Subjects: Other Disciplines >> Synthetic discipline submitted time 2023-10-09 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Globally, suicide is universally among the top twenty leading causes of death. Suicide risk, referring to the probability of occurrence of suicide attempts, has been widely studied, yet still lacks a reliable explanation as to the mechanisms of the suicide risk and its effective intervention. In the present article, we focus on a phenomenon that is both prevalent, culturally distinct, and challenging to the existing theories of suicide: In most countries in the world, males have a higher suicide rate than females; however, the sex ratio of the suicide of the Chinese population is markedly different and sometimes even reversed, meaning the male/female suicide ratio is less than one. Extant popular theories of suicide, such as the diathesis-stress model (Zubin & Spring, 1977), social integration and regulation theory (Durkheim, 2005), and interpersonal theory of suicide (Joiner, 2005; van Orden et al., 2010) do not provide ready explanations of this phenomenon. The present discussion aims to sort out the psychological theories and risk factors related to suicidal behavior, focusing on identifying risk factors and possible mechanisms that may contribute to sex differences in suicide. Most previous explanations of the sex ratio of suicide held the following two viewpoints: (1) Males were more aggressive, more success-orientated, and more risk-taking with a higher rate of injury-producing behaviors than females, resulting in more males choosing lethal suicide methods, resulting in a higher suicide rate than females; (2) Cultural and social norms allow females to engage more in help-seeking behaviors but discourage males from showing their soft sides. In addition, suicide is reviewed more as a masculine behavior. Considering the challenging Chinese sex ratio of suicide rates, a recent theory of suicide has proposed four psychological strains as causes of suicide: conflicting values, conflicts between desires and realities, relative deprivation, and poor coping skills in the face of a life crisis. In an attempt to search for psychological mechanisms of suicide in general and of the sex ratio in suicide risk in particular, we identified, from previous theories and research findings, two possible pathways leading to sex-specific suicide risks: (1) the number and quality of coping methods males and females use differentially to deal with psychological stress, and (2) cultural-specific social expectations for stress coping. The number of methods and socially available means for coping psychological stress may vary for males and females. For instance, men in China may have more effective social means to copy with psychological stress than women. In addition, social expectations regarding ability to cope with and tolerance to stressful events may also differ depending on the sex of the respondent. If men expect women to be more resilient to stressful events in life more than women actually do, such sex-specific expectancy may aggravate the stressful experience of women, reducing their chance of being helped and increasing their risk of suicide. From the perspective of domain-specific risk-taking, suicide risk is a unique domain of risk that is sensitive to life-history factors such as age, sex, birth order, and childhood family experience. Based on the predictions derived from life-history theory, we suggested several directions for future research to understand the sex ratio of suicide risk and to identify sex-specific and effective intervention strategies.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： This research project explores the emotional mechanisms underlying prosocial and antisocial behaviors in public arenas. By synthesizing several influential theories concerning the roles of emotions in decision-making, we developed a hypothesis of anticipatory emotions as an information source for social risks. We define anticipatory emotions as any discrete emotions that are induced from anticipating expected choice outcomes and felt at the time of decision-making, and in turn, regulate the decision behavior. Risky events in social and public contexts are characterized by their destructive, emergent, transient, and unpredictable nature. Thus, the reactions to these risky events need to be quick and unambiguous. However, the probabilities of possible consequences associated with these reactions are usually hard to reckon with. Under such conditions, anticipatory emotions provide a prompt and overall risk assessment as a substitute for expected utility, reflecting both the likelihood and severity of expected choice outcomes. We view anticipatory emotions as mental representations of social risks. We predict that different profiles of anticipatory emotions collectively distinguish different types of social risks. Moreover, the combinations of anticipatory emotions are culturally specific. The more recent categorization of the face, dignity, and honor cultures allows us to make predictions about the emotional characteristics of each culture. Overall, the proposed four studies with multiple experiments will examine how anticipatory emotions influence reactions to public risks. We explore how dispositional, social, and cultural factors regulate prosocial and antisocial behaviors. The results of these studies will benefit the research in risk management, public policymaking, and provide scientific support to public education, counseling, and civil service training.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Previous studies on self-other welfare tradeoff focus more on the gain situations than the loss situations. Numerous studies have explored the influence of social distance on the tradeoff but ignored the complex interactions among gain and loss situations, others’ reference points, and psychological distance. This study investigated the influences of others’ reference points and psychological distance on self-other welfare tradeoff in gain and loss situations by using welfare tradeoff rate (WTR) as an index of altruistic degree in self-other welfare tradeoff. In Experiment 1, the effect of WTR on the gain and loss situations and its mechanism were explored. In Experiment 2, others’ reference points were added as another factor to examine their influence on WTR and interaction with the gain and loss situations. In Experiment 3, the psychological distance variable was further introduced to investigate its influence on WTR and interaction with the gain and loss situations and others’ reference points. Results of Experiment 1 showed no significant difference in WTR between gain and loss situations. In Experiment 2, WTR in the gain situation was found to be significantly higher than that in the loss situation, and WTR was reduced when others approached the bottom line, goal, and status quo. Further analyses showed that the WTR under the gain situation was significantly higher than that under the loss situation when others approached the bottom line. Meanwhile, no significant difference was observed in the WTR under the gain and loss situations when others approached the status quo and goal. In Experiment 3, the WTR of close psychological distance was found to be higher than that of far psychological distance, and the main effect of gain and loss situations disappeared. Psychological distance had complex interaction effects with gain and loss situations and others’ reference points. These findings contribute to a deep understanding of the asymmetric effects of gain and loss situations, tri-reference-point theory, and related findings from studies on social discounting and self-other decision- making differences. They also have certain practical implications for individuals, organizations, and countries in understanding and dealing with the relationships between ones’ selves and others.
Subjects: Psychology >> Other Disciplines of Psychology submitted time 2019-09-22
Abstract： Death awareness refers to thinking about and the recognition of the inevitability of personal death. As a critical component of the human-unique ability of autonoetic consciousness, death awareness can be viewed as a cognitive adaptation for time management. We hypothesize that activating death awareness may affect intertemporal choice, in which people make tradeoffs between rewards across different time points. Such effects of death awareness on intertemporal choice may be mediated by time perception, a subjective assessment of the speed of time passage. In this research, we investigate the impact of death awareness on time perception and intertemporal choice, and the relationships among them. Study 1 examined the relationship between death awareness and time estimation. Eighty-three college students were randomly assigned to either a death awareness activation group where mortality was made salient to the participants or a control group where the participants imagined their toothache experience. After a word-search distraction task, the participants in both groups completed a time-passage (400ms, 800ms, 1200ms, 1600ms) estimation task. The results showed that the participants in the group of death awareness activation gave significantly shorter estimates than the participants in the control group. Study 2 (n = 123) extended the measure of time perception to a more extended period and also measured the delay discounting rate of the participants from their intertemporal choices between a smaller-and-sooner reward and a larger-and-later reward. The participants were randomly assigned to either a death awareness activation group or a toothache awareness activation group. The participants then indicated how long ten years was to them by marking on a line with the statement “10 years is very short” on the left end side of the line and the statement “10 years is very long” on the right end side. The participants in the death-awareness activation group marked the line closer to the left end (“life is short”) than those in the control group. As predicted, the participants in the death-awareness activation group had a lower delay discounting rate and were more future-oriented in making intertemporal choices. Moreover, bootstrapping analysis revealed a partial mediation effect of time-passage estimation between death awareness and delay discounting. In conclusion, death awareness serves adaptive functions in time management. Activating death awareness makes people feel that time passes more quickly and promotes future-oriented decisions.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2018-09-07 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： 本文提出了决策中不确定性的五种类型及其行为学和心理学的应对机制：用简捷启发式替代加权求和应对信息不确定性, 用直觉应对认知不确定性, 用价值观预测选择偏好应对行为不确定性, 用决策参照点的权重替代概率应对结果不确定性, 用时间换时间以降低延迟折扣应对未来不确定性。新行为经济学应当通过“为什么”的功能性分析, 找到行为助推的心理杠杆。化解不确定性本身就是一种有效的行为助推; 化繁为简是行为助推的关键所在。
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