Sad-and-social is not smart: The moderating effects of social anticipation on mood and information processing

We examined if anticipating working collectively, rather than individually, moderates the effects of mood on information processing through (a) distraction, (b) loafing, and/or (c) task engagement. When participants anticipated working collectively, rather than individually, those in sad moods became distracted by the social elements of the task, resulting in a reduced information focus. In contrast, those in happy moods became engaged in the collective task, increasing their intended effort, raising their information focus, and improving their performance on the task. Social loafing effects did not occur. Mediation analyses revealed that these effects were due to changes in information focus, not social focus or intended effort.     

Gender differences in applying social cognitive career theory in engineering students

This study tested Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) in predicting engineering interest and major choice goals among male and female college students. Participants were 579 sophomore engineering students who completed measures of self-efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations, interests, goals and social supports and barriers. Findings confirmed that the SCCT model produced a good fit to the data across gender. The findings also corroborated that women have less self-efficacy beliefs and interest than men. However, there are no statistically significant differences in measures relating to outcome expectations and goals. Moreover, women are more likely to perceive support, especially from peers and family, while men are more likely to perceive family barriers than women. For other supports and barriers there are no gender differences. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Identity salience moderates processing of group-relevant information

When an individual is categorized as a member of a group, the individual’s social identity becomes his or her frame for perceiving the world. This research investigates how information can be perceived and processed differently when relevant social identities are salient. In two studies, participants’ individual, student, or American identities were made salient before they read strong or weak arguments in favor of the institution of comprehensive exams at their university in 10 years time. In both studies, student-salient participants analytically processed the message whereas self-salient (Study 1) and American-salient (Study 2) participants failed to agree differentially with strong and weak messages. These data suggest that social-identity salience changes the information that individuals consider relevant, providing clear support for the contention that social identities have a profound impact on the way individuals perceive and interact with the world around them.     

Good friendships,bad friends: Friendship factors as moderators of the relation between aggression and social information processing

The primary objective was to examine whether the associations between aggression and social information processing was moderated by friendship quality and the aggressiveness of the best friend. Drawn from a larger normative sample of 5th and 6th graders, 385 children (180 boys) completed questionnaires pertaining to friendship quality and social information processing. Friendship and peer nominations of behaviours were collected. Results revealed positive associations between aggressive behaviour and the endorsement of aggressive coping strategies in cases where the protagonist was an unfamiliar peer. However, one important exception emerged: no significant associations between aggression and aggressive coping were revealed for children with high-quality friendships with aggressive peers. In cases where the protagonist was the best friend, there was a significant relation between aggression and vengeful coping, but only for those participants who had a low-quality friendship with an aggressive friend.     

Gender differences in empathy: the role of the right hemisphere

The relationship between activation of the right cerebral hemisphere (RH) and empathy was investigated. Twenty-two men and 73 women participated by completing a chimeric face task and empathy questionnaire. For the face task, participants were asked to pick which of the two chimeric faces looked happier. Both men and women were significantly more likely to say the chimera with the smile to their left was happier, suggesting activation of the RH. As expected, men scored significantly lower than women on the empathy questionnaire, p = .003. A correlation was found between RH activation on the face task and empathy for women only, p = .037, suggesting a possible neural basis for gender differences in empathy.     

Explaining sex differences in infants' preferences for groups

Social organization of a species influences myriad facets of individuals’ behavior. Much research indicates that human social organization consists of males in large groups and females in smaller groups or interacting with individuals. This study analyzed the initial factors that produce greater preferences for groups by human male versus female infants. To this end, using a looking preference paradigm, fifty-nine 6–8-month-old infants viewed individual versus group images of actual children. On the basis of several controls, results demonstrated that male more than female infants are attracted to the complex level of stimulation provided by groups. Discussion centers on further identifying male versus female patterns of group interaction from a perceptual and cognitive standpoint.     

Early information processing biases in social anxiety

Considerable controversy persists regarding the nature of threat-related attention biases in social anxiety. Previous studies have not considered how variations in the temporal and energetic dimensions of affective stimulus delivery interact with anxiety-related individual differences to predict biased attention. We administered a visual dot-probe task, using faces that varied in affective intensity (mild, moderate, strong) and presentation rate (100, 500, 1,250 ms) to a selected sample. The high, compared to the low, socially anxious group showed vigilance towards angry faces and emotionally ambiguous faces more generally during rapid (100 ms) presentations. By 1,250 ms, there was only a non-specific motor slowing associated with angry faces in the high socially anxious group. Findings suggest the importance of considering both chronometric and energetic dimensions of affective stimuli when examining anxiety-related attention biases. Future studies should consider using designs that more closely replicate aspects of real-world interaction to study processing biases in socially anxious populations.     

Structural gender differences in perceived social support

Gender is an important influence on support-relevant social interactions, however findings of studies on gender differences in social support are not definitive. Although differences between men and women in the various social support measures have been found in numerous studies, neither the cause nor the explanatory process is known. This study examines gender differences in the dimensionality of social support. A large sample (N=3210) from the general population of women (60%) and men aged between 18 and 65 years old (Mean AGE=34.1) responded to a brief scale with items assessing the distinct functions of the perceived availability of social support. Confirmatory factor analyses yielded one factor in the women's sample that measures global social support perceived, and two in the men's. The first factor in the men's sample measures emotional support (providing empathy, caring, validation of self-worth), and the second measures instrumental support (e.g. practical assistance or financial aid). We concluded that there are gender differences in the structure of perceived social support and that these differences can be explained by socialization experiences and social roles associated with gender.     

Individual and group differences in intelligence and speed of information processing

A battery of eight different reaction time (RT) tests, measuring the speed with which individuals perform various elementary cognitive processes, and a group test of scholastic aptitude (the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, ASVAB) were given to 50 black and 56 white male vocational college students. The regression of the general factor scores of the ASVAB on the RT measures yielded a shrunken multiple correlation of 0.465. Although discriminant analyses, when applied separately to the ASVAB subtests and to the RT variables, showed highly comparable overall discrimination (over 70% correct classification) between the black and white groups, factor scores derived from the general factor (labeled ‘speed of information processing’) of the RT battery show only about one-third as large a mean black-white difference as the mean group difference on the general factor scores derived from the ASVAB. Comparisons were also made between the 106 vocational college students and 100 university students of higher average academic aptitude who had previously been tested on the same RT battery (Vernon, 1983a). These groups showed marked differences on the RT variables, the largest differences occuring on the tests that required more complex cognitive processing. The more complex RT tests also correlate most highly with the psychometric measures of ability within each group. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that individual differences and the mean differences between groups in psychometric abilities and scholastic achievement are related to differences in the speed of information processing as measured in elementary cognitive tasks.     

Gender differences in facial imitation and verbally reported emotional contagion from spontaneous to emotionally regulated processing levels

Previous studies on gender differences in facial imitation and verbally reported emotional contagion have investigated emotional responses to pictures of facial expressions at supraliminal exposure times. The aim of the present study was to investigate how gender differences are related to different exposure times, representing information processing levels from subliminal (spontaneous) to supraliminal (emotionally regulated). Further, the study aimed at exploring correlations between verbally reported emotional contagion and facial responses for men and women. Masked pictures of angry, happy and sad facial expressions were presented to 102 participants (51 men) at exposure times from subliminal (23 ms) to clearly supraliminal (2500 ms). Myoelectric activity (EMG) from the corrugator and the zygomaticus was measured and the participants reported their hedonic tone (verbally reported emotional contagion) after stimulus exposures. The results showed an effect of exposure time on gender differences in facial responses as well as in verbally reported emotional contagion. Women amplified imitative responses towards happy vs. angry faces and verbally reported emotional contagion with prolonged exposure times, whereas men did not. No gender differences were detected at the subliminal or borderliminal exposure times, but at the supraliminal exposure gender differences were found in imitation as well as in verbally reported emotional contagion. Women showed correspondence between their facial responses and their verbally reported emotional contagion to a greater extent than men. The results were interpreted in terms of gender differences in emotion regulation, rather than as differences in biologically prepared emotional reactivity.     

The influence of provocateurs' emotion displays on the social information processing of children varying in social adjustment and age

This study examined the effect of provocateurs' emotion displays on first through fourth graders' social information processing (SIP). Rating and nomination sociometric techniques were used to identify rejected-aggressive, rejected-nonaggressive, average-nonaggressive, and popular-nonaggressive groups. Children viewed videotaped ambiguous provocation situations in which provocateurs' emotion displays were varied systematically. After each vignette, children's recall of story details, attribution of intent, and problem-solving responses were obtained. Half of the children were randomly assigned to a condition where they were asked directly about provocateurs' emotions, and the remaining children were not asked about provocateurs' feelings. Results revealed both developmental and social adjustment differences in SIP. In addition, provocateurs' emotion displays and asking versus not asking about those displays influenced multiple aspects of SIP.     

Gender differences in the relationship of moderator variables to stress and symptoms

Abstract

This study focused on gender differences in the relationship of four moderator variables (hostility, social support, optimism, and Type A behavior) to perceptions of symptoms and stress based on a sample of 120 female and 79 male undergraduates. Results confirmed significant gender differences in hostility, Type A behavior, and social support but not in optimism. Multiple regression analyses exposed distinct gender differences. For females, social support accounted for 21% and hostility 5% of the total variance in perceived stress. For males, only hostility accounted for any significant variance (10%). Hostility contributed 21% and social support contributed 13% to the total variance in the number of symptoms for females. For males, optimism contributed 14% and hostility 5%. Results indicate that social support is a potent variable for females in their perception of both stress and symptoms but essentially unrelated for males. Hostility, however, relates to perceptions of stress and symptoms for both sexes.     

Moral chronicity and social information processing: Tests of a social cognitive approach to the moral personality

Following Higgins, King, and Mavin (1982) chronicity paradigm, we examined the effects of chronically accessed moral constructs for prototypic moral character using two different research paradigms, spontaneous trait inferencing and lexical decision. Study 1 presented target sentences in a deliberate or spontaneous processing condition. Recall was cued with either a dispositional or semantic cue. Moral chronics made more spontaneous trait inferences with dispositional cues than semantic cues. In Study 2, participants read stories about characters who did or did not help. Moral chronics were faster responding to probes reflecting negative evaluations of story characters who did not help when requested (e.g., “disloyal”). Findings support claims that the moral personality is usefully conceptualized in terms of the chronic accessibility of moral knowledge structures.     

Gender differences in implicit and explicit personality traits

This article investigates gender differences in implicit and explicit measures of the Big Five traits of personality. In a high-powered study (N = 14,348), we replicated previous research showing that women report higher levels of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Neuroticism. For implicit measures, gender differences were much smaller for all, and opposite in sign for Extraversion. Somewhat higher levels of implicit Neuroticism and Agreeableness were observed in women, and somewhat higher levels of implicit Extraversion and Openness were observed in men. There was no gender difference in implicit Conscientiousness. A possible explanation is that explicit self-concepts partly reflect social norms and self-expectations about gender roles, while implicit self-concepts may mostly reflect self-related experiences.     

A cross-sequential analysis of developmental differences in speed of visual information processing

Development of processing speed was examined in three backward masking studies. The first verified the central nature of backward masking for children aged 8 and 11 years and for adults. The second suggested that task requirements were equivalent for children similar to those in Study 1, and that age differences in performance were not attributable to nonprocessing variables. The main cross-sequential study estimated speed of processing in 80 children (approximately 6 years to 13 years) and young adults using an inspection time task. Target exposure duration was varied to establish the time required to achieve a high level of discriminative accuracy. Estimates of processing speed increased until about 11-13 years of age; beyond this, the trend was less obvious, and it is possible that inspection time asymptotes at around the onset of adolescence. Performance improvement after 1 year could not be explained as resulting from practice since improvement among controls over a period of 2 weeks was significantly less. Correlations between estimates of inspection time made up to 2 years apart found the measure to be reliable.     

Forming all pairs in a minimal number of steps

How can N individuals in a closed space meet and greet each other most efficiently? This paper presents a general solution to this problem—an algorithm or “dance” that will achieve universal pairing in the least possible number of moves or steps. A proof of the suggested algorithm is included, showing that it guarantees that every two participants will greet each other once and only once, and that no procedure with this property can be accomplished with fewer steps. Slightly different procedures are required for the odd and even cases. The algorithm has been applied in classroom settings, and could be applied in any social setting where the objective is to initiate efficiently a sense of group cohesion and common purpose.     

The differences between cerebral dominance patterns in the speed and accuracy of information processing among university students

IntroductionThe subject of cerebral dominance has received great attention by researchers; however, there is a paucity of studies that have examined its relationship to information processing.ObjectiveThe current study aims to reveal the differences between the cerebral dominance patterns (left cerebral dominance, right cerebral dominance, integrated parallel cerebral dominance) in the speed and accuracy of information processing.MethodA sample of (182) volunteers university students, (mean age ± SD, 19.92 ± 2.76 years; range, 18–24 years; 68 male, 114 females). The Human Information processing survey was applied to the participants. Each subject was exposed to two elementary cognitive tasks (Stroop task and Eriksen flanker task). Each task included two experimental conditions: first, the congruent condition that reflects the automatic processing of information; second, the incongruent condition that reflects the controlled processing of information.ResultsThe results of the study revealed that there were no differences between the patterns of cerebral dominance in the speed and accuracy of information processing.ConclusionAlthough the relationship between cerebral dominance and information processing is not significant, we need more studies to examine this relationship in other samples and in other experimental conditions.     

Gender Schemas: A Cognitive Explanation of Discrimination of Women in Technology

Despite the need for qualified personnel in the field of information technology (IT), women are under represented. Recruiting has been difficult and those women entering the profession often leave. Gender schema theory adds to the explanation of behaviors and attitudes in the workplace that may adversely impact women in technology. We surveyed members of Systers, an online forum for women in technology, to examine gender schemas of IT women to see if there is a significant difference between them and the general public. Our findings suggest that there is a significant difference in the gender-schemas of women in technology and the gender-schemas of the general population. A subsequent sample of male IT students and men in the general public also indicated a significant difference in gender schemas of these two groups. Implications of these differences and future research in this area are discussed.     

Gender and contextual differences in social responsibility in Thai schools: a multi-study person versus situation analysis

Social responsibility has been linked to the moral development of students, but little prior research has examined how personal and situational variables influence students’ willingness to show care and concern for social issues that reflect higher levels of moral development. We theorised and tested the hypotheses that females would endorse social responsibility to a greater extent than males, and that school/programme context would moderate this relationship. In Study 1, levels of social responsibility were greater for girls than boys and in academic versus vocational high schools, and school type moderated levels of social responsibility for boys. Study 2 replicated the male–female difference in social responsibility, and demonstrated greater differences in social responsibility across university academic programmes for female than male students. These studies expand the understanding of personal versus situational influences on social responsibility and their implications for moral education in schools.