Models of Plio-Pleistocene hominid behavioral ecology often emphasize competition with large carnivores. This paper describes competition between modern humans and large carnivores in rural Uganda, including active, confrontational scavenging of carnivore kills by humans and carnivore attacks on humans. Information gathered from Ugandan Game Department archives (1923-1994) reveals that twentiet...

Intimates regularly confront their partners to motivate them to change undesirable behaviors. Nevertheless, contextual perspectives suggest that qualities of the partner may determine the implications of such attempts. Consistent with these ideas, a pilot study of romantic relationships, an observational study of newlyweds, and a diary study of married couples demonstrated that partner depressi...

To investigate the impact of counselor style, a 2-session motivational checkup was offered to 42 problem drinkers (18 women and 24 men) who were randomly assigned to 3 groups: (a) immediate checkup with directive-confrontational counseling, (b) immediate checkup with client-centered counseling, or (c) delayed checkup (waiting-list control). Overall, the intervention resulted in a 57% reduction ...

BACKGROUND The use of spirometry for early detection of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is still an issue of debate, particularly because of a lack of convincing evidence that spirometry has an added positive effect on smoking cessation. We hypothesise that early detection of COPD and confrontation with spirometry for smoking cessation may be effective when applying an approach we ...

According to hedonic approaches to psychological health, healthy individuals should pursue pleasant and avoid unpleasant emotions. According to instrumental approaches, however, healthy individuals should pursue useful and avoid harmful emotions, whether pleasant or unpleasant. We sought to reconcile these approaches by distinguishing between preferences for emotions that are aggregated across ...

People may react differently when individuals of different ages commit a social faux pas. Younger (22 to 35 years old) and older (65 to 77 years old) participants read vignettes where age of characters committing social transgressions varied (young vs. old). Participants rated whether the offended person would respond with engagement, confrontational, and avoidant behaviors and how much people ...

Under what conditions will a bystander intervene to try to stop a violent attack by one person on another? It is generally believed that the greater the size of the crowd of bystanders, the less the chance that any of them will intervene. A complementary model is that social identity is critical as an explanatory variable. For example, when the bystander shares common social identity with the v...