Is the whole more than the sum of the parts? Re-evaluating social status in marketing

Data from 2 national surveys were examined to determine whether the components of social status (education, income, occupation) as separate individual factors could explain more variance than social status composites (Coleman, Hollingshead, Census). In general the evidence implies that the components are better predictors than the composite score, and that in the majority of cases only the raw education and income information is required for prediction.     

Once more: is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Relative contributions of private and shared taste to judgments of facial attractiveness

Misconstruing the meaning of Cronbach's alpha, experts on facial attractiveness have conveyed the impression that facial-attractiveness judgment standards are largely shared. This claim is unsubstantiated, because information necessary for deciding whether judgments of facial attractiveness are more influenced by commonly shared or by privately held evaluation standards is lacking. Three experiments, using diverse face and rater samples to investigate the relative contributions of private and shared taste to judgments of facial attractiveness, are reported. These experiments show that for a variety of ancillary conditions, and contrary to the prevalent notion in the literature, private taste is about as powerful as shared taste. Important implications for scientific research strategy and laypeople's self-esteem are discussed.     

The role of team and sport social contexts: Are three-level models needed in studies of sport conduct?

In this work, I examined how variation in sport conduct is allocated across the three different levels (i.e., athlete, team, and sport) in order to consider how the team and sport environment might contribute to athletes' sport conduct. Specifically, three-level models were utilized for sportspersonship, technical and mental gamesmanship, and instrumental aggression to examine whether there is unique variance due to sport and team clustering with athletes (N = 1412) nested within teams (J = 92) that are in turn nested within sports (K = 17). Results showed that clustering due to sport accounted for unique variance above and beyond team clustering. However, sex and invasion team sport explained most of the sport-level variance. The implication is that it is important to account for the sport clustering. However, when accounting for the sport-level clustering is not feasible, controlling for sex is necessary at the very least.     

Neurologist or psychiatrist? The public and private domains of Jean-Martin Charcot

The emergence of neurology as an autonomous, prestigious field in late-nineteenth-century Paris is well known. Less appreciated is the role that neurologists played vis-à-vis the cognate older field of psychiatry. Taking Jean-Martin Charcot, the most influential neurologist of his time, as a test case, this paper contrasts his attitudes and practice in the public setting of teaching and hospital work with his private practice. A staunch defender of a clear distinction between his field and psychiatry, Charcot's private practice displayed more flexibility. Treating hysteria and neurasthenia created a middle ground of nervous diseases for him to cultivate. Unpublished case histories and other materials, especially from the Charcot library, support the conception of neurologists as active agents in constituting a new psychological medicine.     

Attentional dysfunction, social perception, and social competence: what is the nature of the relationship?

The aim of this study was to examine the nature of the relationship between attentional dysfunction and social competence deficits in patients with schizophrenia. Attentional functioning, social perception, and social competence were assessed in 56 inpatients. Measures of vigilance and span of apprehension were administered to assess attentional functioning. Social perception was assessed with an audiovisual measure of affect recognition. Social competence was rated from a role-play task. Span of apprehension and auditory vigilance emerged as specific predictors of social competence. Affect recognition was tested as a mediator and a moderator of the relationship between attentional dysfunction and social competence. Affect recognition was found to moderate the relationship between span of apprehension and social competence.     

To whom does the unconscious belong? The interface between the private and the social dimension in psychotherapy practice

This paper explores how ‘the social unconscious’, namely the influence of society and politics, impacts upon clinical thinking and practice. The author argues that insufficient attention is paid to the influence of the psychosocial dimension and there is a methodological awkwardness in knowing how to conceptualize it. Furthermore it is argued that psychodynamic practice, with its emphasis on the exploration of the individual psyche, tends to disregard social engagement as a criterion of mental health.

Three clinical examples are cited to demonstrate how the influence of politics and society can enter the psychotherapeutic dialogue. A methodology is then proposed using Bion's formulations about binocular vision, to examine the patient-therapist pair from the perspective of a small work group in society.     

The importance of social structure and social interaction in stereotype consensus and content: is the whole greater than the sum of its parts?

This paper addresses the hypothesis derived from self‐categorization theory (SCT) that the relationship between groups and stereotyping will be affected by the social structural conditions within which group interaction occurs. A mixed design experiment (n=56) measured low‐status groups' stereotypes and preferences for conflict with a high‐status outgroup prior to and after within‐group discussion across varying social structural conditions. Over time, participants in [open] conditions consensualized around positive conceptions of the outgroup and endorsed acceptance of their own [low status] position. However, in [closed] conditions participants consensualized around positive conceptions of the ingroup, negative conceptions of the outgroup, and tended towards preferences for collective protest. It is argued that the data support S‐CT's contention that stereotyping and group processes are fundamentally interlinked and that neither can be properly understood in isolation from the dynamics of the surrounding intergroup context. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Who is most likely to seek and give support in the face of agentic and communal threat? The roles of extraversion and agreeableness

Agentic threat tends to elicit support seeking and hinder support provision. Communal threat tends to elicit support seeking and provision. We examined whether the associations between threats and support are moderated by Extraversion and Agreeableness. Three hundred fifty undergraduate students completed questionnaires twice daily across one week, reporting the worst stressor of the half-day, appraisals of agentic and communal threats, and efforts to seek and provide support. In response to agentic threat, those higher in Extraversion increased their support seeking and decreased their support provision to a greater extent than those lower in Extraversion. In response to communal threat, those higher in Agreeableness increased their support seeking and provision to a greater extent than those lower in Agreeableness.     

Is there an internal association of numbers to hands? The task set influences the nature of the SNARC effect

The SNARC effect refers to the association of smaller numbers with the left and of larger numbers with the right side of extracorporal space (Dehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993). We tested the assumption that, in addition to these associations, numbers are also related to participants' hands. We report two experiments with vertically arranged buttons in which the nature of the SNARC effect depended on whether the task set was button or hand related: In the first case, a vertical location-related SNARC effect occurred, whereas in the second a hand-related SNARC effect was found. Our third experiment confirmed that space-related number representations dominate the SNARC effect when the buttons are arranged horizontally. We concluded that both effector- and space-related number representations can influence and modify the SNARC effect.     

The role of affect in the decision to exercise: Does being happy lead to a more active lifestyle?

ObjectiveThis study investigated the influence of affect on individuals' intentions to engage in physical activities such as exercise. Behavior intentions were examined through the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB).MethodAn experimental survey was conducted among 153 undergraduates randomly assigned to three conditions – positive affect, neutral, and negative affect. Key variables from the TPB were assessed across these conditions.ResultsAnalyses showed that participants in the positive affect and the negative affect conditions reported lower intentions to exercise than those in the neutral condition. Participants in the negative affect condition also reported more unfavorable attitudes toward exercise than their positive or neutral counterparts. Other TPB measures remained stable across the three conditions. In particular, perceived behavioral control and attitude were significant predictors of behavior intention in the pooled sample.ConclusionThese results underline the important role that affect, especially negative affect, plays in individuals' decision to exercise. Rational models for health behavior change, such as the TPB, should take into account the impact of affect.     

The object-line effect: is it attributable to intercontext differences or the structural properties of contexts and task demands?

Briefly presented target lines are reported more accurately when part of an object-like context than alone (Williams & Weisstein, 1978). Efforts to explain this effect have tended to focus on structural properties that contexts must possess in order to be effective in facilitating target-line discrimination (e.g., Weisstein, Williams, & Harris, 1982). Enns and Prinzmetal (1984) take issue with this approach. They propose that contexts differ more from one another than do target lines presented alone, and it is this fact, and not the general structural properties of contexts, that underlies their effectiveness. Two experiments examined intercontext differences and structural factors as determinants of context effectiveness. Subjects were found to use intercontext differences to narrow the range of possible alternatives, but when this factor was controlled, structural properties determined context effectiveness. The structural interpretation of context effectiveness was found not be as straightforward as generally assumed, however. A third experiment showed context effectiveness to be affected by the character of the discrimination task employed.     

Doing good by doing nothing? The role of social norms in explaining default effects in altruistic contexts

We explore whether the known preference for default options in choice contexts—default effects—occur in altruistic contexts and the extent to which this can be explained through appeal to social norms. In four experiments, we found that (i) participants were more likely to donate money to charity when this was the default option in an altruistic choice context; (ii) participants perceived the default option to be the socially normative option; (iii) perceptions of social norms mediated the relationship between default status and charitable donations; and (iv) a transfer effect, whereby participants translated social norms they inferred from the default option in one domain into behavior in a second, related domain. Theoretically, our analysis situates default effects within a comprehensive body of social psychological research concerning social norms and the attitude‐behavior relationship, providing novel empirical predictions. Practically, these findings highlight that the way donation policies are framed can have an important impact on donation behavior: in our third study, we found that 81% donated half of their earnings for taking part in the experiment to charity when this was the default option, compared with only 19% when keeping the money was the default. Our work suggests that making use of default effects could be an effective tool to increase altruistic behavior without compromising freedom. © 2014 The Authors. European Journal of Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ethics and Science: Is Plausibility in the Eye of the Beholder?

This paper argues that morality is objective in a specific sense that accords with a broadly expressivist stance in metaethics. The paper also explains that although there is a kind of subjectivity in moral inquiry, the same holds for other kinds of normative inquiry, including epistemic and even scientific inquiry, and moreover that this kind of subjectivity is no threat to morality’s objectivity. The argument for the objectivity of morality draws strong parallels between ethics, epistemology, and science, but does not depend on equally strong parallels between ethics and mathematics. I argue that there is more to learn from a comparison between ethics and mathematics than I used to think, but the difference between the issues that come up in thinking about objectivity in ethics and those that come up in thinking about objectivity in mathematics is substantial, and we cannot carry over results from the philosophy of mathematics to the case of morality.     

Jealousy: a response to infidelity? On the nature and appropriateness conditions of jealousy

This paper critically assesses the widespread claim that jealousy is a response to infidelity. According to this claim, herewith called the entitlement theory (ET), jealousy is only an appropriate response to a relationship between a loved one and a rival if, by entertaining this relationship, the loved one does not treat the jealous person the way she is entitled to be treated. I reconstruct different versions of ET, each of them providing a different answer to the question why we should assume that jealousy is a response to infidelity. I show that even the most plausible versions enjoy less argumentative support than it seems at first sight. The positive aim of this paper is to present a more inclusive account of jealousy as an alternative to ET. According to this account, jealousy serves to disturb the rival relationship and to (re-)gain the attention and affection of the loved person. Jealousy so understood is not only an appropriate response to infidelity but has wider appropriateness conditions. However, it plays a role in the negotiation of norms concerning exclusivity in personal relationships. The inclusive account does justice to the continuity and commonalities between adult and infant protest against rival relationships.     

The effect of message framing and the nature of the targeted illness on individuals’ intention to participate in clinical trials

IntroductionClinical trials are considered as the most useful methods to evaluate the efficacy of new medical treatments, but the participation of healthy individuals is often too small, which limits the statistical power of the trial and hence its effectiveness.ObjectiveThe goal of the present research is to assess, for the first time, the effects of message framing (gain versus loss) and of the nature of the illness targeted by a clinical trial (highly- versus mildly-contagious) on individuals’ intention to enter it.MethodsThe experimental manipulation is carried out within a scenario promoting a clinical trial, in a 2 (framing: gain vs loss) × 2 (nature of the illness: highly- vs mildly-contagious) between-participants design. After reading the scenario, participants were asked to rate their intention to enter the trial and their perception of its utility.ResultsStatistical analyses validated a causal model explaining that a gain-framed message describing a highly-contagious illness increases the perception of the utility of the clinical trial, which in turn enhances the intention to participate.ConclusionThe discussion mainly focuses on the contributions of these findings at a theoretical level, considering the limits and potential of their possible application.     

From contexts to circumstances of evaluation: is the trade-off always innocuous?

Both context relativists and circumstance-of-evaluation relativists agree that the traditional semantic interpretation of some sentence-types fails to deliver the adequate truth-conditions for the corresponding tokens. But while the context relativists argue that the truth-conditions of each token depend on its context of utterance—each token being thus associated with a distinct intension—circumstance-of-evaluation relativists preserve a unique intension for all the tokens by placing circumstances of evaluations under the influence of a certain ‘point of view’. The main difference between the two approaches is that only the former can operate locally. It is shown that, for this reason, circumstance-of-evaluation relativism makes erroneous semantic predictions about (relative) gradable adjectives.