focused on the bottom-up selective attention to negative information in depressive individuals or the patients with depressive disorder. The influence of the top-down executive control deficit on memory has been largely ignored. Recent studies indicate that the deficit of memory suppression plays an important role in the formation and maintain of negative memory bias in depression. The main reason that depressive individuals persistently and negatively ruminate is that they cannot effectively perform motivated forgetting of negative events/stimuli. The relevant study will be of great importance in the improvement of the cognitive model of depressive disorder and the planning of therapeutic schedules for patients. The current mini-review introduced recent studies on memory suppression (or motivated forgetting) in healthy adults and in individuals with depressive disorder/tendency. In general, there are two stage of memory suppression, namely the encoding stage and the retrieval stage. As regard to the memory suppression on the encoding stage, directed forgetting paradigm is usually employed to compare the number of remembered items between to-be-remember and to-be-forget conditions. The effect of directed forgetting in healthy subjects is reflected by the performance in the posttest, which shows that the remembered items are more in the to-be-remember condition, compared with the remembered items in the to-be-forget condition. Recent studies in healthy adults revealed that the effect of directed forgetting is not only due to the mechanism of selective rehearsal, but also associated with the motivated forgetting in the memory encoding. As regard to the memory suppression on the retrieval stage, think/no think paradigm is usually employed to compare the number of remembered cue-target pairs between think and no think conditions. The suppression-induced forgetting can be observed when healthy subjects perform the think/no think task. In particular, the cue-target pairs in the no think condition are less frequently recalled in the posttest, as compared with the cue-target pairs in both the think condition and the baseline condition. Behavioral studies of memory suppression in depressive subjects have revealed that inhibitory control deficits exist on both memory encoding and retrieval stages. More specifically, three studies used directed forgetting paradigm found that compared with healthy controls, 1) individuals diagnosed with depression remembered fewer to-be-remember items while they forgot fewer to-be-forget items; 2) the patients remembered more negative than positive words in the to-be-forget condition; and 3) the impaired memory suppression for negative words was positively correlated with the severity of negative rumination. At the same time, three studies used think/no think paradigm found that the more severe the negative rumination, the worse performance of subjects in the no think condition. Furthermore, compared with healthy controls, depressive subjects remembered more emotional, especially negative, words in the no think condition. According to the current finding reviewed in this paper, we proposed three problems that need to be solved in this area and discussed possible solutions. It is suggested that directed forgetting and think/no think paradigms are employed simultaneously to explore the neural mechanism of the deficit of memory suppression in depression. Electroencephalogram and functional magnetic resonance imaging are appropriate techniques, which facilitate us to compare the spatial-temporal pattern of event-related potentials, event-related oscillations, and blood oxygen level dependent signals during the emotional memory suppression task in depressive individuals and healthy controls. In addition, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation is suggested to use in the experiment; it can stimulate specific brain region(s) so as to help illuminating the causality of specific brain region(s) in the deficit of memory suppression in depressive individuals. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Theories of Personality and Motivation Based on Chinese Culture: Personality Model from China and Theory of Key Needs Tsingan Li 2016, 39(2): 497-511.  Abstract ( )   PDF (975KB) ( )   In the past 2,500 years, there are a huge number of papers and books in connection with the Analects of Confucius. However, most of them belong to the speculative styles of research, and it is difficult to see empirical findings of research. All debates on the Analects of Confucius, therefore, are often based on subjective likes or dislikes, rather than the objective data. On the basis of these understandings, the Coding Manual for Management Competence Based on the Analects of Confucius has been adopted, which has provided an effective coding instrument for empirical researches on the Analects of Confucius. In the last four years, based on the coding instrument, a series of empirical researches were conducted into the structure and development of Confucian psychological assets and liabilities in eminent figures from China and abroad. The series of researches are characterized by the four features as follows: (1) the innovated coding instrument. The Coding Manual for Management Competence Based on the Analects of Confucius developed by the author of the paper is not only an innovation in research methodology for the Analects of Confucius, but also an innovation in the coding instrument for qualitative researches; (2) the innovated concepts of psychology. The author of this paper coined the concepts of the Confucian psychological assets and the Confucian psychological liabilities, which are two new concepts in psychology characterized by Chinese culture. The Confucian psychological assets refer to the equipment(traits) valued by the Confucian culture, while the Confucian psychological liabilities refer to the equipment abandoned by the Confucian culture（Watson, 1919，p.397）. (3) the innovated methodology of research on biographies. Two main methods are adopted in previous researches on biographies. The first one is the historical method, which is designed to conduct textual criticism and sort out historical facts. The second one is the literature method, which is intended to investigate the image of the subject of biographies and biographer’s techniques in describing the image of the subjects. In order to extract the psychological equipment in individuals from their biographies, the deep structure coding method is adopted in the series of empirical research. It is not only an innovation of the previous two methods of research on biographies, but also an innovation of the research methods in psychology. (4) The enormous time-consumption. The empirical studies on Confucian psychological assets and liabilities of eminent figures from China and abroad involved 29 research subjects. The coding material of this series of research involves a total number of 32 biographies, or 14,074 pages. It is extremely easy to imagine that enormous time and energy were required for the series of empirical researches. The first important finding of these series of empirical researches is that there are 261 equipment of Confucian psychological assets in eminent figures from China and abroad, and the cumulative frequencies of the equipment range between 1 and 7957. Ranked by the order of frequencies, the top-seven equipment are as follows: insight, speaking, achievement, friendship, hardworking, governing and change. Accordingly, the seven equipment were established as the key equipment for the structure of Confucian psychological assets. The second important finding of these series of empirical researches is that the structure of Confucian psychological liabilities of eminent figures from China and abroad includes 127 equipment, the cumulative frequencies of the equipment range between 1 and 2369. From the perspective of Yogacara Buddhism, the top-13 equipment led by the subjective judgment could be reorganized into the categories of erroneous cognitions, fear, hatred, arrogance, ignorance and desire, namely, the category of six fundamental afflictions. Accordingly, the six equipment led by “the erroneous cognitions” were established as the core equipment for the structure of Confucian psychological liabilities. To the author’s great excitement, the seven key equipment are mysteriously correspondent to the seven virtues of water in chapter eight of Tao Te Ching (Book of Lao-tzu); while the six core equipment such as erroneous cognitions are mysteriously corresponding to the category of six fundamental afflictions in Yogacara Buddhism. In other words, the former one is in correspondence with the wisdom of Lao-tzu, while the latter one is matched with the wisdom of Buddha. Based on the series of empirical researches, the author revised the five-factor theory of personality advanced by the western psychologists, proposed the personality model from China which is a theory of personality characterized with Chinese culture, and presented the theory of key needs which is a theory of motivation characterized with Chinese culture. The empirical researches of Confucian psychological assets and liabilities in eminent figures from China and abroad, which resulted in the personality model from China and the theory of key needs, are expected to have a positive impact on constructing psychology of personality and motivation featured by Chinese culture, on encouraging the equal dialogues between the western psychology and the Chinese culture, on improving the internationalization of Chinese psychology, and on promoting the cultural self-awareness and cultural confidence in Chinese citizens. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The differences of priming effects in the perception of consonant and vowel category 2016, 39(2): 291-298.  Abstract ( )   PDF (527KB) ( )   Phonetic category is an important concept in speech perception. Generally, phonetic category includes consonant category and vowel category. In phonetics, there are many differences in the acoustic and articulatory features between consonant and vowel category. With priming paradigm, the present study aimed to explore the differences of priming effects between consonant and vowel perception. Few studies compare the differences of priming effect in consonant and vowel perception. With non-speech and speech sounds as priming sounds, consonant or vowel category continuum as target sounds, response time and the percentage of category response as dependent variables, the present study examines the priming effect differences of consonant and vowel perception in two experiments. In experiment 1, the priming effect of consonant category perception was examined. The target sound was a Chinese stop contrast continuum, [ta]-[ka], which was synthesized by varying the onset frequency of F3 (the third formant) transition. The priming sounds were two non-speech tones and two speech sounds. The frequency of two tones was equal to the F3 onset frequency of [ta] and [ka] respectively. The onset 100ms segments of [ta] and [ka] acted as the two speech priming sounds. Participants were asked to identify the target sounds by pressing buttons labeled with “da” or “ga” as quickly as possible. The results showed that both tone and speech primes influenced the percentage of consonant category identification, tone primes increased the response of spectral-matched consonant category, while speech primes increased the response of spectral-opposed consonant category. In addition, only speech primes showed priming effect in response time for spectral-matched category. In experiment 2, the priming effect of vowel category perception was examined. The target sound was a Chinese vowel category continuum, [a]-[ε]. The priming sounds were two tones and two speech sounds. The frequency of two tones was set at the F2 frequency of [a] and [ε] respectively. The onset 100ms segments of [a] and [ε] served as the speech primes. The results indicated that neither tone nor speech primes could affect the percentage of vowel identification, but speech primes showed priming effect in response time. The experiment results indicated that the priming effects in consonant and vowel perception were different. For consonant category, the category judgment was more easily affected by prior priming sounds, but the speed of category identification was not easily influenced by spectrally partial-matched primes. For vowel category, the speed of category identification was susceptible to the primes, but the category judgment was resistant to the influence of primes. Some researchers suggested that the perceptual trace of consonant category (rapid-changing sound) decays faster than that of vowel category (steady-state sounds), and the perception of consonants relies more on the category labels. So it seems that the category judgment of rapid-changing sounds is easily influenced by context sounds because of fast decay of perceptual traces and more reliance on category labels, while the speed of category identification of steady-state sounds is easily affected by context sounds for its clearer perceptual traces. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The duration of retention intervals and their effects on time-based prospective memory 2016, 39(2): 272-278.  Abstract ( )   PDF (732KB) ( )   An important factor that influences memory performance is the length of the delay between encoding new information into memory and the moment that information is to be retrieved. Recently, a small but growing body of research has examined the effect of the delay between intention formation and retrieval on prospective memory (PM) performance. These studies found that the effect of delay on PM is mixed. However, most of the researches are related to event-based PM. We knew little about the influence of delay on time-based PM. The present study explored the effect of retention intervals on time-based PM with two experiments. In experiment 1, the duration of ongoing task prior to the presentation of the first PM goal was manipulated. Participants were told to press the A key every 2 min or 8 min or 15 min when they were performing the ongoing task. The participants in control condition only performed the ongoing task about 7min as the 2 min delay condition. There were three PM responses in the PM conditions. In experiment 2, participants were required to perform filler task before ongoing task in which PM goals were embedded. The duration of filler task was 2 min or 15 min. The duration between the onset of ongoing task and the first PM goal was also 2 min or 15 min. The experiment conformed to a 2(filler task duration: 2 min vs. 15 min)×2(ongoing task interval: 2 min vs. 15 min) between-subjects design. For example, the subjects should perform 2 min filler task, then perform the ongoing task. They needed to press the A key every 15 min when they started the ongoing task. There were two PM responses. The results showed that the PM performance in 15 min delay condition was significantly lower than other two conditions when participants only carried out ongoing task in experiment 1. But, the reaction time (RT) in 2 min delay condition was longer than the other conditions. However, when the retention interval was defined by both the filler task duration and the ongoing task duration in experiment 2, the PM performance was different. The filler task duration by ongoing task interval interaction was significant. The subsequent analysis revealed that in the long filler task conditions, the PM performance in 2 min ongoing task interval was better than 15 min delay condition. In short filler task conditions, there was no significant difference between 2 min and 15 min ongoing task delay conditions. In addition, for the RTs of ongoing task, the ANOVA analysis revealed a main effect of ongoing task interval. The RTs for the short ongoing task interval were longer compared to the long ongoing task interval, especially when participants performed the short version of the filler task. The frequency of clock checking was positively associated with PM performance and participants increased their frequency of time monitoring closer to the target time in the two experiments. The present study suggests that the duration of filler tasks vs. ongoing tasks is an important factor to consider in evaluating the impact of delays between intention formation and intention retrieval. The delay of filler task and ongoing task may have different effects on intention maintaining in time-based PM. Filler task more or less alleviates the negative influence of long ongoing task delay on PM. Participants may use different strategies to maintain PM goal. However, many other factors will affect the intention retrieval in time-based PM, for example, the number and feature of filler tasks. The future research may consider these issues. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Effect of the Direction of Mental Time Travel and Events’ Emotional Valence on Task Self-confidence xuan-kang di 2016, 39(2): 305-311.  Abstract ( )   PDF (452KB) ( )   Time is a framework of understanding and defining self. Individuals could mentally travel back to the past and forward to the future. Research has demonstrated that the self drives mental time travel, showing self-descriptions predict the valence and personal focus of future events, and self-concept (e.g. core self-evaluations, self-construal, self-efficacy ) can drive the construction of past and future events. However, the cognitive mechanism of the effect of mental time travel on the self wasn’t explored yet. Task self-confidence in the present study means the extent of individuals’ sureness about their performance in a task, and it’s a part of the foundation of the cognitive construction of self-confidence. The current study examined the effect of time direction and events’ emotional valence on task self-confidence. This study included 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, 40 undergraduates were randomly assigned to 2 groups (past and future). First, they should recall or imagine self-related events freely in 8 time periods respectively (e.g. the 8 time periods of the past group were last year, the year before last year, 3 years ago, 4 years ago, 5 years ago, period of middle school, period of primary school, preschool period), and described them in the blanks below each time period. Afterward, participants predicted their performance in the upcoming graphic reasoning test by rating 7 items. All the 7 items’ average score represented the task self-confidence. The procedure of Experiment 2 was similar to Experiment 1. Eighty undergraduates were randomly assigned to 4 groups (i.e. past-positive, past-negative, future-positive, future-negative). According to what was required to each group, participants should recall or imagine self-related positive or negative events freely in 4 time periods respectively (e.g. the 4 time periods of the 2 past groups were last year, 3 years ago, 5 years ago, period of primary school), and described them in the blanks. After describing each event, they rated their feelings about it from 1(extremely negative) to 7(extremely positive). To eliminate order effect, the orders of generating events were balanced. Then, participants completed the prediction task which was the same as that in Experiment 1. Results of Experiment 1 showed that: time direction affected task self-confidence indirectly through the mediating effect of events’ emotional valence, that was, compared with events participants recalled in the past group, events in the future group were more positive, so that they induced higher task self-confidence. And in the model consisting of time direction, events’ emotional valence and time direction × events’ emotional valence, only events’ emotional valence could predict task self-confidence significantly. If events that people generated were more positive, they would introduce higher task self-confidence. When events’ emotional valence was manipulated, the effect of time direction and events’ emotional valence was separated (Experiment 2), and results showed: time direction didn’t affect on task self-confidence. A 2 (time direction: past, future) × 2 (events’ emotional valence: positive, negative) ANOVA on task self-confidence showed a significant main effect for events’ emotional valence, and a significant time direction × events’ emotional valence interaction. When participants recalled past events, valence didn’t affect task self-confidence; while as to future events, valence positively affected task self-confidence, positive events induced higher task self-confidence than negative events. When participants recalled or imagined positive events, time direction didn’t affect task self-confidence; while as to negative events, time direction negatively affected task self-confidence, that was, future direction induced lower task self-confidence than past direction. These results indicate that both time direction and events’ emotional valence can influence task self-confidence. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

How Red Affects Decision Making and Judgment? The Studies on Psychological Functioning of Red and The Investigations in China 2016, 39(2): 324-329.  Abstract ( )   PDF (360KB) ( )   As a ubiquitous perceptual stimulus, color of red is not only the symbol of visual world but also the symbol of social interaction. A substantial amount of research has been conducted to explore the psychological functioning of red and achieved a great progress. This paper reviewed theoretical and empirical work that addresses the link between color and psychological functioning in humans. We began by elaborating color-in-context theory, which is designed to be a broad model of color and psychological functioning that can be used to explain and predict relations between color and affect, cognition, and behavior. To be specific, it covers six premises: a) color carries meaning; b) color influences psychological functioning; c) color effects are automatic; d) color meanings have two sources: learning and biology; e) relations between color perception and affect, cognition, and behavior are reciprocal; f) color meanings and effects are context specific. In the following, we also overviewed several lines of empirical work that had emerged from this theoretical framework, starting with research on red in sports competition contexts, moving on to research on red in achievement contexts, and concluding with research on red in affiliation/attraction contexts. In addition, the authors comprehensively elaborated their recent investigations on red’s psychological functioning in Chinese society, i.e., how color of red affects Chinese prediction in finance, sports competition, and achievement contexts. Based on the empirical comparison conducted among Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Poland, convergent findings suggest that in finance contexts, people from Mainland China tend to predict a higher economic growth in red condition rather than in green condition. The prediction pattern is opposite for Hong Kong people. However, in sports competition and achievement contexts, results show that both Chinese and Westerners demonstrate similar red effect, i.e., individuals’ performance is undermined by red in achievement contexts but facilitated by red in sports competition contexts. Therefore, color of red displays different psychological functioning across cultures. In the following sections, different perspectives were overviewed to explain the underlying mechanism of red’s psychological functioning, including biology perspective, motivation perspective, and emotion perspective. In the end of the paper, the issues of future direction were discussed, i.e., future investigations should pay more attention to the underlying mechanism and cultural specificity of psychological functioning of red. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Plasticity of Self-Representation: Based on the Studies of Rubber Hand Illusion Jing ZHANG Heng-Wei LI 2016, 39(2): 299-304.  Abstract ( )   PDF (302KB) ( )   Self-recognition is considered as the behavioral marker of self-awareness, because previous studies showed only a small selection of primate species possess the ability to recognize their own physical features in a mirror. Self-recognition is fixed as traditional unimodal methods such as self-other detection tasks, self-other morphing tasks or masked priming tasks suggested. The arising of rubber hand illusion not only changes the study of self-recognition methodologically, but also suggests that self-representations are malleable, thus self-recognition should be plastic accordingly. Rubber hand illusion is the experience of an artificial body part as becoming a real body part. A rubber hand was placed in front of participants whose corresponding real hand was hidden from sight. Participants reported to experience the rubber hand as their own body part after the real hand and the visible rubber hand were stroked synchronously for 10 minutes. With various minor or major variations, this illusion is widely used to induce illusions of sense of ownership and sense of ownership, which are considered as two basic experiences to help us recognize ourselves. This paradigm makes it possible to investigate the intimate relations among sense of ownership, sense of agency, self-representation, self-recognition, and different kinds of illusions. Converging evidence for temporal consistency, spatial consistency and feature consistency as three main factors that may affect the ownership illusion was found. Except for temporal rule, the exact roles of the other two factors are not entirely clear. Other studies did not find an effect of distance or object. The same situation exists in the studies of sense of agency. The importance of the congruency between real action and its feedback was proved by numerous studies, but there were still some studies showed participants could perceive agency even in cases of rather large spatiotemporal discrepancies. However, it is non-controversial that the setups of rubber hand illusion can influence people’s sense of agency and sense of ownership, and so do “enfacement illusion”, “the whole body illusion”, as well as “rubber voice illusion” which can affect participants’ sense of face ownership, sense of whole body ownership, and sense of voice ownership respectively. In the present paper, we reviewed a series of studies focusing on sense of ownership, sense of agency, as well as self-recognition. These multimodal studies gave enough evidence for one hypothesis that self-representation is plastic, which might be explained by the free-energy principle. According to this principle, the brain always attempts to minimize the amount of surprise, for which it may need to update probabilistic representations. In other words, when there is any new information which reveals a discrepancy between a predicated sensory sate and the actual sensory state, then probabilistic presentations of ourselves will be changed and updated, which means the representations of the self are malleable, therefore self-recognition should also be plastic. The free-energy principle gives an optional choice for the explaining of self-representation and self-recognition, but current evidence is not sufficient enough to deny the role of top-down body representation. Further investigations and improvement of the methodology itself are needed in order to test this hypothesis empirically. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

STEARC Effect in Different Temporal Focus LIU XinYuan Zhi-Jie ZHANG 2016, 39(2): 279-284.  Abstract ( )   PDF (374KB) ( )   Abstract Does the spatial-temporal association of response codes ( STEARC ) effect affected by subjective temporal characteristics? In this study, we investigate whether temporal focus is one of the influencing factors of STEARC effect. Results of spatial-temporal metaphor refer that there’s a left-to-right mental time line in our mind. However, studies have found that the pattern and the direction of this effect could be influenced by cultural features (mainly read and writing direction) or experimental conditions (by priming tasks). In another word, the STEARC effects are not the same as each other in the performance of people with different reading/writing directions or in different experimental priming conditions. Recently, researches proposed and supported a temporal-focus hypothesis: People should conceptualize either the future or the past as in front of them to the extent that their culture (or temporal personality divided by old and young) is future oriented or past oriented. Hence, we made an attempt to investigate whether participants with different temporal focus, but in common culture and age group, could also show a different response in the left-right horizontal axis of STEARC effect. Or other, this research assumed that STEARC effect could be affected by individuals’ different temporal focus. The Temporal Focus Scale (TFS) was used to divide the participants into two groups, temporal focus towards the past and focus towards the future. And after this step, a total of 49 undergraduates and graduate students (25 focus towards the past, 24 focus towards the future ) were qualified to participate the modified response-discrimination paradigm experiment. In this experiment, participants were asked to response, by pressing the key ( “P” or ”Q” ) on the computer keyboard, to both different locus of a point and different meanings of temporal words. A total of 42 temporal words of Chinese were used, half of them referring to past time and the other half referring to future time. The experiment was conducted with a 2 (point location: left/right) × 2 (temporal reference: past/future) × 2 ( temporal focus: past/future ) between-subject design, to examine whether people with different temporal focus would show a different pattern of temporal-spatial representation. The assume was that responses were faster when the test requirements were consistent with individuals’ temporal focus, whereas it may took a respectively longer response time if the experimental conditions were disaccord to their temporal focus. The results show that the diversity on the STEARC effect was observed by distinguishing participants into different temporal focus. Persons with temporal focus towards the past judged faster to “ left / past” , and persons with temporal focus towards the future responded faster to “ right / future ”. Different levels of attention allocation may be the reason that temporal focus could influent our temporal-spatial metaphor. And this co-processing pattern between STEARC effect and temporal focus conforms to the Coherent Working Models. In conclusion, these findings provide evidence that the temporal-focus hypothesis between time and space observed in fore-behind axis also exists in left-right axis of STEARC effect. Based on relevant literatures, there are many other factors affecting the temporal-spatial metaphor. Thus, in the future, both objective and subjective conditions of experiments on temporal representation should be better controlled. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Bilingual Experience Reduces Access Performance during Speech production 2016, 39(2): 330-335.  Abstract ( )   PDF (299KB) ( )   Economic globalization pushes the exchanges between different countries, along with the requirement for languages. An increasing number of people realize that only mastering the mother tone is not sufficient to deal with the interpersonal communications with other countries’ people. Learning a second language, especially English, is ubiquitous in our country currently. Lots of study field have focused on the issue about the second language learning, such as psychology, linguistics and sociology. Considering the relationships with language learning bilingual experience has an indispensable effect on persons’ language processing. But few reviews centered on this issue. This paper gave a brief review about the influence of bilingual experience on speech production. With respect to the speech production, the most common research paradigms include Boston naming task, picture naming task and tip of tongue task. In the early stage, many researchers paid attention to lexical access, which got the most extensive studies and the most fruitful results. The results manifested that bilingual experience had a negative effect on lexical access, with the increasing reaction time in picture naming tasks. Recently, researchers were more interesting in other levels of speech production, including sub-lexical level, noun phrase and sentence. In the sub-lexical level, the tongue twist naming task proved bilinguals’ error rate was higher, and the result was affected by phonetic similarity. The naming speed of noun phrases and sentences in bilinguals was also slower than that in monolinguals. Furthermore, structural frequency and syntactic similarity of the two languages modulated the negative influence. In a word, bilingual speakers showed a poor access performance during speech production. This paper integrated the reasons of bilingual access disadvantage in terms of interference effect, frequency effect and the effect of vocabulary size. From interference perspective, the non-target language could not be turned off during speech production. Therefore, the non-target language caused interference or consumed cognitive resources. However, the language frequency effect hypothesis discussed the frequency of each language between monolingual and bilingual. This hypothesis emphasized bilinguals’ poor access performance in mother tongue, which was the most convincing evidence. Different from the above two, vocabulary size hypothesis was based on the size of bilingual speakers’ vocabulary. Until now, researchers have not agreed on the reason why the second language learning experience could reduce access ability during speech production. The review pointed out the urgent problems about bilingual access disadvantage in the end. One of the problems was the scope of the disadvantage. On one hand, language processing included language comprehension and language production which can be divided into spoken production and written production. Thus, more systemic studies should focus on the negative influence on the different aspects of language processing. On the other hand, most of the psychological researches centered on young adults and children, while ignored the elderly. The aged mastered more knowledge with the growth of age. It will be an interesting theme whether bilinguals’ access performance during language production changes in company with the growth of age. The other problem was to summarize these explanations about this phenomenon. The type of bilinguals is an important factor influencing language processing. Thus, the scope of subjects in experiment should be enlarged to different types, and researchers will follow the development of these subjects as well. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The resonance theory of affordance perception 2016, 39(2): 336-342.  Abstract ( )   PDF (331KB) ( )   Studies of tool affordance effect for the last two decades have changed the understanding of perception. This article reviews the important findings and discusses different explanations of affordance perception by traditional cognitive psychology and ecological psychology. We analyze why traditional approach is inadequate to explain affordance perception, and how resonance theory can offer a better interpretation from ecological perspective. As argued by Gibson, affordance is an emergent action possibility in the animal-environment system. It is a relationship between animal and environment about what actions an environment affords and an animal can adopt. Empirical evidence shows that human can immediately perceive the affordances of a tool without subjective intention. Physiological observations demonstrate that neurons in premotor cortex and dorsal stream active remarkably as soon as the subjects see a tool in reachable distance, even the subjects do not need to take any action. Furthermore, human are able to perceive affordances of more than two tools simultaneously, and also to perceive affordance for others. Traditionally, cognitive psychology proposes that the perceptual system first collects low-order sensory information to build an internal descriptive representation of objects in the external world. And then, this information is used along with representations of current needs and memories of past experience to deduce high-order information, such as affordance, and make judgments and decide upon a course of action. However, such claims have encountered difficulties in interpreting neural activities in terms of distinct perceptual, cognitive or motor systems, as the motor system immediately actives when seeing a manipulable and reachable tool.? To response the challenge, some traditional psychologists propose a motor simulation theory and suggest that when seeing a tool, brain also represents the actions and operations related to it, and that we simulate these actions, estimate actions possible and suitable, and predict the results of these actions. This is claimed as the way in which human perceive affordances in environment. The motor simulation theory has made a good progress in robot design but it is not as nearly good in explaining affordance perception, since the theory is inadequate to explains the findings: (1) Affordance is not real action but action possibilities about what animals can do and cannot do, and the motor simulation theory largely disregards the distinction. (2) Experiments show that individuals can perceive affordance without simulation. (3) Motor simulation theory confines affordance perception within tool perception, does not take into account that affordance perception takes place far beyond the domain and may extend to much broad relationship between human perception and environment. Building on animal-environment system, ecological psychology explains affordance perception differently. According to ecological psychology: (1) Affordance is an emergent reality in animal-environment system, not knowledge existed in our head. (2) Affordances are what we perceive, and what we attend first in the environment, and, as many experiments that compare visually extinct patients with normal vision participants have demonstrated, the priority of affordance in perception. (3) During evolution and learning, individuals adapt themselves to different affordance information, and such adaptations bring changes in body state, such as activation of motor neurons and muscle cells, transformation of actions. (4) When individuals meet environmental affordance information, they pick up the information without retrieval of memory, and the direct perception of affordances appears to be an outcome of the resonance between our body’s motor system and affordance information in the environment. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The ERPs Study on the Divergent Effect of Processing Core and Moral Disgust Stimuli at Different Level of Attentional Resources 2016, 39(2): 265-271.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1113KB) ( )   Disgust has been considered a basic, universal human emotion that functions to protect us from contact with and incorporation of harmful substances. Later, through some combination of biological and cultural evolution, the core rejection impulse of disgust has then expanded into other threat domains. Thus, disgust is considered as a heterogeneous construct consisting of multiple subtypes with distinct characteristics. Core disgust and moral disgust are two major subtypes of the disgust emotion. However, it is unclear whether it is the same disgust, or just contains some common elements in the two types of disgust. We conducted a 2 (cue: valid cues, invalid cues) × 3 (target stimulus type: core disgust, moral disgust, neutral) within-subject design. The current study manipulated attentional resources by a cue-target paradigm. In the valid cueing condition, subjects could obtain sufficient attentional resources, whereas in the invalid cueing condition, attentional resources were relatively insufficient. Core disgust, moral disgust and neutral pictures were taken from the International Affective Picture System, the Chinese Affective Picture System as well as the internet, and were transformed into upper and lower adjacent patchworks of a normal scene and its inverted copy. Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded while the participants were instructed to pay attention to the structure of the patchworks and to judge whether the normal scene was located in the upper or lower part of the whole patchwork. We used fifteen electrodes to detect the P2 and P3 components which were divided by the time windows in which they occurred: P2, 180~240 ms and P3, 320~420 ms. Repeated measure ANOVAs were conducted on the behavioral data and the measurements derived from ERP waveforms. The behavioral data showed that the response accuracy in the valid cueing condition was significantly higher than that in the invalid cueing condition. Moreover, the reaction time of core disgust was significantly longer than that in moral disgust and neutral stimuli condition. Amplitudes of P2 for core disgust stimuli were significantly larger than those for moral disgust and neutral stimuli. Most importantly, a significant interaction between emotional types and cue types was observed in P3 stage. In the sufficient attention condition, there was no obvious difference between core disgust and moral disgust stimuli. In contrast, the P3 amplitudes of core disgust were significantly larger than those of moral disgust and neutral stimuli when the attentional resource was relatively inadequate. Taken together, these findings have revealed that the processing of core and moral disgust are divergent at different level of attentional resources, which suggest that there are distinct neuro-cognitive processes underlying the core and moral disgust, and provide supporting evidence for the heterogeneity of disgust. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Effect of Event Duration on the Updating of Situation Model Yi XIE xianyou He 2016, 39(2): 285-290.  Abstract ( )   PDF (444KB) ( )   Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Unconscious Thought: Theory, Queries and Responses（the second time） 2016, 39(2): 318-323.  Abstract ( )   PDF (299KB) ( )   It is traditionally considered that as human higher mental processes, thought belongs to conscious category. When confronted with a complex decision, people are accustomed to solving problems with deliberation. Nevertheless, a growing number of research have suggested the opposite: it is quite likely that applying unconscious thought leads to a better decision than conscious thought, breaking the traditional opinion “where there is conscious thought, there is a good result”. Unconscious thought refers to object-relevant or task-relevant cognitive or affective thought processes that occur while conscious attention is directed elsewhere. Then the Unconscious Thought Theory was put forward on this basis. The Unconscious Thought Theory suggests that unconscious thought and conscious thought have different characteristics, and these different characteristics make each mode preferable under different circumstances. Specifically, there are six different processing characteristics between them, including capacity, weighting, rules, bottom-up versus top-down and convergence versus divergence process and so on. Subsequently, it was detected that unconscious thought was preferable to conscious thought in the perspective of decision-making tasks, but also in attitude formation and change, creatively solving problems, moral judgment, prediction of football competition and discovery of complex rules and so on. However, a few researchers had failed to replicate the beneficial effect of unconscious thought, and provided alternative explanations. Some opponents admitted the existence of unconscious thought, but they thought the main reason for unconscious thought effects was that conscious thought was limited in the previous studies. They did not support the view that unconscious thought was better at solving complex problems than conscious thought. What’s more, some researchers completely denied that there was unconscious thought. They pointed out that unconscious thought actually belonged to a kind of conscious thought on the basis of on-line judgment. According to the views above mentioned, researchers who considered that unconscious thought actually existed, turned to looked for some mediation variables of influencing unconscious thought effect. That is to say, only with the variables, unconscious thought could show more advantage effects than conscious thought. Some studies found that the variables such as thinking time, the difficulty of distraction task, mindset and the difficulty of decision-making tasks could influence the unconscious thought effects; some researchers further discovered that unconscious thought was goal-directed. It might lead to the changes in memory presentation, and the unconscious thought existed in the neural mechanism which differed from that of conscious thought. In a word, the key of current studies has transformed from debating whether unconscious thought existed or whether unconscious thought owned more advantages than conscious thought to exploring the processing mechanism of unconscious thought. However, as a new research field, there are a large mount of important problems remain to be further explored. In addition, the current future research in this field should pay more attention on these aspects. First of all, it is necessary to shed more light on how to improve unconscious thought paradigm and looking for more mediators influencing on unconscious thought effect; secondly, how unconscious thought works and when and how the unconscious transfers its information to consciousness; thirdly, the styles of unconscious thought processing information should be explored in future studies; finally, researchers ought to study the application of unconscious thought under the real and risky task situation as well. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The position and Time Offset of Prototype Elicitation in Logogriph Problem Solving 2016, 39(2): 312-317.  Abstract ( )   PDF (627KB) ( )   On the basis of the theory of prototype elicitation in insight, this study design two experiments to examine whether different positions will be influenced by task difficulty and presentation time of prototype elicitation logogriph in four-word logogriph problem solving. 16 target logogriphs and 16 prototype elicitation ones are selected from logogriph database established by Cong and Zhang (2013) to test. Each of the two types is composed of 8 slack block logogriphs (SBL) and 8 compact block logogriphs (CBL). Every participant is required to finish 16 random logogriphs from the two types of logogriphs. Experiments are programmed by E-prime 2.0, where the logogriph type is tested as a within-subject variable including the SBL and CBL, the presentation time of prototype is a between group variable consisting of prototype existence (PE) and prototype disappearance (PD). The first experiment is 2（logogriph type）×2（presentation time of prototype）mixed design, the prototype is in front of the target logogriph(BTL) and 77 undergraduates are randomly assigned into the PE and PD groups. Repeatedly measured variance analysis shows that the accuracy of the SBL is significantly higher than that of the CBL on whichever conditions of PE or PD (p=.001), and the accuracy of the PD is remarkably higher than that of the PE (p=.0036),we call this time offset effect. Additionally there is a strong interaction between logogriph type and presentation time of prototype (p=.018). Further analysis on the simple effect displays that the scores of CBL on PD conditions are significantly higher than those on the PE ones (p<.001). In order to check the time offset effect and further examine whether the different positions of prototype can influence logogriph problem solving, we design experiment 2. It is 2（logogriph type）×2（the presentation time of prototype）×2 (position) mixed design. The position includes two cases , the prototype is placed behind (BTL) or in front of the target logogriph(FTL) . A repeated-measures ANOVA is conducted with logogriph type (SBL vs. CBL) as a within-subject variable, presentation time of prototype (PE vs. PD) and position (BTL vs. FTL) as between subject variables. The results not only demonstrate experiment 1 , but also show a strong interaction between logogriph type, the presentation time and position of prototype(p=.00). Further analysis on the simple effect display that ,for BTL, the scores of the SBL on the PD conditions are significantly higher than those on the PE ones (p=.003), While for FTL, the scores of the CBL on the PD conditions are significantly higher than those on the PE ones. These results suggest there are time offset effect and prototype position effect in logogriph problem solving. Specifically, the SBL compare to the CBL and the PD compared to the PE are easier to solve in logogriph problem, for BTL ,the SBL is easier to be influenced by the presentation time of the prototype, whereas for FTL,the CBL is easier to be influenced by the presentation time of the prototype. In order to check the time offset effect and further examine whether the different positions of prototype can influence logogriph problem solving, we design experiment 2. It is 2（logogriph type）×2（the presentation time of prototype）×2 (position) mixed design. The position includes two cases , the prototype is placed behind (BTL) or in front of the target logogriph(FTL) . A repeated-measures ANOVA is conducted with logogriph type (SBL vs. CBL) as a within-subject variable, presentation time of prototype (PE vs. PD) and position (BTL vs. FTL) as between subject variables. The results not only demonstrate experiment 1 , but also show a strong interaction between logogriph type, the presentation time and position of prototype(p=.00). Further analysis on the simple effect display that ,for BTL, the scores of the SBL on the PD conditions are significantly higher than those on the PE ones (p=.003), While for FTL, the scores of the CBL on the PD conditions are significantly higher than those on the PE ones. These results suggest there are time offect effect and prototype position effect in logogriph problem solving. Specifically, the SBL compare to the CBL and the PD compared to the PE are easier to solve in logogriph problem, for BTL ,the SBL is easier to be influenced by the presentation time of the prototype, whereas for FTL,the CBL is easier to be influenced by the presentation time of the prototype. Experiments are programmed by E-prime 2.0, where the logogriph type is tested as a within-subject variable including the SBL and CBL, the presentation time of prototype isa between group variable consisting of prototype existence (PE) and prototype disappearance (PD). The first experiment is 2（logogriph type）×2（presentation time of prototype）mixed design, the prototype is in front of the target logogriph(BTL) and 77 undergraduates are randomly assigned into the PE and PD groups. Repeatedly measured variance analysis shows that the accuracy of the SBL is significantly higher than that of the CBL on whichever conditions of PE or PD (p=.001), and the accuracy of the PD is remarkably higher than that of the PE (p=.0036),we call this time offset effect. Additionally there is a strong interaction between logogriph type and presentation time of prototype(p=.018). Further analysis on the simple effect displays that the scores of CBL on PD conditions are significantly higher than those on the PE ones (p<.001). In order to check the time offset effect and further examine whether the different positions of prototype can influence logogriph problem solving, we design experiment 2. It is 2（logogriph type）×2（the presentation time of prototype）×2 (position) mixed design.The position includes two cases , the prototype is placed behind(BTL) or in front of the target logogriph(FTL) . A repeated-measures ANOVA is conducted with logogriph type (SBL vs. CBL) as a within-subject variable, presentation time of prototype (PE vs. PD) and position (BTL vs. FTL) as between subject variables. The results not only demonstrate experiment 1 , but also show a strong interaction between logogriph type, the presentation time and position of prototype(p=.00). Further analysis on the simple effect display that ,for BTL, the scores of the SBL on the PD conditions are significantly higher than those on the PE ones (p=.003), While for FTL, the scores of the CBL on the PD conditions are significantly higher than those on the PE ones. These results suggest there are time offset effect and prototype position effect in logogriph problem solving. Specifically, the SBL compare to the CBL and the PD compared to the PE are easier to solve in logogriph problem, for BTL,the SBL is easier to be influenced by the presentation time of the prototype, whereas for FTL,the CBL is easier to be influenced by the presentation time of the prototype. Two experiments are programmed by E-prime 2.0, where the logogriph type is tested internal variable including the SBL and CBL and the presentation time of prototype is between group variable consisting of prototype existence (PE) and prototype disappearance (PD). The first experiment is 2（logogriph type）×2（the presentation time of prototype）mixed design, the prototype is in front of the target logogriph(BTL) and randomly-selected 77 undergraduates are randomly assigned into the PE and PD groups. Repeatedly measured variance analysis on the experimental results show that the accuracy of the SBL is significantly higher than that of the CBL on whichever conditions of the PE or the PD (p=.001), and that the accuracy of the PD is remarkably higher than that of the PE (p=.0036), thus suggesting strong interaction between the logogriph type and time offset (p=.018). Further analysis on the simple effect display that the scores of the CBL on the PD conditions are significantly higher than those on the PE ones (p<.001). In order to check the results from the first experiment and further examine whether the prototype’s different positions can influence logogriph problem solving, we design experiment 2. It is 2（logogriph type）×2（the presentation time of prototype）×2 (position) mixed design. The position includes two cases ,there are the prototype is placed behind the target logogriph(FTL) or the prototype is in front of the target logogriph(BTL) . A 2 × 2 × 2 repeated-measures ANOVA is conducted with logogriph type (SBL vs. CBL) as a within-subject variable, time offset (PE vs. PD) and position (BTL vs. FTL) as between subject variables. The results not only demonstrate experiment 1 , but also show a strong interaction between logogriph type，time offset and position (p=.00). Further analysis on the simple effect display that for BTL, the scores of the SBL on the PD conditions are significantly higher than those on the PE ones (p=.003), While for FTL, the scores of the CBL on the PD conditions are significantly higher than those on the PE ones. These results suggest that the logogriph type as well as the position and presentation time of the prototype can indeed affect the logogriph problem solving. Specifically, the SBL compare to the CBL and the PD compared to the PE are easier to solve the logogriph problem, and as the prototype is placed behind the target logogriph it is easier to solve the SBL problem whereas the SBL relative to the CBL is easier to be influenced by the presentation time of the prototype, and vice versa. This study discusses the influence of task difficulty and time offset of the prototype elicitation on logogriph problem solving from a new viewpoint, which will lay the theory’s foundation on better solving problems from study and life. In order to check the results from the first experiment and further examine whether the prototype’s different positions can influence logogriph problem solving, the second experiment was designed that all the conditions were same to the first experiment except that the prototype was placed behind the target logogriph(FTL). The results demonstrate experiment 1 , and A 2 × 2 × 2 repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted with logogriph type (SBL vs. CBL) as a within-subject variable, time offset (PE vs. PD) and position (BTL vs. FTL) as between subject variables. The results show a strong interaction between logogriph type，time offset and position (p=.00). Further analysis on the simple effect displays that for BTL, the scores of the SBL on the PD conditions are significantly higher than those on the PE ones (p=.003), While for FTL, the scores of the CBL on the PD conditions are significantly higher than those on the PE ones. These results suggest that the logogriph type as well as the position and presentation time of the prototype can indeed affect the logogriph problem solving. Specifically, the SBL compared to the CBL and the PD compared to the PE are easier to solve the logogriph problem, and as the prototype is placed behind the target logogriph it is easier to solve the SBL problem whereas the SBL relative to the CBL is easier to be influenced by the presentation time offset of the prototype, and vice versa. This study discussed the influence of task difficulty and time offset of the prototype elicitation on logogriph problem solving from a new viewpoint, which will lay the theory’s foundation on better solving problems from study and life. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Familiarity of Morphemes Modulating Word Spacing Effects on the Acquisition of Novel Chinese Vocabulary 2016, 39(2): 258-264.  Abstract ( )   PDF (739KB) ( )   Chinese script is normally printed as a continuous string of characters, where there are only small spaces between characters, and these are the same size regardless of whether they appear between or within words. Other than punctuation marks between characters, there is no other visual word boundary information to help Chinese readers segment and identify the words within sentence contexts. The lack of visual word segmentation cues, such as word spacing, leads to an intriguing but fundamental theoretical question in relation to Chinese reading: How do Chinese readers segment character strings to identify words? There has been an amount of research to examine the role of word spacing on Chinese word identification during reading. There has, however, been less research focusing on the issue that how word spacing affected the cognitive processes of word acquisition when novel words are encountered during reading. In the present study, we endeavor to explore the role of word spacing on the acquisition of Chinese novel words, especially to examine whether the word spacing effect was modulated by the characteristics of each morpheme which was comprised of the novel word. Two types of two-character pseudowords were constructed as novel vocabularies: the first type of novel words was made up of both familiar initial and final constituents, which was considered as easy novel word; whilst the second type was made up with unfamiliar initial and final constituents, which was considered as difficult novel word. Each pseudoword was embedded into two sets of sentences for the learning and the test phase separately in order to describe each novel word into a special semantic category, such as fruit, animal and so on. Each sentence frame provided a chance for readers to understand the novel word’s meaning. In the learning phase, half participants read a set of sentences in word-spaced format, and half in unspaced format. In the test phase, all participants read another set of sentences in unspaced format. In order to check that adult readers were able to learn the pseudowords from the sentences that we created, we included a semantic category judgment for each target word in the test phase of the experiment. The results showed that, readers made shorter reading times on pseudowords when inserting spaces into words than that in traditional, unspaced format in the learning phase, indicating that the facilitatory role of word spacing was observed in the leaning phase. However, the benefit of word spacing in the learning phase did not maintain to the subsequent test phase, here, all readers read in the unspaced format. Furthermore, greater benefit of word spacing was found for pseudowords which were comprised of two familiar constituents than when pseudowords were made up of two unfamiliar constituents, indicating that the benefit of word spacing was modulated by the different familiarity of constituents composed of pseudowords when acquiring them within sentential contexts. On the bases of the main findings in the present experiment, we argue that it would deepen our knowledge of word segmentation mechanism in Chinese reading and would provide important teaching suggestions for Chinese children and readers of Chinese as second language. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Effect of Power Priming on the Illusion of Control 2016, 39(2): 418-423.  Abstract ( )   PDF (376KB) ( )   This study explored the influence of power and power-rationality on the illusion of control by using experimental methods. We hypothesized that activation of the different behavior system will lead high-power individuals and low-power individuals have different experience in the sense of control: compared to low-power individuals, high-power individuals will have a greater sense of control, in other words, high-power individuals will have the illusion of control. Consider the conflicting behavior of high-power and low- power individuals when the power is legitimate and illegitimate, we believe that the legitimacy of power is also an important factor on the relationship between power and control illusion. Then we put forward a hypothesis: the legitimacy of power and power levels will have an interaction effect on the sense of control——when the power is legitimate, the high-power individuals will have significantly stronger sense of control than low-power individuals; when the power is illegitimate, there will have the opposite effect. In the current study, two experiments were designed to verify the above two assumptions. 87 undergraduates and 129 undergraduates and graduate students participated in the study. All these participants were recruited from the same school. During the study 1, participants are divided into two groups randomly. one of the two groups imagined themselves owning the power; the other imagined themselves being lack of power. Then both of them solved distribution shops problem. During the study 2, participants are divided into four groups randomly. Four groups are be made up of high legitimate power group, high illegitimate power group, low legitimate power group and low illegitimate power group. Then all of them solved distribution shops problem. Imagination of power the role and distribution role from false questionnaire score are used to manipulate the sense of power, distribution shops problem is used to measure the subjects' sense of control. The results show that these two assumptions are worked: a) the high-power will lead to overestimation of the illusion of control（F（1,85）=4.237，p=.043）; b）while power relationship is legitimate, high power lead to overestimation of the illusion of control; while power relationship is illegitimate, low power rather than high power lead to overestimation of the illusion of control.（ F （1，124）=10.552，p=.001）. This study provides empirical support for the power approach / inhibition theory and reveals the illusion of control can be determined by the dynamic of power relations based on the context and power-rationality. The study also shows how power, once attained, is maintained （as well as how it is lost），and so on. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Effect and the Mechanism Religions Play on Color Cognition of Taiwan Riligious Disciples 2016, 39(2): 399-405.  Abstract ( )   PDF (742KB) ( )   The relation between color terms and color cognition is a basic issue in cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics as it concerns the relationship between language and cognition. So far, this issue has been discussed by three distinct theories: the Theory of Color Term Evolution, Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis and a compromised view between the two theories. Zhang Jijia et al. (2012)put forward a new theory named the Interaction Theory of color and color cognition. The theory assumes that six factors (physics, physiology, cognition, intelligence, culture and language) can be divided into three different levels in the whole theory system. All the six factors interact with each other and finally form the color cognition together. In the present study, the Interaction Theory of color term and color cognition has been examined. Taiwan is famous for its religions, in which the Buddhism, Christianity, and Taoism are of the three most famous religions sharing Asian culture and Chinese language. 211 Buddhists, 212 Christians, and 210 Taoists from Taiwan took part in this research. Eleven Chinese basic color terms (black, white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, gray and pink) are used as the experimental materials. The participants were asked to classify the 11 color terms according to their own criteria and then explain the reason why they sort the color terms as so. The responses were analyzed using the multi- dimensional scaling method. The results show that Buddhists, Christians and Taoists in Taiwan are consistent in their classification of basic color terms in general. There are two dimensions in conceptual structure of the three religions and the average classification category is four. However, the two dimensions and the four sub categories are sort of different. For the Buddhists, the sub-category can be religious color, brown, cool color and neutral color, while for the Taoists, the cool color is replaced by the warm color, and other sub categories are the same as the Buddhists. And for the Christians, the sub category can be religion color, brown, cool color and warm color. What’s more, they all share the dimension “religious/unreligious color”, and the other dimension is “cool/warm color”, “colorful/neutral” and “cool/warm color” for Buddhists, Taoists and Christians respectively. In order to probe into the relationship of the three religions, the Spearman grade correlation was used. As a result, in dimension 1 the value of the correlation coefficients are all over 0.95, and ps<0.05; in dimension 2, the value are all over 0.85, and up to the significance too. Mostly, the number of each category is different among the three religions. The conclusion can be that although differences result from the religious culture do exist in terms of the number and content of the categories, they share the consistency in dimensions. The consistency and differences reflect the co-effects of Asian culture and the sub-culture of religions on color cognition. On the other hand, color as a symbol affects the cognition of the religious disciples by the imagistic transmission. During the imagistic transmission, some religious culture or religious traditions gradually affect the cognition of their disciples, especially the cognition of colors. To some extent, this makes the color cognition full of unconscious religion culture. In conclusion these results support the interaction theory of color and color cognition that people in the same culture system and place share the same dimension of the color term category. Key words　Buddhist; Taoist; Christian; color terms; classification; the Interaction Theory of color and color cognition Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The effects of supervisor big-five personality traits and psychological contract violation on abusive Supervision: The empirical analysis based on the theory of trait activation theory 2016, 39(2): 454-460.  Abstract ( )   PDF (669KB) ( )   Despite researchers' increasing attention on abusive supervision, few studies have investigated its antecedents by focusing on the personality traits. Drawing on person-situation interaction perspective, this study proposed the main and interactive effects of psychological contract violation and personality traits on supervisor abusive supervision. The participants in this study were the employees of a large-sized manufacturing company in South China. Two waves of data collection were conducted in order to reduce the potential common method bias. In the first-wave survey (T1)，the supervisors completed a survey to report their big-five personality trait，perceptions of psychological contract violation form the company and demographic data. In the second-wave survey (T2)，conducted six months after T1，their immediate subordinates were asked to report on their perceptions of abusive supervision from the supervisors and demographic data. With the assistance of the human resource manager of this company，we obtained a randomly selected list of 460 supervisors and their subordinates (each supervisor was matched with one subordinate).Survey questionnaires were coded before distribution，and the human resources departments assisted in matching the identity numbers and names of respondents with the responses of the T1 and T2 surveys conducted. In T1，356 questionnaires were completed and returned，representing a response rate of 77.39 per cent. Six months later，when the T2 survey was conducted，questionnaires were distributed to these 356 immediate subordinates，with 213 questionnaires completed and returned，representing a response rate of 59.55 per cent. Hence，the final sample of this study consisted of 213 matched supervisors-immediate subordinates dyads. Of these 213 supervisors，51.2 per cent were male and the average age was 36.72 years (SD = 6.26). Of the 213 the supervisors' immediate subordinates，52.58 per cent were male and the average age was 33.18 years (SD = 6.86). We employ multi-regression analysis to explore the relationship among psychological contract violation，big-five personality traits and supervisor abusive supervision. The results indicate that: (1) supervisor agreeableness was negatively related while neuroticism was positively related to abusive supervision; (2) supervisor perceptions of psychological contract violation was positively related to abusive supervision; (3) perceptions of psychological contract violation not only strengthened the negative relationship between agreeableness and abusive supervision，but also strengthened the positive relationship between neuroticism and abusive supervision. Although many studies have indicated that abusive supervision could cause harm to individuals and organizations，we know little about the cause of abusive supervision. By integrating the factors of person (i.e.，personality traits) and situation (i.e.，perceptions of psychological contract violation)，this study makes important contributions to the growing literature on abusive supervision. Our findings，combined with our literature review，have provided evidence that both personality traits and organizational situation will predict abusive supervision; especially，the result show that the interaction of personality traits and organizational situation influences abusive supervision. This result extended existing knowledge and explained why and when the supervisors do exhibit abusive behaviors in their organization. Practical implications of the results were discussed. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Which Group Suffer More: Inter-group Competitive Victimhood 2016, 39(2): 468-473.  Abstract ( )   PDF (338KB) ( )   In the contexts of direct violence, adversarial groups repeatedly aggress against each other harms or kills a great number of people. Such contexts often leave the parties involved with a deep sense of victimhood, “which group suffer more” is an important question. Each group involved in the conflict tries its best to claim that it has suffered more than the out-group. Moreover, this competition over the quantity of suffering also implies some dispute over the illegitimacy of the suffering. Then, a group’s motivation and consequent efforts to establish that it has suffered more than its adversaries are called inter-group competitive victimhood, CV. In the contexts of direct violence, CV is prevalent regardless of the group status and group power. Once the group has constructed its biggest victim role, the members would share this kind of belief, and reject, deny and refuse heterogeneous information threatened. CV reflects the obvious egocentric tendency when in-group evaluate their injuries. There are several dimensions of victimhood over which groups may compete, they are physical suffering(groups may quantify suffering and portray their in-group as having endured a larger share of the overall suffering), material suffering(groups often compete over material resources, such as housing, education, and employment), cultural suffering(conflicting groups may call attention to their sense of cultural deprivation or threat of cultural extinction, such as loss of language, unique religious, way of life), psychological suffering(psychological distress, emotional pain, and subject wellbeing), illegitimacy of suffering(injustice of their suffering), the sense of victimization, the ways be treated after conflicts (whether they have received adequate attention concerning their needs compared with victims in the other group). Groups may stress one or more dimensions depending on their different needs. Disadvantaged groups may highlight obvious and objective damages, while advantaged groups perhaps highlight the subjective aspects, claiming that their behaviors involved in the conflict were forced. Constructing the biggest victim role is a social constructing process. We reviewed the various psychological bases and motivations behind CV, specifically, including collective sense of victimhood (a mindset shared by group members that results from a perceived intentional harm with severe consequences), cognitive attribution of responsibility(group members are likely to cast their in-group in the role of the victim and out-group in the role of the perpetrator), biases memories about inter-group conflicts(selective and biased information processing and remembering), group’s motivations to maintain its moral acceptance or restore their power, and other psychological bases(group emotions results from conflicts, such as anger, fear, anxiety). The existence of CV serves various functions. As far as in-group is concerned, CV contributes to conflicts’ escalation, increases in-group identification, weakens responsibility of conflict, and obtains the supports from other non-involved groups. However, in term of out-group, such efforts of CV impede the process of inter-group forgiveness and reconciliation. Studies found that direct inter-group contact, and constructs both common victim identity and common perpetrator identity, the groups involved conflicts would lower the level of CV. There has been little systematic investigation on this kind of competition, therefore, in the future, more researches are needed to explore the mechanisms and multiple psychological factors, such as the positive effects of different indirect group contact, apology and compensation on CV. Researchers also need to explore the psychological mechanisms of CV between hostile groups, as well as the cognitive and evaluated mechanisms of the third group on who is the biggest victim. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Experimental Research on the Effect of Power on Risky Choice Framing Effect 2016, 39(2): 412-417.  Abstract ( )   PDF (504KB) ( )   Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Relationship between Organizational Commitment and Unethical Pro-Organizational Behaviors: the Moderating Role of Moral Identity 2016, 39(2): 392-398.  Abstract ( )   PDF (781KB) ( )   Unethical pro-organizational behaviors (UPB) refer to employees’ unethical behavior for the benefits of organization. In this study we focus the interactive influence on UPB of the two factors of organizational commitment and moral identity. While empirical evidence indicates these two factors may shed light on prediction of UPB, prior research on UPB is relatively limited. We propose that moral identity moderates the relationship between organizational commitment and UPB, as discussed by Umpress, Bingham, & Mitchell, M. S. (2010). Specifically, we discriminate the two kinds of moral identity, internalization and symbolization, in order to test their influence on the relationship between organizational commitment and UPB. 289 participants of this research are sampled from employees of shopping malls in Hangzhou. The data is collected by three questionnaires about moral identity, organizational commitment and UPB, respectively. Age, gender, position and length of service are taken as controls. We start with revising the Unethical Pro-Organizational Behaviors questionnaires and after checking its reliability and validity, we move on to perform correlations and moderate regressions. The results suggest that the correlation of UPB with moral identity is significantly negative, while its correlation with organizational commitment is positive but not significant. It is supposed that the violation of UPB with deontic ethnics limits the effect of organizational commitment towards UPB. There is also a three-way interaction indicating the different influence of internalized and symbolic moral identity on the relationship between organizational commitment and UPB. Individuals high in organizational commitment are more likely to demonstrate UPB if they hold low internalized moral identity and high symbolic moral identity at the same time. The present study contributes to broaden the theories of UPB, which is quite few currently. Given the collective context of our culture, such lack of research on organizational behavior is quite confusing. Our research reveals the negative impact of organizational commitment on individual organizational behavior for employees with low moral identity. It further separates the effect from two dimensions of moral identities. Symbolic moral identity, not a one-to-one relationship, inspired by certain external situation, may lead to UPB, while internalized moral identity would prevent one from UPB. Our results may also give employers a better understanding of organizational management. Although UPB is beneficial for the organizational interest temporarily, it does harm to the reputation of an enterprise in long term. For management it is necessary to balance the relationship between organizational profits and public ethnics. Our finding also indicates the dark side of organizational commitment that it may cause confusion on the moral rules of employees. As with nearly any research endeavor, several limitations are present in the work we discussed. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The influence of professional background, subjective impression and emotions on criminal judgment 2016, 39(2): 441-447.  Abstract ( )   PDF (460KB) ( )   Background: Criminal judgment and decision making has triggered great interests among legal and psychological researchers. It refers to the processes of decision making related to guilt verdict and penalty by juries or judges based on the facts of the crimes according to the provisions of the law. Previous findings demonstrate that extraneous factors, such as irrelevant emotions, physical features of criminal suspects, etc., could affect criminal judgments. It is possible that juries or judges gain a positive or negative impression on a criminal suspect from knowing the information about his and the victims’ personalities, family background, personal experience or occupations , all of which should be considered as extraneous factors and should not taken into account in the course of criminal judgments. However, it is unknown how these factors affect legal decisions and what mechanisms underlie the process. Method: In order to investigate how and why the impression of parties to a case (the perpetrators and the victims) has an influence on the penalty judgments. Legal students and non-legal professional students were asked to make penalty judgments on the case, each of which included the same criminal act but contains different descriptions of the personal traits of the perpetrators and the victims. After the judgment task, participants were asked to assess the emotional responses triggered by the criminal behaviors. Results: Results showed that when the impression on the perpetrators was negative, participants felt more anger and disgust, less sympathy towards the criminal behavior; in the meantime, they gave higher punishment scores, than when the impression on the perpetrators was positive. When the subjective impression on the victims was positive than when it was negative, lower-grade participants gave higher punishment scores. No effect of the impression on victims was found on the punishment scores among higher-grade participants. Neither did we find any differences of the intensity for each of the three emotions between the positive and negative impression of the victims. Legal professionals reported lower emotional intensity than non-legal professionals towards the criminal behaviors. However, the professional background didn’t exert any significant influence on the penalty judgments. In order to explore the mechanisms underlying the influence of subjective impression on criminal judgment, mediation analysis was carried out. Results showed disgust fully while anger and sympathy partly mediated the influence of the subjective impression of the perpetrators on the penalty judgments. However, no mediating effect of any emotion was found for the influence of the subjective impression of the victims on the penalty judgments. Conclusion: This study suggests that the subjective impression of perpetrators and victims has significant influence on judicial decisions either in legal or non-legal participants. Participants tended to punish more harshly when they hold a relatively negative impression on criminals. In the process of the influence of the subjective impression of the criminals on the judgments, anger , disgust and sympathy emotions were found to serve as intermediary factors. However, in the process of the influence of the subjective impression of the victims on the judgments, no mediation effects of any of the emotions were found. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Difference of Place Identity between Natives and Outlanders: Evidences from Four Districts 2016, 39(2): 461-467.  Abstract ( )   PDF (541KB) ( )   Motherland, native, homeland, and other place related concepts are important constructs, not only because they are relevant to the personal development, but also the hukou (户口) system and migrant movement exist in our country. Place related variables are important to understand the psychological world of the individual and collective. Migrant to a new place but not gain the new hukou produces a group which is named as outlanders comparing to natives. These two groups of people would have different feelings and relationships with the same place. Place identity is an important variable to describe person-place relationship, and has received considerable research attention since place is a fundamental component of personal identity. Four samples were sampled from a city of central China and a district of the west China, and two multiple-component internet samples were collected from a city of east China and a city of North China, and the total sample was composed of 3842 people, in which 44% were natives students or residents. Place identity scale revised from Lalli (1992) was used to measure the relationship between people and place they live at that time they answer the questionnaire. Several other measures (including risk perception scale, leave or stay intention scale, global satisfaction scale) were implemented on some of the six samples. Internal consistencies and inter-correlation coefficients of the subscales of the verbal place identity were tested, and found coefficients based on native samples were higher than outland samples in trends. On the mean level of the total score of the place identity, natives were significantly higher than the outlanders on all the five samples (effect sizes with the indication of Cohen’s d were 1.63 and 1.75 on the two samples of Kashi, 0.70 and 0.96 for the two samples of Wuhan, 0.53 and 0.54 for Shanghai sample and Beijing samples). Two samples from the west China were combined and the two samples from the central China were combined, samples of east and north China were combined, and a two-factor analysis of variances (ANOVA) was conducted to examine the differences between natives and outlanders on these three combined samples, and found significant interaction effect (?2=0.04), simple effects analysis indicated that there was the largest difference on the west sample, second larger difference on the central sample. The mediation effect of place identity between risk perception and leave or stay intention was lower on natives of the west China sample than on the other three subsamples (52% vs. 82%, 77%, 77%), and correlation between place identity and global satisfaction was significantly higher on native samples than outland samples (0.44 vs. 0.32 on Shanghai sample, and 0.56 vs. 0.26 on Beijing sample) especially on the north China sample. The psychological and social meanings of exploring the differences of place identity between natives and outlanders in different cities or districts and their values on the inclusive and sharing development of the city during the process of our urbanization were discussed. Future directions relating to the place identity were also put forward. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Effect of Honest Self-presentation in Online Social Network Sites on Life Satisfaction: The Chain Mediating Role of Online Positive Feedback and General Self-concept 2016, 39(2): 406-411.  Abstract ( )   PDF (594KB) ( )   Nowadays social network sites (SNS) have been popular all over the world and already integrated into people’s daily life. Individuals used social network sites out of lots of motivations such as entertainment, needs of connecting and belonging, maintaining and deepening relationships as well as self-presentation. Self-presentation which was also called impression management or impression regulation referred to that one controlled the content of the information and the way it was presented in order to affect the formation and change of their impressions on others. Self-presentation was quite a common phenomenon in interpersonal interactions in offline life. With the development of internet, more and more individuals began to present themselves in cyberspace which provided them a relatively safe environment. And social network sites were considered as the ideal platform of self-presentation for people could engage in self-presentation through social network sites profile construction, status updates, photo album management, message-posting and so on. Researchers revealed that as most social network sites friends were offline friends who knew or could know the presenter easily in real life, individuals would have to present true information about themselves in case that others thought they were dishonest. Therefore, honest self-presentation was one of the main strategies that people adopted when self-presenting. Existing researches also indicated that SNS honest self-presentation had significant effect on life satisfaction, and online positive feedback as well as general self-concept might play important roles in between SNS honest self-presentation and life satisfaction. To investigate the relationship among SNS self-presentation, online positive feedback general self-concept and life satisfaction, a survey research method was adopted in which SNS Honest Self-presentation Questionnaire, SNS Positive Feedback Questionnaire, General Self-concept Questionnaire as well as Satisfaction with Life Scale were administered to 554 middle and high school students. Data were collected and analyzed with SPSS 17.0，and the bias-corrected percentile Bootstrap method was used to analyze the chain mediating roles of online positive feedback and general self-concept in between SNS honest self-presentation and adolescents’ life satisfaction. The results indicated: (1) the relationships between each pair of SNS honest self-presentation, online positive feedback, general self-concept as well as life satisfaction were significantly positive; SNS honest self-presentation had no direct effect on life satisfaction, but could significantly predict online positive feedback and general self-concept; online positive feedback could significantly predict general self-concept; both online positive feedback and general self-concept could significantly predict life satisfaction. (2) SNS honest self-presentation affected adolescents’ life satisfaction through three indirect paths: through the mediating role of online positive feedback; through the mediating role of general self-concept; through the chain mediating role of both online positive feedback and general self-concept. These findings highlighted the complex nature of association between honest self-presentation in online social network sites and adolescent’s life satisfaction. Honest self-presentation in online social network sites influenced life satisfaction through online positive feedback and general self-concept. Individuals who presented themselves with honest self-presentation strategy on social network sites would get more positive feedback and have positive general self-concept, and finally have higher level of life satisfaction. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Impact of Peer Behavior and Cooperative Belief on Cooperative Changes in Social Dilemmas 2016, 39(2): 448-453.  Abstract ( )   PDF (352KB) ( )   Cooperation in social dilemmas has received considerable attention during the last decades. In repeated social dilemmas settings, individuals’ contributions decline over time and finally reach a minimum when the interaction terminates. However, it is observed that individuals try to increase their contributions in their initial stage of interactions. A previous study using a step-level public good dilemma has verified that those who contributed high in their first interaction demonstrated high levels of contribution in their subsequent interactions, whereas those who contributed low increased their levels of contribution subsequently. In addition, the cooperative level of low contributors increased along with their cooperative belief. In current study, we aimed to replicate those findings using a different task, i.e., a continuous public good dilemma, and to examine the role of cooperative belief in cooperation. The design was a 2 (peer behavior: equality violation vs. equality compliance) × 2 (decision stage: first vs. second) mixed factor design, with the latter being a within-subject variable. 60 college students (Mage=21.13, 27 males) were recruited from a university campus. They were randomly assigned to the equality compliance or violation condition. For each session, a group of six participants were first instructed to make their allocations in a continuous public good game, and then assessed their cooperative belief. Thereafter, manipulation on peer behavior was introduced. In the equality compliance condition, participants was believed that most members complied with an equal allocation rule, whereas in the equality violation condition, only one of 5 other members gave a cooperative allocation while the rest contributed far less than an equal level. Thereafter, the participants were provided another chance to make their allocation decision and to rate their cooperative belief. In addition, they also assessed their social value orientation. Based on their first decisions, participants were divided into two groups, i.e., low-contributors (N=23) who allocated less than 50 tokens to the group, and high-contributors (N =37) who allocated more than 49 tokens to the group. Our result did not support that this classification was related to participants’ reliable social value orientation. A 2 × 2 × 2 (peer behavior × participant type × decision stage) ANOVA on contributions revealed participants in the equality compliance condition cooperated more than those in the equality violation condition. In addition, participants increased their allocations from their first interaction to their second interaction. Importantly, the high contributors demonstrated high levels of contribution in their subsequent interactions, whereas the low contributors increased their levels of contribution after the initial interaction because of their increase of cooperative belief. In sum, the present study replicates the previous finding, that is, people increased their contributions during initial social interactions. This may suggest that people are in nature other-regarding. However, the observed increase in the cooperative level is due to individuals who contribute little in their first interaction. Therefore, one practical implication is that individuals who contribute less in the initial interactions should garner greater attention than those who contribute more. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Perspective Modulation in the Early Processing of Self-reflective 2016, 39(2): 384-391.  Abstract ( )   PDF (2042KB) ( )   For most individuals, information about the self is associated with a positive valence. Previous research demonstrates such self-positive bias can be modulated by the third-person perspective-taking, which means when people evaluate oneself through the third-person perspective, they evaluate themselves less positive as through the first-person perspective: as the cognitive neuroscience studies showed the event-related potentials (ERPs) component such as P300, N400, and LPC attributed to the modulation phenomenon, while it’s still not quite clear what happened at the very beginning of the self-reflect task or whether the modulation start at the early stage of the self-evaluation processing. Since the emotional studies found the processing of negative words attract much more attention than the positive ones at the early stage of the emotional processing. We hypothesis the modulation of the self-positive bias by the third-person perspective started at the early stage when attention was paid for the emotional words which were used to describe one’s personality. In the present research, 15 participants were enrolled in a 2 (perspective: first-person perspective, third-person perspective) ×2 (emotion: positive, negative) within-group experimental design. All participants had to make a judgment whether the emotional words appeared on the computer screen is appropriate to describe themselves through their own perspective or other perspective respectively. During the processing, the electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded using the 256-channel HydroCel Geodesic Sensor Net (Electrical Geodesics, Inc., Eugene, OR). Components, source and spectral analysis were used to explore the processing of the self-reflective task in 4 different conditions. The mean amplitude and power data were then analyzed with repeated measures ANOVAs. The components results showed that under the third-person perspective, the processing of negative words elicited larger P2 (120-200ms) amplitude than the positive ones in the left frontal electrodes, while, there’s no significant difference between the emotional words under the first-person perspective. Then we analysis the source of the P2 component and found the same results: at the left prefrontal area, the activity is significant different between processing the negative words through different perspective while no difference was found when processing the positive words through the 2 perspectives. Furthermore, in order to confirm the hypothesis, we analysis the event related spectral power (ERSP). The result is consistent with the previous: when processing negative words, significant increasing ERSP in the Theta (3-6Hz) and Gamma (30-45Hz) rhythm have been found than the positive words under third-person perspective, while the Alpha (8-13Hz) band showed significant decreasing, there’s no significant difference in 3 rhythms when processing emotional words through the first-person perspective. All the results showed that when we make the self-reflective processing or self-evaluation, we cared more or paid more attention when we take the third-person perspective than the first-person perspective, especially for the negative information. In consistent with the previous research, these findings suggested during the self-reflective processing, taking the third-person perspective can decrease the self-positive bias, or we can say, the modulation of the self-positive bias by the third-person perspective start at the early stage of the processing when attention began. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Experimental Researches of the influence on repeat offenses：Vengeance, Punishment, Silence or Forgiveness? Jie Li 2016, 39(2): 424-429.  Abstract ( )   PDF (790KB) ( )   Does different coping strategies which are revenge, punishment, silence and forgiveness influence repeat offenses? This study contains 2 experiments. Experiment 1 chose 64 graduate students to participate in prisoner’s dilemma game (PDG). They were told that they would be playing an interaction game with other 5 players (one-to-one) and that cash payouts would be made based on the outcome. In fact, every participant received a message that they were chosen to be the assistant of the experimenter, so they need to choose “compete” in Round 1 of the game. The other 5 players (pre-arranged) gave different feedbacks to participants, which were revenge, punishment, silence and forgiveness. The participants need to make choice how possible they would “complete” in the next round. And in the “power part” of the game, they need to choose one player to punish, whether to take 10 yuan from the player to himself or take 20 yuan to public. The results show that victims’ coping strategies have a significant influence on repeat offenses ( F(3, 186)=19.17, p< .01，η2= .24), while possibility of retaliation is not significant( F(1, 62)=1.23, p= .27> .05), and the interaction of the two variable is not significant either ( F(3, 186)=1.27, p= .29> .05). Offenders are more likely to attack victims for the second time that claimed to revenge or punish rather than silent or forgiven ones. Experiment 2 chose 227 subjects in Gansu and Shanxi province from 16 to 80 years old. Subjects were asked to imagine they are the character in the story, who built up library for poor children with his /her friends, but won Outstanding Citizen Prize all by himself, and latter on wrote a letter of apology to his friends. The friends have different attitudes to him/her, one said he would revenge, one said he would go to the leader to talk about this, one kept silent, and one said he would receive the apology and forgive you. Now there is an opportunity to be Outstanding Citizen, because of quota limit, you need to make decisions that one of your 4 friends cannot be the Outstanding Citizen. The study examines the influence of age and coping strategies to repentance motivation and repeat offenses. The results show that the impact of coping strategies for repentance motivation is significant ( F(3, 221)=1.21, p< .01，η2= .62), and tolerance policy is the highest, age for repentance motivation is not significant ( F(3, 223)=2.229, p= .086> .05), while the interaction is significant (F(9, 669)=2.56, p< .01，η2= .03); Strategies for repeat offenses is significant ( F(3, 221)=3.33，p< .01，η2= .04), age for repeat offenses is significant ( F(3, 223)=10.66，p< .01，η2= .13), and the interaction is also significant ( F(9, 669)=7.85, p< .01，η2= .10). Offenders from 16-20 are more likely to attack victims who use revenge, punish strategies, rather than silent, forgive ones; offenders from 21-35 do not have choice preference; while offenders over 36 prefer to attack those victims who use silent , forgive and punish strategies rather than avengers. In addition, all these four types of strategies have effect on the reduction of repeat offences, while there is a certain risk. From a legal perspective, retaliation strategy risks outweigh the benefits, and the current relatively safe strategy is mainly based on retribution justice, meanwhile, restorative justice can attempt to apply in the youth group. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The Effect on Cooperative Behaviors by Cooperation Index and Social Distance 2016, 39(2): 435-440.  Abstract ( )   PDF (585KB) ( )   The behavior decisions in social dilemmas are research highlights for the sociology, economics as well as social psychology. Cooperation index (CI) reflexes the benefit of cooperative behavior, and social distance refers to an abstract conception that describes the closeness of emotional relationship among individuals. In social dilemmas, the CI is of rational factor and the social distance belongs to emotional factor. Early theories view that behavior decisions are mostly determined by benefit and payment, which represents rational idea. On the contrary, irrational idea considers that the behavior decisions are not only affected by rational but emotional factors. However, even recent researches have proved that social distance or CI can motivate cooperative behaviors, the influencing mechanism of those factors is still unclear. To be specific, how do CI and social distance affect competitive and cooperative behaviors? Does an interaction exist between these two factors? Accordingly, we hypothesized that there was an interaction between social distance and CI. To address this, the Prisoner’s Dilemma paradigm was employed to discover the mechanism. A 2 (Social distance: close vs. strange) × 9 (CI: 0.1~0.9) within-subjects experiment was designed for testing the hypothesis. In the experiment, 20 pairs of same-gender friends (males and females were also 10 pairs) were recruited as participants with an average age 21.55. All participants were undergraduates or graduates. Participants were directed to play Prisoner’s Dilemma Game with same-gender friends and strangers respectively. In the procedure, different payoff matrices were randomly presented based on 9 levels of CI (0.1~0.9). The participant’s reward was entirely depended on outcomes of the game. The cooperative rate was computed from frequency of cooperation as a measurement in each conditions (In a condition, cooperative rates = 100%* numbers of trials of cooperating/ total of trials). To analyze those effects, we performed repeated-measured ANOVA and t test with gender, CI and Social distance on the cooperative rates. The results of the ANOVA revealed that main effects of CI and social distance were significant (CI: p < .001, ηp2 = .55; Social distance: p < .001, ηp2 = .33), while the interactive effect was insignificant (ps > .2). The results of t tests revealed that, with all CI conditions, the cooperative rates for gaming with friend were significantly higher than that with stranger (ps < .05) (Table 3). To determine how the social distance affected specific behaviors, we compared the cooperative rates in Close and Strange conditions with baseline (50% cooperative rate), and the results revealed competition both in close and strange conditions with CI = 0.1~0.3 (ps < .01). With CI = 0.4~0.6, it was appeared that chance level (no difference with baseline) was found in close condition (ps > .09) but competition was still in strange condition (ps < .001). Then, with CI = 0.7~0.9, cooperation in close condition (ps < .01) and chance level in strange condition were found (ps > .1). (Fig. 1 and Table. 3) For effects by CIs, the Pairwise Comparisons showed that differences among the cooperative rates with CI = 0.1~0.3 were insignificant. However, the cooperative rate with CI = 0.1 was significantly lower than that with CI = 0.4~0.9 (ps < .05). The operative rates with CI = 0.2 and 0.3 were significantly lower than those with CI = 0.5~0.9 (ps < .05). The cooperative rates with CI = 0.4 and 0.5 were significantly lower than those with CI = 0.6~0.9 (ps < .05). The cooperative rate with CI = 0.6 was significantly lower than that with CI = 0.7~0.9 (ps < .001). The cooperative rate with CI = 0.7 was significantly lower than that with CI = 0.9 (ps < .05). The cooperative rates with CI = 0.8 and 0.9 were insignificantly different (p = .56). (Table. 2). Those results suggested that both CI and social distance played positive roles in cooperative behaviors, but those two facilitating effects worked separately. Furthermore, for effect by CI, even cooperative rate was promoted by CI, but did not increasing immediately, which indicted a threshold in the promoting process (Table.3). In this experiment, the threshold was approximate CI = 0.3. For effect by social distance, a closer social distance could enhance individual’s cooperative inclination, which came to motivate more behaviors that are cooperative. Related Articles | Metrics