Curiosity and time: from not knowing to almost knowing

How does it feel to be curious? We reasoned that there are two sides to curiosity: not knowing something (i.e. information-gap) and almost knowing something (i.e. anticipation of resolution). In three experiments, we showed that time affects the relative impact of these two components: When people did not expect to close their information-gap soon (long time-to-resolution) not knowing affected the subjective experience of curiosity more strongly than when they expected to close their information-gap quickly (short time-to-resolution). As such, people experienced less positive affect, more discomfort, and more annoyance with lack of information in a long than a short time-to-resolution situation. Moreover, when time in the long time-to-resolution setting passed, the anticipation of the resolution became stronger, positive affect increased, and discomfort and annoyance with lack of information decreased. Time is thus a key factor in the experience of curiosity.     

Social Influence on consumer decisions: Motives,modes, and consequences

Research on consumer decision making has long recognized the influence of others. In this comment on Simpson, Griskevicius, and Rothman (this issue), we agree with them that consumer decisions are best understood in the social contexts in which these decisions are made. We explain how research on consumer social influence incorporates social motives, and we trace the effects of these motives on consumers’ information processing and their purchase and consumption decisions.     

Quantifying Intervention Intensity: A Systematic Approach to Evaluating Student Response to Increasing Intervention Frequency

Response to intervention (RTI) has been discussed as a new model of assessment. Although the basic process by which RTI works has received frequent attention in the literature, the available research leaves several important questions unanswered (Kavale et al. in Learn Disabil Q 28(1): 2–16, 2005). One concept within RTI that has received little empirical consideration is intervention intensity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of the application of increased intervention frequency on the mathematics performance of students and to evaluate this increased frequency as a systematic means of increasing and quantifying intervention strength. Results indicate that although all students were responsive to the intervention, some participants were sensitive only to more frequent application of the treatment or at more intense levels of treatment. Through this methodology a means of quantifying treatment intensity was also identified and implications for future research are discussed.     

Methods for Influencing Social Policy: The Role of Social Experiments

Research methods in community psychology have grown more diverse since the Swampscott conference, but rigorous social experiments maintain a place among the multiplicity of methods that can promote community psychology values. They are particularly influential in policy circles. Two examples of social experiments to end homelessness for different populations illustrate their role. Both studies show that offering extremely poor and disenfranchised people autonomy and the resources they seek works better than “helping” them to overcome deficits in ways designed by well‐meaning service providers. Experiments are neither the first nor the last method community psychologists should employ, but are a critical part of the field's armamentarium for systems change.     

俄勒冈社会学习中心反社会行为预防与干预研究述评

简要回顾了美国俄勒冈社会学习中心的发展历程,重点介绍了该机构的主要研究课题内容和研究成果。该中心在应用研究领域,主要是针对问题儿童在课堂场景及其家中进行干预。其基础性研究致力于家庭、同伴以及社会背景对青少年行为发展模式的长期影响。俄勒冈社会学习中心针对青少年开展的早期经验、应激神经生理学和病原学的研究,以及以家庭、学校、福利制度、司法制度等背景开展的对收养家庭养育、受虐孩子、受监禁父母的孩子、问题青少年反社会行为的预防与干预研究对我国青少年的干预研究都富有借鉴意义     

Curiosity and pathways to well-being and meaning in life: Traits,states, and everyday behaviors

This study examined curiosity as a mechanism for achieving and maintaining high levels of well-being and meaning in life. Of primary interest was whether people high in trait curiosity derive greater well-being on days when they are more curious. We also tested whether trait and daily curiosity led to greater, sustainable well-being. Predictions were tested using trait measures and 21 daily diary reports from 97 college students. We found that on days when they are more curious, people high in trait curiosity reported more frequent growth-oriented behaviors, and greater presence of meaning, search for meaning, and life satisfaction. Greater trait curiosity and greater curiosity on a given day also predicted greater persistence of meaning in life from one day into the next. People with greater trait curiosity reported more frequent hedonistic events but they were associated with less pleasure compared to the experiences of people with less trait curiosity. The benefits of hedonistic events did not last beyond the day of their occurrence. As evidence of construct specificity, curiosity effects were not attributable to Big Five personality traits or daily positive or negative mood. Our results provide support for curiosity as an ingredient in the development of well-being and meaning in life. The pattern of findings casts doubt on some distinctions drawn between eudaimonia and hedonic well-being traditions.

A Social Interpolation Model of Group Problem-Solving

How do people use information from others to solve complex problems? Prior work has addressed this question by placing people in social learning situations where the problems they were asked to solve required varying degrees of exploration. This past work uncovered important interactions between groups' connectivity and the problem's complexity: the advantage of less connected networks over more connected networks increased as exploration was increasingly required for optimally solving the problem at hand. We propose the Social Interpolation Model (SIM), an agent-based model to explore the cognitive mechanisms that can underlie exploratory behavior in groups. Through results from simulation experiments, we conclude that “exploration” may not be a single cognitive property, but rather the emergent result of three distinct behavioral and cognitive mechanisms, namely, (a) breadth of generalization, (b) quality of prior expectation, and (c) relative valuation of self-obtained information. We formalize these mechanisms in the SIM, and explore their effects on group dynamics and success at solving different kinds of problems. Our main finding is that broad generalization and high quality of prior expectation facilitate successful search in environments where exploration is important, and hinder successful search in environments where exploitation alone is sufficient.     

Social influence and perceived organizational support: A social networks analysis

We suggest that employees’ perceptions of organizational support (POS) are not solely a product of independent evaluations of treatment offered by the organization, but are also shaped by the social context. We argue that coworkers will directly (through inquiry via cohesive friendship and advice ties) and indirectly (through monitoring of employees structurally equivalent in advice and friendship networks) affect employees’ perceived organizational support. Network studies in the admissions department of a large public university and a private company specializing in food and animal safety products indicate that employees’ POS are similar to those of coworkers with whom they maintain advice relationships as well as to those who hold structurally equivalent positions in organizational friendship and advice networks. Our work contributes to organizational support theory by developing and testing a theoretical explanation for the relationship between the social context and perceptions of support among employees. Implications for research and practice are offered.     

Social Influences on Judgments of Rape Victims: The Role of the Negative and Positive Social Reactions of Others

An experimental study examined whether judgments about a rape victim can be influenced by the social reactions of others, and whether this effect would be moderated by the type of rape (stranger or date rape) or by the gender of the participants. One hundred and ten U.S. college students (90% white; 59% female) responded to rape vignettes in which the type of rape and the social reactions received by the victim (negative, positive, or neutral) were manipulated. People exposed to negative social reactions made less positive judgments. Men and people who read about a date rape also made less positive judgments, but neither variable interacted with type of reactions to impact judgments.     

作弊为什么会传染?社会损失和作弊态度的中介作用

为了解释考试作弊的"传染"现象,研究探讨大学考试情境中他人作弊对观察者将来作弊意向的效应,假设他人作弊通过社会损失和作弊态度的链式中介作用对观察者将来作弊意向产生效应。研究采用他人作弊问卷、社会损失问卷、作弊态度问卷、将来作弊意向问卷,对765名在校大学生进行调查。在控制了性别、年级、第一次作弊的时间和经常作弊的开始时间之后,研究发现：（1）他人作弊正向预测观察者将来作弊意向;（2）社会损失在他人作弊和观察者将来作弊意向之间起中介作用;（3）社会损失与作弊态度在他人作弊与观察者将来作弊意向之间起链式中介作用。研究为理解考试作弊的"传染"现象及其内在机制提供了有价值的视角。     

From Social Withdrawal to Social Confidence: Evidence for Possible Pathways

Children born with a possible predisposition toward shyness face many social challenges. Researchers over the past four decades have begun to identify specific factors that influence shy children’s social skill development and their level of peer acceptance. The purpose of this article is to review factors across each developmental stage that have been found to either promote or hinder the development of social competence and peer acceptance in shy children. These factors include physiological differences, caregiver influences, emotion socialization, friendships, general peer support, coping skills, organized social activities, and socioeconomic status.     

From Social Withdrawal to Social Confidence: Evidence for Possible Pathways

Children born with a possible predisposition toward shyness face many social challenges. Researchers over the past four decades have begun to identify specific factors that influence shy children’s social skill development and their level of peer acceptance. The purpose of this article is to review factors across each developmental stage that have been found to either promote or hinder the development of social competence and peer acceptance in shy children. These factors include physiological differences, caregiver influences, emotion socialization, friendships, general peer support, coping skills, organized social activities, and socioeconomic status.     

A Meta-analysis of Prereferral Intervention Teams: Student and Systemic Outcomes

Although prereferral intervention teams (PIT) are common in public schools, there is little and conflicting research to support them. The current article conducted an empirical meta-analysis of research on PITs by reviewing 72 articles. Nine of the articles matched the inclusion criteria for the study and 57 effect size (ES) coefficients were computed, which resulted in a mean ES of 1.10. The studies were further broken down by category of dependent variable (DV), and resulted in a mean ES of 1.15 for student outcomes and 0.90 for systemic outcomes. PITs that were implemented by university faculty resulted in a mean ES of 1.32, but field-based PITs resulted in a mean ES of only .54. Studies that used random assignment resulted in higher ES coefficients than those that used nonrandom assignment. Implications for research and cautious suggestions for practice are discussed.     

第三方惩罚与社会规范激活——社会责任感与情绪的作用

社会规范需要被激活才能显著影响个体行为,第三方惩罚（TP）正是这样一个激活的过程。本研究将TP引入独裁者博弈（DG）,社会规范被激活的被试参与了TP与DG,未激活的被试只参与了DG。结果表明,前者在TP之后显著提升了DG中的亲社会行为。进一步的分析发现,在社会规范激活过程中,社会责任感越高的个体被激活的程度越高,对违背社会规范的行为产生的愤怒情绪也越高,从而产生了更高水平的亲社会行为。在排除了实验中其他因素和相关理论的解释后,这一基本的实验结果表明社会规范激活受到社会责任感的影响并伴随着特定情绪的激发。     

Social influence of a coworker: A test of the effect of employee and coworker exchange ideologies on employees’ exchange qualities

Integrating social comparison and social influence perspective within a social exchange theoretical framework, we examine how the exchange ideologies of employees and their coworkers affect the quality of the employees’ social exchanges. Drawing from social exchange theory, we hypothesize that the exchange ideology of a focal employee has a negative relationship with the quality of his/her social exchange with the organization (i.e., felt obligation) and the quality of his/her social exchange with a leader (i.e., leader–member exchange), both of which are related to task performance. Furthermore, we propose that a coworker close to the employee acts as a social referent and provides cues to exert influence on these relationships. Using data collected from 374 (employee–coworker–manager) triads in Hong Kong, we find support for the aforementioned relationships as well as the moderating roles of a coworker’s exchange ideology.     

Social Skills,Social Support,and Psychological Distress: A Test of the Social Skills Deficit Vulnerability Model

The social skills deficit vulnerability model predicts that poor social skills minimize opportunities to acquire social support, in turn, leading to the proliferation of psychological distress. This prediction was tested in a 2‐wave longitudinal study that assessed 211 emerging adults at Time 1 (T1), with a 70% response rate 1 year later at Time 2 (T2). The results indicated that, after controlling for psychological distress at T1, social skills at T1 had an indirect effect on lower psychological distress at T2, through higher social support. Thus, people with poor social skills may be vulnerable to the development of psychological distress because they have less access the protective effects of social support.     

Learning on Work Placement: The Narrative Development of Social Competence

This paper explores the development of social competence by examining examples of research interviews conducted with 35 British undergraduate students on work placements. Work placement schemes are a characteristic of contemporary higher education, which is particularly geared towards students’ development of employability and transferable skills. Among these skills is that of social competence which is often taken for granted as emerging from normative adult developmental processes. Research on social competence is mostly confined to developmental psychology and focused on studying children and adolescents in their social settings. Moreover, the methodology of social competence is often developed from a child-developmental perspective, neglecting the situation-specific development beyond childhood. The paper argues that social competence is examinable as situated discursive practice and that it is essential to understanding career development. Membership categorisation analysis identifies the participant’s fluid positioning in narrating experiences of work and university. Lastly the paper addresses implications for theories of development and learning and considers ways in which this study can be expanded in the future.

Achievement Goals in Social Interactions: Learning with Mastery vs. Performance Goals

Little work has studied achievement goals in social interaction situations. The present experiment aimed at contributing to this matter by showing the potential of social interaction (in particular disagreement) to moderate the effects of achievement goals on learning. Participants were led to think they interacted with a partner, sharing opinions about a text that they were studying. Mastery and performance goals were manipulated. During the “interaction,” they received either disagreement or agreement from this bogus partner. Results showed that a condition in which mastery goals were induced led to better learning than a performance goal condition only when the partner disagreed. No differences between goal conditions were observed when the partner agreed. Implications for achievement goal research are discussed. Part of this work was conducted during Céline Darnon’s doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Fabrizio Butera, and was written during Céline Darnon’s post-doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, thanks to a Fulbright fellowship.     

A protean approach to social influence: Dark Triad personalities and social influence tactics

To avoid detection, those high on Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) may adopt a protean approach to interpersonal influence. We show the Dark Triad traits correlate with a number of unique tactics of influence (Study 1; N = 259). We show this protean approach was insensitive to differences in targets of manipulation (Study 2; N = 296). When forced to choose one tactic to solve different adaptive problems, the Dark Triad traits were correlated with unique tactical choices (Study 3; N = 268). We show these associations are generally robust to controlling for the Big Five and participants’ sex (Study 1 and 2). We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings for both life history and cheater-detection theories.     

Social influence on metacognitive evaluations: The power of nonverbal cues

Metacognitive evaluations refer to the processes by which people assess their own cognitive operations with respect to their current goal. Little is known about whether this process is susceptible to social influence. Here we investigate whether nonverbal social signals spontaneously influence metacognitive evaluations. Participants performed a two-alternative forced-choice task, which was followed by a face randomly gazing towards or away from the response chosen by the participant. Participants then provided a metacognitive evaluation of their response by rating their confidence in their answer. In Experiment 1, the participants were told that the gaze direction was irrelevant to the task purpose and were advised to ignore it. The results revealed an effect of implicit social information on confidence ratings even though the gaze direction was random and therefore unreliable for task purposes. In addition, nonsocial cues (car) did not elicit this effect. In Experiment 2, the participants were led to believe that cue direction (face or car) reflected a previous participant's response to the same question—that is, the social information provided by the cue was made explicit, yet still objectively unreliable for the task. The results showed a similar social influence on confidence ratings, observed with both cues (car and face) but with an increased magnitude relative to Experiment 1. We additionally showed in Experiment 2 that social information impaired metacognitive accuracy. Together our results strongly suggest an involuntary susceptibility of metacognitive evaluations to nonverbal social information, even when it is implicit (Experiment 1) and unreliable (Experiments 1 and 2).