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Schizophrenia participants showed higher accuracy when targets appeared in the same location as a directional cue (i.e., congruency) for nonsocial, but not social, cues. Contrary to expectations, reduced social attention was not significantly correlated with clinically rated social motivation deficits or decreased social functioning in the schizophrenia group. CONCLUSION These findings provide evidence for social attention deficits in schizophrenia, but without a clear mapping of its influence on social motivation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).One approach that is starting to reveal interesting variation in social interactions assesses how familiarity of individuals affects their behavior toward one another. This was studied by Prior, Smith, Dooling, and Ball (2020) with a model songbird species, zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). This work is important in that it reveals how fundamental simple familiarity-repeated social experience with another individual-is to communication and interaction in social species. More work is now needed, and in a wide range of species exhibiting a wide range of variation in social behavior, to assess the extent to which variation in familiarity is the bridge that links social interactions to social relationships in groups of animals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Research indicates that marriage equality legislation is associated with improved mental health outcomes for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people. However, the public debate that often precedes such legislation may exacerbate psychological distress and minority stress. this website In 2017, the Australian Federal Government conducted a national survey to gauge support for marriage equality. The present study investigated the mental health of a sample of LGBTQ people during and after this survey period. A sample of 2,220 LGBTQ participants completed measures of psychological distress and minority stress during the survey period. Participants were invited for follow-up 1 week, 3 months, and 12 months after the postal survey results were announced. Data were analyzed using linear mixed models to evaluate change in psychological distress and minority stress across time points, and the influence of exposure to the marriage equality debate, sexual identity, and gender identity on psychological distress and minority stress. Reported symptoms of psychological distress and minority stress significantly decreased following the postal survey period. Greater exposure to the marriage equality campaign was associated with greater psychological distress and perceived stigma but not internalized stigma. Sexual and gender identity subgroups significantly differed on outcome variable means. This study documents the longitudinal effects on a minority group of a public vote and the enactment of legislation regarding their human rights. The results suggest the postal survey served as a significant stressor to Australia's LGBTQ community. Implications for policy and clinical practice are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Intimacy develops when a person discloses vulnerability and perceives their partner's response as supportive. However, a published experimental study found that individuals report their partners as less supportive in response to disclosures of specific examples of vulnerability that involve the partner (i.e., partner-inclusive) compared to disclosures that do not involve the partner (i.e., partner-exclusive). This research is an extension of findings from that experimental study and examines how individual differences in mindfulness and disclosure specificity are associated with perceived partner responsiveness during disclosures of partner-inclusive and partner-exclusive vulnerabilities. Cohabiting couples (N = 82) were randomly assigned to engage in either partner-inclusive or -exclusive vulnerability discussions. Each couple engaged in 2 video-recorded discussions so that each person took a turn as discloser and responder. Trained coders rated disclosures for specificity (i.e., whether or not the discloser used specific examples). Following each discussion, couples rated perceived partner responsiveness. Hypotheses were tested with multilevel modeling. Findings suggest that individuals perceived their partners' reactions as less responsive when they disclosed specific, partner-inclusive vulnerabilities and their partners had lower mindfulness. When partners had higher mindfulness, individuals perceived their partners as similarly responsive when disclosing partner-inclusive and -exclusive vulnerabilities, regardless of specificity. Mindfulness may enable couples to remain engaged during partner-inclusive vulnerability discussions leading to higher perceived responsiveness-an integral component of intimacy development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Major life events (MLEs) are studied in many different areas in psychology such as personality development, clinical psychology, or posttraumatic growth. In all of these areas, a common finding is that MLEs differ in their effects on psychological outcomes. However, a framework that allows a systematic examination of these differences is still absent. This article presents a systematic literature review and 4 empirical studies (Ns between 226 and 449, total N = 1,477) in which we developed and evaluated a dimensional taxonomy of 9 perceived characteristics of MLEs valence, impact, predictability, challenge, emotional significance, change in worldviews, social status changes, external control, and extraordinariness. These event characteristics can be measured reliably with the Event Characteristics Questionnaire (ECQ). Perceived event characteristics predicted individual differences in changes in subjective well-being in both retrospective and longitudinal data after MLEs over and above established predictors of subjective well-being such as personality and demographic characteristics. A comparison between the ECQ and established taxonomies of situation characteristics such as the DIAMONDS (Rauthmann et al., 2014) showed high conceptual and empirical convergence between some ECQ subscales (e.g., valence, challenge) with characteristics of situations, whereas other ECQ subscales (e.g., social status changes, external control) were conceptually and empirically distinct from situation characteristics. In sum, including measures of perceived event characteristics in studies on MLEs may enhance our understanding of why MLEs differ in the direction, strength, and duration of their effects on psychological outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).