Achievement goal promotion at university: social desirability and social utility of mastery and performance goals.

The present research examines the ambivalence of achievement goal promotion at university, and more specifically in the psychology curriculum. On the one hand, psychology teachers explicitly encourage mastery but not performance (neither approach nor avoidance) goals. On the other hand, the selection process encourages the endorsement of not only mastery but also performance-approach goals. In fact, it would seem that both performance-approach and mastery goals are valued in a university context. Two pilot studies verified the above assumptions. Subsequently, Experiments 1, 2, and 3 showed that each of these goals corresponds to different aspects of social value. Indeed, high endorsement of mastery goals was associated with being judged as both likable (social desirability) and likely to succeed (social utility). High endorsement of performance-approach goals enhanced social utility judgments but reduced perceived likability. Performance-avoidance goals only enhanced perceived likability. The discussion focuses on the 2 functions of university, namely education (apparent in the official discourse of teachers) and selection (apparent in the university structure), and on the perceived value of achievement goals.

Automatic effects of alcohol and aggressive cues on aggressive thoughts and behaviors.

Numerous studies have shown that alcohol increases aggression. In this article it is proposed that the link between alcohol and aggression is so strong that mere exposure to alcohol-related cues will automatically activate aggressive thoughts and behaviors. Two experiments tested this automaticity theory of alcohol-related aggression. In Experiment 1, participants exposed to alcohol- or weapon-related primes made faster lexical decisions about aggression-related words than did participants exposed to neutral primes. In Experiment 2, participants exposed to alcohol- or aggression-related subliminal primes were more aggressive toward the experimenter than were participants exposed to neutral subliminal primes. In both experiments, the effects of alcohol-related cues were as strong as the effect of aggression-related cues on aggressive thoughts and behaviors. People do not need to drink a drop of alcohol to become aggressive; exposure to alcohol cues is enough to automatically increase aggression.

Species-specific inhibition of cerebral malaria in mice coinfected with Plasmodium spp.

Recent epidemiological observations suggest that clinical evolution of Plasmodium falciparum infections might be influenced by the concurrent presence of another Plasmodium species, and such mixed-species infections are now known to occur frequently in residents of most areas of endemicity. We used mice infected with P. berghei ANKA (PbA), a model for cerebral malaria (CM), to investigate the influence of experimental mixed-species infections on the expression of this pathology. Remarkably, the development of CM was completely inhibited by the simultaneous presence of P. yoelii yoelii but not that of P. vinckei or another line of P. berghei. In the protected coinfected mice, the accumulation of CD8(+) T cells in the brain vasculature, a pivotal step in CM pathogenesis, was found to be abolished. Protection from CM was further found to be associated with species-specific suppression of PbA multiplication. These observations establish the concept of mixed Plasmodium species infections as potential modulators of pathology and open novel avenues to investigate mechanisms implicated in the pathogenesis of malaria.