When drivers see red: car color frustrators and drivers' aggressiveness.

Research has found that exposition to red is associated with physiological activation and fighting spirit. A field experiment was conducted to explore whether the color of cars is related to an aggressive response. Drivers waiting at a traffic light were blocked by an experimental car. The color of the car varied (blue, red, green, black, and white). The amount of time that elapsed until the drivers responded by honking their horns or beaming their headlights was the dependent variable. It was found that the red car elicited early aggressive response.

[A simple method to determine and evaluate "effect size"]. / L'importance d'un effet : méthodologie simple de détermination et d'évaluation de l'« effect size ¼

Measurement of effect sizes is a practice that is increasingly encouraged, indeed required, by journals of psychological and social behaviour, in addition to the standard tests of statistical significance. This paper is a methodological note presenting the conceptual interest of the effect size, its main indicators and their interpretation.

Predictive value of age for coping: the role of self-efficacy, social support satisfaction and perceived stress.

OBJECTIVES: The present study was prompted by the lack of agreement on how coping changes with age. We postulate that the effect of age on coping is mediated by coping resources, such as self-efficacy, perceived stress and social support satisfaction. METHOD: The participants in the study were community dwelling and aged between 22 and 88 years old. Data were collected using the General Self Efficacy Scale, the Social Support Questionnaire, the Perceived Stress Scale, the Geriatric Depression Scale, the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (life-events) and the Way of Coping Checklist. RESULTS: We performed path analyses for two competitive structural models: M1 (age does not directly affect coping processes) and M2 (age directly affects coping processes). Our results supported a modified version of M2. Age was not found to predict either of two coping strategies: problem-focused coping is predicted by self-efficacy and social support satisfaction; emotion-focused coping is predicted by social support satisfaction and perceived stress. DISCUSSION: Changes in coping over the lifespan reflect the effectiveness with which a person's adaptive processes deal with age-associated changes in self-referred beliefs and environment perception.

A web replication of Snyder, Decker, and Bersheid's (1977) experiment on the self-fulfilling nature of social stereotypes.

Authors instructed two groups of male participants to respond to a web personal advertisement that had a photograph of either an attractive or unattractive woman. In the physically attractiveness condition, it was found that the message was longer and contained few spelling and grammatical mistakes than in the condition where the male's participant believe that the personal advertisement came from an unattractive woman. Two undergradutates females who were unaware of the experimental conditions judged that they had more probability to respond to the male's message in the physically attractiveness condition.

Sound level of environmental music and drinking behavior: a field experiment with beer drinkers.

OBJECTIVE: It had been found that environmental music was associated with an increase in alcohol consumption. The presence versus absence of music, high versus slow tempo and the different styles of environmental music is associated with different level of alcohol consumption. However, the effect of the level of the environmental music played in a bar still remained in question. METHODS: Forty male beer drinkers were observed in a bar. According to a random distribution, patrons were exposed to the usual level of environmental music played in 2 bars where the experiment was carried out or were exposed to a high level. RESULTS: The results show that high level volume led to increase alcohol consumption and reduced the average amount of time spent by the patrons to drink their glass. CONCLUSIONS: The impact of environmental music on consumption was discussed and the "arousal" hypothesis and the negative effect of loud music on social interaction were used to explain our results.

Foot-in-the-door technique using a courtship request: a field experiment.

"Foot-in-the-door" is a well-known compliance technique which increases compliance to a request. Many investigations with this paradigm have generally used prosocial requests to test its effect. Evaluation of the effect of foot-in-the-door was carried out with a courtship request. 360 young women were solicited in the street to accept having a drink with a young male confederate. In the foot-in-the-door condition, before being solicited to have a drink, the young woman was asked to give directions to the confederate or to give him a light for his cigarette. Analysis showed foot-in-the-door was associated with greater compliance to the second request. The theoretical implication of such results with this nonprosocial request are discussed.

[The effort-reward imbalance and negative spill-over between professional and personal life among dairy farmers: effects on job burnout]. / Le déséquilibre efforts-récompenses et les débordements entre vie au travail, vie privée chez les éleveurs laitiers: leurs effets sur l'épuisement professionnel.

The aim of this study is to test the hypothesis according to which the imbalance between effort and reward, as well as to what degree the interference of professional life upon one's private life, can affect the level of job burnout felt by a group of dairy farmers. The sample group was composed of dairy farmers (N=104) from Eure who were sent a questionnaire by mail. Each questionnaire was designed to collect results which could be analysed with the help of the Siegrist scale (the effort-reward imbalance scale), the Swing scale and the MBI (General Survey). The data show that effort-reward imbalance does not in itself explain the burnout. On the other hand, negative professional/personal interaction strongly contributed to it. In addition, no difference was observed based on the sex of the worker. The limits and contributions of the study are presented in the discussion.

Judgment of riskiness: impact of personality, naive theories and heuristic thinking among female students.

Three different studies were conducted to examine the impact of heuristic reasoning in the perception of health-related events: lifetime risk of breast cancer (Study 1, n = 468), subjective life expectancy (Study 2, n = 449), and subjective age of onset of menopause (Study 3, n = 448). In each study, three experimental conditions were set up: control, anchoring heuristic and availability heuristic. Analyses of Covariance controlling for optimism, depressive mood, Locus of Control, hypochondriac tendencies and subjective health, indicated significant effect of experimental conditions on perceived breast-cancer risk (p = 0.000), subjective life expectancy (p = 0.000) and subjective onset of menopause (p = 0.000). Indeed, all findings revealed that availability and anchoring heuristics were being used to estimate personal health-related events. The results revealed that some covariates, hypochondriac tendencies in Study 1, optimism, depressive mood and subjective health in Study 2 and internal locus of control in Study 3 had significant impact on judgment of riskiness.