Developmental and social determinants of religious social categorization

The purpose of this study was to assess developmental and social determinants of the age at which children become aware that the social environment can be marked by categorization into religious groups and that those groups are associated with different religious beliefs. The results show that middle childhood is a critical period for this religious social categorization. Moreover, social factors play a role in the development. Religious categorization is likely to appear sooner in children attending heterogeneous schools than in those at homogeneous schools, and children from the minority religious group in the country understand religious categorization earlier than children from the majority group. However, no relation was found between the age at which religious categorization was understood and parents' religious socialization practices. This study is of both theoretical and practical interest: It complements what is already known about gender, race, and ethnic categorization by integrating developmental and social frameworks, and it can serve as a guideline for educational programs.     

Behavioral confirmation in social interaction: From social perception to social reality

A perceiver's actions, although based upon initially erroneous beliefs about a target individual may channel social interaction in ways that cause the behavior of the target to confirm the perceiver's beliefs. To chart this process of behavioral confirmation, we observed successive interactions between one target and two perceivers. In the first interaction, targets who interacted with perceivers who anticipated hostile partners displayed greater behavioral hostility than targets whose perceivers expected nonhostile partners. Only when targets regarded their actions as reflections of personal dispositions did these behavioral differences in hostility persevere into their subsequent interactions with naive perceivers who had no prior knowledge about them. Theoretical implications of the behavioral confirmation construct for social perception processes are discussed.     

Modification of extreme social isolation by contingent social reinforcement

Two socially isolated patients were placed on a program where social reinforcement from staff members was made dependent on social interaction with other patients or staff members. This procedure was imposed in a setting where only limited control was possible. The level of social interaction and a concomitant alternate behavior in each patient was increased when the contingency for social reinforcement was imposed. The study provides another example of the efficacy of social reinforcement where there is little control over other reinforcers. Implications for use of similar procedures to increase generalization in the community are discussed.     

Framing social information and generalized social phobia

Patients with generalized social phobia (GSP, N=33) and matched community controls (N=31) engaged in a social interaction that was constructed to go well, and then received feedback that framed social cues reflecting either the absence of negative outcomes or the presence of positive outcomes. Following feedback that framed positive social cues, the GSP group predicted they would experience more anxiety in a subsequent interaction than did non-phobic controls. In contrast, following feedback framing the absence of negative outcomes, the GSP group did not differ from controls in their anxiety predictions. The results demonstrated that framing paradigms and methods can be usefully applied to the study of cognitive processes in social phobia and indicated that research to examine how GSP patients process specific types of social information is needed.     

Infant social attention predicts preschool social cognition

Recent research examining infants' understanding of intentional action claims to be studying the early origins or precursors of children's later theories of mind If these infant understandings are continuous with later preschool achievements, there should be empirical connections between the two. We provide initial evidence that infants' social attention predicts later social cognition. Specifically, 14-month-olds' habituation to human intentional action significantly predicts later preschool mentalistic construal of persons, as measured on a Theory of Mind Scale.     

Distinguishing between social reinforcement and social elicitation

The theoretical, procedural, analytic, and interpretive components of Poulson's (1983, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 36, 471–489) study were considered in an effort to clarify the distinction between social reinforcement and social elicitation. Contrary to Poulson's contention, DRO was not, and cannot by definition be, a control for reinforcement. More importantly, the speciestypical, social nature of the infant probably reflects the collaborative influence of elicitation and reinforcement. By carefully unravelling these two interacting processes, future conditioning studies might specially enhance our knowledge of early social development.     

社会阶层的心理学研究：社会认知视角

社会阶层是心理学研究的一个新的前沿领域,是指由于经济、政治等多种原因而形成的,在社会层次结构中处于不同地位的群体,这些群体之间存在着客观的社会资源（收入、教育和职业）的差异,以及感知到由此造成的社会地位的差异。基于社会认知视角的社会阶层理论认为,处于同一阶层中的个体,由于共享的经历,形成了相对稳定的认知倾向,低阶层者是情境主义的,高阶层是唯我主义的。大量的实证研究进一步证实,环境所导致的认知倾向差异,使得高低阶层这在感知自我、他人和社会的方式存在显著的不同。而阶层的流动性对个体心理与行为的影响以及本土化的社会阶层心理学研究是需要未来深入探索的研究方向。     

宫观应该发挥的作用

道教有许多积极的教义精神和内容,都是通过宫观展示和发挥出来的。依托宫观,道教在历史的过程中进步发展,展现了道教作为一种文化载体特有的精神风貌,许多著名的高道也是在各个历史的时代中依赖宫观环境发     

Distraction and social comparison as mediators of social facilitation effects

Sanders and Baron (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1975, 32, 956–963) suggested that increases in drive produced by the presence of others (social facilitation) are due to the tendency for others to distract task performers as they worked on a task. This Distraction-Conflict theory proposes that socially mediated drive induction will occur whenever there is some reason to shift attention from the task to the social stimuli. In the case of humans, one such reason may be the opportunity to obtain social comparison information from an audience or coactors. The present research demonstrated that social facilitation effects (improved simple task performance and impaired complex task performance produced by the presence of others) occurred only when subjects were motivated to obtain comparison information (Experiment I) and when comparison information was available (Experiment II). The availability of comparison information also led to increased accuracy in estimating the coactor's performance. This indicated that in conditions manifesting social facilitation, subjects were spending some time monitoring the coactor's work, which is an inherently distracting activity. Several supplementary measures of distraction were generally consistent in indicating greater distraction under conditions manifesting social facilitation. The present results offer no support for the explanations of social facilitation suggested by Zajonc and by Cottrell.     

Correlates of social support: Personal characteristics and social resources

This study attempted to identify potential determinants of receiving support using multivariate analysis. A community probability sample of 581 adults were surveyed. In addition to recording demographic variables and social support receipt, extraversion and locus of control were measured as personal characteristics; being married and numbers of confidants were recorded as social resources indicators. We found that (1) gender, education, extraversion, locus of control and social resources had direct effects on social support receipt; (2) education also had an indirect effect through locus of control, whereas extraversion had indirect effects through both locus of control and sod resources. Roles of personal characteristics and social resources in determining social support receipt were discussed.     

社交退缩与儿童的社会适应之间的关系

本研究的目的是探讨社交退缩与儿童的社会适应之间的关系。 共有145名11岁儿童(M=129个月,SD=6.5个月,60名男孩,85名女孩)参与了本研究。本研究运用实验室观察程序,采用儿童游戏观察量表(Play Observation Scale)对儿童在两个自由游戏情景中的社交退缩行为进行编码,采用教师报告法和儿童自我报告法测量了儿童的适应情况。研究结果发现,焦虑退缩行为更多的与男孩的适应问题有关,而安静退缩更多的与女孩的适应问题如孤独感、抑郁等有关。结果表明社交退缩的各个亚型与其社会适应之间的关系是不同的,且性别在其中起着调节作用。     

Trusted strangers: social affordances for social cohesion

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - How could the paradigm shift towards enactive embodied cognitive science have implications for society and politics? Translating insights form enactive...     

Popular and rejected children's social reasoning: linking social status and social knowledge.

The relationship between children's social status/sex and their moral judgements was examined. Sixty-four second- and third-grade children (33 boys, 31 girls) who were identified as popular or rejected by peer sociometric measures were shown pictures of children engaged in moral and second-order transgressions. The children were asked to rate each event on (a) the degree of seriousness for other and self, (b) the amount of punishment for other and self, and (c) rule alterability. The children were also asked for justification of the transgressions (why they thought the transgressions were wrong). The popular and rejected children differentiated between moral and second-order transgressions based upon criterion ratings and justifications. Differences emerged between the popular and the rejected children's ratings and justifications for moral transgressions, suggesting that children's moral judgements are related to social experiences associated with peer acceptance and rejection.     

Negative self-imagery in social anxiety contaminates social interactions

Patients with social phobia report experiencing negative images of themselves performing poorly when in feared social situations. The present study investigates whether such negative self-imagery (based on memory of past social situations) contaminates social interactions. High socially anxious volunteers participated in two conversations with another volunteer (conversational partner). During one conversation, the socially anxious volunteers held in mind a negative self-image, and during the other they held in mind a less negative (control) self-image. As predicted, when holding the negative image the socially anxious volunteers felt more anxious, reported using more safety behaviours, believed that they performed more poorly, and showed greater overestimation of how poorly they came across (relative to ratings by the conversational partner). Conversational partners rated the socially anxious volunteers' performance as poorer in the negative image condition. Furthermore, the conversation was contaminated since both groups of participants rated its quality as poorer in the negative image condition.     

From social talk to social action: shaping the social triad with emotion sharing

Seemingly trivial social talk provides fertile ground for emotion sharing (a narrator and audience's realization that they experience the same emotional response toward a target), which in turn creates a coalition between the narrator and the audience, configures the narrator and audience's relationship with the target, and coordinates their target-directed action. In this article, the authors use 4 studies to investigate this thesis. In Studies 1 and 2--where participants rated scenarios in which narrators told them anecdotes--the authors found that when there was emotion sharing (a) participants were more bonded with narrators, (b) the narrator and audience's relationship with the target (as reflected in action tendencies) was determined by the emotionality of the anecdotes, and (c) they coordinated their target-directed actions. Study 3 demonstrated that this effect was indeed due to emotion sharing. Study 4 provided behavioral evidence for the effects of emotion sharing using a 2-person trust game. Together, these studies reveal that the everyday act of social talk is a powerful act that is able to shape the social triad of the narrator, the audience, and the social target, with powerful consequences for social structure and group action.     

Integrating research on social class and social relationships

A decade of research on social class has shown that those lower in social class tend to be more interdependent or focused on others. Here, we show that considering social class as an aspect of culture, which means that it shapes thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, can improve the precision, generalizability, and utility of theories about relationships. Moreover, we show the value of research on social class that integrates theories and methodologies developed in relationship science (e.g., studying existing relationships in real life, over time) with those developed in the science of social class (e.g., social class as a form of culture; the distinction between material resources and rank in society). Integrating these perspectives will accelerate understanding of when and how relationships can be beneficial for all. Recent research on social-class variation in interpersonal processes lays the groundwork for substantial advances across domains of psychology.