Learning (not) to talk about race: when older children underperform in social categorization

The present research identifies an anomaly in sociocognitive development, whereby younger children (8 and 9 years) outperform their older counterparts (10 and 11 years) in a basic categorization task in which the acknowledgment of racial difference facilitates performance. Though older children exhibit superior performance on a race-neutral version of the task, their tendency to avoid acknowledging race hinders objective success when race is a relevant category. That these findings emerge in late childhood, in a pattern counter to the normal developmental trajectory of increased cognitive expertise in categorization, suggests that this anomaly indicates the onset of a critical transition in human social development.     

Universals and cultural differences in recognizing emotions

Moving beyond the earlier nature-versus-nurture debate, modern work on the communication of emotion has incorporated both universals and cultural differences. Classic research demonstrated that the intended emotions in posed expressions were recognized by members of many different cultural groups at rates better than predicted by random guessing. However, recent research has also documented evidence for an in-group advantage, meaning that people are generally more accurate at judging emotions when the emotions are expressed by members of their own cultural group rather than by members of a different cultural group. These new findings provide initial support for a dialect theory of emotion that has the potential to integrate both classic and recent findings. Further research in this area has the potential to improve cross-cultural communication.     

On the interactive influence of facial appearance and explicit knowledge in social categorization

Although people form impressions of others with ease, sometimes one's initial perceptions of individuals conflict with what one knows about them. Here, we aimed to investigate the process by which explicit knowledge about people interacts with initial perceptions on the basis of cues from facial appearance. Participants memorized the sexual orientations of men's faces wherein half of the targets were encoded with a sexual orientation opposite to their actual orientation. Subsequent categorization showed that perceivers favored appearance‐based information when temporally constrained but favored explicit knowledge about group membership with increased viewing time. Additionally, real‐time measures of participants' categorizations showed greater vacillation between appearance‐based cues and explicit knowledge as viewing time increased. These findings suggest that explicit knowledge does not simply overrule appearance‐based cues past a particular threshold but that the two may interact recurrently with top‐down knowledge directing attention and perception at later processing. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

MouseTracker: Software for studying real-time mental processing using a computer mouse-tracking method

In the present article, we present a software package, MouseTracker, that allows researchers to use a computer mouse-tracking method for assessing real-time processing in psychological tasks. By recording the streaming x-, y-coordinates of the computer mouse while participants move the mouse into one of multiple response alternatives, motor dynamics of the hand can reveal the time course of mental processes. MouseTracker provides researchers with fine-grained information about the real-time evolution of participant responses by sampling 60–75 times/sec the online competition between multiple response alternatives. MouseTracker allows researchers to develop and run experiments and subsequently analyze mouse trajectories in a user-interactive, graphics-based environment. Experiments may incorporate images, letter strings, and sounds. Mouse trajectories can be processed, averaged, visualized, and explored, and measures of spatial attraction/curvature, complexity, velocity, and acceleration can be computed. We describe the software and the method, and we provide details on mouse trajectory analysis. We validate the software by demonstrating the accuracy and reliability of its trajectory and reaction time data. The latest version of MouseTracker is freely available at http://mousetracker.jbfreeman.net.     

The influence of the fear facial expression on prosocial responding

Perceiving distress cues appears to be associated with prosocial responding. This being the case, it was hypothesised that the fear facial expression would elicit prosocial responding in perceivers. In Study 1, participants indicated that fear and sadness expressions would be associated with greater sympathy and willingness to help the expresser than would neutral expressions. In Study 2, participants were primed with fear or neutral expressions before reading vignettes featuring protagonists in mild distress. Fear-primed participants reported more sympathy and desire to help the protagonists than neutral-primed participants. Moreover, participants who recognised fear most accurately, as measured by a standard facial expression recognition task, showed the greatest increases in prosocial responding following fear expression primes. This corroborates the notion, supported by research as disparate as behavioural research on bystander intervention and clinical research on psychopaths, that exposure to and correct interpretation of certain distress cues may predict an individual's likelihood of behaving prosocially.     

The Racial and Ethnic Identity Formation Process of Second‐Generation Asian Indian Americans: A Phenomenological Study

This phenomenological study elucidates the identity development processes of 12 second‐generation adult Asian Indian Americans. The results identify salient sociocultural factors and multidimensional processes of racial and ethnic identity development. Discrimination, parental, and community factors seemed to play a salient role in influencing participants’ racial and ethnic identity development. The emergent Asian Indian American racial and ethnic identity model provides a contextualized overview of key developmental periods and turning points within the process of identity development. Este estudio fenomenológico dilucida los procesos de desarrollo de la indentidad de 12 individuos Americano‐Indoasiáticos adultos. Los resultados identifican factores socioculturales destacados y procesos multidimensionales del desarrollo de la identidad racial y étnica. Los factores de discriminación, paternos y comunitarios parecieron jugar un papel destacado en su influencia sobre el desarrollo de la identidad racial y étnica de los participantes. El modelo emergente de identidad racial y étnica Americano‐Indoasiática proporciona una visión general contextualizada de los periodos clave del desarrollo y los puntos de inflexión durante el proceso del desarrollo de la identidad.     

Age-related decline in executive function predicts better advice-giving in uncomfortable social contexts

Conventional wisdom suggests that older adults are more likely than young adults to speak their mind. Age-related executive function (EF) decline is believed to underlie this tendency by weakening older adults' capacity to inhibit responses. While age-related EF decline disrupts social and cognitive functioning in many domains, such degeneration may also carry the unforeseen benefit of improving communication in uncomfortable social contexts. We examined the performance of relatively low and high EF older adults and young adults on the socially distressing task of providing critical advice to a troubled obese teenager. Relative to higher EF older adults and younger adults, lower EF older adults were more open, provided more advice, and were seen as more empathic. Moreover, doctors specializing in obesity treatment rated lower EF older adults’ advice to the teen as having greater potential for prompting a lifestyle change. Our findings suggest a potential silver lining to age-related cognitive decline.     

Brief exposures: Male sexual orientation is accurately perceived at 50 ms

People have proved adept at categorizing others into social categories, at least when the categorical distinction is perceptually obvious (e.g., age, race, or gender). There remain many social groups whose boundaries are less clear, however. The current work therefore tested judgments of an ambiguous social category (male sexual orientation) from faces shown for durations between 33 ms and 10,000 ms. The sexual orientation of faces presented for 50 ms, 100 ms, 6500 ms, 10,000 ms, and at a self-paced rate (averaging 1500 ms), was categorized at above-chance levels with no decrease in accuracy for briefer exposures. Previous work showing impression formation at similar speeds relied on consensus to determine the validity of judgments. The present results extend these findings by providing a criterion for judgmental accuracy—actual group membership.