Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2023-08-06
Abstract： People commonly take preventive measures against potential dangers to achieve a sense of psychological security. Psychological security refers to the anticipation of potential physical or psychological threats and is a state of mind manifested through cognition, emotion, behavior, and physiological reactions. In recent years, research on psychological security has garnered significant attention in psychology, particularly concerning public health, organizational management, and social relations. However, its role in human development and its implications in evolutionary history have been under-explored. This paper, by examining the existing literature, delves into the understanding of psychological security from evolutionary, developmental, individual, and group perspectives. Specifically, genetic factors combined with personal experiences result in varied individual responses and coping mechanisms to stressful events. Between groups, the interplay of environment, culture, and genetics leads to differences in thought and behavior patterns, inducing group-level variances in psychological security. Interactions between individuals and groups are pivotal to shaping psychological security. Shared cultural symbols and collective memories provide a common framework for understanding one's environment, fostering cognitive psychological security. Meanwhile, positive group interactions and the resultant feelings of belonging and cohesion fortify emotional psychological security. This research explores psychological security comprehensively and discusses its relevance in various domains like intimate relationships, family education, organizational leadership, and emergency preparedness, aiming to bolster psychological well-being, enhance the overall quality of life and promote diversity and inclusion for the civil society.
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Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： The dominant paradigm for learning in China today is “gradual learning”, that is, learners acquire knowledge gradually from a lower to a higher level with the help of teachers. Based on theories of adaptive learning and “meta-learning self”, we advanced the alternative of “integrative learning”, that is, “under the role of ‘meta-learning self', learners actively integrate learning materials to achieve rapid and in-depth understanding of knowledge.” Furthermore, we designed an animal behavioral model to explore the effects of integrative learning versus progressive learning.Forty SD rats were selected as subjects, a two (Learning mode: Integrative Learning-IL, Progressive Learning - PL) by two (Sex: Male, Female) factorial design was employed, and a fourteen-unit integrative T-maze was constructed for the study. Five task stages were conceived to test the phenomenon and mechanisms of integrative learning: a learning stage, a retest stage after one week, a Gestalt transfer learning stage, a generalization/analysis test stage, and a segment fixation test stage.The results showed that: 1. During the learning stage, the number of errors in each trial in the IL group decreased exponentially over time, while that curve in the PL group was wavy; males exhibited significantly fewer errors in total than females; and the number of days to learning success in the IL-male group was significantly less than in the PL-male group, though the difference between female groups was not significant. 2. During both Gestalt transfer learning and generalization/analysis test stages, the IL group performed better than the PL group overall; during the segment fixation test stage, all groups appeared fixed more on the first segment of the original correct path. 3. To identify mechanisms for the IL groups' better performance, a dynamic heat-map path analysis was employed, showing that the IL group (especially males) appeared to consolidate the first key segment of the correct path repeatedly before quickly apprehending the rest of it, which had elements similar to the first one. Males in the PL group, however, were more likely to return to explore the earlier segment than females when allowed to enter a new segment of the maze. 4. The IL group as a whole either ate less of the chocolate reward at the finish of the correct path or moved the pellet elsewhere to eat, a pattern that was much more obvious in females.We arrived at the following conclusions: 1) Integrative learning is more efficient than progressive learning, and is characterized by the acquisition of more layered knowledge which can better assist long-term migration learning. 2) During the process of forming a “cognitive map”, information stored in memory has the characteristics of entirety, chunking, and categorization. 3) In a maze learning task, performance among males is more consistent than among females. 4) Some individuals may appear anxious or maladjusted during integrative learning.
Subjects: Psychology >> Experimental Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Physiological Psychology submitted time 2023-03-10
Abstract： As a kind of prosocial behavior, helping behavior is universal across species. In recent years, it has become a new trend for scholars at home and abroad to use rodent models to explore the motivation of helping behavior. Empathy, relieving personal distress and desire for social contacts are considered to be plausible motivations for rodents to help, but debates about whether helping behavior is inspired by one of the motives or a combination of them still exist. In this study, in order to explore the motivation of helping behavior in rodents, the two-chamber experimental apparatus designed by Carvalheiro et al. (2019) was improved by adding an intermediate chamber to manipulate the possibility of the free rat's social contact with the entrapped rats after implementing the helping behavior as well as the possibility of the free rat's escaping from the helping context to relieve its personal distress in the process of helping decision-making. 108 male Sprague– Dawley rats were used as subjects in three experiments. The latency to open the door for helping the entrapped rat escape was recorded as the main outcome variable. Experiment 1 confirmed the existence of helping behavior and the impact of social contact on helping behavior under the condition of being unable to escape from the helping context, using a 2 (possibility of social contact: yes/no) by 4 (restrainer condition: empty restrainer, familiar rat, unfamiliar rat, toy rat) mixed experimental design. The results show that when social contact was allowed, the free rat maintained a consistently short latency to help, but when social contact was not allowed, the free rat’s latency to help became longer and longer as sessions went on until that the free rat no longer helped at all within the 15min session limit. Experiment 2 explored the impact of social contact on helping behavior under the condition of being able to escape from the helping context, using the same experimental design as Study 1 but keeping the door between the middle chamber and the dark chamber open. The results show that the existence of the dark chamber was beneficial for the non-social contact group to help continuously, but extended the latency to help in the social contact group, namely, relieving personal distress contributes to the emergence of helping behavior, but the emergence of helping behavior ultimately depends on whether social contact could be made. Experiment 3 explored the influence of previous social contact experience and current social contact possibility on helping behavior under the condition of the free rats’ having been trapped before, using a 2(possibility of social contact: yes/no) by 2 (previous social contact experience: yes/no) by 4 (restrainer conditions: empty restrainer, familiar rat, unfamiliar rat, toy rat) mixed experimental design. The results show that previous experiences of being trapped did not affect helping behavior, but previous experiences of social contact were conducive to maintain continuous helping behavior in the non-social contact group. In summary, the following conclusions were obtained through this study: (1) Desires for social contact and the pursuit of interesting environment are important motivations for rodents’ helping behavior, regardless of the possibility to escape from the helping context. (2) Relieving personal distress can help sustain helping behavior, but the emergence of helping behavior ultimately depends on whether social contact can be carried out after helping. (3) Previous experiences of social contact rather than the experiences of having been trapped contribute to the occurrence of helping behavior. (4) Empathy may not the main reason to maintain helping behavior but rather can be used to describe the process of helping behavior. This study extends the comparative research on the motivation of helping behavior and provides some hints for the psychological development and educational practices in humans.
Subjects: Psychology >> Management Psychology submitted time 2021-06-12
Abstract： [Objective] With organizations’ fast-paced development, employees' passion for work and their innovative behavior in the workplace inevitably faces the influences of time pressure as well as the life-history strategy of the organization’s development. According to the two-dimensional view of pressure, time pressure can be categorized into the challenge time pressure and the hindrance time pressure. According to the view of organizational duality, innovative behavior can be categorized into exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation. At the same time, the life-history strategy in the field of behavioral ecology can be introduced into organizational development to describe the pace and focus of an organization’s developmental strategy, and thus the life-history strategy of organizational development can be divided into the K strategy and the r strategy. [Methods] Through three survey experiments (Study 1, Study 2 and Study 3) and a questionnaire survey (Study 4), this paper explores the impact of different types of time pressure and organizational life-history strategies on employees' innovative behavior, and the role of employees' work passion in it. [Results] Study 1a (n = 75) and Study 1b (n = 74) found that the K strategy had a promoting effect on the participants’ exploratory innovation and harmonious work passion, and the r strategy had a promoting effect on the participants’ exploitative innovation and compulsory work passion. Study 2 (n = 282) found that compared with the hindrance time pressure, the challenge time pressure significantly promoted harmonious work passion and exploratory innovation while significantly inhibited compulsory work passion and exploitative innovation. Study 3 (n = 206) further verified the results of Study 1 and Study 2, and found the influences of four combinations of time pressure and organizational life-history strategy on work passion and innovation. Study 4 (n = 400) not only supported the findings of Study 3, but also further revealed the mediating roles that harmonious work passion and compulsive work passion played on the relationship between the combination of time pressure and organizational life-history strategy and the two types of innovative behavior. [Implications] The results suggest that: 1. The organizational life-history strategy has a direct impact on employees’ innovative behavior, with the K strategy promoting exploratory innovation and the r strategy promoting exploitative innovation, but these effects are not mediated by work passion; 2. The type of time pressure has a direct impact on employees’ work passion and an indirect impact on innovative behavior, with the challenge time pressure promoting exploratory innovation via elevating harmonious work passion and the hindrance time pressure promoting exploitative innovation via elevating compulsory work passion; 3. The impact of different combinations of time pressure and organizational development life history strategies on employees can be summarized into four types: the harmonious exploration type, the harmonious exploitation type, the positive contradiction type and the negative contradiction type. From the dual perspectives of the meso-level organizational life-history strategy and the micro-level time pressure, this study indicates the differential impacts and mechanisms of different combinations of organizational life-history strategy and time pressure on employees’ work passion and innovative behavior, which provides useful insights for the daily management practice of innovative organizations."
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Experimental Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2021-05-29
Abstract： [Objective] Cultivating the next generation of sound emotional, cognitive and socio-behavioral development is fundamental to human civilization, and the impact of early experiences cannot be ignored from the point of view of probabilistic epigenesis. This study aims to investigate the causal relationship between early experiences and later behavioral development based on a novel experimental model termed the “human-rat interaction paradigm” (HRIP). [Methods] Thirty-six one-month-old male Sprague-Dawley rats were selected as subjects. Based on the HRIP, three groups (Positive early experiences (PEE) / Negative early experiences (NEE) / Control) were intervened for 3 weeks, and the effects of the manipulation of early experiences on behavioral development were tested through a battery of behavioral paradigms. [Results] The results showed that: 1) During the emotional behavior tests, compared with the other two groups, the PEE group was more active in the open arm of the O-maze, more active in the center area of the open field, ate faster in the new and familiar environment, and had less hesitation to adapt to and utilize the new learning device. 2) During the learning behavior tests, the PEE group showed most rule-breaking exploratory behavior in the integrated-learning maze; while the majority of the NEE group learned to open the gate during the early stage of procedural learning, the firmness of their long-term memory was the lowest during the new object recognition task; the control group was overall passive during the whole series of learning behavior tests. 3) During the social behavior tests, the PEE group showed the most interests towards the toy rat, while the NEE group showed the most aversion towards the toy rat. At the same time, while all groups preferred a real rat to a toy rat, only the intervention groups (both PEE and NEE) showed clear preference in interacting with a real stranger rat to a real familiar rat. Moreover, during the empathy and pro-social behavioral tests, when there were no food rewards, all three groups of rats generally would open the gate to rescue the entrapped rat, and after multiple trials their latency to rescue became shorter and shorter; however, when there were food rewards to be shared with the entrapped rat, both the PEE and NEE groups were less likely to open the gate, and after multiple trials, their latency to rescue became longer and longer. When the entrapped rat was unable to reach the food reward without the subject’s active sharing, the NEE group showed much more frequent behavior of feeding interruption and vigilant sniffing, possibly for fear of losing the food to the entrapped rat. 4) During the social competition tests, when there were no food rewards in the tube test, the control group had the highest success rate; when there were food rewards to be competed for, the PEE group had the highest success rate. At the same time, the degree of social rank differentiation was smallest in the control group and largest in the PEE group. The NEE group showed clear differentiation between the high-rank individual and the middle/low-ranked individual. The success rate of the NEE group was overall the lowest during the inter-group social competition tests. [Conclusions] We arrived at the following conclusions: 1) On the long run, the early experience intervention based on the HRIP will have sustained and stable effects on the behavioral development. 2) Rich early experiences can improve the sensitivity to learning and social rules. Lack of early experiences can passivate learning and social behavior. 3) Positive early experience can promote the individual to have more interests in exploring "objects", produce more rule-breaking exploratory behavior and maintain the stability of goal behavior; in contrast, negative early experience can cause excessive arousal of negative emotions, inhibit exploration and interfere with the maintenance of goal behavior."
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Physiological Psychology Subjects: Biology >> Zoology submitted time 2021-05-15
Abstract： Rats are widely used in experimental research in biology, medicine, and psychology, and many studies need the measurement of rats’ emotional states. Ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) of rats are means to express and transmit emotions: among them FM-50 kHz USVs are for positive emotions such as pleasure, flat-50 kHz USVs are for social communication, and 22 kHz USVs are for negative emotions such as anxiety and disgust. Collecting and analyzing the USVs of rats provides researchers a possible way to quantify the emotional states of rats during experimental manipulations. This paper discusses the emotional meaning of USVs in rats and provides suggestions for measuring and analyzing USVs in rats.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2021-01-24
Abstract： [Objective] Based on the phenomenon that Chinese people can wear masks within a short period of time after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study explores the mechanism of concerted actions under Chinese collectivism. [Methods]Through logical integration of previous studies and the results of a national questionnaire survey on Chinese people's motivation to wear masks during the epidemic period, this study first constructed a theoretical model of the awareness of responsibility under Chinese collectivism, and put forward the possibility of its dynamic nature led by the changes of social and organizational situations; and then the study used methods like questionnaire, interview, Thematic Apperception Test and survey experiment to verify the validity of the model and the causes and consequences of its dynamic nature. It is speculated that different forms of the model will lead to different levels of concerted actions under the collective goal, and then a situation-primed survey experiment was designed to test the cause and effect. [Results] 1. The micro model of responsibility consciousness under collectivism culture can be divided into two parts: individual responsibility and interdependent responsibility: when interdependent responsibility dominates, individual and others in the collective form meta responsibility interdependence, which constitutes the meso model of responsibility consciousness; the meta responsibility interdependence of all individuals in the collective forms a macro model similar to "Chinese knot"; 2 The "Chinese knot" model of responsibility consciousness shows a dynamic change with the change of situation; 3. The results of the questionnaire experiment show that driven by the collective goal, the consistent action tendency of the individuals who are interdependent with the collective responsibility will be significantly enhanced. [Limitations] As a preliminary exploration of theoretical modeling and empirical test from the perspective of Chinese indigenous psychology and Western cultural psychology, this study has a long way to go from its ultimate goal of "telling Chinese stories in the world academic language". [Conclusions] Under Chinese collectivism culture, people's sense of responsibility can be represented by "Chinese knot", and its different forms of self construction with the change of situation will lead to different levels of consistent action driven by collective goals.
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Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2021-01-02
Abstract： Objective Based on the phenomenon that Chinese people can wear masks within a short period of time after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study explores the mechanism of concerted actions under Chinese collectivism. Methods Through logical integration of previous studies and the results of a national questionnaire survey on Chinese people s motivation to wear masks during the epidemic period, this study first constructed a theoretical model of the awareness of responsibility under Chinese collectivism, and put forward the possibility of its dynamic nature led by the changes of social and organizational situations; and then the study used methods like questionnaire, interview, Thematic Apperception Test and survey experiment to verify the validity of the model and the causes and consequences of its dynamic nature. It is speculated that different forms of the model will lead to different levels of concerted actions under the collective goal, and then a situation-primed survey experiment was designed to test the cause and effect. Results 1. The micro model of responsibility consciousness under collectivism culture can be divided into two parts: individual responsibility and interdependent responsibility: when interdependent responsibility dominates, individual and others in the collective form meta responsibility interdependence, which constitutes the meso model of responsibility consciousness; the meta responsibility interdependence of all individuals in the collective forms a macro model similar to Chinese knot ; 2 The Chinese knot model of responsibility consciousness shows a dynamic change with the change of situation; 3. The results of the questionnaire experiment show that driven by the collective goal, the consistent action tendency of the individuals who are interdependent with the collective responsibility will be significantly enhanced. Limitations As a preliminary exploration of theoretical modeling and empirical test from the perspective of Chinese indigenous psychology and Western cultural psychology, this study has a long way to go from its ultimate goal of telling Chinese stories in the world academic language . Conclusions Under Chinese collectivism culture, people s sense of responsibility can be represented by Chinese knot , and its different forms of self construction with the change of situation will lead to different levels of consistent action driven by collective goals.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Experimental Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Educational Psychology submitted time 2020-07-19
Abstract： The current learning concept in China is dominated by “gradual learning”, that is, learners acquire knowledge gradually from a lower level to a higher level with the help of teachers. Based on the theory of adaptive learning and meta learning self, we put forward the concept of "integrated learning", that is, "under the role of meta learning self, learners actively integrate learning materials to achieve rapid and in-depth understanding of knowledge", and we designed an animal behavioral model to explore the effects of integrated learning compared with progressive learning. A total of 40 SD rats were selected as subjects, and a 2 (Learning mode: Integrated Learning - IL, Progressive Learning - PL) by 2 (Sex: Male, Female) factorial design was employed, and a 14-unit integrative T-maze was constructed for the study. Five task stages were designed to test the phenomenon and mechanisms of integrated learning: the learning stage, the one-week-later retest stage, the Gestalt transfer learning stage, the generalization/analysis test stage and the segment fixation test stage. The results showed that: 1. During the learning stage, the number of learning errors in each trial in the IL group decreased exponentially as training went on, while that in the PL group was wavy; the same indicator in males was significantly less in total than that in females; and the number of days to learning success in the IL-male group was significantly less than that in the PL-male group, while the difference was not significant between IL- and PL- female groups. 2. During both Gestalt transfer learning and generalization/analysis test stages, the IL group performed better than the PL group as a whole; during the segment fixation test stage, all groups appeared fixed more on the first segment of the original correct path. 2. In searching for the mechanisms of the IL groups’ better performance, a dynamic heat-map path analysis was employed, and it was shown that the IL group (especially males) appeared to repeatedly consolidate the first key segment of the correct path before quickly apprehending the rest of the correct path, which had element similarities with the first one; whereas the males in the PL group were more likely to return to explore the earlier segment than the females when a new segment of the maze was allowed to enter. 3. The IL group as a whole either ate less of the chocolate reward at the finish of the correct path or they moved the pellet to somewhere else to eat, and this pattern was much more obvious in females. The results indicated that: 1. Integrated learning is more efficient than progressive learning, with the characteristics of acquiring more-layered knowledge which can easily assist long-term migration learning. 2. During the formation process of a “cognitive map”, information stored in memory has the characteristics of entirety, chunking and categorization; 3. In maze learning task, performance in males is more regular than that in females; 4. Some individuals may appear anxious or maladjusted during integrated learning.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
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