Review of General Psychology

Psychologists (and subsequently the media) have defined ‘Facebook depression’ as the affective result of spending too much time on the social networking site (Selfhout et al., 2009; Kross et al., 2013). Some social psychologists have denied that Facebook is causally implicated in any such negative affect (Jelenchick et al., 2013). This article argues that if we want to understand modern mass media and new social media, we need a better understanding of the (old) psychology bequeathed us by natural selection (Barkow et al., 2012). Disentangling the relationship between social media and depression using evolutionary social competition theories of depression, I argue that the mismatch between current social milieu and the environment of evolutionary adaption affords some predictions about the use of social media as a trigger for mild depression or dysphoria. I hypothesize that users of Facebook may be more susceptible to causal triggers for mild depression under the following (specific) circumstances: (a) the greater the number of ‘friends’ that the user has online; (b) the greater the time that the user spends reading updates from this wide pool of friends; (c) the user does so regularly; and (d) the content of the updates tends to a bragging nature. I hypothesize that the frequency and the number of displays of higher status cues observed by the user may incur the perception of low relative social value among users (automatically triggering this response). The article concludes with directions for future research on the behavioral and cognitive effects of social media sites such as Facebook.

In this article, I assess several methodological concerns surrounding mentalistic interpretations of infant social cognition. Those skeptical of such interpretations have offered behavior-reading interpretations of the same phenomena, thereby leading to an extended debate that has been, often implicitly, a debate over methodology in psychological explanations. In what follows, I set out the methodological concerns that arise in assessing the two interpretations and show the critical role these concerns play in this particular debate. Although it will become clear that I contend the overall debate favors the mentalistic interpretation over the behavior-rule interpretation, I will be focusing primarily on how to conceptualize the problems under discussion, rather than trying to solve them directly. Because additional empirical and conceptual work will be required to support either interpretation, I hope to situate both past and future work within a more thoroughly methodological terrain than has been attempted to date.

As a species, humans are generally serial monogamists; in some cases mating with the same partner for years or even decades. Nonetheless, humans often mate with more than one partner over the life course, meaning that romantic pair bonds often come to an end. Prior research has tentatively suggested that a mental mechanism might exist that facilitates severing the romantic bond between mates. Put differently, because romantic love is a species-typical trait, all members of the human species may come equipped with the mental hardware for both falling in love as well as for ending a relationship. Currently, the evolutionary, cognitive, neurobiological, and genetic underpinnings of human mate ejection have yet to be fully elucidated. We examine each of these factors to illuminate the possible mechanisms that may underpin the human tendency to fall out of love.

According to the Social Message Model, interpersonal judgments are transactions in which judges convey important social messages to the individuals they evaluate (the targets); targets can then respond to the judgments in more or less adaptive ways. We argue that judges’ opinions emerge from their current concerns, be it to promote their own well-being, or to foster group cohesion. Targets of judgments can best interpret the meaning of a judgment they receive by understanding the judge's concerns, competence of the judge, and other qualities of the transaction. We suggest that judges and targets who are better able to reason about the judgment process are likely to change their behaviors more adaptively than people less able to reason in this area.

Numerous recommendations for improving the dependability of research findings in psychological science have emerged in recent years. Unfortunately, this glut of recommendations proves problematic for advancing uniform solutions to improve research dependability by individuals within and across the various constituencies that comprise psychological science. Moreover, several dependability recommendations propose practices to address the problem of false positive findings that can inversely increase the problem of false negative findings, and vice versa. It is proposed that the solution to this conundrum is to develop a concise and concrete list of core research dependability recommendations that address problems of false positive and false negative findings in a noncontradicting manner. Examination of the current research dependability literature and earlier literatures dealing with the problem of false findings is used to arrive at a set of three core research dependability recommendations: (a) conduct and promote direct replication studies; (b) ensure data sharing when requested by fellow scientists; and (c) adopt and promote a truth seeking mindset during the research endeavor.

Traditional theories of behavior change rely mostly on influencing higher-order mental processes as a route to altering deliberate responses, whereas more recent theorizing postulates that interventions can also rely on using contextual cues influencing lower-order processes as a route to changing spontaneous responses. We propose an alternative mechanistic account based on reinforcement learning theory, which utilizes different action control systems in the brain. Therefore, this account works at a different level of analysis and description, which promises to lead to the development of a more general and integrative theory of behavior change. Reward systems generate specific affective states that influence behavior via 3 action controllers. Innate actions are stereotyped evolutionarily determined responses to stimuli. Habitual actions develop through stimulus-response learning without explicit outcome representations. Goal-directed actions are based on an explicit model of the structure of the environment, which utilizes computations of action-outcome contingencies. We describe how these mechanisms for action control parsimoniously explain behavior change theories and techniques.

Psychological historians and psychobiographers advance our understanding of psychological theories through the intensive study of the lives of pioneering psychologists. In the course of their archival research, psychobiographers often uncover private information on the lives of historic psychologists that may never have been intended for public view and scrutiny. As such, psychobiographers need to balance considerations of the postmortem privacy of historic figures with the potential benefit to psychological science of revealing private information. Federal research guidelines and the ethical principles of the American Psychological Association concern themselves primarily with research on living subjects and are generally silent on best ethical practices regarding deceased historic and public figures. Using the case of William James's possible sojourn at McLean Hospital as an example, this article examines legal and ethical issues regarding the postmortem privacy protections of influential psychologists. An actuarial model is presented that recommends the postmortem time period after which private information, including mental health records, may become open to researchers. A decision-tree model on the process of requesting, securing, and reporting on such information is also presented. Finally, specific suggestions for follow-up qualitative and quantitative research on psychobiographical ethics are put forth.

The notion that “success breeds success, and failure breeds failure” is a widely held belief applied by people to a variety of situations in everyday life. Initial success is assumed to generate confidence, which then increases the likelihood of success in subsequent trials. Repeated failures are expected to lead to diminished future accomplishments. One arena in which the apparent relationship between psychological factors and sequences of successes and failures has been tested is sport. Recently, Iso-Ahola and Dotson (2014) developed a model of psychological momentum (PM), and argued that the “hot hand” can be detected in sport (including games such as basketball) if the appropriate methodology and statistical tests are employed. This commentary examines their theoretical framework and conclusions, which seem to be rather conflicting in light of the evidence on the performance-enhancing effects of PM and the hot hand in sports. More specifically, we argue that their claims have received only limited support, suggesting that more solid empirical evidence is required to support the “success-breeds-success” principle and the conceptual framework of PM, at least as the sport arena is concerned.

To declare a phenomenon an illusion would require no logical (theoretical) and empirical support for it after exhaustive research. Yet both types of evidence for psychological momentum (PM) abound in the literature, from individual sport performance to mutual fund investing. For example, it is well established that momentum-based investing provides consistent outperformance. However, in their commentary, the authors focus narrowly on one segment of sporting behavior, especially basketball studies, in which “hot hand” has only been tested based on 1 performance criterion—shooting percentages or probabilities—when a true test of “hotness” would require inclusion of multiple performance indicators. These studies are also marred by major theoretical and methodological deficiencies. Coupled with the propositional and provisional nature of scientific knowledge, one is left with no basis for making generalized statements about illusion and randomness of PM. As Gleiser (2014, p. 44) so eloquently states, “Data without theory is lame; theory without data is blind.” To move forward, we have formulated the theoretical parameters of the phenomenon and show evidence indicating that performance successes not only occur in sequence, but higher-ranked players are able to put together more frequent and more lasting strings of successful performances; they also bounce back more quickly from failures. All in all, PM is alive and well. Its theoretical properties have been put forth for the first time, and empirical evidence is mounting for its effects in various domains of human behavior and performance.