Abstaining College Students' Motives to Use E-Cigarettes: A Brief Report.

Objective: Although college students have higher rates of e-cigarette use compared with non-college-attending young adults, e-cigarette-abstaining college students are an understudied population. The present study was designed to create a scale assessing current e-cigarette abstainers' motives to abstain from or initiate e-cigarette use.

Method: Participants from two universities who had never used e-cigarettes ( = 281) completed an online survey.

Test of a deviance regulation theory intervention among first-year college student drinkers: Differential effects via frequency and quantity norms.

Objective: First-time-in-college (FTIC) students are relatively inexperienced with alcohol and have pressure to assimilate to new norms, and, therefore, are at a heightened risk of alcohol-related consequences. The present study investigates the use of a brief deviance regulation theory (DRT) intervention to increase the use of protective behavioral strategies (PBS) among FTIC students.

Method: Participation took place completely online.

The Prototypes of Tobacco Users Scale (POTUS) for Cigarette Smoking and E-Cigarette Use: Development and Validation.

Endorsing prototypes of cigarette smokers predicts cigarette smoking, but less is known about prototypes of users of other tobacco products. Our study sought to establish the reliability and validity of a measure of prototypes of smokers and e-cigarette users. Participants were from a national survey of smokers and non-smokers ( = 1414), a randomized clinical trial (RCT) of adult smokers ( = 2149), and adolescent children of adults in the trial ( = 112).

Personalized normative feedback for heavy drinking: An application of deviance regulation theory.

Deviance Regulation Theory (DRT) proposes that individuals regulate their behavior to be in line with the behaviors of others. Specifically, individuals desire to stand out in positive way and not stand out in a negative way. DRT has been successfully applied to encourage other health behaviors and offers a unique method to utilize both injunctive norms in combination with descriptive norms in brief alcohol interventions.

In-Game Health Communication: Delivering Low-Fear Health Messages in a Low-Fear Videogame.

Objective: Prior research has demonstrated that psychological immersion (or "transportation") into virtual gaming worlds can heighten influence from health-promotion messages embedded in the backgrounds of gaming scenes. However, research to date has only studied the effectiveness of embedding graphic, fear-based messages in the background of violent, first-person videogames. This study sought to examine whether transportation into a nonviolent videogame can heighten persuasion from low-fear, nongraphic health messages.

To accurately estimate implicit influences on health behavior, accurately estimate explicit influences.

Objective: This project considered how inattention to left-out variable error and measurement correspondence in the assessment of explicit measures can result in upwardly biased estimates of the predictive utility of implicit measures designed to predict health behaviors.

Method: A pilot study (n = 96) used a cross-sectional design to predict beer consumption and a main study (n = 132) used a longitudinal design to predict binge drinking. In each study, a battery of 4 implicit inventories (implicit association test, personalized implicit association test, evaluative priming, and attribution misattribution paradigm) and a battery of correspondent explicit measures (based on the Reasoned Action Model and the Prototype Willingness Model) were administered to college youth.

Media coverage of "wise" interventions can reduce concern for the disadvantaged.

Recent articulation of the "wise" approach to psychological intervention has drawn attention to the way small, seemingly trivial social psychological interventions can exert powerful, long-term effects. These interventions have been used to address such wide-ranging social issues as the racial achievement gap, environmental conservation, and the promotion of safer sex. Although there certainly are good reasons to seek easier as opposed to harder solutions to social problems, we examine a potentially undesirable effect that can result from common media portrayals of wise interventions.

Group and individual as complementary conceptual categories.

Baumeister et al. depart from self-theories that contrast the psychology of the group with the psychology of the individual by considering how differentiated identities further collective interests. In concert with Deviance Regulation Theory, their framework offers a foundation for predicting the reward and punishment contingencies that will help groups function as more than the sum of their parts.

Using the IAT to predict ethnic and racial discrimination: small effect sizes of unknown societal significance.

Greenwald, Banaji, and Nosek (2015) present a reanalysis of the meta-analysis by Oswald, Mitchell, Blanton, Jaccard, and Tetlock (2013) that examined the effect sizes of Implicit Association Tests (IATs) designed to predict racial and ethnic discrimination. We discuss points of agreement and disagreement with respect to methods used to synthesize the IAT studies, and we correct an error by Greenwald et al. that obscures a key contribution of our meta-analysis.

The limits to pride: A test of the pro-anorexia hypothesis.

Many social psychological models propose that positive self-conceptions promote self-esteem. An extreme version of this hypothesis is advanced in "pro-anorexia" communities: identifying with anorexia, in conjunction with disordered eating, can lead to higher self-esteem. The current study empirically tested this hypothesis.

Toward a meaningful metric of implicit prejudice.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 100(5) of Journal of Applied Psychology (see record 2015-40760-001). there are errors in some of the values listed in Table 6 that do not alter any of the conclusions or substantive statements in the original article. The corrected portion of Table 6 is in the correction.

Implications of the Implicit Association Test D-Transformation for Psychological Assessment.

Psychometricians strive to eliminate random error from their psychological inventories. When random error affecting tests is diminished, tests more accurately characterize people on the psychological dimension of interest. We document an unusual property of the scoring algorithm for a measure used to assess a wide range of psychological states.

Characterizing switching and congruency effects in the Implicit Association Test as reactive and proactive cognitive control.

Recent research has identified an important role for task switching, a cognitive control process often associated with executive functioning, in the Implicit Association Test (IAT). However, switching does not fully account for IAT effects, particularly when performance is scored using more recent d-score formulations. The current study sought to characterize multiple control processes involved in IAT performance through the use of event-related brain potentials (ERPs).

Effect of graphic cigarette warnings on smoking intentions in young adults.

Introduction: Graphic warnings (GWs) on cigarette packs are widely used internationally and perhaps will be in the US but their impact is not well understood. This study tested support for competing hypotheses in different subgroups of young adults defined by their history of cigarette smoking and individual difference variables (e.g.

Threading the needle in health-risk communication: increasing vulnerability salience while promoting self-worth.

Health interventions often draw attention to the risks associated with unhealthy choice but in the process produce a boomerang effect such that those targeted become more committed to risky behavior. In 2 studies designed to promote condom use among sexually active college students, the authors document strategies for highlighting risk while promoting healthy choices. Study 1 demonstrated that optimistic perceptions regarding the likelihood of contracting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) can be counteracted by drawing attention to the emotional consequences of contracting STDs, instead of its likelihood.

Predicting ethnic and racial discrimination: a meta-analysis of IAT criterion studies.

This article reports a meta-analysis of studies examining the predictive validity of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and explicit measures of bias for a wide range of criterion measures of discrimination. The meta-analysis estimates the heterogeneity of effects within and across 2 domains of intergroup bias (interracial and interethnic), 6 criterion categories (interpersonal behavior, person perception, policy preference, microbehavior, response time, and brain activity), 2 versions of the IAT (stereotype and attitude IATs), 3 strategies for measuring explicit bias (feeling thermometers, multi-item explicit measures such as the Modern Racism Scale, and ad hoc measures of intergroup attitudes and stereotypes), and 4 criterion-scoring methods (computed majority-minority difference scores, relative majority-minority ratings, minority-only ratings, and majority-only ratings). IATs were poor predictors of every criterion category other than brain activity, and the IATs performed no better than simple explicit measures.

Implicit self-esteem: nature, measurement, and a new way forward.

Gaining insight into the nature and consequences of people's global self-evaluations (i.e., their self-esteem) has been fraught with difficulty.

Strong claims and weak evidence: reassessing the predictive validity of the IAT.

The authors reanalyzed data from 2 influential studies-A. R. McConnell and J.

Unconscious and spontaneous and...complex: the three selves model of social comparison assimilation and contrast.

Several theoretical perspectives predict that social comparisons lead to simple, default-driven effects when triggered outside of conscious awareness. These theoretical perspectives differ, however, in the default effects they predict. Some theories argue for self-evaluative contrast, whereas others argue for self-evaluative assimilation.

In search of the big fish: investigating the coexistence of the big-fish-little-pond effect with the positive effects of upward comparisons.

Blanton, Buunk, Gibbons, and Kuyper (1999) and Huguet, Dumas, Monteil, and Genestoux (2001) found that children nominated a social comparison target who slightly outperformed them in class with a beneficial effect on course grades - an assimilation effect, but with no effects on self-evaluation. However, big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE) research has shown that attending a high-ability school has a negative effect on academic self-concept--a contrast effect. To resolve this apparent conflict, the present investigation (1) tested the BFLPE in the Netherlands and France, using nationally representative samples (Study 1) and (2) further analysed (using more sophisticated analyses) the Dutch (Blanton et al.

A decision theoretic and prototype conceptualization of possible selves: implications for the prediction of risk behavior.

The present study explores a new framework for conceptualizing possible selves for the prediction of behavior. The framework uses decision theory, attitude theory, and classic expectancy-value models. The focus is on using possible-self constructs that (a) correspond to behavioral alternatives, (b) focus on self dimensions directly tied to the behavioral criterion, and (c) use expectancy-value constructs to assess the core features of a given possible self-dimension.

Tests of multiplicative models in psychology: a case study using the unified theory of implicit attitudes, stereotypes, self-esteem, and self-concept.

Theories that posit multiplicative relationships between variables are common in psychology. A. G.

Arbitrary metrics in psychology.

Many psychological tests have arbitrary metrics but are appropriate for testing psychological theories. Metric arbitrariness is a concern, however, when researchers wish to draw inferences about the true, absolute standing of a group or individual on the latent psychological dimension being measured. The authors illustrate this in the context of 2 case studies in which psychologists need to develop inventories with nonarbitrary metrics.

Different selves have different effects: self-activation and defensive social comparison.

Three studies show that different forms of self-activation have differential influences on the processing of social comparison information. Activating neutral self-conceptions results in defensive processing of threatening social comparison information (Study 1). Participants maintain favorable self-evaluations in the face of upward comparison and rate the upward target of comparison negatively.

Peer influences on risk behavior: an analysis of the effects of a close friend.

Cross-sectional research suggests that peer influence has a moderate to strong impact on adolescent risk behavior. Such estimates may be inflated owing to third-variable confounds representing either friendship selection effects or the operation of parallel events. Approximately 1,700 peer dyads in Grades 7 to 11 were studied over a 1-year period to estimate the influence of closest friends on sexual activity and binge drinking.