Intergroup Ratio and the Contact Hypothesis1

This study assessed whether contact between members of 2 social groups generalized to contact in another setting, as well as influenced their intercultural knowledge and acceptance. Subjects were 244 international (mainly ethnic Chinese) and Anglo-Australian students living in 3 student residence halls, with each group comprising a numerical majority, equal proportion, and a numerical minority in one of the residential halls. As anticipated, group ratio exerted a systematic effect on the amount of intercultural contact, with most contact by members of a numerical minority, regardless of student group. Importantly, the pattern of residence-hall contact tended to generalize to the wider university environment and to influence intercultural knowledge and acceptance. However, contact was not unqualified in its effects, particularly in relation to members of the cultural majority.     

Processes That Mediate the Relationship Between a Group Goal and Group Member Performance

The impact of a group goal on the performance of anonymous and nonin- teracting group members performing an additive group task was tested. Pro- cesses believed to mediate the effect, the role of self-set individual goals, the impact of information about the group's previous performance on the task (group knowledge of results; GRPKR) on goal commitment, and the motiva- tional basis of the goal were also assessed. Seventeen groups of three to five people performed two trials of an idea generation task. In the GOAL/GRPKR condition, group members were assigned a group goal for Session 2 and received information about the group's performance for Session 1. In the goal without knowledge of results (GOAL/NOKR) condition, group mem- bers were assigned a group goal for Session 2 without GRPKR. In the NO- GOAL condition, group members worked without a goal and without GRPKR. In each condition, group members worked on the task without talk- ing to other group members and individual contributions to the group prod- uct were unknown to others. Self-reports of effort, changes in individual performance strategies from Rial 1 to Rial 2, self-set individual goals, goal commitment, and personal challenge were collected. Results showed that (a) group members working toward a performance goal outperformed those working without a goal, b) information about the group's previous perfor- mance on the task did not influence commitment to the goal or performance, (c) changes in individual performance strategies mediated the group goal ef- fect but self-reports of effort invested in the task did not, (d) g m ~ p members working toward a group goal felt more personal challenge than group mem- bers working without a goal, and (e) self-set individual goals can not account for the group goal effect. The implications of these results for models of group goals and group performance are discussed.     

An Investigation of the Contact Hypothesis of the Own-race Bias in Face Recognition

Although previous studies have demonstrated that faces of one's own race are recognized more accurately than are faces of other races, the theoretical basis of this effect is not clearly understood at present. The experiment reported in this paper tested the contact hypothesis of the own-race bias in face recognition using a cross-cultural design. Four groups of subjects were tested for their recognition of distinctive and typical own-race and other-race faces: (1) black Africans who had a high degree of contact with white faces, (2) black Africans who had little or no contact with white faces, (3) white Africans who had a high degree of contact with black faces, and (4) white Britons who had little contact with black faces. The results showed that although on the whole subjects recognized own-race faces more accurately and more confidently than they recognized other-race faces, the own-race bias in face recognition was significantly smaller among the high-contact subjects than it was among the low-contact subjects. Also, although high-contact black and white subjects showed significant main effects of distinctiveness in their recognition of faces of both races, low-contact black and white subjects showed significant main effects of distinctiveness only in their recognition of own-race faces. It is argued that these results support the contact hypothesis of the own-race bias in face recognition and Valentine's multidimensional space (MDS) framework of face encoding.     

Improving Group Judgment Accuracy: Information Sharing and Determining the Best Member

Most approaches to improving the quality of group decisions have focused on structuring the group interaction so as to minimize the negative features present in freely interacting groups. The recent finding that groups often can perform at least as well as their best member on judgment tasks suggests the possibility that group effectiveness could be improved by building on the positive features of group interaction rather than by restricting it. In the present study interacting groups were encouraged to discuss each item of a quantitative judgment task before determining what their group′s estimate would be. Two different instructional interventions were implemented and contrasted to a control condition. Both interventions consisted of giving common sense advice about what the groups should do as they discussed each item. Findings indicate that simply telling groups to either: (a) share task-relevant information, or (b) try to determine the most accurate member led to significantly better group performance. These results suggest two distinct ways in which groups can be as accurate as their best member, even when performing tasks with undemonstrable solutions. Implications of these two approaches for improving group accuracy are discussed.     

不胜任专家对团队互动模式的影响:团队成员补偿效应

团队中专家的作用日益受到关注,而不胜任专家对于团队互动模式的影响鲜有研究。采用实验室任务团队,通过对专家胜任力进行精确操纵,研究发现不胜任专家团队条件下出现了明显的"成员补偿效应"。即普通成员的主导行为和功能性行为显著增加;影响力水平显著提升。同时,普通成员影响力水平受到领导开放性的调节。只有在高领导开放性的团队中,普通成员对不胜任专家的补偿效应才能发挥作用。     

Member Preferences for Discussion Content in Anticipated Group Decisions: Effects of Type of issue and Group Interactive Goal

Preferences for discussion content in three future group decision-making sessions were sought from individuals. Each session would deal with a different topic, and discussion would be limited to content items to be determined by compiling individual-member item rankings. Topics varied in the degree to which they were judgmental or intellective. An induced interactive goal stressed either group relations (group goal) or decision quality (task goal). For each topic, subjects ranked 12 potential discussion items, 6 reflecting normative and 6 informational material. Normative material was preferred if the anticipated topic was clearly judgmental, and informational material was preferred for an intellective topic, agreeing with prior research in which actual discussion followed the same type of issue-influence mode pattern. When given false feedback regarding the items (predominantly normative or informational) that had been chosen by compiling members' votes, subjects were most satisfied if selections were congruent with their interactive goal, that is, if they anticipated discussing normative items under a group goal and informational items under a task goal. In sum, preference for normative versus informational content in an anticipated discussion was driven by issue type, but satisfaction with expected content was driven by interactional goal. Though preferred influence mode in anticipated group decisions was affected by whether conditions fostered concern for group relations versus gathering facts, specific manifestations (ranking or satisfaction) varied with invoking conditions (issue type or goal).     

Conceptions of Man and the Helping Professions

The helping professions are defined and the argument is advanced that because they are dealing with existential affairs, practitioners must rely more on values than on science. An image of man is proposed and the implications of this image for the work of those in the helping profession indicated.     

Ingroup Bias in the Minimal Group Situation: An Experimental Test of the Inequity Prevention Hypothesis

The inequity prevention explanation of ingroup bias in the minimal group situation holds that group members expect biased behavior from the outgroup. As a consequence, they would favor their own group in order to compensate for this anticipated outgroup bias. As a test of this interpretation,the relationship between experimentally created minimal groups was operationalized in such a way that subjects of some conditions could indeed expect biased behavior from the outgroup. In another condition, they had no reason to expect such biased behavior. The results revealed that subjects participating in the first kind of condition did indeed think that the outgroup was biased. In the condition of the second type, they thought that the outgroup was fair. Their actual intergroup behavior was nevertheless equally discriminatory in both kinds of conditions. The theoretical implications of the data are discussed.     

Two Conceptions of the Physical

The debate over physicalism in philosophy of mind can be seen as concerning an inconsistent tetrad of theses: (1) if physicalism is true, a priori physicalism is true; (2) a priori physicalism is false; (3) if physicalism is false, epiphenomenalism is true; (4) epiphenomenalism is false. This paper argues that one may resolve the debate by distinguishing two conceptions of the physical: on the theory-based conception , it is plausible that (2) is true and (3) is false; on the object-based conception , it is plausible that (3) is true and (2) is false. the paper also defends and explores the version of physicalism that results from this strategy.     

Explanation and Two Conceptions of the Physical

Any position that promises genuine progress on the mind-body problem deserves attention. Recently, Daniel Stoljar has identified a physicalist version of Russells notion of neutral monism; he elegantly argues that with this type of physicalism it is possible to disambiguate on the notion of physicalism in such a way that the problem is resolved. The further issue then arises of whether we have reason to believe that this type of physicalism is in fact true. Ultimately, one needs to argue for this position by inference to the best explanation, and I show that this new type of physicalism does not hold promise of more explanatory prowess than its relevant rivals, and that, whether it is better than its rivals or not, it is doubtful whether it would furnish us with genuine explanations of the phenomenal at all.     

Stereotypes on Campus: How Contact and Liking Influence Perceptions of Group Distinctiveness

In two studies, subjects' stereotypes of various campus groups were assessed using a content-free, cognitive methodology in which stereotypes are defined as "generalizations about a class of people that distinguish that class from others" (McCauley, Stitt, & Segal, 1980, p. 197). In an effort to predict strength of stereotypes, four main findings emerged: (a) contact with a group's members was associated with increased liking of the group; (b) contact predicted increased stereotype strength; (c) liking a group was associated with decreased stereotype strength; and (d) over time, the strength of stereotypes tended to decrease. These data are discussed in regard to the contact hypothesis (Airport, 1954; Amir, 1969; Cook, 1978,1984), the role of positive affect in altering cognitive organization, and more generally, to the issue of stereotype development.     

Conceptions of the self and others across time

People are full of plans, goals, hopes, and fears-future-oriented thoughts that constitute a significant part of the self-concept. But are representations of others similarly future oriented? Studies 1a and 1b demonstrate that the future is seen as a larger component of the self than of another person. Study 2 found that because self-identity is tied to an unrealized future, the self is thought to be less knowable than others in the present. Study 3 indicates that people believe that others need to know who they are striving to be in order to be understood-more so than they believe they need to know others' strivings to understand them. Studies 4a and 4b tested an important implication of these findings, that because so much of who they are is tied to the future, people believe they are further from their ideal selves than others are. Implications for judgment and decision making are discussed.     

大学生人际交往团体心理辅导的实效研究

1　问题提出　　人际交往障是影响大学生心理健康的占第一、第二位的影响因素 ,人际关系不良学生往往有更多心理健康问题 ,大学生人际交往存在问题很多。团体心理辅导是在团体领导者的带领下 ,团体成员围绕某些共同关心的问题 ,通过一定的活动形式与人际互动 ,相互启发、诱导 ,形成团体的共识与目标 ,进而改变成员的观念、态度和行为。本人以团体心理辅导技术对师专生进行了为期 6周的团体心理辅导 ,并进行了实验组与控制组的比较 ,实验组辅导后与九个月后的比较。目的是要探讨通过团体心理辅导改善大学生人际交往的羞怯、交流恐惧、社交回…     

Chance and the Continuum Hypothesis

This paper presents and defends an argument that the continuum hypothesis is false, based on considerations about objective chance and an old theorem due to Banach and Kuratowski. More specifically, I argue that the probabilistic inductive methods standardly used in science presuppose that every proposition about the outcome of a chancy process has a certain chance between 0 and 1. I also argue in favour of the standard view that chances are countably additive. Since it is possible to randomly pick out a point on a continuum, for instance using a roulette wheel or by flipping a countable infinity of fair coins, it follows, given the axioms of ZFC, that there are many different cardinalities between countable infinity and the cardinality of the continuum.     

Wittgenstein and the Dream Hypothesis

The paper deals with Wittgenstein’s treatment of radical skepticism. He holds from his earliest work to his last that skepticism is senseless and therefore no rebuttal, such as G.E. Moore offered, is necessary.