Authoritarianism and Social Dominance in Western and Eastern Europe: The Importance of the Sociopolitical Context and of Political Interest and Involvement

The present study tests whether the magnitude of the relation between Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) is stable across and within cultures, whether their differential relations with value orientations and sociopolitical attitudes remain stable in spite of these possible differences, and whether their differential relations point to a different genesis. For these purposes, two student samples (total N = 684), three adult samples (total N = 553), and a political activist sample (N = 69) were gathered in Belgium, and one adult sample (N = 235) was collected in Poland. Both cross- and intracultural differences in the strength of the RWA-SDO relation emerged. These can be attributed to specificities in sociopolitical context and differences in political socialization, interest, and involvement. In spite of these fluctuations, in the strength of the RWA-SDO relation, regression analyses revealed high stability of the relation between RWA-SDO and sociopolitical attitudes, and mediation analyses supported the hypothesis of their different genesis.     

Location and frequency cues in auditory selective attention

The roles of frequency and location cues in auditory selective attention were investigated in a series of experiments in which target tones were distinguished from distractors by frequency, location, or the conjunction of frequency and location features. When frequency separations in high-rate tone sequences were greater than 1 octave, participants were fastest at identifying targets defined by frequency and were sometimes faster at identifying conjunction than location targets. Frequency salience diminished as filtering demands were reduced: At long interstimulus intervals (> 2.0 s), performance was superior in location conditions. The results suggest that frequency may play a role in auditory selective attention tasks analogous to the role of spatial position in visual attention.     

Stereotype threat undermines intellectual performance by triggering a disruptive mental load

Research on stereotype threat has repeatedly demonstrated that the intellectual performance of social groups is particularly sensitive to the situational context in which tests are usually administered. In the present experiment, an adaptation of the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices Test was introduced as a measure of cognitive ability. Results showed that individuals targeted by a reputation of intellectual inferiority scored lower on the test than did other people. However, when the identical test was not presented as a measure of cognitive ability, the achievement gap between the target and the control group disappeared. Using heart rate variability indices to assess mental workload, our findings showed that the situational salience of a reputation of lower ability undermined intellectual performance by triggering a disruptive mental load. Our results indicate that group differences in cognitive ability scores can reflect different situational burdens and not necessarily actual differences in cognitive ability.     

The impact of need for closure on conservative beliefs and racism: differential mediation by authoritarian submission and authoritarian dominance

The present study explores the influence of need for closure as well as authoritarian submission (Right-Wing Authoritarianism [RWA]) and authoritarian dominance (Social Dominance Orientation [SDO]) on the genesis of conservative beliefs and racism. For this purpose, two structural equation models were compared. In Model 1, RWA and SDO were entered as independent variables and the need for closure facets Decisiveness and Need for Simple Structure acted as mediator variables. In Model 2, the need for closure facets served as independent variables and RWA and SDO acted as mediators. In two student samples (Sample 1, N = 399, Sample 2, N = 330) and one adult sample (Sample 3, N = 379), Model 2 showed superior fit to the data. These results corroborate the hypothesis that authoritarianism should be interpreted in terms of generalized beliefs rather than in terms of personality characteristics. In addition, analyses show that the effects of Need for Simple Structure on conservative beliefs and racism are fully mediated by RWA but only partly by SDO. These results suggest a differential genesis of RWA and SDO.     

On the way to assess emotions in animals: do lambs (Ovis aries) evaluate an event through its suddenness, novelty, or unpredictability?

Appraisal theories provide a framework that gives insight into emotions and could allow comparisons across species. According to these theories, events are first evaluated on their suddenness, novelty, and unpredictability. The authors examined the ability of lambs (Ovis aries) to evaluate an event according to these 3 criteria through 3 tests. The lambs responded to suddenness with a startle response coupled with an increase in heart rate and to novelty with an orientation response coupled with an increase of vagal activity. There was no clear evidence that lambs can detect the predictability of an event. Those results support the usefulness of appraisal theories to assess emotion in animals.     

Protein synthesis inhibition blocks consolidation of an acrobatic motor skill

To investigate whether motor skill learning depends on de novo protein synthesis, adult rats were trained in an acrobatic locomotor task (accelerating rotarod) for 7 d. Animals were systemically injected with cycloheximide (CHX, 0.5 mg/kg, i.p.) 1 h before sessions 1 and 2 or sessions 2 and 3. Control rats received vehicle injections before sessions 1, 2, and 3. Although CHX did not affect improvement of performance within session 1, between-session improvement was impaired. In overtrained animals, comparable injections of CHX had no effect on rotarod performance. These findings suggest that consolidation of motor skills requires protein synthesis.     

Are age-of-acquisition effects on object naming due simply to differences in object recognition? Comments on Levelt (2002)

Levelt (2002) argued that apparent effects of word frequency and age of acquisition (AoA) reported in recent picture naming studies might actually be confounded effects operating at the level of object recognition, rather than relevant to theories of lexical retrieval. In order to investigate this issue, AoA effects were examined in an object recognition memory task (Experiments 1 and 2) and a word-picture verification task (Experiment 3) and compared with those found in naming tasks using the same pictures. Contrary to Levelt's concerns, the results of the three experiments show that the AoA effect on picture naming has a lexical origin and does not simply result from a possible confound of object identification times.     

The relative deprivation-gratification continuum and the attitudes of South Africans toward immigrants: a test of the V-curve hypothesis

It has long been established that there is a linear and positive relationship between relative deprivation and prejudice. However, a recent experiment suggests that the converse of relative deprivation, relative gratification, may also be associated with prejudice (S. Guimond & M. Dambrun, 2002). Specifically, the evidence suggests that the usual test for a linear relationship between relative deprivation-gratification and prejudice might conceal the existence of a bilinear relationship. This function, labeled the V-curve hypothesis, predicts that both relative deprivation and relative gratification are associated with higher levels of prejudice. This hypothesis was tested with a representative sample of South Africans (N=1,600). Results provide strong support for the V-curve hypothesis. Furthermore, strength of ethnic identification emerged as a partial mediator for the effect of relative gratification on prejudice.     

The analytic process in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy: from the interpersonal to the intrapsychic level

The current debate over the conflicting interpersonal and intrapsychic views of the analytic process may or may not help us to distinguish between psychoanalysis and analytic psychotherapy. A comparison of psychoanalysis in the English-speaking world--especially in the United States--with French psychoanalysis reveals the features that unite and at the same time divide these different psychoanalytical tendencies, both of which are the heirs to Freud's thought, in terms, in particular, of the setting (couch and chair) and of technique (interpretation, transference analysis and technical neutrality). Whereas all psychoanalytic work belongs within the framework of an interpersonal relationship, that relationship becomes meaningful only when linked to the intrapsychic dimension, which alone can open the way to the unconscious and to infantile sexuality.     

The role of the syllable in lexical segmentation in French: word-spotting data

Three word-spotting experiments assessed the role of syllable onsets and offsets in lexical segmentation. Participants detected CVC words embedded initially or finally in bisyllabic nonwords with aligned (CVC.CVC) or misaligned (CV.CCVC) syllabic structure. A misalignment between word and syllable onsets (Experiment 1) produced a greater perceptual cost than a misalignment between word and syllable offsets (Experiments 2 and 3). These results suggest that listeners rely on syllable onsets to locate the beginning of words. The implications for theories of lexical access in continuous speech are discussed.