Distanced self-talk increases rational self-interest.

Does stepping back to evaluate a situation from a distanced perspective lead us to be selfish or fair? This question has been of philosophical interest for centuries, and, more recently, the focus of extensive empirical inquiry. Yet, extant research reveals a puzzle: some studies suggest that adopting a distanced perspective will produce more rationally self-interested behavior, whereas others suggest that it will produce more impartial behavior. Here we adjudicate between these perspectives by testing the effects of adopting a third-person perspective on decision making in a task that pits rational self-interest against impartiality: the dictator game. Aggregating across three experiments (N = 774), participants who used third-person (i.e., distanced) vs. first-person (i.e., immersed) self-talk during the dictator game kept more money for themselves. We discuss these results in light of prior research showing that psychological distance can promote cooperation and fairmindedness and how the effect of psychological distance on moral decision-making may be sensitive to social context.

Younger Women Living with Chronic Disease: Comparative Challenges, Resiliencies, and Needs in Heart Disease and Breast Cancer.

Background: Younger women with chronic disease (<60 years of age), especially women with stereotypically "men's" heart disease (HD), are understudied. Unique difficulties may occur with HD, which is less commonly associated with women, compared with breast cancer (BC). Similarities may also exist across younger women, as chronic disease is less normative in younger people. Intersections of gender, age, and the specific disease experience require greater attention for improving women's health. This exploratory qualitative study compared younger women's experiences of HD or BC. Methods: Semistructured interviews with 20 women (n = 10 per disease) were analyzed using applied thematic analysis. Results: Amidst building careers, intimate relationships, and families, women felt thwarted by disease-related functional problems. Cognitive-behavioral coping strategies spurred resilience, including integrating the illness experience with self-identity. Barriers arose when medical professionals used representativeness heuristics (e.g., chronic disease occurs in older age). Important experiences in HD included worsened self-image from disability, negative impact of illness invisibility, and persisting isolation from lacking peer availability. Initial medical care reported by women with HD may reflect gender biases (e.g., HD missed in emergency settings and initial diagnostics). New information provided by the younger women includes limited illness-related optimism in women with HD facing age and gender stereotypes, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of peer availability in BC. Conclusions: Greater public awareness of younger women with chronic disease, alongside structural support and connection with similarly challenged peers, is suggested. As advocacy for BC awareness and action has strengthened over past decades, similar efforts are needed for younger women with HD.

Does counting emotion words on online social networks provide a window into people's subjective experience of emotion? A case study on Facebook.

Psychologists have long debated whether it is possible to assess how people subjectively feel without asking them. The recent proliferation of online social networks has recently added a fresh chapter to this discussion, with research now suggesting that it is possible to index people's subjective experience of emotion by simply counting the number of emotion words contained in their online social network posts. Whether the conclusions that emerge from this work are valid, however, rests on a critical assumption: that people's usage of emotion words in their posts accurately reflects how they feel. Although this assumption is widespread in psychological research, here we suggest that there are reasons to challenge it. We corroborate these assertions in 2 ways. First, using data from 4 experience-sampling studies of emotion in young adults, we show that people's reports of how they feel throughout the day neither predict, nor are predicted by, their use of emotion words on Facebook. Second, using simulations we show that although significant relationships emerge between the use of emotion words on Facebook and self-reported affect with increasingly large numbers of observations, the relationship between these variables was in the opposite of the theoretically expected direction 50% of the time (i.e., 3 of 6 models that we performed simulations on). In contrast to counting emotion words, we show that judges' ratings of the emotionality of participants' Facebook posts consistently predicts how people feel across all analyses. These findings shed light on how to draw inferences about emotion using online social network data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Perceptual load is not always a crucial determinant of early versus late selection.

The perceptual load hypothesis posits that early and late selection occurs under conditions of high and low perceptual load, respectively. Recent work, however, suggests that the absence of a congruency effect in high-load trials - the behavioral signature of early selection in studies of perceptual load - may not provide an exhaustive index of failing to identify task-irrelevant distractors. Prior research also suggests that the congruency sequence effect (CSE) - a modulation of the congruency effect after incongruent relative to congruent trials - provides complementary information about whether participants identify distractors. We therefore conducted a novel test of the perceptual load hypothesis that employed both the congruency effect and the CSE as measures of distractor identification. Experiment 1 revealed that distractors were identified not only in low-load trials but also in high-load trials wherein there was no overall congruency effect. Experiment 2 further revealed which task parameters allowed us to observe such "hidden" distractor identification. These findings suggest that perceptual load is not always a crucial determinant of early versus late selection.

The congruency sequence effect transfers across different response modes.

The congruency effect observed in distracter interference tasks is usually smaller after incongruent relative to congruent trials. However, the nature of control processes underlying this congruency sequence effect (CSE) remains a topic of active debate. For example, while some researchers have suggested that these processes are recruited only when participants utilize the same response mode (e.g., the same hand) to respond in consecutive trials, others have argued that these processes can operate independently of response mode. To distinguish between these views, we investigated whether changes of response mode across consecutive trials influence the CSE in a prime-probe task (Experiment 1) or a flanker task (Experiment 2). Such changes did not influence the CSE in either task. Further, the CSE was significant even when participants utilized different response modes (i.e., different hands) to respond in consecutive trials. These findings indicate that control processes underlying the CSE can operate independently of response mode and thereby clarify the nature of control processes that minimize distraction from irrelevant stimuli.