Keeping it in‐house: how audience affects responses to group criticism

It is often assumed that group‐directed criticism is best kept ‘in‐house’, but the effects of audience on responses to criticism have not been directly examined. Consistent with predictions, ingroup members who criticized the group to an outgroup audience were seen to be making a less appropriate choice of audience (Experiments 2 and 3), aroused more negative feelings (Experiment 1), were downgraded more strongly on personality traits (Experiment 2), and were seen to be doing more damage to the group (Experiment 2) than were ingroup members who kept their criticisms in‐house. Experiment 3 showed that, whereas moderate identifiers agreed with the comments less and showed weaker friendly intentions toward the critic when an outgroup audience as compared to an ingroup audience was chosen, high identifiers agreed with the criticisms just as strongly—and showed more friendly intentions toward the critic—when they were made to an outgroup as compared to an ingroup audience. Results are discussed in light of the broader literature on identity threat. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Traumatic stress and quality of attachment: Reality and internalization in disorders of infant mental health

This article describes the interface between the fields of attachment and child trauma, their respective contributions to an understanding of infant mental health disturbances, and the clinical applications of an integration between attachment theory and trauma‐informed treatment and research. The organizing theme is that a dual attachment and trauma lens must be used in the assessment and treatment of infants and toddlers with mental health and relationship problems. The quality of attachment is an important factor in children's capacity to process and resolve traumatic experiences. At the same time, traumatic events often have a damaging effect on the quality of existing attachments by introducing unmanageable stress in the infant–parent relationship. It is argued that trauma in the first years of life needs to be assessed and treated in the context of the child's primary attachments. Reciprocally, the etiology of attachment disturbances should include an assessment of possible exposure to trauma in the child and in the parents. Current conceptualizations of attachment and trauma are reviewed from this perspective, and a clinical illustration is presented to highlight how a traumatic stressor can trigger behaviors reminiscent of disorganized attachment.     

The Effect of Upward Feedback on Managerial Behavior

Un feed-back de gratification a été donné par des subordonnés aux managers australiens d'une firme internationale de prestation de services. Dans cette recherche quasi-expérimentale, la perfomance au travail de ces managers, a pu être observée six mois plus tard par les subordonnés comme s'étant accrue par rapport à la performance initiale et à ceux obtenus par un groupe de comparaison. L'efficacité personnelle modère la portée de ces résultats suggérant qu'elle joue un rôle clé en déterminant des réactions comportementales au feed-back de gratification. L'orientation vers un but d'apprentissage fut corrélée de manière significative à leur performance subséquente.
Upward feedback from subordinates was provided to Australian managers in an international professional services firm. The job performance of the managers in this quasi-experimental study was observed by subordinates to be significantly higher six months later, compared to both initial performance and subordinate ratings of a comparison group. Self-efficacy moderated this finding, suggesting that it plays a key role in determining behavioral reactions to upward feedback. The managers' learning goal orientation correlated significantly with their subsequent performance.     

False feedback increases detection of low-prevalence targets in visual search

Many critical search tasks, such as airport and medical screening, involve searching for targets that are rarely present. These low-prevalence targets are associated with extremely high miss rates Wolfe, Horowitz, & Kenner (Nature, 435, 439?C440, 2005). The inflated miss rates are caused by a criterion shift, likely due to observers attempting to equate the numbers of misses and false alarms. This equalizing strategy results in a neutral criterion at 50?% target prevalence, but leads to a higher proportion of misses for low-prevalence targets. In the present study, we manipulated participants?? perceived number of misses through explicit false feedback. As predicted, the participants in the false-feedback condition committed a higher number of false alarms due to a shifted criterion. Importantly, the participants in this condition were also more successful in detecting targets. These results highlight the importance of perceived prevalence in target search tasks.     

Travelling backwards and forwards in time: culture and gender in the episodic specificity of past and future events

There is considerable evidence that, when recalling past events, Westerners exhibit greater episodic specificity than East Asians and women exhibit greater episodic specificity than men. Yet it is unknown whether the same cultural and gender differences are true for future events. In the present study 209 European American and Chinese young adults were asked to recall past personal events and imagine future personal events occurring in varied time periods (i.e., 1 week, 1 year, 10-15 years). Regardless of time period, European Americans consistently produced more specific details than Chinese for future events than they did for past events, and women produced more specific details than men for both past and future events. These findings provide additional support for the constructive-episodic-simulation hypothesis, and shed new light on the influence of culture and gender on episodic thinking.     

Inside the Black Box: Assessing and Improving Quality in Youth Programs

Over the past decade, structured programming for children and youth during the non-school hours has expanded exponentially. A confluence of recent research studies and program evaluations backs the publicly perceived notion that after-school programs can positively influence important developmental and learning outcomes. The rapid expansion of the field and the potential of programs to contribute to child and youth development have made defining what high quality programs look like and learning how to improve program quality key challenges facing the field. This paper describes what is known about the relation between youth program quality and youth developmental outcomes, summarizes different quality assessment tools being used in the field, and discusses how such tools are being used to drive systemic quality improvement efforts.     

Racial Identity and Body Image Among Black Female College Students Attending Predominately White Colleges

This study examined attitudes about body image and racial identity among Black women at a predominately White college in the United States. We conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with 34 women about their school experiences, family, racial identity, self-esteem, and body image. We found that early childhood influences including family and school environment had profound impacts on their racial identity and body image. Through a qualitative analysis based in grounded theory, we found that participants’ identification with White and/or Black culture produced levels of body satisfaction and a set of beauty ideals that generally corresponded to four racial identity groups: identification with White or Black culture, floating between both, or having a diverse self-identity.     

36‐month‐olds conceal visual and auditory information from others

By three years of age, children are skilled at assessing under which circumstances others can see things. However, nothing is known about whether they can use this knowledge to guide their own deceptive behaviour. Here we investigated 3‐year‐olds’ ability to strategically inhibit or conceal forbidden actions that a nearby adult experimenter could see or hear. In the first experiment, children were more likely to disobey the adult when she did not have visual access to their activities than they were when she was looking at them. In the second experiment, in which the adult could never see the child, children refrained from making noise when engaging in a prohibited action that the adult might hear. These results suggest that by three years of age children use their knowledge of others’ perceptual states to decide whether it is safe to commit a transgression and, moreover, actively conceal perceptual cues that could reveal to others their ongoing transgression.     

The Influence of a Manager's Own Performance Appraisal on the Evaluation of Others

This study examined the possibility that the performance appraisal process is affected by a pervasive and inherent effect that has heretofore been unidentified. This effect derives from the results of the performance appraisal most recently performed on the manager who subsequently conducts appraisals of others. The nature of this effect was examined in four studies. In a case study, the ratings received by two area coordinators in a university academic department affected their subsequent ratings of faculty. In a simulation, 30 managers received hypothetical feedback regarding their own job performance. The managers subsequently evaluated an employee on videotape. Managers who received positive feedback about their performance subsequently rated the employee significantly higher than managers who received negative feedback regarding their own performance. This occurred despite the fact that the managers knew the evaluation of them was bogus. The results of two follow‐up field studies involving 74 manager–employee dyads in a manufacturing company in Canada and 39 manager–subordinate dyads in a retail organization in Turkey are consistent with the view that one's own performance appraisal is related to the subsequent appraisal of one's subordinates. Both anchoring with insufficient adjustment and a mood induction may explain this effect, but the results are more consistent with the former explanation than the latter.     

Family functioning in families of children with anxiety disorders.

The authors examined maternal and paternal reports of family functioning and their relationship with child outcomes as well as the association between anxiety and depression in family members and family functioning. Results reveal that maternal and paternal reports of family functioning were both significantly associated with worse child outcomes, including child anxiety disorder (AD) severity, anxiety symptoms, and child global functioning. Maternal and paternal anxiety and depression predicted worse family functioning, whereas child report of anxiety and depression did not. Parents of children with ADs reported significantly worse family functioning and behavior control, but only fathers reported worse problem solving and affective involvement compared with fathers of children with no psychological disorders. Findings from this study suggest that paternal as well as maternal anxiety and depression play a role in worse family functioning in children with ADs and that unhealthier family functioning is associated with worse child outcomes in this population.