Similarity and Social Interaction: When Similarity Fosters Implicit Behavior Toward a Stranger

ABSTRACT

People interact more readily with someone whom they think they have something in common with. At a pedestrian crossing, confederates asked participants for the time and, in one condition, said she/he had the same watch as the participant. The amount of time that participants lingered near a confederate was used as the dependent variable. Participants in the similarity condition spent significantly more time near the confederate than when no similarity was manipulated. The results showed that similarity fosters implicit behavior, adding to the growing body of data on the positive effects of similarity and its role in social interaction.     

Coping with Exposure to Violence: Relations to Emotional Symptoms and Aggression in Three Urban Samples

Relations among exposure to violence, coping, and adjustment were examined in three urban samples. In study 1, which took place in a southeastern city, children ages 6–16 (N = 35; M age = 10.7 years) completed measures of adjustment, exposure to violence, and coping with violence. In study 2, which took place in one southern Midwestern city and one Northeastern city, children ages 8–15 (N = 70; M age = 11.3 years) completed similar measures with the addition of a measure assessing normative beliefs about aggression. Results are in line with the pathologic adaptation model and provide preliminary evidence for two hypothesized pathways explaining the effects of exposure to violence on adjustment: a normalization pathway in which exposure leads to more aggression-supporting beliefs and in turn to greater aggression, and a distress pathway in which exposure leads to avoidant coping and in turn to emotional symptoms.     

The Face of the Chameleon: The Experience of Facial Mimicry for the Mimicker and the Mimickee

This research addressed three questions concerning facial mimicry: (a) Does the relationship between mimicry and liking characterize all facial expressions, or is it limited to specific expressions? (b) Is the relationship between facial mimicry and liking symmetrical for the mimicker and the mimickee? (c) Does conscious mimicry have consequences for emotion recognition? A paradigm is introduced in which participants interact over a computer setup with a confederate whose prerecorded facial displays of emotion are synchronized with participants’ behavior to create the illusion of social interaction. In Experiment 1, the confederate did or did not mimic participants’ facial displays of various subsets of basic emotions. Mimicry promoted greater liking for the confederate regardless of which emotions were mimicked. Experiment 2 reversed these roles: participants were instructed to mimic or not to mimic the confederate’s facial displays. Mimicry did not affect liking for the confederate but it did impair emotion recognition.     

Implications of Religious Identity Salience,Religious Involvement,and Religious Commitment on Aggression

Social identity can affect perceptions of external threats and the type of response elicited to those threats. Religion is a social identity with eternal group membership and revered beliefs and values; thus, religious identity salience, religious commitment, and religious involvement may have implications for aggressive responses to perceived threats to a person’s religious identity. In a sample of 176 Christians, Muslims, and Jews, we investigated whether people respond aggressively to collective threat as a function of religious identity salience, religious commitment, and religious involvement. Religious commitment was positively related to anger only when religious identity was salient. Religious involvement was negatively related to anger and hostility only when religious identity was salient. Religious identity salience appears to act as a moderator by either enhancing perceptions of threat or by activating internal religious beliefs and values.     

从个体印象管理到组织印象管理

组织印象管理（OIM）关注组织如何通过行为和信息的调控来影响受众的知觉问题,成为当前印象管理研究的新领域。组织印象管理与个体印象管理具有互动关系;个体印象管理研究为组织印象管理研究奠定了基础。未来组织印象管理研究的重点领域包括：研发组织印象管理的评价工具,了解组织印象管理的策略,认识组织印象管理策略使用的后效,并突出组织印象管理的在我国的实际应用研究     

School reform disorder: Alternative audience responses to nonsense

Neither general education nor special education now offers appropriate and therapeutic treatment to all children and youth with emotional or behavioral disorders. Substantial improvements are needed in both general and special education, but the needed changes may not be those suggested by many proponents of school reform. Some suggested reforms are tenuously connected to reality in ways that suggest comedic intent or thought disorder, yet audiences typically respond as if these suggestions were both serious and rational. The disorder of school reform may be as much a problem of inappropriate audience response as it is a matter of nonsensical suggestions. One possible response to serious but highly questionable suggestions for reform is articulation of postulates on which a comprehensive educational service delivery system might be based. I present eight such postulates and correlates.This article is based on a keynote presentation at the First Annual Conference on Multiple Perspectives on Children and Adolescents with Serious Emotional Disturbance, Virginia Beach, VA, October 8, 1991. Portions of the paper are based on Kauffman and Hallahan (in press).     

The development of responses to people and a toy in infants with down syndrome

The behavior of eight infants with Down syndrome was observed biweekly from 8 to 24 weeks and monthly up to 48 weeks. At each visit the infants were presented with their mother, a female stranger, and a rattle puppet that were alternately active and passive. Each condition lasted 60 s. The results showed that by 4 months of age the infants began to differentiate, in the proportion of time they looked, smiled, and vocalized, between people and the toy. They did not discriminate, however, between mother and female stranger and between the active and passive adults until the second half of the first year. In particular, whereas normal infants usually show distress toward passive or “still-face” adults, the infants in this study continued to vocalize, at times even with smiling faces. The implications of these atypical aspects of the social development of infants with Down syndrome for their subsequent nonverbal communicative development are discussed.     

Aggression among older adults: The relationship of interaction networks and gender role to direct and indirect responses

This study examined interpersonally aggressive strategies among older adults and the social and personal context in which these strategies are likely to be employed. Specifically we assessed the relationship of social interaction networks and gender roles to the use of direct and indirect aggression. We predicted that older adults would be more likely to employ indirect than direct strategies and that the use of such strategies would be associated with network structure (i.e., size, density, and knowingness) and gender roles. One hundred ten older adults (mean age, 71 years; range, 55–89 years) completed questionnaires and interviews designed to measure aggressive strategies; gender roles; and network size, density, and knowingness. Respondents reported using more indirect than direct strategies. Those who reported using indirect aggression also reported being relatively masculine and having larger but less connected interaction networks. Use of direct aggression was associated with lower femininity scores but was not related to network structure. Aggr. Behav. 26:145–154, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Understanding Teasing: Lessons From Children With Autism

Teasing requires the ability to understand intention, nonliteral communication, pretense, and social context. Children with autism experience difficulty with such skills, and consequently, are expected to have difficulty with teasing. To better understand teasing concepts and behaviors, children with autism, their parents, and age and Verbal-IQ-matched comparison children and parents described concepts and experiences of teasing and engaged in a parent–child teasing interaction. The teasing of children with autism was less playful and provocative and focused less on social norms than that of comparison children. Similarly, parents of children with autism teased in less playful ways. Scores on a theory of mind task accounted for several of the observed differences. Discussion focused on the importance of understanding social context and playful behavior during teasing.     

The Development of Aggression During Adolescence: Sex Differences in Trajectories of Physical and Social Aggression Among Youth in Rural Areas

To describe trajectories of aggressive behaviors for adolescents living in rural areas, we compared the patterns, timing and sex differences in development of physical and social aggression using five waves of data collected from youth in school surveys administered over 2.5 years. The sample (N = 5,151) was 50.0% female, 52.1% Caucasian and 38.2% African-American. Multilevel growth curve models showed that physical and social aggression followed curvilinear trajectories from ages 11 to 18, with increases in each type of aggression followed by subsequent declines. Physical aggression peaked around age 15; social aggression peaked around age 14. Boys consistently perpetrated more physical aggression than girls, but the trajectories were parallel. There were no sex differences in the perpetration of social aggression. Given the characteristics of the developmental trajectories observed, interventions with both boys and girls targeting physically and socially aggressive behaviors are needed in early adolescence to slow the development of aggression.     

Task context changes: teams’ maladaptive responses to unanticipated change

Understanding how teams are affected by and adapt to unexpected change is critical to maximizing team effectiveness. We explore the perspective that rather than being adaptive, how teams experience relativistic adjustments in pacing can actually undermine team creative processes and performance. We test our hypotheses in two experimental studies. Study 1 considers how teams experience change in the time available to complete the task, while Study 2 employs a change in workload. Results support that the deviating patterns of task pacing exhibited by teams responding to an unexpected exogenous change undermines effective team creative processes, leading to lower levels of creative performance. In addition, their effects differ by when the change occurs in the teams’ work process (i.e., earlier, midpoint, or later).     

Social Desirability in Patients Seeking Surgical Treatment for Dentofacial Disharmony: Associations with Psychological Distress and Motivation for Treatment

The role of socially desirable responding in the report of treatment motivation and psychological distress by patients seeking surgical treatment for dentofacial disharmony was explored. Participants completed the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR; Paulhus, 1988), which measures two components of socially desirable responding (SDR): impression management (IM), which is the purposeful tailoring of answers in order to create the most positive social image, and self-deceptive positivity (SDE), which is an honest, but overly positive self-presentation. When simple bivariate relationships were examined, statistically significant inverse associations were observed between socially desirable responding and specific motives for treatment and between SDR and psychological distress. However, the relationship between socially desirable responding and motives for treatment disappeared when the effect of psychological distress was controlled. The positive relationship between psychological distress and the report of social well-being, and self-image motives for treatment remained statistically significant even after the variance attributable to socially desirable responding was removed. Implications of the findings for the evaluation of psychological distress and treatment motivation in this population are discussed.     

The Effects of Intimacy and Target Sex on Direct Aggression: Further Evidence

The effects on aggression of target sex and relationship with the target were investigated using self‐report data. One hundred and seventy‐four participants (115 female) reported on acts of direct aggression in the last 2 years toward intimate partners, known and unknown same‐sex targets, and known and unknown opposite‐sex targets. Women's self‐reported aggression was higher toward partners than other targets, replicating previous findings regarding women's intimate partner aggression. Women's aggression was consistently higher toward same‐sex than opposite‐sex targets, but the effect of knowing the target was inconsistent. Men's self‐reported aggression was more frequent toward same‐sex than opposite‐sex targets—including intimate partners—and more frequent toward known than unknown targets. Results are discussed with reference to a partner‐specific reduction in women's fear, and sex differences in threshold for classifying someone as “known well.” Limitations of the present sample and suggestions for future work are discussed. Aggr. Behav. 38:272‐280, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Types of Aggression,Responsiveness to Provocation,and Callous-unemotional Traits in Detained Adolescents

The present study investigated differences in the behavioral and psychophysiological responses to provocation and in the level of callous-unemotional traits in boys exhibiting different patterns of aggression. Eighty-five boys (ages 13-18) in a juvenile detention center played a competitive computer task against a hypothetical peer who provided low and high levels of provocation. Youth high on both self-reported reactive and proactive aggression showed different behavioral responses to provocation than youth high on only reactive aggression. Specifically, the combined group showed high levels of aggressive responses without any provocation, whereas the group high on reactive aggression showed an increase in aggressive responding to low provocation. Further, results revealed a trend for the combined group to show lower levels of skin conductance reactivity to low provocation if they were also high on callous-unemotional traits.     

The Impact of Election Outcome on the Display of Political Posters: A Field Study During Communal Elections in Flanders

The present field study was designed to test the relationship between the election outcomes of political parties and the post-election display of posters in favor of those parties. Two days before the Flemish communal elections on 8 October 2000, addresses of private houses in the community of Zele were registered that displayed at least one poster in support of a political party (N = 388). On the day after the elections, two observers checked whether the registered houses still displayed their poster(s). A strongly and positively linear relation was found between the proportional win/loss of each political party (compared with the previous elections) and the percentage of houses that continued to exhibit poster(s) in support of that party: The better the election result, the higher the proportion of houses that still displayed their poster(s).     

Aggression in the Laboratory: Problems with the Validity of the Modified Taylor Competitive Reaction Time Test as a Measure of Aggression in Media Violence Studies

Many laboratory studies of aggression use a measure known as the modified Taylor Competitive Reaction Time Test (TCRTT), for which validation studies are lacking. Using sound blasts administered by the participant against a fictional human opponent, the TCRTT also allows for multiple methods of measuring aggression. The validity of the TCRTT was tested in 53 college student participants. Participants took a self-report measure of aggressiveness as well as neuropsychological measures of frontal lobe functioning predictive of aggression. Results were not supportive of the TCRTT's validity and indicated concerns regarding the use of the TCRTT as a measure of aggression. Results suggest that labaratory studies of media violence using the TCRTT are of questionable validity.     

Sex and Aggression: The Relationship Between Gender and Abuse Experience in Youngsters Referred to Residential Treatment

We examined the relationship of gender and different forms of abuse experience on internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms, and IQ in a sample of 397 youngsters who were admitted to a residential treatment program. Three types of abuse experience were examined in this study: sexual abuse only, physical abuse only, and both sexual and physical abuse. Results indicate that girls exhibited higher levels of internalizing and externalizing symptoms even though abuse experience was accounted for in the analyses. Moreover, youngsters who had experienced sexual abuse (but not physical abuse) exhibited higher levels of internalizing and externalizing symptoms than youngsters who had not been abused. Implications for developing individualized interventions based on gender and abuse experience in residential treatment programs is discussed.     

Reactive and Proactive Aggression: Cross-informant Agreement and the Clinical Utility of Different Informants

The current study examined cross-informant agreement and clinical utility of parent and teacher ratings of reactive and proactive aggression (two functions of aggression) in the prediction of aggressive and rule-breaking behavior (two forms of aggressive behavior) in a clinically-heterogeneous referred sample. Reactive and proactive measures were significantly related to one another within informant. Furthermore, the reactive and proactive measures of aggression were significantly related across informants and resulted in differential predictions of emotion-focused aggressive and goal-directed rule-breaking behaviors in home and school settings. Both reactive and proactive functions of aggression predicted aggressive acts that were more emotion-focused, whereas only the proactive function of aggression predicted instrumental acts of aggression. The current findings suggest that setting-specific reports of functions and forms of aggressive behavior are valuable and that it may be premature to abandon the reactive and proactive aggression distinction.