Listening to Reporters or Engineers? How Instance‐Based Messages About Building Design Affect Earthquake Fatalism1

Attributions are shaped by information about the causal mechanisms that produce outcomes. Two studies examined the effect of mechanism information on attributions for earthquake damage and judgments that the damage could be prevented. Scenarios based on actual reports of earthquakes compared 2 messages about the building design of damaged buildings. Accurate rate‐based messages stated that well‐designed buildings were resilient, whereas fatalistic, instance‐based messages stated that well‐designed buildings were damaged. In Study 2, to vary source credibility, the message source was either an engineer or a reporter. Participants made less fatalistic inferences and attributions with rate‐based messages than with instance‐based messages, regardless of the source. These findings show that rate‐based messages are likely to reduce fatalism about earthquakes and other risks.     

Natural Disasters in Indonesia: Relationships Among Posttraumatic Stress,Resource Loss,Depression, Social Support,and Posttraumatic Growth

ABSTRACT

Indonesia is at significant risk for catastrophic natural disasters, including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis. Few studies have examined psychological functioning following disaster exposure in Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world. This study assesses variables associated with posttraumatic stress and posttraumatic growth following a devastating earthquake in Central Java that ranks as one of the costliest in Indonesia. The participants were 85 men and women living in rural farming villages. Almost all (95%) experienced major home damage or total home destruction. Posttraumatic stress symptoms were associated with resource loss, depression, and concerns about future earthquakes. Participants reported moderate posttraumatic growth. Posttraumatic growth was associated with energy resource loss and social support. The findings support conservation of resources stress theory. The implications of the findings for intervention and recovery programs are discussed.     

Sex bias in the newspaper treatment of male-centered and female-centered news stories

Differences in the newspaper treatment of men and women were examined in two sets of news stories collected a year apart, in the fall of 1976 and 1977. In both samples, coverage of women was more likely to include mention of personal appearance, marital status, and spouse than was coverage of men. These differences could not be attributed to the greater number of men in the news, nor to differences in the sections of the newspaper where stories about men and stories about women were usually found. They were equally true of locally written and national wire-service stories.     

Stress and coping: The Loma Prieta Earthquake

This study examined the stress response, coping strategies, and behavioral intentions of 185 subjects following the Loma Prieta Earthquake. Subjects completed a series of open ended questions about previous experience with earthquakes and their preparedness for previous and future earthquakes. The Impact of Event Scale (IES) and the Symptom Checklist, Version 90R (SCL-90R), were used to measure participants’ subjective stress response and symptoms of psychological distress at two days and either one week or three weeks following the earthquake. At one or three weeks, some subjects also completed the Coping Strategies Inventory. This study describes the stress response in this earthquake population and explores the relationship of the passage of time and past experiences with earthquakes to psychological distress following the earthquake. Coping strategies and behavioral intentions were also assessed. Results indicated that, although stress levels were elevated at the time of the initial testing, there were declines in reported stress as early as the one week follow-up session. Additionally, a number of gender differences were found in terms of the stress response to the earthquake.     

On forgetting the historical past

In this paper, empirical data are presented related to memory and time perception. The data are the frequencies with which specific calendar years are cited in newspaper texts. When plotted, the curves produced by the time series of these frequencies turn out to be independent of the languages and cultures in which the texts have been written as well as the year and the year density of the text corpus. The frequency of a specific year is inversely proportional to the distance from that year to the year in which the texts were written. It is argued that these curves are forgetting curves. It is suggested that the curves might be explained in terms of the “cognitive distance” between past and present. An argument is presented based on the curve representing the frequencies with which future years are cited in newspaper texts.     

How do valence and meaning interact? The contribution of semantic control

The hub-and-spoke model of semantic cognition proposes that conceptual representations in a heteromodal ‘hub’ interact with and emerge from modality-specific features or ‘spokes’, including valence (whether a concept is positive or negative), along with visual and auditory features. As a result, valence congruency might facilitate our ability to link words conceptually. Semantic relatedness may similarly affect explicit judgements about valence. Moreover, conflict between meaning and valence may recruit semantic control processes. Here we tested these predictions using two-alternative forced-choice tasks, in which participants matched a probe word to one of two possible target words, based on either global meaning or valence. Experiment 1 examined timed responses in healthy young adults, while Experiment 2 examined decision accuracy in semantic aphasia patients with impaired controlled semantic retrieval following left hemisphere stroke. Across both experiments, semantically related targets facilitated valence matching, while related distractors impaired performance. Valence congruency was also found to facilitate semantic decision-making. People with semantic aphasia showed impaired valence matching and had particular difficulty when semantically related distractors were presented, suggesting that the selective retrieval of valence information relies on semantic control processes. Taken together, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that automatic access to the global meaning of written words affects the processing of valence, and that the valence of words is also retrieved even when this feature is task-irrelevant, affecting the efficiency of global semantic judgements.     

To the letter: Early readers trust print‐based over oral instructions to guide their actions

Children have many opportunities to learn from others through oral and written sources. Recent evidence suggests that early readers place more trust in written over oral testimony when learning names for unfamiliar objects. Across three studies, we examined whether the authority of print extends beyond mere naming to guide children's actions in the physical world. In Study 1, 3‐ to 6‐year‐olds received conflicting oral and print‐based advice from two puppets about how to operate a novel apparatus. Whereas pre‐readers were indiscriminate in their trust, early readers preferred to follow the print‐based advice. In Study 2, we replicated this finding, controlling for the amount of corroborating evidence presented by both sources, and the location of the print. In Study 3, we explored whether readers' preference for print‐based information was due to a global preference for external representations, or a more specific preference for text. Children were presented with conflicting instructions based on text versus a coloured circle. Whereas pre‐readers preferred to follow the colour circle, readers preferred to follow the text. Together, the results suggest that when children learn to read, they rapidly come to regard the written word as a particularly authoritative source of information about how to act in the world.     

How information about building design influences causal attributions for earthquake damage

Causal attributions for events are shaped by information about causal mechanisms that contribute to the events. In the case of damage from earthquakes, these mechanisms include the design of buildings. Three studies presented scenarios drawn from actual reports of recent earthquakes (Kobe, Japan and Northridge, California, USA), including statements by engineers about the quality of the design of damaged and undamaged buildings. Studies examined whether this design information affected attributions for earthquake damage. Participants attributed damage to building design more strongly and rated damage more preventable when scenarios referred to the poor building design of damaged buildings than when scenarios gave no design information. Information about the excellent design of undamaged buildings had less consistent effects. This effect was most consistent with scenarios about the design of damaged buildings. These findings show that mechanism (design) information does influence judgments about damage in earthquakes and, by implication, other hazards.     

Looking at the past through a telescope: adults postdated their earliest childhood memories

ABSTRACT

Our previous studies have consistently shown a telescoping error in children’s dating of earliest childhood memories. Preschool children through adolescents systematically date their earliest memories at older ages, in comparison with the age estimates provided by their parents or by themselves previously. In the current study, we examined the dating of earliest childhood memories in two samples of college adults and collected independent age estimates from their parents. Consistent with our findings with children, adults significantly postdated their earlier memories by approximately 12 months (Study 1) and 6 months (Study 2). The actual age of earliest memories was 2.5 years after adjusted for telescoping errors, 1 year earlier than what is commonly believed at 3.5 years. These findings challenge commonly held theoretical assumptions about childhood amnesia and highlight critical methodological issues in the study of childhood memory.     

Ease‐of‐retrieval effects on procedural justice judgements under conditions of informational and personal uncertainty

This study tests whether individuals' reliance on ease‐of‐retrieval processes when forming procedural justice judgements are moderated by informational and personal uncertainty. In Studies 1 and 2 we examined the predicted effects of informational uncertainty. Results indicated that participants in information‐uncertain conditions relied on ease‐of‐retrieval, whereas those in information‐certain conditions relied on content information to make procedural justice judgements. In Study 3 we examined the combined effects of informational uncertainty and personal uncertainty on reliance on ease‐of‐retrieval when forming procedural justice judgements. The findings of Study 3 indicated that personal uncertain participants who were in informational certain conditions based their procedural justice judgements on content information, whereas all other participants based their procedural justice judgements on ease‐of‐retrieval. This is the first paper to demonstrate that the joint effect of informational uncertainty and personal uncertainty on reliance on ease‐of‐retrieval is different from the two uncertainties acting alone.     

Emotions in sexual morality: Testing the separate elicitors of anger and disgust

Recent work suggests that negative moral judgements of sexual activities are informed by disgust and anger. A correlational study (N=62) and an experiment (N=176) examined the specific antecedents that elicit these distinct, though correlated, moral emotions. Participants in Study 1 rated their emotional reactions to, and judgements of, 10 sexual scenarios. Across scenarios, judgements of abnormality predicted disgust independent of anger, and judgements of harm/rights violation predicted anger independent of disgust. Study 2 replicated these results in an experimental design. Participants rated their emotions and judgements in response to behaviours that varied in degree of potential sexual morality violation (non-sexual, heterosexual, homosexual) and rights violation (no harm, indirect harm, direct harm). Judgement of rights violation mediated the effects of harm on anger. Judgements of abnormality, but not other antecedents proposed to elicit moral disgust, mediated the effects of sexual immorality on disgust.     

Disaster threat and justice sensitivity: a terror management perspective

Based on terror management theory, we tested the idea that reminders of death strengthen justice sensitivity. In Study 1, we exposed participants to three different kinds of death‐related pictures (terrorism vs. natural disasters vs. graveyards) or neutral pictures. The results showed that death‐related visual material led to more justice sensitivity from three perspectives (victim, observer, and perpetrator) than neutral visual material. Likewise, Study 2 indicated that fake newspaper articles claiming that the likelihood of terrorism is very high (vs. low) strengthened these three justice sensitivity types. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Exchange fairness and employee performance: An examination of the relationship between organizational politics and procedural justice

Data obtained from a manufacturing firm and a newspaper firm in India were used to examine the relationship between organizational politics and procedural justice in three separate studies. Study 1 constructively replicated research on the distinctiveness of the two constructs. Confirmatory factor analyses in which data from the manufacturing firm served as the development sample and data from the newspaper firm served as the validation sample demonstrated the distinctiveness of organizational politics and procedural justice. Study 2 examined the antecedents of the two constructs using data from the manufacturing firm. Structural equation modeling (SEM) results revealed formalization and participation in decision making to be positively related to procedural justice but negatively related to organizational politics. Further, authority hierarchy and spatial distance were positively related to organizational politics but unrelated to procedural justice. Study 3 examined the consequences of the two constructs in terms of task and contextual performance using data from the newspaper firm. Results of SEM analysis revealed procedural justice but not organizational politics to be related to task performance and the contextual performance dimensions of interpersonal facilitation and job dedication.     

What triggers prosocial effort? A positive feedback loop between positive activities,kindness, and well-being

Across two studies, we found evidence supporting a positive feedback loop between positive activities, kindness and well-being. In Study 1, participants were randomly assigned to one of four distinct positive activities (versus a neutral writing activity) before spending three weeks engaging in kind acts. We found that the positive activities served as triggers – that is, they predicted greater prosocial effort, which in turn predicted greater well-being immediately following the intervention and at a two-week follow-up. In Study 2, we explored the specific effects of a gratitude trigger, and extended the intervention period to six weeks. Although, we did not replicate the direct effect of the gratitude trigger on prosocial effort, people who wrote gratitude letters (versus writing about their week) reported relatively greater elevation, which predicted greater prosocial effort during the six weeks. In turn, replicating Study 1, greater effort predicted higher well-being immediately following the study.     

Emotions in sexual morality: Testing the separate elicitors of anger and disgust

Recent work suggests that negative moral judgements of sexual activities are informed by disgust and anger. A correlational study (N=62) and an experiment (N=176) examined the specific antecedents that elicit these distinct, though correlated, moral emotions. Participants in Study 1 rated their emotional reactions to, and judgements of, 10 sexual scenarios. Across scenarios, judgements of abnormality predicted disgust independent of anger, and judgements of harm/rights violation predicted anger independent of disgust. Study 2 replicated these results in an experimental design. Participants rated their emotions and judgements in response to behaviours that varied in degree of potential sexual morality violation (non-sexual, heterosexual, homosexual) and rights violation (no harm, indirect harm, direct harm). Judgement of rights violation mediated the effects of harm on anger. Judgements of abnormality, but not other antecedents proposed to elicit moral disgust, mediated the effects of sexual immorality on disgust.     

Converging evidence of configural processing of faces in high-functioning adults with autism spectrum disorders

There is conflicting evidence about whether individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate configural processing of faces. We examined two types of configural processing of unfamiliar faces in high-functioning adults with ASD: Holistic processing (processing a face as a gestalt percept) and processing of second-order relations (the spatial relations among facial features, e.g., distance between two eyes). Compared to age- and IQ-matched typical adults, 17 adults with ASD demonstrated normal holistic processing (as demonstrated by the composite face effect), normal sensitivity to second-order relations in upright faces, and the expected disruption of sensitivity to second-order relations in inverted faces. They were also normal in using the internal features and shape of the external contour to make same/different judgements about facial identity. The results provide converging evidence of configural processing of unfamiliar faces in high-functioning adults with ASD, and bring into question the generalizability of previous reports of abnormal face processing in individuals with ASD.     

Temporal information and children's and adults' causal inferences

Three experiments examined whether children and adults would use temporal information as a cue to the causal structure of a three-variable system, and also whether their judgements about the effects of interventions on the system would be affected by the temporal properties of the event sequence. Participants were shown a system in which two events B and C occurred either simultaneously (synchronous condition) or in a temporal sequence (sequential condition) following an initial event A. The causal judgements of adults and 6–7-year-olds differed between the conditions, but this was not the case for 4-year-olds' judgements. However, unlike those of adults, 6–7-year-olds' intervention judgements were not affected by condition, and causal and intervention judgements were not reliably consistent in this age group. The findings support the claim that temporal information provides an important cue to causal structure, at least in older children. However, they raise important issues about the relationship between causal and intervention judgements.     

Children's memory for the duration of a paediatric consultation

To learn about children's ability to estimate the duration of an event many days after it occurred, 6–12‐year‐old children were asked to judge the amount of time (range 5–45 minutes) they spent in the treatment room as part of a paediatric visit. Judgements were made 1 week or 1 month after the visit occurred. Children showed an average error of about 13 minutes. Retention interval did not significantly affect estimates. Other judgements of the length of the interview itself (mean length 8 minutes) provided what may be the first data on children's ability to make immediate retrospective duration estimates. The results also include information about children's capacity to judge how long ago they visited the clinic. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Prior knowledge and subtyping effects in children's category learning

Two experiments examined how 5- and 10-year-old children revise their category representations when exposed to exemplars that are congruent or incongruent with existing knowledge. During training children were presented with exemplars containing features that were congruent or incongruent with children's social stereotypes together with a stereotype-neutral feature. In the knowledge-subtyping condition this neutral feature predicted the stereotype-congruence of the other features. In the knowledge-standard condition the neutral feature was uncorrelated with stereotype-congruence. At test children made judgements about feature co-occurrence within the learned category. In each experiment these judgements were influenced by both stereotypical beliefs and exemplar observation. Stereotypical beliefs, however, had a greater influence on co-occurrence judgements in the knowledge-subtyping than in the standard conditions. In Experiment 2 these effects were shown to generalize to judgements about features that were not presented during training. These results challenge current models of knowledge-based categorization by showing that exemplar structure determines whether novel exemplar features are incorporated into category representations.     

The correlates and consequences of newspaper reports of research on sex differences

Correlates and consequences of newspaper accounts of research on sex differences were examined. In Study 1, articles from high-circulation newspapers were coded for the degree to which biological factors were used to explain sex differences. Results showed that political conservatism and traditional attitudes toward gender roles coded from other newspaper sections predicted greater use of biological explanations than did political liberalism and less traditional attitudes toward gender roles. In Studies 2 and 3, participants read a fictional newspaper article reporting research on a gender difference that cited either biological or sociocultural factors as explaining the difference. Results showed that exposure to biological explanations significantly increased participants' endorsement of gender stereotypes. Moreover, exposure to social explanations significantly increased participants' belief in the mutability of human behavior. Together, these studies show that political ideology influences how the popular press reports research findings and that such reporting in turn affects readers' beliefs and attitudes.