The motive for sensory pleasure: enjoyment of nature and its representation in painting, music, and literature.

Eight studies assessed the motive for sensory pleasure (MSP) involving a general disposition to enjoy and pursue pleasant nature-related experiences and avoid unpleasant nature-related experiences. The stated enjoyment of pleasant sights, smells, sounds, and tactile sensations formed a unitary construct that was distinct from sensation seeking, novelty preference, and need for cognition. MSP was found to be related to (a) enjoyment of pleasant nature scenes and music of high but not low clarity; (b) enjoyment of writings that portrayed highly detailed nature scenes; (c) enjoyment of pleasantly themed paintings and dislike of unpleasant paintings, as distinct from findings with Openness to Experience; (d) choice of pleasant nature scenes over exciting or intellectually stimulating scenes; (e) view duration and memory of artistically rendered quilts; (f) interest in detailed information about nature scenes; and (g) frequency of sensory-type suggestions for improvement of a museum exhibit.

Perceived organizational support and extra-role performance: which leads to which?

L. Rhoades and R. Eisenberger (2002) reported the meta-analytic finding of a highly statistically significant relation between perceived organizational support (POS) and performance but concluded that the reviewed studies' methodology allowed no conclusion concerning the direction of the association. To investigate this issue, the authors assessed POS and extra-role performance 2 times, separated by a 3-year interval, among 199 employees of an electronic and appliance sales organization. Using a cross-lagged panel design, the authors found that POS was positively associated with a temporal change in extra-role performance. In contrast, the relation between extra-role performance and temporal change in POS was not statistically significant. These findings provide evidence that POS leads to extra-role performance.

Who takes the most revenge? Individual differences in negative reciprocity norm endorsement.

The authors report that beliefs favoring the reciprocation of unfavorable treatment form a unitary factor that is distinct from beliefs favoring the reciprocation of favorable treatment. Individual differences in endorsement of this negative reciprocity norm were related to (a) beliefs that people are generally malevolent; (b) inclination toward anger in everyday life; (c) anger, disagreement, and ridicule directed toward a new acquaintance who treated participants unfavorably; and (d) reduced anxiety, positive emotional engagement, and encouragement of a new acquaintance who treated participants favorably. These findings suggest that individual differences in endorsement of the negative norm of reciprocity influence the extent of vengeance.

Hemispheric interaction and consciousness: degree of handedness predicts the intensity of a sensory illusion.

It has been suggested that the two cerebral hemispheres play different roles in the maintenance and updating of an individual's beliefs. In particular it has been suggested that the left hemisphere (LH) forms consistent beliefs, whereas the right hemisphere (RH) monitors for inconsistencies or anomalies in reference to these beliefs. If some threshold of inconsistencies is detected, the role of the RH is to update the LH's belief system accordingly. Handedness may reflect the degree to which the two hemispheres exchange information such that the more strongly handed an individual is, the less interhemispheric communication may take place, thus attenuating this updating process. Two studies were carried out that confronted participants with conflicting, anomalous sensory information by tapping on both the participant's real hand and a fake hand in synchrony. One conclusion would be to update the LH belief system to include the fake hand as their own and consciously experience the taps as coming from the fake hand. It was predicted that this experience would vary with handedness such that the more strongly handed a participant was, the less they would experience the sensory illusion. Study 1 supported this, with more strongly handed participants reporting lesser degrees of the illusion. A second study replicated this effect and included a variable that measured the time it took for a participant to experience the illusion. A non-significant trend was present such that more strongly handed participants were slower to experience the illusion. Last, although the illusion was felt equally in both the left and right hand conditions, correlations between handedness and the illusion were only present in the left hand condition. A model of how interhemispheric interaction may function in maintaining beliefs and consciousness is presented.