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Personal motivation is a key factor in the service of foster care, impending both on the welfare of the child and on the satisfaction of the carer. This paper explores the benefits, challenges and dilemmas involved in the job of professional (i.e. state-supported) foster carer in Romania–a country where the issue of child protection has drawn a great deal of international attention over the last thirty years. The principal hypothesis concerns whether the benefits, challenges and dilemmas identified by foster carers are influenced by the factors that led to their taking up this kind of work. Quantitative research was conducted using a questionnaire as the main tool. The paper takes a descriptive, cross-sectional and multifactorial approach. Sampling was carried out by self-selecting method, and the study involved 51 participants. The research project identified a statistically significant variation in the challenges and dilemmas reported by foster carers. Thus, the results of the study show that the majority of the carers indicate a primarily intrinsic motivation for their work. By way of conclusion, it is argued that social workers, operating in collaboration with multidisciplinary teams, can offer carers support in managing more difficult periods in the child–carer relationship, thus enhancing the sustainability of the foster care service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes seasonal effects and their potential drivers in charitable giving. We conduct two studies to analyze whether donations to the German Red Cross differ between the Christmas season and summer. In study 1 we find that in the pre-Christmas shopping season prosocial subjects almost donate 50% less compared to prosocials in summer. In study 2 we replicate the low donations in the Christmas season. In an extensive questionnaire we control for several causes of this effect. The data suggest that the higher prosocials’ self-reported stress level, the lower the donations. The higher their relative savings, the lower the giving. Our questionnaire rules out that “donation fatigue” matters. That is, donations do not depend on the number of charitable campaigns subjects are confronted with and their engagement in these activities during Christmas season outside the lab. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been decades of research on the usability and educational value of augmented reality. However, less is known about how augmented reality affects social interactions. The current paper presents three studies that test the social psychological effects of augmented reality. Study 1 examined participants’ task performance in the presence of embodied agents and replicated the typical pattern of social facilitation and inhibition. Participants performed a simple task better, but a hard task worse, in the presence of an agent compared to when participants complete the tasks alone. Study 2 examined nonverbal behavior. Participants met an agent sitting in one of two chairs and were asked to choose one of the chairs to sit on. Participants wearing the headset never sat directly on the agent when given the choice of two seats, and while approaching, most of the participants chose the rotation direction to avoid turning their heads away from the agent. A separate group of participants chose a seat after removing the augmented reality headset, and the majority still avoided the seat previously occupied by the agent. Study 3 examined the social costs of using an augmented reality headset with others who are not using a headset. Participants talked in dyads, and augmented reality users reported less social connection to their partner compared to those not using augmented reality. Overall, these studies provide evidence suggesting that task performance, nonverbal behavior, and social connectedness are significantly affected by the presence or absence of virtual content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our personalities (who we are) influence our social relationships (how we relate to people around us), and our social relationships influence our personalities. However, little is known about the specific processes underlying the complex interplay of personality and social relationships. According to the PERSOC framework, the identification of underlying social interaction processes promotes the understanding of how personality and social relationships are expressed, develop, and influence each other over time. The aim of the present paper is twofold: First, we outline and discuss four methodological challenges that arise when trying to empirically realize a process approach to the personality-relationship interplay. Second, we describe two data sets that are designed to meet these challenges and that are open for collaborative investigations: a laboratory-based process approach (Personality Interaction Laboratory Study; PILS) and a field-based process approach (CONNECT). We provide detailed information on the samples (two student samples; PILS: N = 311; CONNECT: N = 131), procedures (longitudinal and multimethodological), and measures (personality and social relationships, appearance and behavior, interpersonal perceptions), for which we present descriptive information, reliabilities, and intercorrelations. We summarize how these studies’ designs targeted the introduced methodological challenges, discuss the advantages and limitations of laboratory- and field-based process approaches, and call for their combination. We close by outlining an open research policy, aimed at accelerated collaborative efforts to further open the process black box, ultimately leading to a better understanding of the expression, development, and complex interplay of personality and social relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many national (US) and International guidelines for physical activity provide guidance that under-active and sedentary adults can begin by accumulating moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in bouts as brief as 10 minutes. This guidance fits well with Goal Setting theory in that goals should be realistic and achievable, and is also consistent with Social Cognitive theory since achieving small goals should boost self-efficacy and thus, encourage continued physical activity. In contrast, Behavioral Economics might suggest that fewer, longer bouts would be more conducive to the adoption of physical activity due to the costs incurred with each separate bout of MVPA. This paper examines patterns of MVPA adoption among a sample of under-active adults from the perspective of goal setting theory and behavioral economics to explore specific strategies to help people who are in the early stages of PA activity adoption. Under-active men and women (N = 225; mean age = 46 ± 10; mean BMI = 28 ± 4.48) who enrolled in a PA intervention participated in a single goal setting session at enrollment. Participants were encouraged to set realistic goals and to increase their activity to meet national recommendations (150 minutes/week of moderate to vigorous physical activity [MVPA]) by the 6-month follow up. This process included identifying a specific frequency goal (days/week) and session duration goal (minutes/day). At baseline, participants reported average weekly MVPA of 14.59 min (± 24), which increased to an average of 140.52 (± 143.55) at 6 months. MVPA goals at baseline averaged 33.24 min/day (± 18.08) and 3.85 days/week (± 1.31). Analyses showed that longer session duration goals set at baseline were associated with more weekly minutes of MVPA at 6 months (b = 1.26, SE = 0.58, t = 2.17, p = 0.03). There was no significant association between goals for number of days per week (frequency) or total minutes of weekly MVPA (minutes x frequency) and MVPA at 6 months. Widely promoted guidelines for uptake of physical activity recommend accumulating physical activity in bouts as short as 10 minutes. This recommendation may ultimately hinder the adoption of physical activity among under-active and sedentary individuals. For the purposes of behavioral adoption of MVPA, more ambitious session duration goals appear to result in higher levels of physical activity participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a family of models that allows us to estimate egos’ unobserved action dispositions from a joint behavioural outcome of a dyadic social interaction process of both egos’ and alters’ action dispositions. The method is put to test on a data set containing two different types of dyadic activities of high relevance for the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STI), condom use and anal sex. The data consists of individuals older than 15 years old who visited one of the nine youth clinics in the Vastra Gotaland region of Sweden between February 2010 and March 2011 for STI testing. This is hence a group of special interest for STI interventions. We cannot find any difference in condom disposition between women and men. Condoms are initially used more often in less risky types of relationships, especially if the partner ends up as a main partner. When studying the disposition towards anal sex we do however find a difference between men and women. Women are more against practising anal sex than men while the majority of men are neutral towards anal sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persuasion is at the core of norm creation, emergence of collective action, and solutions to ‘tragedy of the commons’ problems. In this paper, we show that the directionality of friendship ties affect the extent to which individuals can influence the behavior of each other. Moreover, we find that people are typically poor at perceiving the directionality of their friendship ties and that this can significantly limit their ability to engage in cooperative arrangements. This could lead to failures in establishing compatible norms, acting together, finding compromise solutions, and persuading others to act. We then suggest strategies to overcome this limitation by using two topological characteristics of the perceived friendship network. The findings of this paper have significant consequences for designing interventions that seek to harness social influence for collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though chronic stress is a pervasive problem in contemporary societies and is known to potentially precede both adverse psychological as well as physiological conditions, its effects on decision making have not been systematically investigated. In this paper, we focus on the relation between self-reported chronic stress and self-reported as well as behaviorally shown social preferences. We measured chronic stress with the Trier Inventory for Chronic Stress. To determine social preferences, participants played a double anonymous dictator game. In order to control for the robustness of social preferences we employed a 2x2x2x2 design where we manipulated four variables: the frame (Give to Recipient vs. Take from Recipient), the decision maker’s gender (Female vs. Male), the recipient’s gender (Female vs. Male), and the nature of the reward (Real vs. Hypothetical). Results show that perceived chronic stress is not significantly related to social preferences in monetarily rewarded dictator decisions for either gender. However, women’s displayed preferences for hypothetical rewards are negatively correlated to chronic stress levels. This indicates that higher chronic stress in women is associated with lower hypothetical transfers but not with altered actual behavior as compared to non-stressed women. For men, we do not observe such effects. Our findings suggest that, while chronic stress leaves social preferences unaffected in an incentive compatible task, it might foster what could be interpreted as a decrease in self-image promotion in women. Thus, we conclude that in a thoroughly controlled behavioral task differences in reported chronic stress do not entail differences in social preferences, but relate to variation in hypothetical decisions for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arrogant behavior is as old as human nature. Nonetheless, the factors that cause people to be perceived as arrogant have received very little research attention. In this paper, we focused on a typical manifestation of arrogance: dismissive behavior. In particular, we explored the conditions under which a person who dismissed advice would be perceived as arrogant. We examined two factors: the advisee’s competence, and the manner in which he or she dismissed the advice. The effect of the advisee’s competence was tested by manipulating two competence cues: relative expertise, and the outcome of the advice dismissal (i.e., whether the advisee was right or wrong). In six studies (N = 1304), participants made arrogance judgments about protagonists who dismissed the advice of another person while the advisees’ relative expertise (compared to the advisor), their eventual correctness, and the manner of their dismissal were manipulated in between-participant designs. Across various types of decisions and advisee-advisor relationships, the results show that less expert, less correct, and ruder advisees are perceived as more arrogant. We also find that outcome trumps expertise, and manner trumps both expertise and outcomes. In two additional studies (N = 101), we examined people’s naïve theories about the relative importance of the aforementioned arrogance cues. These studies showed that people overestimate the role of expertise information as compared to the role of interpersonal manner and outcomes. Thus, our results suggest that people may commit arrogant faux pas because they erroneously expect that their expertise will justify their dismissive behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Poor service user experiences are often reported on mental health inpatient wards. Crisis houses are an alternative, but evidence is limited. This paper investigates therapeutic alliances in acute wards and crisis houses, exploring how far stronger therapeutic alliance may underlie greater client satisfaction in crisis houses. Methods and Findings: Mixed methods were used. In the quantitative component, 108 crisis house and 247 acute ward service users responded to measures of satisfaction, therapeutic relationships, informal peer support, recovery and negative events experienced during the admission. Linear regressions were conducted to estimate the association between service setting and measures, and to model the factors associated with satisfaction. Qualitative interviews exploring therapeutic alliances were conducted with service users and staff in each setting and analysed thematically. Results: We found that therapeutic alliances, service user satisfaction and informal peer support were greater in crisis houses than on acute wards, whilst self-rated recovery and numbers of negative events were lower. Adjusted multivariable analyses suggest that therapeutic relationships, informal peer support and negative experiences related to staff may be important factors in accounting for greater satisfaction in crisis houses. Qualitative results suggest factors that influence therapeutic alliances include service user perceptions of basic human qualities such as kindness and empathy in staff and, at service level, the extent of loss of liberty and autonomy. Conclusions and Implications: We found that service users experience better therapeutic relationships and higher satisfaction in crisis houses compared to acute wards, although we cannot exclude the possibility that differences in service user characteristics contribute to this. This finding provides some support for the expansion of crisis house provision. Further research is needed to investigate why acute ward service users experience a lack of compassion and humanity from ward staff and how this could be changed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Patients with schizophrenia often experience problems regulating their emotions. Non-affected relatives show similar difficulties, although to a lesser extent, and the neural basis of such difficulties remains to be elucidated. In the current paper we investigated whether schizophrenia patients, non-affected siblings and healthy controls (HC) exhibit differences in brain activation during emotion regulation. Methods: All subjects (n = 20 per group) performed an emotion regulation task while they were in an fMRI scanner. The task contained two experimental conditions for the down-regulation of emotions (reappraise and suppress), in which IAPS pictures were used to generate a negative affect. We also assessed whether the groups differed in emotion regulation strategies used in daily life by means of the emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ). Results: Though the overall negative affect was higher for patients as well as for siblings compared to HC for all conditions, all groups reported decreased negative affect after both regulation conditions. Nonetheless, neuroimaging results showed hypoactivation relative to HC in VLPFC, insula, middle temporal gyrus, caudate and thalamus for patients when reappraising negative pictures. In siblings, the same pattern was evident as in patients, but only in cortical areas. Conclusions: Given that all groups performed similarly on the emotion regulation task, but differed in overall negative affect ratings and brain activation, our findings suggest reduced levels of emotion regulation processing in neural circuits in patients with schizophrenia. Notably, this also holds for siblings, albeit to a lesser extent, indicating that it may be part and parcel of a vulnerability for psychosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific research yields inconsistent and contradictory evidence relating religion to moral judgments and outcomes, yet most people on earth nonetheless view belief in God (or gods) as central to morality, and many view atheists with suspicion and scorn. To evaluate intuitions regarding a causal link between religion and morality, this paper tested intuitive moral judgments of atheists and other groups. Across five experiments (N = 1,152), American participants intuitively judged a wide variety of immoral acts (e.g., serial murder, consensual incest, necrobestiality, cannibalism) as representative of atheists, but not of eleven other religious, ethnic, and cultural groups. Even atheist participants judged immoral acts as more representative of atheists than of other groups. These findings demonstrate a prevalent intuition that belief in God serves a necessary function in inhibiting immoral conduct, and may help explain persistent negative perceptions of atheists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]