José Bermúdez

Personality and health-protective behaviour

Over the last decades much research has been devoted to the analysis of psychosocial factors associated with the development of health problems. However, less attention has been paid to mechanisms explaining why people keep engaging in risky behaviours and do not develop, instead, those habits that could increase their quality of life. To answer these questions, two lines of research have been followed: the main hypothesis of the first line is that there are personality characteristics that predispose the development of certain patterns of behaviour. The second line is focused on the analysis of the psychological processes that, together with situational factors, explain what behaviour is initiated and how it is maintained or changed. The main purpose of this paper is to review these two lines of research: what their main contributions are and what the problems they face are. Copyright

Neuroticism, Mood, and Retrieval of Negative Personal Memories

Most studies of the effects of neuroticism on memory investigate the recall of self-related material learned during the course of the experimental session. The present study was designed to examine the effects of neuroticism on more complex personal events in real life. High levels of neuroticism were associated with a tendency toward fewer happy thoughts and memories. The results also suggest that neuroticism increased retrieval of negative personal memories independent of depressed mood. These findings are discussed in relation to cognitive vulnerability to depression.

Anxiety and Attention: Is There an Attentional Bias for Positive Emotional Stimuli?

Empirical research has shown that anxiety is associated with a systematic bias in the cognitive system. Anxious individuals (clinically anxious patients and normal individuals with high-trait anxiety) are characterized by a pattern of selective processing that favors the encoding of threatening information. Is this attentional bias specific to threat-related information, or does it operate for positive emotional stimuli? The research directly connected with the existence of an attentional bias for threat in anxiety was examined.

Extraversion and task properties as determinants of incidental recall

The present research investigated in a dual task design the effects of extraversion level and structural task properties on the recall of an incidentally learned text. First, the hypothetical relation between arousal level and attentional selectivity was tested. Second, the relation between structural levels in the text and recall of text elements was studied. It was found that (a) extraverts performed significantly better on incidental recall compared to introverts; (b) the nuclear sentences at the top of the hierarchical structure were the best recalled sentences, independently of arousal level; (c) the effect of differences in arousal on recall was only significant in case of the top sentences. The effect was absent in case of specificúsecondary sentences.

Estilo atribucional, autoobservación y defensividad: el caso del síndrome del impostor y el pesimismo defensivo

Resumen El presente estudio evalúa el estilo atribucional y de autoobservación, con el fin de analizar la naturaleza defensiva del Síndrome del Impostor (SI) y el Pesimismo Defensivo (PD). Estos patrones de comportamiento se caracterizan por mantener unas bajas expectativas de resultado a pesar de una historia importante de éxitos. Realizamos una serie de análisis de regresión jerárquica destinados a explorar las asociaciones relativas entre el SI y el PD, por un lado, y el estilo atribucional y la autoobservación, por otro. Los resultados revelaron que el SI se caracteriza por un patrón atribucional consistente en una externalización de los éxitos, mientras que en el PD lo relevante es una incontrolabilidadde los fracasos; asimismo, el SI, pero no el PD, se asociaba con auto-observación protectora (vs. adquisitiva). En la discusión se comentan las implicaciones de estas tendencias atribucionales para la utilización de diferentes modos de protección contra los fracasos.