European‐American children's intergroup attitudes about peer relationships

Intergroup attitudes were assessed in European‐American first grade (M=6.8 years) and fourth grade (M=9.9 years) boys and girls (N=94) to test hypotheses about implicit racial biases, perceptions of similarity between peer dyads, and judgments about cross‐race friendships. Two assessments, an ambiguous situations task and a perceptions of similarity task, were administered to all participants. Contrary to prior findings, participants did not display implicit racial biases when interpreting children's intentions to commit a negative moral transgression towards a peer. Implicit biases were revealed, however, when asking children to judge cross‐race friendship potential. The findings on children's similarity perceptions revealed that children focused on shared interests and race when judging similarity. Given that previous meta‐analyses of prejudice have pointed to cross‐race friendships as a significant predictor of a reduction in prejudice, these findings help to understand what may account for the relative infrequency of intergroup friendships in childhood. Further, the findings indicate the ways in which, implicit racial biases influence friendship decisions.     

‘It's a boy because he's painting a picture’: Age differences in children's conventional and unconventional gender schemas

Two studies investigated the development of children's gender knowledge using a procedure designed to tap into children's unconventional gender beliefs. Study 1 revealed a developmental progression with 34 3‐ to 4‐year‐old children providing more unconventional reasons than conventional reasons to explain the gender of a series of drawings. By contrast, 39 5‐ to 6‐year‐old and 42 7‐ to 8‐year‐old children provided more conventional than unconventional reasons. Study 2 found that a second sample of 42 3‐ to 4‐year‐old children mastered a close‐ended assessment of gender stereotyping, while they relied on unconventional and conventional reasoning equally when explaining the gender of a series of drawings displaying conventional cues only. This research supports the model that children's conventional gender schemas do not develop before their unconventional gender schemas.     

Understanding the Academic–Practitioner Gap for Structured Interviews: ‘Behavioral’ interviews diffuse, ‘structured’ interviews do not

Recent studies about the academic–practitioner gap suggest that the nonadoption of evidenced‐based practices can be explained by their diffusion through practitioner‐oriented literature. This study extends these findings by investigating the case of the structured interview, which has not been widely adopted by practitioners despite its good psychometric properties. Using a social representations approach, we investigate how the academic concepts of ‘structured’ and ‘behavioral’ interviewing are diffused to practitioners in advice books. Results show that ‘behavioral’ interviews diffuse while ‘structured’ interviews do not, and that different arguments are used to describe these concepts. Facilitating the diffusion of structured interview practices requires academics to rethink their ways of communicating with practitioners through media.     

‘It's not supposed to be this way’: Psychological aspects of a premature menopause

Background: Premature menopause (menopause diagnosed at 40 years or under) is a challenging condition with no prevention or cure. Causes can be the result of surgical intervention or spontaneous and largely unknown. It affects 1–6% of women aged 14–40. Aim: This study investigated women's experience of diagnosis, perception of cause, treatment received, main concerns, perceived long‐term consequences and impact on psychological wellbeing. Method: A cross‐sectional single group design questionnaire study that included both quantitative and qualitative measures was used. It was distributed to women on the database of two specialist London clinics and an internet‐based patient support group. A thematic analysis was undertaken. Findings: The response rate was 62%. Women's experiences varied but showed common themes regardless of timing of diagnosis and services accessed. Improved understanding by health professionals could help this group accept and adjust to the condition more effectively as could psychological support. Fertility was a primary concern regardless of parity and there were several secondary impacts both physiological and psychological. Discussion: A clear need for the offer of emotional support was indicated for all, but particularly for teenage girls and single women who tended not to access support from their own social network. Conclusion: Young women with this diagnosis could benefit from the offer of counselling, though uptake may be influenced by individual factors and vary according to age and circumstances. A good understanding of the physical aspects of this condition is important in the counselling of this group.     

‘I Remember When I Learned That!’ developmental and gender differences in children's memories of learning episodes

Eighty 4‐ to 9‐year‐old children answered factual knowledge questions in math, science and social studies during one‐on‐one interviews. Children indicated whether they had known or guessed each answer, and whether they (a) remembered the moment they learned the answer (episodic response) or (b) did not remember. For episodic responses, children provided memory narratives of learning episodes. One third of children's responses identified a learning episode. There was a developmental trend in which older children were more episodic than younger children, and when children knew and provided correct answers, there was a gender difference in which females were more episodic than males. Developmental and gender differences in the characteristics of memory narratives were also apparent. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“Honey, you’re jumping about”—Mothers’ scaffolding of their children's and adolescents’ life narration

Research on mother–child reminiscing as a socializing practice for autobiographical memory is extended from early childhood and the narrating of single events to adolescence and the narrating of an entire life story. To explore whether the development of the life story in adolescence depends on qualities of the narrator or on the brevity of the narrated life, and whether mothers adapt their scaffolding strategies in co-narrations of the child's life to the child's zone of proximal development, 16 mother–child pairs (child's ages 8, 12, 16, and 20 years) both co-narrated and individually narrated the child's life. As expected, only the coherence of the children's, but not the mothers’, narratives varied with the child's age. Also, mothers supported temporal structuring more in younger children and arguments about personality and its development more in adolescents.     

‘It's not racist. It's common sense’. A critical analysis of political discourse around asylum and immigration in the UK

This paper looks at a political speech given by the leader of the opposition party during the run up to the UK elections in 2005. Using this speech as a starting point, we attempt to trace the path of ‘racism’ within a text that makes explicit claims to being ‘not racist’. Drawing on a number of theoretical and methodological resources, this paper approaches the analysis by focusing on a number of conceptually heterogeneous elements that, in relation with each other, function to produce, re‐produce and stabilize ‘racism’. One of the difficulties commonly encountered in social psychological work, we would suggest, is that an explicit statement of allegiance to a particular methodological and theoretical tradition can also result in a restriction of theorization to a particular ‘level of analysis’. That is to say, a methodological process that constructs a pre‐given category, presets the criteria by which ‘racism’ can be identified and fixes the ‘level of analysis’ at which it can be studied risks ignoring the multiple points of contact at which ‘racism’ can be made visible or made to disappear. The concern here it that such a process can work to reinscribe the very ‘racisms’ we aim to disrupt. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self–other awareness and peer relationships in toddlers: gender comparisons

Toddlers' growing self–other awareness has been linked with their ability to interact with peers, but there is reason to think that self–other awareness may relate to different aspects of peer relationships for boys and girls. We hypothesized that boys would express self–other awareness by separating self from other through claiming toys, while girls would express self–other awareness by creating similarities between self and other through use of the duplicate of a partner's toy. For 52 22–26 month olds, self–other awareness was assessed through four tasks: mirror self recognition, perceptual role taking, pronoun recognition and pronoun use. Each child subsequently interacted with a same‐sex peer for 30 min. Girls high in self–other awareness, and their partners were more likely to engage in duplicate toy use than girls low in self–other awareness. No differences in toy claiming were found. Future longitudinal research would clarify how the onset of self–other awareness relates to developments in peer interaction for girls and boys. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Undesirable’ and ‘desirable’ shifts in children's responses to repeated questions: age differences in the effect of providing a rationale for repetition

This study examined factors influencing children's tendency to shift responses when questions are repeated within an interview. Forty nine 4–5‐year‐olds and 40 7–8‐year‐olds were questioned about a video they had seen, with questions repeated by the same or a different interviewer. Half the children were given a rationale for question repetition, and half were not. Overall, the older children shifted less than the younger children, and, unlike the younger children, more to misleading than unbiased questions. The rationale did not affect overall shifting, but reduced the probability of ‘undesirable’ shifts (towards inaccuracy) in the younger children, and increased ‘desirable’ shifts (towards accuracy) at both ages. In the younger children, the rationale reduced total number of shifts, but only with the same interviewer, while in the older children the reverse applied. The results suggest developmental progression in the relative contributions of memorial and social/motivational factors to shifting. Implications for investigative interviewing with children are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Heidegger’s Destruktion of Theology: ‘Primordial Faith’ and ‘Recognition’ of the Messiah

Heidegger’s phenomenology of religious life offers important insights by engaging Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, where he distinguishes ‘Paul the Pharisee’ from ‘Paul the Christian’ in order to explicate the nature of faith in contrast to systematic theology. Neither certitude in God’s existence is primordial to Christian faith, according to Heidegger, nor is rabbinic nor theological disputation concerning God’s existence or God’s nature. Instead, what is essential to Heidegger’s phenomenology of religious life are: (1) faith as lived experience and (2) recognition of ‘the Christ’ (ho christos/ha ma?ía?). This ‘recognition’, however, requires phenomenological clarification and not philosophy of religion as traditionally construed.     

‘Translation’ and ‘transformation’ in the analytic situation: Freud – Bion – Laplanche

Following a short introduction to the core theses of Jean Laplanche’s theory of a ‘general seduction’ the author presents the resultant clinical position of the analyst. In the same way that an adult sends ‘enigmatic messages’ to the child, it is the analyst’s task to reopen this primal situation so that the patient can find new ‘translations’ for these messages. Laplanche distinguishes between the function of the analytic frame – which represents and supports attachment – and the ‘sexual’– which is the repressed and constitutes the unconscious. Only the focus on this unconscious facilitates the deconstruction of ‘incorrect’ translations. Accordingly, the analyst, says Laplanche, should not take part in construction – this is a self‐construction of the patient – but only in reconstruction. The author compares this clinical model with Freud’s notions and the ‘transformation processes’ through the alpha function as described by Bion. She illustrates Laplanche’s model and the interpretation strategy with case material.     

“Communities isn't just about trees and shops”: students from two South African universities engage in dialogue about ‘community’ and ‘community work’

The question of what constitutes ‘a community’ or even ‘the community’ takes on an extra salience in a divided society such as South Africa where the entire environment remains imprinted with the legacy of enforced segregation along racial lines. Higher education institutions need to prepare emerging health and social service students for the world of practice in a context of diversity, continuing segregation and marked inequality. As one step to helping students deal with working in a divided society, academic departments from two different South African universities have been involved in a collaborative teaching and research project. Fourth year psychology and social work students from the two universities took part in a collaborative, practical course which formed part of their curricula. In this course, students were given the opportunity to engage with the notion of ‘community’ and ‘community work’ with each other. The students came from diverse racial, class and political backgrounds, and by engaging with one another as they did, had the opportunity to ‘visit’ worlds they have rarely had access to. While this course was able to achieve a broadening awareness among students from different backgrounds about the notion of community, it will take both more engagement with courses of this kind, and a continuing history of change in South Africa, for students to feel more comfortable in transcending both physical and psychological boundaries. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding ‘Unlikely (20% Likelihood)’ or ‘20% Likelihood (Unlikely)’ Outcomes: The Robustness of the Extremity Effect

Calls to communicate uncertainty using mixed, verbal‐numerical formats (‘unlikely [0–33%]’) have stemmed from research comparing mixed with solely verbal communications. Research using the new ‘which outcome’ approach to investigate understanding of verbal probability expressions suggests, however, that mixed formats might convey disadvantages compared with purely numerical communications. When asked to indicate an outcome that is ‘unlikely’, participants have been shown to often indicate outcomes with a value exceeding the maximum value shown, equivalent to a 0% probability —an ‘extremity effect’. Recognising the potential consequences of communication recipients expecting an ‘unlikely’ event to never occur, we extend the ‘which outcome’ work across four experiments, using verbal, numerical, and verbal‐numerical communication formats, as well as a previously unconsidered numerical‐verbal format. We examine how robust the effect is in the context of consequential outcomes and over non‐normal distributions. We also investigate whether participants are aware of the inconsistency in their responses from a traditional ‘how likely’ and ‘which outcome’ task. We replicate and extend previous findings, with preference for extreme outcomes (including above maximum values) observed in both verbal and verbal‐numerical formats. Our results suggest caution in blanket usage of recently recommended verbal‐numerical formats for the communication of uncertainty. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Lyin' Ted’, ‘Crooked Hillary’, and ‘Deceptive Donald’: Language of Lies in the 2016 US Presidential Debates

Language in the high‐stakes 2016 US presidential primary campaign was contentious, filled with name‐calling, personal attacks, and insults. Language in debates served at least three political functions: for image making, to imagine potential realities currently not in practice, and to disavow facts. In past research, the reality monitoring (RM) framework has discriminated accurately between truthful and deceptive accounts (~70% classification). Truthful accounts show greater sensory, time and space, and affective information, with little evidence of cognitive operations. An RM algorithm was used with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software to code candidates' language. RM scores were significantly higher in fact‐checked truth statements than in lies, and debate language in the 2016 primaries was as deceptive as fact‐checked lies. In a binary logistic regression model, one RM criterion, cognitive processes, predicted veracity using computerized RM, classifying 87% of fact‐checked truth statements but only 28% of fact‐checked lie statements (63% classification overall).Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The closed mind: ‘Experience’ and ‘cognition’ aspects of openness to experience and need for closure as psychological bases for right‐wing attitudes

Openness to Experience and Need for Closure (NFC) are dispositional variables related to social‐cultural right‐wing attitudes. The present study investigated their joint effects. Factor analysis revealed an ‘experiential’ dimension with high loading openness items, and a ‘cognition’ dimension with high loadings for most NFC items and about a quarter of the openness item set. The experiential openness items were weakly related to right‐wing attitudes, demonstrating little predictive value. Conversely, the cognitive openness and NFC items were powerful predictors of right‐wing attitudes, and also played an important role in integrative models, both as a predictor of authoritarianism‐based racism and as a mediator of age related increments in right‐wing attitudes. It is concluded that right‐wing attitudes should be primarily understood in terms of (motivated) cognition, and to a smaller extent in terms of experiential openness. The distinction between ‘experiential’ and ‘cognitive’ openness is critically assessed, and it is asserted that because cognition is a multifaceted construct openness contains more than one cognitive dimension. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.