Booth, Robert William
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boothr@mef.edu.tr
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04.02. Department of Psychology
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Former Staff
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Documents
25
Citations
336
Scholarly Output
9
Articles
8
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1960/10256
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0
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0
WoS Citation Count
82
Scopus Citation Count
94
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5
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5
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0
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0
WoS Citations per Publication
9.11
Scopus Citations per Publication
10.44
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4
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0
| Journal | Count |
|---|---|
| Cogent Psychology | 1 |
| Cognition and Emotion | 1 |
| Current Psychology | 1 |
| Emotion | 1 |
| Journal of Applied Social Psychology | 1 |
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9 results
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Article Citation - WoS: 1Citation - Scopus: 3Brief Time Course of Trait Anxiety-Related Attentional Bias To Fearconditioned Stimuli: Evidence From the Dual-Rsvp Task(Elsevier, 2016) Booth, Robert WilliamBackground and objectives Attentional bias to threat is a much-studied feature of anxiety; it is typically assessed using response time (RT) tasks such as the dot probe. Findings regarding the time course of attentional bias have been inconsistent, possibly because RT tasks are sensitive to processes downstream of attention. Methods Attentional bias was assessed using an accuracy-based task in which participants detected a single digit in two simultaneous rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) streams of letters. Before the target, two coloured shapes were presented simultaneously, one in each RSVP stream; one shape had previously been associated with threat through Pavlovian fear conditioning. Attentional bias was indicated wherever participants identified targets in the threat’s RSVP stream more accurately than targets in the other RSVP stream. Results In 87 unselected undergraduates, trait anxiety only predicted attentional bias when the target was presented immediately following the shapes, i.e. 160 ms later; by 320 ms the bias had disappeared. This suggests attentional bias in anxiety can be extremely brief and transitory. Limitations This initial study utilised an analogue sample, and was unable to physiologically verify the efficacy of the conditioning. The next steps will be to verify these results in a sample of diagnosed anxious patients, and to use alternative threat stimuli. Conclusions The results of studies using response time to assess the time course of attentional bias may partially reflect later processes such as decision making and response preparation. This may limit the efficacy of therapies aiming to retrain attentional biases using response time tasks.Article Citation - WoS: 18Citation - Scopus: 20Working Memory Regulates Trait Anxiety-Related Threat Processing Biases(2017) Booth, Robert W; Sharma, Dinkar; Mackintosh, BundyHigh trait anxious individuals tend to show biased processing of threat. Correlational evidence suggests that executive control could be used to regulate such threat-processing. On this basis, we hypothesized that trait anxiety-related cognitive biases regarding threat should be exaggerated when executive control is experimentally impaired by loading working memory. In Study 1, 68 undergraduates read ambiguous vignettes under high and low working memory load; later, their interpretations of these vignettes were assessed via a recognition test. Trait anxiety predicted biased interpretation of social threat vignettes under high working memory load, but not under low working memory load. In Study 2, 53 undergraduates completed a dot probe task with fear-conditioned Japanese characters serving as threat stimuli. Trait anxiety predicted attentional bias to the threat stimuli but, again, this only occurred under high working memory load. Interestingly however, actual eye movements toward the threat stimuli were only associated with state anxiety, and this was not moderated by working memory load, suggesting that executive control regulates biased threat-processing downstream of initial input processes such as orienting. These results suggest that cognitive loads can exacerbate trait anxiety-related cognitive biases, and therefore represent a useful tool for assessing cognitive biases in future research. More importantly, since biased threat-processing has been implicated in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety, poor executive control may be a risk factor for anxiety disorders.Article Citation - WoS: 40Citation - Scopus: 44The Age of Anxiety? It Depends Where You Look: Changes in Stai Trait Anxiety, 1970-2010(Springer, 2016) Booth, Robert William; Leader, Tirza I.; Sharma, DinkarPurpose : Population-level surveys suggest that anxiety has been increasing in several nations, including the USA and UK. We sought to verify the apparent anxiety increases by looking for systematic changes in mean anxiety questionnaire scores from research publications. Methods : We analyzed all available mean State–Trait Anxiety Inventory scores published between 1970 and 2010. We collected 1703 samples, representing more than 205,000 participants from 57 nations. Results : Results showed a significant anxiety increase worldwide, but the pattern was less clear in many individual nations. Our analyses suggest that any increase in anxiety in the USA and Canada may be limited to students, anxiety has decreased in the UK, and has remained stable in Australia. Conclusions : Although anxiety may have increased worldwide, it might not be increasing as dramatically as previously thought, except in specific populations, such as North American students. Our results seem to contradict survey results from the USA and UK in particular. We do not claim that our results are more reliable than those of large population surveys. However, we do suggest that mental health surveys and other governmental sources of disorder prevalence data may be partially biased by changing attitudes toward mental health: if respondents are more aware and less ashamed of their anxiety, they are more likely to report it to survey takers. Analyses such as ours provide a useful means of double-checking apparent trends in large population surveys.Article Citation - WoS: 8Citation - Scopus: 7State Anxiety Impairs Attentional Control When Other Sources of Control Are Minimal(Taylor & Francis, 2016) Booth, Robert William; Peker, MüjdeResearch suggests anxiety impairs attentional control; however, this effect has been unreliable. We argue that anxiety’s impairment of attentional control is subtle, and can be obscured by other non-emotional sources of control. We demonstrate this by examining conflict adaptation, an enhancement in attentional control following a trial with high conflict between distracter and target stimuli. Participants completed a Stroop task featuring incongruent (e.g. RED in green font; high-conflict) and control (e.g. +++ in green font; low-conflict) trials. More state-anxious participants showed greater Stroop interference following control trials, but interference was uniformly low following incongruent trials. This suggests state anxiety can impair attention, but other sources of top-down control – such as conflict adaptation – can easily overcome this impairment. This is consistent with recent theories of anxious cognition and shows that anxiety researchers must attend to the dynamics and sources of attentional control.Article Muhafazakarlık, Kaygı ve Tehdit Edici Uyarıcılara Karşı Dikkat Yanlılığı(2017) Booth, Robert W; Dikçe, Uğurcan; Peker, MüjdePolitical ideology often forms an important part of someone’s identity, and affects their life in many ways. Many have studied the correlates and predictors of ideology, especially conservative ideology (e.g. Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950; Jost, Glaser, Kruglanksi, & Sulloway, 2003; Tomkins, 1963; Wilson, 1973). Psychologists and political scientists have become increasingly convinced that ideology is related to biological, physiological and cognitive factors. For example, twin studies suggest political attitudes are about 30-60% heritable (see Bouchard & McGue, 2003; Hatemi et al., 2010). Here, we focus on cognitive and associated emotional correlates of ideology.Book Part Biyoloji, Biliş ve Siyaset Psikolojisi(Nobel Akademik Yayıncılık, 2017) Peker, Müjde; Booth, Robert WEğer bu kitabı okuyorsanız, halihazırda siayset bilimi ve psikoloji etkileşimiyle ilgileniyorsunuz demektir.Article Citation - WoS: 7Citation - Scopus: 10Relationships Among Self-Construal, Gender, Social Dominance Orientation, and Interpersonal Distance(Wiley, 2018) Eke, Aylin; Booth, Robert W.; Peker, MüjdeThe present research focuses on the cognitive embodiment of physical proximity,through interpersonal distance’s relationship with self‐construal, gender, and socialdominance orientation. Previous work showed that more independent self‐construalwas associated with higher distancing preferences of participants, and that femalestend to have higher interdependent self‐construal that lead them to prefer less interpersonal distance. We expected to replicate these findings. However, due to the relationship between power and interpersonal distance, it was argued that gender andperceptions regarding the social hierarchy would also play a role in predicting interpersonal distance. More specifically, it was predicted that while females who accept social hierarchies between males and females would prefer more distance when interacting with males, males would not differ in their preference for social distance.One hundred participants (67 female) completed the Comfortable Interpersonal Distance Scale, Independent and Interdependent Self‐Construal Scales and the Social Dominance Orientation Scale. Interdependent self‐construal was negatively correlated with overall preferred interpersonal distance. Moreover, females high on social dominance orientation preferred larger interpersonal distance from male adult strangers than from female adult strangers. The findings provide further support for the embodiment of self‐construal by showing that psychological closeness and heteronomy are related to physical closeness. The findings also highlight the importance of investigating communal sharing and authority ranking dimensions simultaneously when focusing on interpersonal distance as well as differentiating females’ interpersonal sensitivity due to low power with their high affiliation.Article Citation - WoS: 5Citation - Scopus: 7Turkish Adaptation of the Fear of Spiders Questionnaire: Reliability and Validity in Non-Clinical Samples(Taylor & Francis, 2016) Booth, Robert William; Öztop, Pınar; Peker, MüjdeThe rapid, objective measurement of spider fear is important for clinicians, and for researchers studying fear. To facilitate this, we adapted the Fear of Spiders Questionnaire (FSQ) into Turkish. The FSQ is quick to complete and easy to understand. Compared to the commonly used Spider Phobia Questionnaire, it has shown superior test–retest reliability and better discrimination of lower levels of spider fear, facilitating fear research in non-clinical samples. In two studies, with 137 and 105 undergraduates and unselected volunteers, our adapted FSQ showed excellent internal consistency (Cronbach’s ? = .95 and .96) and test–retest reliability (r = .90), and good discriminant validity against the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory—Trait (r = .23) and Beck Anxiety Inventory—Trait (r = .07). Most importantly, our adapted FSQ significantly predicted 26 students’ self-reported discomfort upon approaching a caged tarantula; however, a measure of behavioural avoidance of the tarantula yielded little variability, so a more sensitive task will be required for future behavioural testing. Based on this initial testing, we recommend our adapted FSQ for research use. Further research is required to verify that our adapted FSQ discriminates individuals with and without phobia effectively.Article Citation - WoS: 3Citation - Scopus: 3Perceived Self-Society Moral Discrepancies Concerning Fairness Predict Depression and Paranoid Ideation(Springer, 2021) Booth, Robert W; Güney, Onuray; Peker, MüjdeThis study investigated the psychological correlates of perceiving a discrepancy between one’s own moral beliefs and those of the greater society (a ‘moral discrepancy’). One hundred and one female Turkish students answered questions about their own moral beliefs, their perceptions of the greater society’s moral beliefs, and their mental health. Moral discrepancies were assessed using an adaptation of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (Graham et al. 2009), while mental health was assessed using the Symptom Check List-90-Revised (Derogatis 1992). Participants who perceived a discrepancy relating to fairness and reciprocity concerns reported more depressed and paranoid symptoms. It is suggested that moral discrepancies can create a vulnerability to depression and paranoid thinking by fostering a feeling of isolation.