Blonde like me: When self-construals moderate stereotype priming effects on intellectual performance

Stereotype priming can lead to assimilation or contrast effects on behavior. We argue that self-activation is a moderator of both assimilation and contrast effects. To test this hypothesis, in two studies, we activated independent or interdependent self-knowledge before priming participants with the dumb Blonde stereotype or a control category (Study 1) or no prime (Study 2). Participants then answered a knowledge test. Results support our expectations: Participants presented assimilation under interdependence (i.e., underperformance compared to control group) while they presented no assimilation (i.e., comparable performance with control group in Study 1) and contrast (better performance than control group in Study 2) under independence. We discuss implications of these findings in regards of previous research and recent models such as the Active Self Account [Wheeler, S. C., DeMarree, K. G., & Petty, R. E. (2005). The roles of the self in priming-to-behavior effects. In A. Tesser, J. V. Wood, & D. A. Stapel (Eds.), On building, defending and regulating the self: A psychological perspective (pp. 245-271). New York, NY, USA: Psychology Press].     

Interparental conflict and children's school adjustment: the explanatory role of children's internal representations of interparental and parent-child relationships

This study examined how children's insecure internal representations of interparental and parent-child relationships served as explanatory mechanisms in multiple pathways linking interparental conflict and parent emotional unavailability with the emotional and classroom engagement difficulties the children had in their adjustment to school. With their parents, 229 kindergarten children (127 girls and 102 boys, mean age = 6.0 years, SD = .50, at Wave 1) participated in this multimethod, 3-year longitudinal investigation. Findings revealed that children's insecure representations of the interparental relationship were a significant intervening mechanism in associations between observational ratings of interparental conflict and child and teacher reports on children's emotional and classroom difficulties in school over a 2-year period. Moreover, increased parental emotional unavailability accompanying high levels of interparental conflict was associated with children's insecure representations of the parent-child relationship and children's difficulties in classroom engagement at school entry. The findings highlight the importance of understanding the intrinsic processes that contribute to difficulties with stage-salient tasks for children who are experiencing interparental discord.     

Prefrontal cognitive ability, intelligence, Big Five personality, and the prediction of advanced academic and workplace performance

Studies 1 and 2 assessed performance on a battery of dorsolateral prefrontal cognitive ability (D-PFCA) tests, personality, psychometric intelligence, and academic performance (AP) in 2 undergraduate samples. In Studies 1 and 2, AP was correlated with D-PFCA (r=.37, p<.01, and r=.33, p<.01, respectively), IQ (r=.24, p<.05, and r=.38, p<.01, respectively), and Conscientiousness (r=.26, p<.05, and r=.37, p<.01, respectively). D-PFCA remained significant in regression analyses controlling for intelligence (or g) and personality. Studies 3 and 4 assessed D-PFCA, personality, and workplace performance among (a) managerial-administrative workers and (b) factory floor workers at a manufacturing company. Prefrontal cognitive ability correlated with supervisor ratings of manager performance at values of r ranging from .42 to .57 (ps<.001), depending on experience, and with factory floor performance at pr=.21 (p=.02), after controlling for experience, age, and education. Conscientiousness correlated with factory floor performance at r=.23.     

Familiarization effects for bilingual letter detection involving translation or exact text repetition.

In two experiments, English-Spanish bilinguals read passages, performing letter detection on some passages by circling target letters as they read. Detection passages were sometimes familiarized (primed) by prior reading of the same passage or a translation of it. Participants detected letters in English passages in Experiment 1 and in Spanish passages in Experiment 2. For both experiments, a missing letter effect occurred (depressed detection accuracy on frequent function words relative to less frequent content words). Familiarization promoted overall improvements in letter detection only for English passages, suggesting that reprocessing benefits depend on high language fluency. For Spanish passages, cognates engendered greater error rates than noncognates; the visual similarity of Spanish and English cognates apparently enabled faster identification of Spanish cognates in a way unaffected by familiarization of the whole text passage. Priming by familiarized text was significantly higher when the passages were in the same language than when they were in different languages, suggesting that the reprocessing benefits are at the word level instead of the semantic level. These results are consistent with the GO model of reading (Greenberg, Healy, Koriat, & Kreiner, 2004) but require an expanded consideration of attention redistribution processes in that model.     

FEMALE LEADERSHIP ADVANTAGE AND DISADVANTAGE: RESOLVING THE CONTRADICTIONS

In the United States, women are increasingly praised for having excellent skills for leadership and, in fact, women, more than men, manifest leadership styles associated with effective performance as leaders. Nevertheless, more people prefer male than female bosses, and it is more difficult for women than men to become leaders and to succeed in male-dominated leadership roles. This mix of apparent advantage and disadvantage that women leaders experience reflects the considerable progress toward gender equality that has taken place in both attitudes and behavior, coupled with the lack of complete attainment of this goal.     

Structural aspects of face recognition and the other-race effect

The other-race effect was examined in a series of experiments and simulations that looked at the relationships among observer ratings of typicality, familiarity, attractiveness, memorability, and the performance variables ofd’ and criterion. Experiment 1 replicated the other-race effect with our Caucasian and Japanese stimuli for both Caucasian and Asian observers. In Experiment 2, we collected ratings from Caucasian observers on the faces used in the recognition task. A Varimax-rotated principal components analysis on the rating and performance data for the Caucasian faces replicated Vokey and Read’s (1992) finding that typicality is composed of two orthogonal components, dissociable via their independent relationships to: (1) attractiveness and familiarity ratings and (2) memorahility ratings. For Japanese faces, however, we fond that typicality was related only to memorahility. Where performance measures were concerned, two additional principal components dominated by criterion and byd’ emerged for Caucasian faces. For the Japanese faces, however, the performance measures ofd’ and criterion merged into a single component that represented a second component of typicality, one orthogonal to thememorability-dominated component. A measure offace representation quality extracted from an autoassociative neural network trained with a majority of Caucasian faces and a minority of Japanese faces was incorporated into the principal components analysis. For both Caucasian and Japanese faces, the neural network measure related both to memorability ratings and to human accuracy measures. Combined, the human data and simulation results indicate that the memorahility component of typicality may be related to small, local, distinctive features, whereas the attractiveness/familiarity component may be more related to the global, shape-based properties of the face.     

Well-being and Need for Support of Adolescents with a Chronically Ill Family Member

This study investigates whether there are differences in the well-being, need for help and use of support services between adolescents with and without a chronically ill or disabled family member. It also examines the role played by the type of illness, the relationship to the family member and the nature and intensity of the help provided by the adolescent. A Dutch sample of 1581 adolescents (average age 14.6?years) completed a questionnaire in 2010 about mental health problems, pro-social behavior, need for and use of support and the illness of family members and any care tasks performed by the respondent. Young people with a sick family member had more mental health problems than their counterparts without a chronically ill family member. They also reported a greater need for and use of help and support. Performing domestic tasks was found to be a predictor for overall mental health problems. The intensity of the help given was related to the need for help by the adolescent. It is concluded that growing up with a chronically ill family member and spending a lot time performing (domestic) tasks are risk factors for adolescent mental health problems and adolescents’ need for help. Special attention is warranted for those who need support but who do not translate that need into reality by seeking help.     

Happy Family Kitchen: Behavioral Outcomes of a Brief Community-Based Family Intervention in Hong Kong

Positive psychology interventions commonly involve behavioral exercises to improve psychosocial well-being. Intervention effect on behavior is unclear. The Happy Family Kitchen project, one of the community-based brief intervention projects under The FAMILY: A Jockey Club Initiative for a Harmonious Society, was conducted in Hong Kong to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a positive psychology family intervention. We have previously reported positive intervention effects on family communication, family well-being, and subjective happiness. This paper aims to explore the effectiveness of the intervention on behavioral outcomes and their associations with psychosocial well-being. A total of 23 social service units organized and conducted intervention programs for 1419 individuals from 612 families in Hong Kong. Each intervention was developed with emphasis on one of five positive psychology themes: gratitude, flow, happiness, health, and savoring. Intervention outcomes were assessed at pre-intervention, immediate post-intervention, and 6 weeks and 12 weeks post-intervention. Results showed that family communication time and frequency of meal preparation with family members increased with sustainable small effects up to 12 weeks. Theme-specific behavior change was observed in the gratitude, flow, and happiness interventions, respectively. Family communication time, frequency of eating with family members, and theme-specific behaviors, including gratitude, flow, happiness behavior, health attitude, and health behavior, were positively associated with psychosocial well-being. Qualitative data provided additional evidence of effectiveness with in-depth insights into behavior change. The positive associations between target behaviors and well-being suggest that improvements in well-being as a function of the intervention may be associated with behavior change.     

The effect of strategy training and stimulus saliency on attention and recognition in preschoolers

Observing behavior and short-term recognition were studied in a training and test design. Preschoolers matched pictures from memory with training of a selective attending strategy or placebo practice. Both groups were then tested for retention of the strategies attained during training. For one-third of the subjects in each condition the relevant portions of the stimuli were made perceptually salient, for another third the irrelevant portions were salient, and for the rest no portions were salient. Strategy training enhanced relevant observing behavior and facilitated recognition accuracy in both training and test. The salient irrelevant cues interfered in training for the Placebo subjects. A second study examined the effect of three components of the strategy training procedure; verbal instructions, modeling, and fading. Verbal instructions, and to a lesser extent, modeling and fading, enhanced relevant observing behavior in both training and test but facilitated recognition accuracy only in training.     

Identifying a school's real agenda: Nine steps

Nine steps are described which enable a school psychologist to determine the real agenda of a school system. The “real” agenda of a school is defined as those behaviors that are encouraged and discouraged by each school's culture on a daily basis. These steps include (a) community expectations, (b) grading system, (c) testing program, (d) school achievement level, (e) curricular options, (f) changes in personnel, (g) organizational changes, (h) budget implications, and (i) walking the halls.