This study investigated to what extent, and under what circumstances, pair collaboration influences the realism in eyewitness confidence in event memory. The participants first saw a short film clip and then confidence rated their answers to questions on its content. A condition (the Individual–Pair condition) where individual effort preceded pair collaboration showed better calibration compared with a condition (the Simple Pair condition) where no individual effort took place. Furthermore, within the Individual–Pair condition, better calibration, and lower overconfidence, were found in the pair phase compared with the individual phase. The eyewitnesses in the Individual–Pair condition made more realistic judgements of the total number of questions answered correctly. In a control experiment no effect on realism in confidence was found when individuals performed the same task twice. The improved realism in the Individual–Pair condition may partly be explained in terms of the increased accuracy and lowered confidence found for such items where the pair members’ had given different answers in the individual phase, and by a risky shift effect for such items where they had given the same answer.

Taking a social psychological approach to metacognitive judgments, this study analyzed the difference in realism (validity) in confidence and frequency judgments (i.e., estimates of overall accuracy) between one’s own and another person’s answers to general knowledge questions. Experiment 1 showed that when judging their own answers, compared with another’s answers, the participants exhibited higher overconfidence, better ability to discriminate correct from incorrect answers, lower accuracy, and lower confidence. However, the overconfidence effect could be attributable to the lowest level of confidence. Furthermore, when heeding additional information about another’s answers the participants showed higher confidence and better discrimination ability. The overconfidence effect of Experiment 1 was not found in Experiment 2. However, the results of Experiment 2 were consistent with Experiment 1 in terms of discrimination ability, confidence, and accuracy. Finally, in both experiments the participants gave lower frequency judgments of their own overall accuracy compared with their frequency judgments of another person’s overall accuracy.

The purpose of this study was trying to understand and explain why young people with psychological problems injure themselves by cutting, scratching and burning. The study also examine if self- injuring behaviour is an increasing problem in our society. Self-injuring behaviour is a phenomenon with dissimilar definitions. There are as many ways of injuring yourself as there are individuals who injure themselves. In this study six professionals, who through their work have contact with self- injuring people, have been interviewed. Their own view of self- injuring behaviour was put in comparison with the literature. It was found that despite their dissimilar educations and experiences of self- injuring behaviour they had a similar view of the phenomenon. The most common definition of a self- injuring behaviour was cutting, scratching or burning yourself. Although they don’t know the reason for it, the literature as well as the informants seem to agree that self-injuring behaviour is increasing in society. They emphasize that media, through the attention given to the phenomenon during the last years, could have an effect on the increase. Two of the most common reasons why an individual chose to hurt him- or herself, seem to be reduction of anxiety and/or seeking attention. The most important result found in this study is why people maintain this behaviour and what functions self-injuring behaviour serve them.

Stress is both a health risk and an economic risk for our society. Employers search for ways to offer possible stress reducers for their employees. Mindfulness as a stress reducer is a fairly new research area but with a good amount of research papers suggesting that mindfulness programmes over several weeks are successful in reducing subjective perceived stress as well as physiological stress, such as blood pressure and cortisol levels. This study aims to examine whether mindfulness could show positive effects on stress at work, after only one mindfulness session, compared to being on an extended break. Measurements includes the Shirom-Melamed Burnout Questionnaire (SMBQ), blood pressure and pulse. The results show that engaging in one single mindfulness session does have an effect on lowering blood pressure as well as lowering perceived tension, which is one of four parts of the SMBQ. 

Current standards for light environments are based on technical requirements, e.g. luminance, uniformity, and illuminance, and do not necessarily describe all parts of the light experience to ensure visual comfort from a user perspective. Including experience-related requirements would most likely yield better lighting comfort. To do that, new methods for specifying and measuring the user experience are needed. This paper describes a pilot study exploring a new method to analytically assess perceived lighting properties by using a trained human panel and thus make human assessments more objective. The methodology is built on established sensory methods, where the human senses are used in product assessments, traditionally applied within e.g. the food, packaging, and car industries. An analytical panel comprising eight persons fulfilling specific selection criteria were recruited and trained to assess lighting products in a multi-sensory laboratory. The results show that the panelists were able to assess lighting by distinguishing between attributes and products. Significant differences were identified between the different luminaires, both in terms of sensory and physical properties, e.g. read ability and glare. Conclusively, analytical sensory methods can be applied to lighting to assess luminaires in a non-subjective way. Physical and sensory attributes do not, however, always co-vary, which shows that data from physical and sensory measuring methods provide complementary information about light quality. This knowledge may in turn be applied in tools supporting the communication between different professions in lighting design and procurement to promote light environments that are both energy efficient and desirable from an end-user perspective.

The aim of the study was to investigate the relation between the phenomenological quality of memory (Tulving, 1985) and the realism (validity) in confidence judgement when using emotional pictures (I.A.P.S; Lang, Ohman, & Vaitl, 1988). A series of three experiments was completed where the participants judged the phenomenological quality of their memory and/or their confidence. The results showed facilitation for the negative pictures in a matrix search task in the encoding phase, where negative pictures were more easily and quickly detected, compared to positive ones. In the memory phase of the experiments a higher degree of recollective experience (a larger proportion of 'remember' responses) was found for negative pictures. A higher level of confidence for recognition of negative pictures than for positive ones was obtained, but no general valence dependent effect on the realism in the confidence judgement was found. However, when analysing only the remember responses, negative pictures showed higher overconfidence than the positive pictures. The results support that a recollective experience induces higher confidence and overconfidence. 

Det är av stort intresse för lärare och tränare att öka elevers inre motivation. Det finns flera studier av hur feedback påverkar den inre motivationen inom olika områden men motsvarande studie för ryttare saknas. Ridundervisning innefattar tre individer – tränare, ryttare och häst. Frågan är därför om ryttares inre motivation påverkas av tränarens feedback i samma utsträckning som i andra idrotter. I studien användes en inomgruppsdesign med 35 ryttare och tre betingelser; positiv feedback, negativ feedback samt ingen feedback. Instrumentet Intrinsic motivation inventory (IMI) användes för att mäta inre motivation som en funktion av fyra faktorer: intresse/nöje, upplevd kompetens, press/anspänning samt ansträngning. Resultaten visade att samtliga faktorer förutom ansträngning påverkades av vilken typ av feedback ryttaren fick. Intresse/nöje och upplevd kompetens var högst vid positiv feedback och lägst vid negativ feedback medan press/anspänning, som är negativt relaterat till inre motivation, var lägst vid positiv och högst vid negativ feedback. Av de 35 deltagarna var 19 kända av experimentledaren sedan tidigare. När tidigare känd/tidigare okänd användes som mellangruppsvariabel fanns en huvudeffekt för faktorn press/anspänning. De tidigare okända deltagarna upplevde högre anspänning än de tidigare kända deltagarna under alla betingelser. För faktorn ansträngning fanns en interaktionseffekt. De tidigare okända ansträngde sig mest vid positiv feedback och minst vid negativ feedback medan de tidigare kända deltagarna visade motsatta reaktioner. Störst effekt hade feedbacken på upplevd kompetens vilket kan leda till förbättrade prestationer. Slutsatsen av studien är att positiv feedback gynnar den inre motivationen hos ryttare och kan därmed förbättra deras utveckling och prestationer.

Det arbetas mer och mer gränslöst, där gränserna mellan privatliv och arbetsliv suddas ut parallellt medsjukskrivningarna för reaktioner på stress ökar. Hur kan personlighetsdrag predicera upplevd stress ochvälmående? Detta kan tillämpas vid arbete med friskfaktorer som bidrar till välmående på arbetsplatsen.Perceived Stress Scale är den mest använda självskattningen inom stress, välmåendeformuläret visarutmärkt reliabilitet och god validitet. Inom personlighetsteorier representerar femfaktormodellen(neuroticism, extraversion, öppenhet, vänlighet och samvetsgrannhet) personlighetsdragen. Enligttidigare forskning utgör neuroticism en särskild sårbarhet för stress. Tre hypoteser prövades där syftetmed studien var att predicera hur personligheten påverkar välmåendet samt benägenheten att upplevastress. Deltagarna som svarade på enkäten var 1545 till antalet i åldrarna 18-71 år utspridda i Sverige.Korrelationsanalyser och multipla regressionsanalysen genomfördes. Hypotesen får stöd i studien,personlighetsdrag kan predicera upplevd stress och välmående. En tydlig korrelation fanns mellanvariablerna stress och samtliga personlighetsdimensioner.

Paradoxical intention (PI) has been considered an evidence-based treatment for insomnia since the 1990s, but it has not been evaluated with modern review techniques such as meta-analysis. The present study aimed to conduct the first systematic review and meta-analysis of studies that explore the effectiveness of PI for insomnia on insomnia symptomatology and theory-derived processes. A systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted by searching for eligible articles or dissertations in six online bibliographic databases. Randomised controlled trials and experimental studies comparing PI for insomnia to active and passive comparators and assessing insomnia symptoms as outcomes were included. A random effects model was estimated to determine the standardised mean difference Hedge's g at post-treatment. Test for heterogeneity was performed, fail-safe N was calculated, and study quality was assessed. The study was pre-registered at International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO, CRD42019137357). A total of 10 trials were identified. Compared to passive comparators, PI led to large improvements in key insomnia symptoms. Relative to active comparators, the improvements were smaller, but still moderate for several central outcomes. Compared to passive comparators, PI resulted in great reductions in sleep-related performance anxiety, one of several proposed mechanisms of change for PI. PI for insomnia resulted in marked clinical improvements, large relative to passive comparators and moderate compared to active comparators. However, methodologically stronger studies are needed before more firm conclusions can be drawn.

The present study investigated differences in judgments of one’s own and others’ knowledge (the own-other difference). Consistent with the below-average effect (e.g., Kruger, 1999), our main results showed that the participants gave lower knowledge ratings of their own extent of knowledge than of another person’s extent of knowledge (Experiment 1). Furthermore, lower and more realistic judgments were found when the participants judged their own as compared with when judging another person’s overall accuracy (frequency judgments) of answering knowledge questions correctly (Experiment 1 and 2). On the basis of these results it is argued that judgmental anchoring may be important also in the context of indirect comparisons, and that previous conclusions of cross-cultural psychology regarding the above-average effect may be oversimplified.

Witnesses’ event recall and the realism in their evaluation of the correctness of their recall are of great importance in forensic processes. These issues were investigated in the present study by use of calibration methodology. More specifically, we analyzed the effects of two recalls of the same event (repetition) and of probes (non-informative follow-up questions at recall) on 9–11 year-old children’s and adults’ open free recall and the degree of realism in the participants’ confidence judgments of the correctness of the recall after they had seen a short video clip. The findings were that repetition resulted in more units recalled both for children and for adults, and in that the children showed higher overconfidence compared with one recall, but not the adults. Moreover, when only the statements in the repetition conditions that were recalled twice were included in the analysis, higher confidence was found for the children (independent of an increase in the proportion correct statements of all statements) but not for the adults. Probing increased the number of units recalled for both children and adults, decreased the children’s proportion correct statements but not the adults’, decreased both children’s and adults’ confidence and increased the children’s overconfidence, but not the adults’. Finally, the combination of two recalls and probing disrupted the children’s but not the adults’ metacognitive performance.

Aim: According to the Cognitive Model of Insomnia, engaging in sleep-related cognitive processes may lead to sleep problems over time. The aim was to examine associations between five sleep-related cognitive processes and the incidence of insomnia, and to investigate if baseline anxiety and depression influence the associations. Methods: Two thousand three hundred and thirty-three participants completed surveys on nighttime and daytime symptoms, depression, anxiety, and cognitive processes at baseline and 6 months after the first assessment. Only those without insomnia at baseline were studied. Participants were categorized as having or not having incident insomnia at the next time point. Baseline anxiety and depression were tested as moderators. Results: Three cognitive processes predicted incident insomnia later on. Specifically, more safety behaviors and somatic arousal at Time 1 increased the risk of developing insomnia. When investigating changes in the cognitive processes over time, reporting an increase of worry and safety behaviors also predicted incident insomnia. Depressive symptoms moderated the association between changes in worry and incident insomnia. Conclusion: These findings provide partial support for the hypothesis that cognitive processes are associated with incident insomnia. In particular, safety behaviors, somatic arousal, and worry increase the risk for incident insomnia. Preventative interventions and future research are discussed.

The aim of the present study was to explore the ability of personality to predict academic performance in a longitudinal study of a Swedish upper secondary school sample. Academic performance was assessed throughout a three-year period via final grades from the compulsory school and upper secondary school. The Big Five personality factors (Costa & McCrae, 1992) - particularly Conscientiousness and Neuroticism - were found to predict overall academic performance, after controlling for general intelligence. Results suggest that Conscientiousness, as measured at the age of 16, can explain change in academic performance at the age of 19. The effect of Neuroticism on Conscientiousness indicates that, as regarding getting good grades, it is better to be a bit neurotic than to be stable. The study extends previous work by assessing the relationship between the Big Five and academic performance over a three-year period. The results offer educators avenues for improving educational achievement.

Previous studies on gender differences in facial imitation and verbally reported emotional contagion have investigated emotional responses to pictures of facial expressions at supraliminal exposure times. The aim of the present study was to investigate how gender differences are related to different exposure times, representing information processing levels from subliminal (spontaneous) to supraliminal (emotionally regulated). Further, the study aimed at exploring correlations between verbally reported emotional contagion and facial responses for men and women. Masked pictures of angry, happy and sad facial expressions were presented to 102 participants (51 men) at exposure times from subliminal (23 ms) to clearly supraliminal (2500 ms). Myoelectric activity (EMG) from the corrugator and the zygomaticus was measured and the participants reported their hedonic tone (verbally reported emotional contagion) after stimulus exposures. The results showed an effect of exposure time on gender differences in facial responses as well as in verbally reported emotional contagion. Women amplified imitative responses towards happy vs. angry faces and verbally reported emotional contagion with prolonged exposure times, whereas men did not. No gender differences were detected at the subliminal or borderliminal exposure times, but at the supraliminal exposure gender differences were found in imitation as well as in verbally reported emotional contagion. Women showed correspondence between their facial responses and their verbally reported emotional contagion to a greater extent than men. The results were interpreted in terms of gender differences in emotion regulation, rather than as differences in biologically prepared emotional reactivity.

En välfungerande och effektiv ledningsgrupp är en framgångsfaktor inom såväl privat som offentlig sektor. Ledningsgruppens speciella karaktär gör att alternativa grupputvecklingsmodeller, utöver de mer klassiska, kan vara mer användbara. Syftet med studien är att undersöka om faktorerna tillit, konflikt, åtagande, ansvarsskyldighet och resultat i Lencionis (2002) modell är relevanta utgångspunkter i arbete med ledningsgruppers effektivitet, med fokus på tillit. Utifrån en egenkonstruerad enkät med självskattning från 74 ledares bedömningar, har deskriptiva analyser utförts. Vidare har t-test, regressionssamband och principalkomponentanalyser genomförts för att besvara studiens frågeställningar. Utifrån denna studies resultat ges endast ett måttligt stöd för att de fem faktorerna förklarar ledargruppsdeltagares syn på ledningsgruppens effektivitet även om de individuellt bedöms som relevanta. Det finns indikationer på att med ytterligare frågor skulle reliabiliteten öka och därmed ge ett tydligare stöd åt de fem faktorerna. Ytterligare studier behövs för att klargöra detta samband. Studien ger dock stöd för betydelsen av tillit och dess oberoende av demografiska variabler som kön, ålder, sektor eller ledningsgruppserfarenhet. Vidare visar studien att ledningsgruppens effektivitet kan beskrivas i två komponenter med flera delar där komponenterna handlar om inre och yttre effektivitet, vilket också är i linje med Granberg och Wallenholm (2017). Sammantaget ger detta en bild av att alternativa modeller som Lencionis (2002) kan vara relevanta att använda och att de fem faktorerna tillit, konflikt, åtagande, ansvarsskyldighet och resultat ändå kan vara relevanta utgångspunkter i arbetet med ledningsgruppens effektivitet, med fokus på tillit.

Little is known on whether the effects of marriage education programs such as the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP) hold across genders or are moderated by risk factors (participants’ parents’ relationship instability, participants’ low level of education, being unmarried, previous relationship counseling, who initiated program participation, having many children). This trial of 889 participants revealed medium to large improvements in relationship satisfaction and communication from baseline to posttest. Only a few tentative moderating factors were identified. Women who were at risk, as indicated by previous relationship counseling, even caught up with others without such risk at the outset. However, men with little higher education did not improve on all measures. Thus, overall, PREP appears applicable for the prevention of intimate relationship problems in a broad range of circumstances. One of the strengths of this study includes the examination of PREP effects in a real-life application across an entire Scandinavian country.

Writers composing multi-sentence texts have immediate access to a visual representation of what they have written. Little is known about the detail of writers’ eye movements within this text during production. We describe two experiments in which competent adult writ- ers’ eye movements were tracked while performing short expository writing tasks. These are contrasted with condi- tions in which participants read and evaluated researcher- provided texts. Writers spent a mean of around 13 % of their time looking back into their text. Initiation of these look-back sequences was strongly predicted by linguisti- cally important boundaries in their ongoing production (e.g., writers were much more likely to look back imme- diately prior to starting a new sentence). 36 % of look-back sequences were associated with sustained reading and the remainder with less patterned forward and backward sac- cades between words (‘‘hopping’’). Fixation and gaze durations and the presence of word-length effects sug- gested lexical processing of fixated words in both reading and hopping sequences. Word frequency effects were not present when writers read their own text. Findings demonstrate the technical possibility and potential value of examining writers’ fixations within their just-written text. 

We suggest that these fixations do not serve solely, or even primarily, in monitoring for error, but play an important role in planning ongoing production. 

BACKGROUND: Although insomnia disorder and social anxiety disorder are among the most prevalent psychiatric disorders, no studies have yet evaluated the use of sequential evidence-based treatment protocols in the population with co-morbid social anxiety disorder and insomnia disorder.

AIMS: This study aimed to investigate the effects of sequential treatments on co-morbid insomnia disorder and social anxiety disorder. As depression is a common co-morbid syndrome for both insomnia and social anxiety, a secondary aim was to examine depressive symptoms.

METHOD: A single-case repeated crossover AB design was used. Ten participants between 18 and 59 years of age with co-morbid DSM-5 diagnoses of insomnia disorder and social anxiety disorder received sequential treatments with cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Seven participants completed the treatment course. The primary outcomes were symptoms of insomnia and social anxiety, and the secondary outcome was symptoms of depression.

RESULTS: The effects of CBT on people with co-morbid social anxiety disorder and insomnia disorder were mixed. The majority of participants improved their sleep quality and lessened symptoms of social anxiety and depression. However, participants differed in their degree of improvement concerning all three disorders.

CONCLUSIONS: Sequential CBT treatments are potentially effective at decreasing symptoms of social anxiety and insomnia for people with co-morbid social anxiety disorder and insomnia disorder. The variation in outcome across participants makes firm conclusions about the treatment efficacy difficult to draw.

Previous studies have shown that characteristics like gender and ethnicity can affect the possibility to be hired. Decisions in hiring may also be justified by weighting the importance of hiring criteria and can thus seem unbiased. In other areas, bias due to political affiliation have been noted to be even more pronounced than bias due to ethnicity. However, effects of candidates’ political affiliation in hiring are not equally researched. This study aimed to fill this blank. Participants (N= 283) were randomized to a between-subjects design; A third read a resumé from a candidate affiliating with the The Left Party, a third read a resumé from a candidate affiliating with The Sweden Democrats, a party at the right end of the spectrum, and a third read a resumé from a candidate with no political affiliation. After reading the resumés, participants evaluated the hireability of their candidate. They also stated which hiring criteria, experience or education, was considered most important in this evaluation. Results showed that participants evaluated candidates with divergent political affiliation from the own as less hireable than candidates with unknown political affiliation, or a politicalaffiliation more similar to the own. Cues of political affiliation may thus be a disadvantage for an individual, applying for a job. However, biased evaluations were not justified to seem unbiased by weighting criteria. It is suggested that social norms do not imply hiding political bias to the same degree as bias due to for example gender or ethnicity.