Over the last ten years, Oosterhof and Todorov's valence-dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgments of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof and Todorov's methodology across 11 world regions, 41 countries, and 11,570 participants. When we used Oosterhof and Todorov's original analysis strategy, the valence-dominance model generalized across regions. When we used an alternative methodology to allow for correlated dimensions we observed much less generalization. Collectively, these results suggest that, while the valence-dominance model generalizes very well across regions when dimensions are forced to be orthogonal, regional differences are revealed when we use different extraction methods, correlate and rotate the dimension reduction solution.

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten)

Multimodal pain management is a comprehensive treatment of complex chronic pain syndromes. In addition to medical therapy various other specialized therapeutic interventions based on the biopsychosocial model of pain origin and chronic pain development, are added. During the last few years treatment centers for chronic pain have been established throughout Germany. Multimodal pain management has been included in the official catalogue of the recognized medical procedures for day clinic units as well as for inpatient pain management. In daily practice there is, however, still a lack of clarity and of consistency about the components that multimodal pain management should contain. This is the reason for the ad hoc commission on multimodal interdisciplinary pain management of the German Pain Society to propose the following position paper that has been worked out in a multilevel and interdisciplinary consensus process. The paper describes the mandatory treatment measures in the four core disciplines of multimodal pain management, pain medicine, psychotherapy, exercise therapy including physiotherapy and assistant medical professions including nurses.

This cost-of-illness analysis, based on information from 1101 patients in Switzerland, is part of a Europe-wide cost-of-illness study in multiple sclerosis (MS). The objective was to analyze the costs and quality of life (QOL) related to the level of disease severity and progression. Patients registered with the Swiss MS patient organization were asked to participate in a mail survey and 44% responded. The questionnaire asked for details on the disease (type of disease, relapses, level of functional disability), information on all medical and non-medical resource consumption, informal care and work capacity (sick leave and early retirement). In addition, patients were asked about their current QOL (measured as utility) and the level of fatigue. The mean age of respondents was 53 years, and 21% were 65 years or older. Almost one-quarter of patients in the sample (23%) had severe disease (Expanded Disability Status Scale [EDSS] score > or =7), while 36% had moderate disease (EDSS score 4-6.5) and 38% had mild disease (EDSS score 0-3). The median EDSS score was 5.0, with a mean of 4.5. Mean utility was 0.53 (range, 0 = death to 1 = full health), while mean fatigue was rated as 5.4 (range, 1 = not tired to 10 = extremely tired). Utility and fatigue were worse for patients with a recent relapse. Costs and utility are highly correlated with disease severity. Workforce participation decreases from greater than 80% in early disease to less than 10% in the very late stages, while total costs increase more than fivefold between an EDSS score of 0-1 and an EDSS of 7, and by more than 40% from an EDSS score of 7 to worse states. Most cost types increase steadily until patients reach an EDSS score of 7, after which there is a sharp increase due to home care, home services and informal care. The mean annual cost per patient in the sample (65.000 Swiss francs, euro 42.000) corresponds to costs for a patient at the median EDSS score of 5. Utility decreases from 0.89 to 0.1 as the disease becomes severe, but the loss compared to the age- and gender-matched general population can be observed at all levels of the disease ( approximately 0.1 at an EDSS score of 2 to approximately 0.3 at an EDSS score of 5-6), leading to an estimated annual loss of 0.3 quality-adjusted life-years (QALY) per patient in the sample. Relapses for patients with an EDSS score <5 were associated with a utility loss of 0.08 and an incremental cost of 5500 Swiss francs (euro 3.500) during the quarter in which they occurred. Health-care costs are to a large extent covered by insurance, and a substantial amount of services such as home care and home help are available to patients with severe disease. These services represent approximately 15% of total societal costs and are largely covered, resulting in almost 30% of total costs to different payers. Despite this, a large amount of costs falls on families providing care, in particular for patients with severe disease.

Abstract. Crowdsourcing platforms provide an affordable approach for recruiting large and diverse samples in a short time. Past research has shown that researchers can obtain reliable data from these sources, at least in domains of research that are not affectively involving. The goal of the present study was to test if crowdsourcing platforms can also be used to conduct experiments that incorporate the induction of aversive affective states. First, a laboratory experiment with German university students was conducted in which a frustrating task induced anger and aggressive behavior. This experiment was then replicated online using five crowdsourcing samples. The results suggest that participants in the online samples reacted very similarly to the anger manipulation as participants in the laboratory experiments. However, effect sizes were smaller in crowdsourcing samples with non-German participants while a crowdsourcing sample with exclusively German participants yielded virtually the same effect size as in the laboratory.