Children's Trait and Emotion Attributions in Socially Ambiguous and Unambiguous Situations

Children's attributions about story characters in ambiguous and unambiguous social situations were assessed. One hundred and forty-four 6–7-year-olds and 10–11-year-olds heard about actors who slighted a recipient intentionally or for an undetermined reason and then made causal attributions about the events, an emotion attribution about the recipient, and global personality attributions about the actors and recipient. Relations between perceived self-competence and attribution style were also assessed. Participants were more likely to make negative causal attributions in the unambiguous condition and with increasing age. Older girls and younger boys were more likely than other groups to attribute negative emotions to the recipient. Overall, participants perceived recipients positively and actors negatively. Perceived self-competence was positively correlated with actor attributions, although these differed by age and gender. Implications for children's psychosocial adjustment are discussed.     

Perceptions of Abusive and Violent Husbands by Engaged Arab Men in Israel

Abstract

The predictability of engaged Arab men's perceptions of abusive husbands was tested. The analysis was based on variables reflecting three theoretical perspectives: male dominance, intergenerational social learning, and interpersonal skills deficit. The data were derived from a standardized measurement package completed by 434 Arab men in Israel. The results revealed that a combination of predictors from disparate frameworks best explained the variance in the different criterion variables of the study. Lack of skills for establishing positive communication with one's fiancée, traditional and nonegalitarian expectations of marriage, and experience with or witnessing violence in the family of origin best explained the variance in the belief that abusive husbands should not be held responsible for their behavior. The combination of the first two predictors and negative attitudes toward women best explained the variance in the view of the respondents that abusive husbands should not be punished for their violent behavior.     

Blushing May Signify Guilt: Revealing Effects of Blushing in Ambiguous Social Situations

Although blushing after a social infraction can function as a remedial gesture, people generally consider blushing as an undesirable response. To address this apparent inconsistency, we tested the idea that blushing has remedial properties after clear-cut antecedent behaviors, but can undermine the actor's image in ambiguous situations. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 49) read vignettes referring to prototypical mishaps, transgressions, and ambiguous situations. In Experiment 2 (N = 58), we specifically varied the actor's intentionality while keeping the actor's behavior constant. In support of its alleged face-saving properties, blushing had remedial effects after obvious mishaps and voluntary transgressions. However, in ambiguous social situations and after transgressions that are ambiguous with respect to the actor's intentionality, blushing undermined the actor's trustworthiness.     

Examining Perceptions of Ambiguous and Unambiguous Threats of Racial Harassment and Managerial Response Strategies1

Scenarios involving ambiguous or unambiguous threats of racial harassment were crossed with four managerial response strategies (taking action, acknowledgment, reframing, denial). Results suggest that minority members are more likely to view repeated racial jokes as severe and are more likely to report the behavior to a manager. For minority group members, racial identification moderated the relationship between type of harassment and perceived severity. For majority group members, blindness to privilege and unawareness of racial issues moderated the relationship between type of harassment and likelihood to report the incident. Taking action was associated with more positive perceptions of organizational justice and a belief that the organization would be less tolerant toward future incidents involving racial harassment. Differences across groups (Whites, African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, and Asians) were found, suggesting a perceptual gap based on racial schema.     

Auditory Pareidolia: Effects of Contextual Priming on Perceptions of Purportedly Paranormal and Ambiguous Auditory Stimuli

Reality television programs that explore purportedly paranormal phenomena with pseudoscientific research approaches have emerged in popular culture. These shows commonly feature electronic voice phenomena (EVP), whereby recording devices capture audio signals that are interpreted as paranormal messages. We compared perceptions for voices in EVP with actual speech, acoustic noise, and degraded speech. Some participants were told that the experiment was about speech intelligibility, whereas others were told that the experiment was about paranormal EVP. The paranormal prime increased the proportion of trials for which participants perceived voices in both EVP stimuli and degraded speech. When a voice was detected, low agreement was found regarding the content of EVP messages. In both priming conditions, participants reported general skepticism in the paranormal. Results are discussed in the context of theoretical perspectives on paranormal events, trait‐versus‐state accounts of paranormal beliefs, and pseudoscientific approaches to research. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Individual Differences Associated with Emotional and Behavioral Responses to Ambiguous Social Situations in which Rejection Might be Inferred

This study sought to examine the extent to which undergraduates' experiences with and attitudes relevant to rejection may be associated with their emotional and behavioral responses to ambiguous social situations in which rejection might be inferred. Undergraduate students completed questionnaires that assessed their experiences with and attitudes relevant to being rejected. Next, each participant read six hypothetical scenarios that described various situations that could be interpreted as interpersonal rejection. Following each scenario, participants completed questionnaires that assessed their emotional and behavioral responses to the hypothetical situation. Analyses revealed that the participants' experiences with rejection (and, to a lesser extent, their rejection-relevant attitudes) were associated with a negative emotional response and some negative behavioral responses. In sum, when another individual's interpersonal behavior has an uncertain intent, undergraduates' prior experiences with rejection may be especially important in determining the extent to which they feel and act as if they have been rejected.     

Threat Vigilance in Child Witnesses of Domestic Violence: A Pilot Study Utilizing the Ambiguous Situations Paradigm

Research has found that children exposed to family violence exhibit higher rates of maladjustment. We review relevant literature on family violence, marital conflict, and cognitive factors implicated in child behaviour problems. A bias toward perceiving threat in ambiguous contexts has been identified as one factor mediating both aggressive and anxious behaviour disorders. We conducted a study utilizing the ambiguous situations paradigm to assess whether children exposed to violent spousal conflict were more likely than children not exposed to violence (divided into children with an externalizing behaviour disorder and non-clinic children) to perceive threat in two classes of ambiguous situations: Peer and Inter-Parental. The results indicated that children exposed to violent spousal conflict perceived more threat in parental situations than either of the other two groups. A number of considerations were taken into account given the exploratory nature of the study, particularly sample limitations. We conclude with suggestions for improvements to the research design and the further relevance of exploring cognitive factors involved in the adjustment of children from backgrounds of violence.     

The Role of Prototypical Situations in the Perceptions of Prejudice of African Americans1

Inman and Baron (1996) found that African Americans and Whites possess prototypes for racist behavior that involve Whites oppressing African Americans. However, prototypical content may be more detailed and specific for African Americans because of differing cultural experiences. In the present experiment, undergraduates read stories about interpersonal encounters representing prototypical and nonprototypical situations. Actor race ambiguity was manipulated by the presence or absence of photographs. As expected, Whites tended to make equal ratings of prejudiced behavior for prototypical and nonprototypical situations. However, African Americans perceived more prejudice in prototypical vignettes than in nonprototypical vignettes. They also perceived stronger prejudicial displays and more dispositional motivation for targets in prototypical vignettes. The results suggest that African Americans have heightened sensitivity to prejudice in specific situations, a factor that may contribute to racial confrontations and misunderstandings.     

A Study of Seventh Grade Children's Reading of Comic Books as Related to Certain other Variables

Developmental changes in a variety of cognitive processes as a function of age and schooling were examined in 160 rural Guatemalan children aged 5, 7, 9, and 11 years. Larger differences in test performance were seen between ages 9 and 11 than during earlier age periods on most tasks. Regression analyses of years of schooling controlling for age, sex, and socioeconomic status indicated that the effects of school were limited to memory tasks and to response time on the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFF). Evidence for cumulative effects of additional years in school on test performance was weak. Good school performance was also most related to two memory measures. Previous studies indicating that schooling has a substantial effect on abstract cognitive processes were questioned; the suggestion that school performance is related to various memory processes was raised.     

Message Design Logic and Message Goal Structure Effects on Perceptions of Message Quality in Regulative Communication Situations

O'Keefe has suggested that variations in the goal sets individuals choose to pursue and the form of reasoning they employ are sources of variation in message designs. She offered an analysis of the specific consequences of differences in goals (“message goal structure”) and in forms of reasoning (“message design logics”), and shouted how this analysis could be used to describe systematically functional variations in regulative messages. The study reported in this article explored the consequences of differences in message design logic and goal structures for success in regulative communication situations; Messages that differed in these properties were presented to subjects for evaluation on a number of functionally significant dimensions. Level of message design logic was straightforwardly associated with every type of effectiveness that was assessed. Differences in message goal structures had more selective effects on message evaluations, often involving interactions with the level of construct differentiation of the message evaluator.     

The Analyst as Comic and the Comic in Analysis: Reply to Commentary

This discussion elaborates aspects of the use of humor and jokes in clinical psychoanalysis. The use of humor, like dreams or other symmetrical processes, facilitates the patient's development of the capacity to symbolize unconscious experience and mitigates the need to evacuate unconscious experiences and fantasies into the external world. In focusing on specific clinical interventions I highlight three dimensions of the process: the concept of coconstruction in the emergence of humor in the psychoanalytic relationship, the authority of the patient's psychopathology and affective and cognitive development, and the analyst's willingness to take the risks of self-exposure and possibly hurting the patient implicit in the use of humor and jokes in the analytic relationship. Different forms of humor are described in relation to the different clinical situations, including mutually created jokes, caricatured enactments, cartoonlike images, and self-depreciating commentary on the analytic process. In using jokes and humor in psychoanalysis we introduce the possibility of pleasure within an intense, intimate moment which allows for the transformation of unacceptable aspects of both patient and analyst as they become joined within a broader human experience.     

Ambiguous figures and representationalism

Macpherson (Nous 40(1):82–117, 2006) argues that the square/regular diamond figure threatens representationalism, construed as the theory which holds that the phenomenal character is explained by the nonconceptual content of experience. Her argument is the claim that representationalism is committed to the thesis that differences in the experience of ambiguous figures, the gestalt switch, should be explained by differences in the NCC of perception of these figures. However, with respect to the square/regular diamond and some other ambiguous figure representationalism fails to offer a unified account of how representational content makes them ambiguous. In this paper, I aim, first, to offer a representationalist account of ambiguous figures and, second, to examine and rebut Macpherson’s arguments. My main point is that in each ambiguous figure Macpherson discusses there are differences in representational content that can explain differences in phenomenal character or content. The representational differences are due to the ways the Cartesian frame of reference in which perceptual content is always cast cuts the figure, underlying different properties of the figure with respect to the axes of the Cartesian frame of reference.     

Ambiguous figures and representationalism

Ambiguous figures pose a problem for representationalists, particularly for representationalists who believe that the content of perceptual experience is non-conceptual (MacPherson in Nous 40(1):82–117, 2006). This is because, in viewing ambiguous figures, subjects have perceptual experiences that differ in phenomenal properties without differing in non-conceptual content. In this paper, I argue that ambiguous figures pose no problem for non-conceptual representationalists. I argue that aspect shifts do not presuppose or require the possession of sophisticated conceptual resources and that, although viewing ambiguous figures often causes a change in phenomenal properties, this change is accompanied by a change in non-conceptual content. I illustrate the case by considering specific examples.     

Comic Immoralism and Relatively Funny Jokes

A widely accepted view in the philosophy of humour is that immoral jokes, like racist, sexist or homophobic jokes, can nevertheless be funny. What remains controversial is whether the moral flaws in these jokes can sometimes increase their humour. Moderate comic immoralism claims that it is possible, in at least some cases, for moral flaws to increase the humour of jokes. Critics of moderate comic immoralism deny that this ever occurs. They recognise that some jokes are both funny and immoral, yet they claim that it is always something other than the moral flaws of jokes that contribute to their humour. In a series of recent papers, Aaron Smuts has pressed this objection to moderate comic immoralism. I argue that Smuts' attempt to narrow the range of cases in which humour can be attributed to immoral features is not sufficient to demonstrate that moderate comic immoralism is false. Specifically, I claim that Smuts cannot rule out a case for moderate comic immoralism grounded in the possibility that humour is normatively relative while the ethical status of jokes is not.