The Impact of Priming on Speed Reduction on a Ski Slope.

We tested a field-adapted priming procedure (a technique used to subtly activate mental representations and guide behavior) on a ski slope, with the goal of reducing risk behavior in winter sports. At cableway stations, skiers were initially exposed eight times to a prevention poster displaying a logo and a "slow down" message. The "slow down" concept was activated on the ski slope by exposing skiers (or not) 10 times to the logo featured on the poster. We used a radar device to measure the skiers' speed data just before a slope intersection. We hypothesized that the mean speed would be lower in the presence of the logo than in its absence. As predicted, the speed was lower (by 0.9 km/h) when the skiers had been primed (i.e., exposed to the logo). This decrease was relevant, since any reduction in speed downhill will reduce kinetic (impact) energy and thus the risk of injury in a collision. The effect of priming was statistically significant at noon and in the afternoon but not in the morning. Our pilot study is the first to show that a priming procedure can influence the speed of skiers at a dangerous location. Our findings open up new perspectives for the prevention of risk behavior in winter sports.

Video Games Exposure and Sexism in a Representative Sample of Adolescents.

Research has indicated that many video games are saturated with stereotypes of women and that these contents may cultivate sexism. The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between video game exposure and sexism for the first time in a large and representative sample. Our aim was also to measure the strength of this association when two other significant and well-studied sources of sexism, television exposure and religiosity, were also included in a multivariate model. A representative sample of 13520 French youth aged 11-19 years completed a survey measuring weekly video game and television exposure, religiosity, and sexist attitudes toward women. Controlling for gender and socioeconomic level, results showed that video game exposure and religiosity were both related to sexism. Implications of these results for future research on sexism in video games are discussed.

Internet Gaming Disorder and Well-Being: A Scale Validation.

The overuse of online games is known to be inversely related to various indicators of well-being. This article validates the DSM-5 criteria of internet gaming disorder (IGD), and analyzes its links with five indicators of well-being: life satisfaction, loneliness, anxiety, depression, and academic performance in a French-speaking sample of 693 gamers. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed a one-factor structure of IGD criteria. The IGD scale showed satisfactory validity and reliability and was related in a consistent way with well-being measures. The IGD scale appears to be an appropriate measure to assess video game addiction and will contribute to increase the comparability of international research on video game addiction.

Effect of priming cooperation or individualism on a collective and interdependent task: changeover speed in the 4 x 100-meter relay race.

Priming effects of cooperation vs. individualism were investigated on changeover speed within a 4 x 100-m relay race. Ten teams of four adult beginner athletes ran two relays, a pretest race and an experimental race 3 weeks later. Just before the experimental race, athletes were primed with either cooperation or individualism through a scrambled-sentence task. Comparing to the pretest performance, cooperation priming improved baton speed in the exchange zone (+30 cm/s). Individualism priming did not impair changeover performance. The boundary conditions of priming effects applied to collective and interdependent tasks are discussed within the implicit coordination framework.