Acculturation Attitudes and the Ethnic and Host-Country Identification of Immigrants

This study assessed a number of potential predictors of host-country and ethnic-group identification of members of immigrant groups to Australia. The study included 281 adult participants from Vietnam, Hong Kong, and New Zealand, who responded to questions relating to their acculturation attitudes, host-culture and ethnic-group identification, and experiences in their new country. Results showed that the predictors of host country (Australian) identification were the immigrants' acculturation attitude of wanting to live according to host standards and values, lower ethnic versus Australian social involvement, lower ethnic prejudice, higher job status, and acceptance by Australians. The major predictors of ethnic-group identification were an acculturation attitude of wanting to live according to ethnic-group standards, higher ethnic versus Australian social involvement, lower self-esteem, fewer Australian friends, lower ability to speak English, higher education, lower self-efficacy, and number of ethnic friends. The implications for the acculturation of immigrants are discussed.     

Prejudice, Ethnic Identity, Contact and Ethnic Group Preferences Among Dutch Young Adolescents

Social identity theory, the contact hypothesis, and prejudice research are three important perspectives for studying ingroup information and preferences in the context of ethnic groups. This paper studies the utility of the three perspectives in a particular interethnic group context among 160 Dutch subjects between 12 and 15 years of age. The results show that the evaluation of ethnic identity and rate of cross-ethnic contact are strongly correlated with ingroup formation and preference. Prejudicial attitudes seem to be dependent on contact and especially on the evaluation of ethnic identity. Prejudice seems to be a function of positive identification with the Dutch as a group. Applied implications for ethnic-group relations are discussed.     

Children's developmental understanding of ethnicity and race

Research on children's development of ethnic cognition from preschool through adolescence was reviewed. This review was based on research conducted on (a) children's ethnic cognition, (b) children's social-cognitive development, (c) children's understanding of a variety of social status, and (d) Quintana's model of children's understanding of ethnicity. Four developmental levels were described: Integration of affective and perceptual understanding of ethnicity (level 0), literal understanding of ethnicity (level 1), social and nonliteral perspective of ethnicity (level 2), and ethnic-group consciousness and ethnic identity (level 3). For each developmental level, applied implications were discussed.     

Children's developmental understanding of ethnicity and race

Research on children's development of ethnic cognition from preschool through adolescence was reviewed. This review was based on research conducted on (a) children's ethnic cognition, (b) children's social-cognitive development, (c) children's understanding of a variety of social status, and (d) Quintana's model of children's understanding of ethnicity. Four developmental levels were described: Integration of affective and perceptual understanding of ethnicity (level 0), literal understanding of ethnicity (level 1), social and nonliteral perspective of ethnicity (level 2), and ethnic-group consciousness and ethnic identity (level 3). For each developmental level, applied implications were discussed.     

Personality terms of abuse in three cultures: type nouns between description and insult

In this study terms of abuse are investigated in three different cultures. Spontaneous verbal aggression is to a certain extent reminiscent of the values of a certain culture. One hundred and ninety‐two male subjects from Spain, Germany and the Netherlands were asked to write down terms of abuse that they would use given a certain stimulus situation, and in addition to give their rating of the offensive character of those terms. A total set of 830 useful expressions was thus collected. The frequencies of the expressions were established, and the total list of expressions was categorized in terms of what they were about. In Spanish abusive language is typically about family and relations, in Germany it is typically about anal aspects, and in the Netherlands it is mainly about genitals. Explanations are provided in terms of dimensions on which the three cultures differ. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Testing hypotheses about the self: Assessments of job suitability1

This investigation examined the strategies employed by individuals when testing hypotheses about the self. Participants known to possess masculine, feminine, or androgynous sex role identities tested hypotheses about their suitability for one of two jobs: either a job characterized in terms of the attributes and aptitudes typically associated with a “masculine” personality, or one characterized in terms of those typically associated with a “feminine” personality. When testing these hypotheses about themselves, participants preferentially reported those aspects of themselves that would suggest their suitedness rather than their unsuitedness for the job under consideration regardless of their sex role identity. Moreover, subsequent judgments of job suitability were positively related to the amount of suitedness evidence reported, but unrelated to the amount of unsuitedness evidence reported. Some consequences of these strategies for testing hypotheses about the self are discussed.     

Talking about Personality: Evidence for Attributions to Self and Others in Early Childhood

ABSTRACT

The early use of person perception terms was examined via an analysis of the spontaneous speech of four young children in conversation with their parents at home. All four children were producing such terms early in their third year. Like their parents, children used the terms in two distinguishable ways: to attribute a trait to a person or to characterize a person’s ongoing action. Most of these terms were evaluative, whether positive or negative. Parents often made direct comments to their children about both their traits and ongoing actions; children made similar comments about themselves. Parents also used person perception terms to make comments about others who were not party to the conversation; children did likewise. A considerable proportion of the trait terms that children produced served as interpretive comments on someone’s actions or preferences. Our findings suggest that from an early age, children are trait theorists. Not only do they describe ongoing actions using trait vocabulary, they interpret those ongoing actions by attributing traits.     

A brief reply to Carson Strong

Carson Strong's reply to my response to his article demonstrates what happens when there is unacknowledged disagreement about the facts of a case or about the meaning of the terms used to describe those facts. I hope that our dialogue will help reduce this disagreement.     

Walking the Walk While Thinking About the Talk: Embodied Interpretation of Metaphorical Narratives

Two sets of experiments examined people’s embodied understanding of metaphorical narratives. Participants heard one of two stories about a romantic relationship; either one that was successful or one that was not, that initially described it in metaphorical terms as “Your relationship was moving along in a good direction” or nonmetaphorical terms as “Your relationship was very important to you.” Participants were then blindfolded and attempted to accurately walk, or imagine walking, to a marker 40 feet away while they thought about the story they just heard. People who heard about the successful metaphorical story walked longer and further than those presented with the unsuccessful relationship story. But these walking and imagining differences disappeared when the critical metaphorical statement “moving along in a good direction” was replaced by a nonmetaphorical expression. These findings, and those from another set of experiments, suggest that people’s understanding of metaphorical narratives is partly based on their embodied simulations of the metaphorical actions referred to in these stories.     

Genetic enhancement and the fate of the worse off

When reflecting on arguments in the debate about genetic technologies, decision makers must try to be empathetic to those who are worse off. Disparities in health and health care in the U.S. pale when global facts are considered. Although U.S. citizens ought to be concerned about the worse off in the U.S., such concern ultimately must be balanced against the urgent imperative to address the plight of those in poor countries. It is a matter of fairness that care and concern be directed to those who are truly worse off in global terms.     

Predictions and causal estimations are not supported by the same associative structure

Studies performed by different researchers have shown that judgements about cue-outcome relationships are systematically influenced by the type of question used to request those judgements. It is now recognized that judgements about the strength of the causal link between a cue and an outcome are mostly determined by the cue-outcome contingency, whereas predictions of the outcome are more influenced by the probability of the outcome given the cue. Although these results make clear that those different types of judgement are mediated by some knowledge of the normative differences between causal estimations and outcome predictions, they do not speak to the underlying processes of these effects. The experiment presented here reveals an interaction between the type of question and the order of trials that challenges standard models of causal and predictive learning that are framed exclusively in associative terms or exclusively in higher order reasoning terms. However, this evidence could be easily explained by assuming the combined intervention of both types of process.     

How young adults address their parents reflects their perception of parenting

A speaker's use of a title for the listener shows the speaker's deference to the listener. Previous studies suggested that the use of kinship terms in the family also shows deference to the listener. The present study focused on young adults' use of kinship terms for their parents to investigate whether their use of kinship terms reflects their perception of their parenting. The participants were 329 Japanese college students, who answered a questionnaire about their forms of address for their parents, perceived parental emotional accessibility, and perceived parental control. They also reported their satisfaction with their parent–child relationships and the frequency of parent–child communication. The results suggest that young adults who use kinship terms for their parents perceive their parents to be more emotionally accessible and communicate with their parents more than those who do not. Young adults who use kinship terms for their father are also more satisfied with their father–child relationships than those who do not. Young adults' use of kinship terms might signal not only their deference to their parents, but also their acceptance of their parent–child relationships.     

Effect on Mood of Thinking About Extreme Emotional Terms

The hypothesis that being asked to think about extreme emotional terms influences mood in the direction of the polarity of the terms was tested in three experiments. Subjects answered items about their mood before and after being asked to think about nine extreme, positive emotional terms (e.g., ecstatic) or nine extreme, negative emotional terms (e.g., wretched). It was found that when subjects were asked to think about extreme, positive emotional terms, mood changed in a positive direction, and when they were asked to think about extreme negative emotional terms, mood changed in a negative direction. The effect on mood of being asked to think about extreme emotional terms did not depend on whether the subjects were asked just to think about the terms(Experiment 1), to think about the terms in relation to the self (Experiment 2), or to think about the meaning of the terms (Experiment 3).     

Understanding of evolution may be improved by thinking about people

The theory of evolution is poorly understood in the population at large, even by those with some science education. The recurrent misunderstandings can be partly attributed to failure to distinguish between processes which individual organisms undergo and those which populations undergo. They may be so pervasive because we usually explain evolutionary ideas with examples from non-human animals, and our everyday cognition about animals does not track individuals as distinct from the species to which they belong. By contrast, everyday cognition about other people tracks unique individuals as well as general properties of humans. In Study 1, I present experimental evidence that categorization by species occurs more strongly for non-human animals than for other people in 50 British university students. In Study 2, I show, in the same population, that framing evolutionary scenarios in terms of people produces fewer conceptual errors than when logically identical scenarios are framed terms of non-human animals. I conclude that public understanding of evolution might be improved if we began instruction by considering the organisms which are most familiar to us.     

Frege on the generality of logical laws

Frege claims that the laws of logic are characterized by their “generality,” but it is hard to see how this could identify a special feature of those laws. I argue that we must understand this talk of generality in normative terms, but that what Frege says provides a normative demarcation of the logical laws only once we connect it with his thinking about truth and science. He means to be identifying the laws of logic as those that appear in every one of the scientific systems whose construction is the ultimate aim of science, and in which all truths have a place. Though an account of logic in terms of scientific systems might seem hopelessly antiquated, I argue that it is not: A basically Fregean account of the nature of logic still looks quite promising.     

From the lexicon to expectations about kinds: a role for associative learning

In the novel noun generalization task, 2 1/2-year-old children display generalized expectations about how solid and nonsolid things are named, extending names for never-before-encountered solids by shape and for never-before-encountered nonsolids by material. This distinction between solids and nonsolids has been interpreted in terms of an ontological distinction between objects and substances. Nine simulations and behavioral experiments tested the hypothesis that these expectations arise from the correlations characterizing early learned noun categories. In the simulation studies, connectionist networks were trained on noun vocabularies modeled after those of children. These networks formed generalized expectations about solids and nonsolids that match children's performances in the novel noun generalization task in the very different languages of English and Japanese. The simulations also generate new predictions supported by new experiments with children. Implications are discussed in terms of children's development of distinctions between kinds of categories and in terms of the nature of this knowledge.     

Comparison of dynamic (effortful) touch by hand and foot

Spatial perception by dynamic touch is a well-documented capability of the hand and arm. Morphological and physiological characteristics of the foot and leg suggest that such a capability may not generalize to that putatively less dexterous limb. The authors examined length perception by dynamic touch in a task in which weighted aluminum rods were grasped by the hand and wielded about the wrist or secured to the foot and wielded about the ankle. Participants' (N = 10) upper and lower extremities were comparable in terms of (a) the accuracy and consistency of length perception and (b) their sensitivity to manipulations of the moments of the mass distribution of the rods. The authors discuss those results in terms of the field-like structure of the haptic perceptual system, an organization that may underlie what appears to be functional, rather than anatomical, specificity.     

Culture and moral judgment: how are conflicts between justice and interpersonal responsibilities resolved?

A 2-session study examined Indian and American adults' and children's (N = 140) reasoning about moral dilemmas involving conflicts between interpersonal and justice expectations. Most Indians gave priority to the interpersonal expectations, whereas most Americans gave priority to the justice expectations. Indians tended to categorize their conflict resolutions in moral terms. In contrast, when Americans gave priority to the interpersonal alternatives, they tended to categorize their resolutions in personal terms. Results imply that Indians possess a postconventional moral code in which interpersonal responsibilities are seen in as fully principled terms as justice obligations and may be accorded precedence over justice obligations. Findings also suggest that a personal morality of interpersonal responsiveness and caring is linked to highly rights-oriented cultural views, such as those emphasized in the United States.     

Persons and their Properties

According to what I call 'the asymmetry thesis', persons, though they are the direct bearers of the properties expressed by mental predicates, are not the direct bearers of properties such as those expressed by 'weighs 135 pounds' or 'has crossed legs'. A number of different views about persons entail the asymmetry thesis. I first argue that the asymmetry thesis entails an error theory about our discourse involving person-referring terms. I then argue that it is further threatened by consideration of the grounds we have for self-ascribing mental and physical predicates.     

Category learning with a goal: how goals constrain conceptual acquisition

A novel task was used to examine the roles that goals play in concept acquisition. In Experiment 1, we varied the type of interaction, and thus the task goal, of participants working in a novel domain. Following those interactions, participant responses showed that they had organized their knowledge in terms of goal-relevant features. Using a variation of the same methodology, Experiment 2 provided evidence that the goal relevance also played a role in how the participants structured their knowledge of the items, specifically what information about the items was associated with differentiating the categories encountered. The results suggest that the goals not only highlighted particular features, they determined the centrality of those features in the conceptual knowledge. We discuss the results in terms of the goal-framework hypothesis; the idea that goals structure information and provide coherence to the acquired concepts. We discuss how this approach informs category learning research.