Positive thinking about the future in newspaper reports and presidential addresses predicts economic downturn

Testing Moral Disengagement and Proteus Effect Predictions on Feelings of Guilt and Self-Empowerment Attributed to Bearing Guns

This study (179 participants, mean age 19. 98, 85% female) examined how violence justification via avatar role manipulations affected first-person shooter game players' subsequent feelings of guilt and self-empowerment attributed to bearing guns in the real-world. In support of the moral disengagement in violent video games model, an independent samples t-test suggested that participants assigned to play as gang members shooting at police officers felt guiltier than those assigned to play as police officers shooting at gang members. In support of Proteus effect predictions linked with self-perception and priming mechanisms, a one-way repeated measures analysis of variance suggested that self-empowerment attributed to carrying guns for both avatar roles increased from baseline to after gameplay, but avatar roles did not influence the increase. The lack of influence could be because participants did not adopt avatar behaviors with undesirable connotations. The results highlight avatar-user bonds through which the associations raised by virtual personas affected players' emotions and self-perception when engaging in simulated violence.

Positive fantasies and negative emotions in soccer fans

Positive thinking is often assumed to foster effort and success. Research has shown, however, that positive thinking in the form of fantasies about achieving an idealised future predicts less (not more) effort and success and more (not less) depressive symptoms over time. This relationship was mediated by people having invested little effort and achieved little success. Here, we ask a different question. We investigate the emotional consequences of positive fantasies about futures that people cannot act on. Specifically, we analyse these consequences when the future fantasies fail to come true (one's favourite soccer team loses). Study 1 provided correlational evidence. The more positively soccer fans fantasised about their favourite team winning an upcoming match, the stronger were their negative emotions when their team lost. That is, the more sad, disappointed, and frustrated they felt. Study 2 provided experimental evidence. Soccer fans who were led to fantasise positively about their team winning an upcoming match reported feeling stronger negative emotions after their team lost than those who were led to fantasise negatively. Positive fantasies were not related to how positive participants felt after their team won (joy, happiness, relief). We discuss theoretical and applied implications for emotion regulation in everyday life.

Best uses of p-values and complementary measures in medical research: Recent developments in the frequentist and Bayesian frameworks

The p-value is a classical proposal of statistical inference, dating back to the seminal contributions by Fisher, Neyman and E. Pearson. However, p-values have been frequently misunderstood and misused in practice, and medical research is not an exception. In recent years, in several statistical and applied journals, a debate erupted about the need of clear guidelines in reporting p-values, which culminated with the publication of the ASA statement in 2016. In this paper, we assess strengths and limitations of p-values and we assert that in applied research the p-value should be supplemented by other measures, such as the Bayes factor, the Bayes false discovery rate and the local Bayes false discovery rate. We also review a recent proposal by Bayarri et al. from a Bayesian perspective that has the advantage of introducing an indicator, the rejection odds, which keeps into account both pre- and post-experimental information, and could also have a straightforward frequentist interpretation. We conduct a delimited numerical study that investigates on the relation of the Bayes factor with its maximum, and of the local Bayes false discovery rate with its minimum under different distributional assumptions and parameter choices. We illustrate the concepts expressed in theory with an example in clinical oncology, namely a randomized trial on the effectiveness of a new chemotherapy for patients with AIDS and Kaposi's sarcoma.

Negative Reflections About Positive Psychology: On Constraining the Field to a Focus on Happiness and Personal Achievement

“Positive” psychology has gained a dominant voice within and outside the field of psychology. Although critiques of this perspective have been rendered, including by humanistic psychologists, psychology scholars have offered minimum space for critical reflections of this movement in contrast to its critiques existing inside and outside the academia in other fields. Therefore, this contribution seeks to explicate emerging systematic critiques of positive psychology by scholars and practitioners from within mental health fields as well as from philosophy, medicine, education, business, and cultural studies and to highlight sociocultural discussions of positive movement by the culture critics. Last, we offer reflections on positive psychology as immigrant professionals from non-Western backgrounds with an emphasis on existential and humanities-based perspectives. We also highlight that the tenets and experiments based on “positive” psychological practices may have especially detrimental effect on marginalized individuals and communities. This contribution seeks to invite a critical dialogue in the field regarding positive psychology within and outside humanistic psychology and psychology in general.

Motivational power of future time perspective: Meta-analyses in education, work, and health

Future time perspective (FTP) may predict individual attitudes and behaviors. However, FTP research includes different FTP conceptualizations and outcomes which hinder generalizing its findings. To solve the inconsistencies in FTP research and generalize the magnitude of FTP as a driver of motivation and behavior, we conducted the first systematical synthesis of FTP relationships in three crucial life domains. Our meta-analyses of FTP studies in education (k = 28), work (k = 17), and health (k = 32) involved N = 31,558 participants, and used a conceptual model for grouping FTP constructs. To address different outcome types, we applied the Theory of Planned Behavior when coding the studies. FTP relationships with outcomes were small-to-medium, were generalizable across domains, and were strongest when the FTP construct included a mixture of cognition, behavioral intention, and affect and, in education, when the FTP measure was domain specific rather than general. There were cross-cultural differences in FTP-outcome relationships. The strength of the FTP-outcome types relationship varied for attitudes, perceived behavioral control, behavioral intention, and behaviors. The lowest effect sizes were found for FTP predicting actual behaviors in education, work, and health and between FTP and health attitudes. Theoretical implications of the findings and future research directions are discussed.

Pragmatic Prospection: How and Why People Think about the Future

In the present, the past is more knowable than the future—but people think far more about the future than the past. Both facts derive from the principle that the future can be changed whereas the past cannot. Our theory of pragmatic prospection holds that people think about the future so as to guide actions to bring about desirable outcomes. It proposes that thoughts about the future begin by imagining what one wants to happen, which is thus initially optimistic. A second stage of such prospective thinking maps out how to bring that about, and this stage is marked by consideration of obstacles, requisite steps, and other potential problems, and so it tends toward cautious realism and even pessimism. Pragmatic prospection presents a form of teleology, in which brains can anticipate possible future events and use those cognitions to guide behavior. Toward that end, it invokes meaning, consistent with evidence that thinking about the future is highly meaningful. Prospection often has narrative structure, involving a series of events in a temporal sequence linked together by meaning. Emotion is useful for evaluating different simulations of possible future events and plans. Prospection is socially learned and rests on socially constructed scaffolding for the future (e.g., future dates). Planning is perhaps the most common form of prospection, and it exemplifies all aspects of our theory (including pragmatic utility, meaning, teleological and narrative structure, and sociality). Bracing for bad news and defensive pessimism are strategies that inspire adaptive responses to feared outcomes.

When Aspirations Exceed Expectations: Quixotic Hope Increases Depression among Students

A paradox exists in modern schooling: students are simultaneously more positive about the future and more depressed than ever. We suggest that these two phenomena may be linked. Two studies demonstrated that students are more likely to be depressed when educational aspirations exceed expectations. In Study 1 (N = 85) aspiring to a thesis grade higher than one expected predicted greater depression at the beginning and end of the academic year. In Study 2 (N = 2820) aspiring to a level of education (e.g., attending college) higher than one expected to achieve predicted greater depression cross-sectionally and five years later. In both cases the negative effects of aspiring high while expecting low persisted even after controlling for whether or not students achieved their educational aspirations. These findings highlight the danger of teaching students to aspire higher without also investing time and money to ensure that students can reasonably expect to achieve their educational goals.

A taxonomy of prospection: introducing an organizational framework for future-oriented cognition

Prospection--the ability to represent what might happen in the future--is a broad concept that has been used to characterize a wide variety of future-oriented cognitions, including affective forecasting, prospective memory, temporal discounting, episodic simulation, and autobiographical planning. In this article, we propose a taxonomy of prospection to initiate the important and necessary process of teasing apart the various forms of future thinking that constitute the landscape of prospective cognition. The organizational framework that we propose delineates episodic and semantic forms of four modes of future thinking: simulation, prediction, intention, and planning. We show how this framework can be used to draw attention to the ways in which various modes of future thinking interact with one another, generate new questions about prospective cognition, and illuminate our understanding of disorders of future thinking. We conclude by considering basic cognitive processes that give rise to prospective cognitions, cognitive operations and emotional/motivational states relevant to future-oriented cognition, and the possible role of procedural or motor systems in future-oriented behavior.