Parents’ influence on the development of their children’s ethnic intergroup attitudes: a longitudinal analysis from middle childhood to early adolescence

This study investigated to what extent parents’ intergroup attitudes influence the development of their children’s ethnic intergroup attitudes (i.e., ingroup bias), and which socialization factors moderate this influence. We report on a four-year longitudinal study of 213 children (M_age = 7.94) and their parents conducted in Eastern Germany. Findings showed significant interindividual differences in children’s developmental trajectories, which could, in part, be explained by child gender, socio-economic status and parental attitudes. The influence of parents’ intergroup attitudes was moderated by parenting style and parental similarity in attitudes both of which, our findings suggest, can make the transmission of parental attitudes more likely.     

Cue-elicited food seeking is eliminated with aversive outcomes following outcome devaluation

In outcome-selective Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT), stimuli that are predictive of specific outcomes prime instrumental responses that are associated with these outcomes. Previous human studies yielded mixed evidence in respect to whether the PIT effect is affected by a posttraining devaluation of an outcome, with the PIT effect being preserved after a devaluation of a primary reinforcer (food, drugs) but not following the devaluation of a secondary reinforcer (money). The present research examined whether outcome-selective transfer is eliminated when the devaluation of a primary (liquid) reinforcer is strong and aversive. Experiment 1 confirmed these expectations following a devaluation with bad tasting Tween 20. However, outcome-selective transfer was still observed when the earned (devalued) outcome was not consumed immediately after each test (Experiment 2). These results suggest that the capacity of a Pavlovian cue to motivate a specific response is affected by the incentive value of the shared outcome only when the devaluation yields an aversive outcome that is consumed immediately.     

Refining the Openness–Performance Relationship: Construct Specificity,Contextualization, Social Skill,and the Combination of Trait Self- and Other-Ratings

Scholars have raised concerns that openness to experience has ambiguous relationships with performance. In this study, we examine both openness and one of its more narrow dimensions, learning approach. In addition, the research context was made narrow (i.e., higher education academic performance in science), and social skill was interactively combined with peer- and self-rated personality in the prediction of academic performance (i.e., grades). We found that those high on learning approach, but not openness, 1 year later performed better academically than those lower on learning approach. Furthermore, for those high and average on social skill, increased peer-rated learning approach was associated with higher performance. Finally, the combination of self- and other-ratings of learning approach was a better predictor of academic performance than the combination of self- and other-ratings of openness. The relationship of openness with academic performance benefits from narrowing predictors and criteria, framing the study within a relevant context, accounting for social skill, and combining self- and other trait ratings.     

What is Said?

It is sometimes argued that certain sentences of natural language fail to express truth conditional contents. Standard examples include e.g. Tipper is ready and Steel is strong enough. In this paper, we provide a novel analysis of truth conditional meaning (what is said) using the notion of a question under discussion. This account (i) explains why these types of sentences are not, in fact, semantically underdetermined (yet seem truth conditionally incomplete), (ii) provides a principled analysis of the process by which natural language sentences (in general) can come to have enriched meanings in context, and (iii) shows why various alternative views, e.g. so‐called Radical Contextualism, Moderate Contextualism, and Semantic Minimalism, are partially right in their respective analyses of the problem, but also all ultimately wrong. Our analysis achieves this result using a standard truth conditional and compositional semantics and without making any assumptions about enriched logical forms, i.e. logical forms containing phonologically null expressions.     

Soziales Trauma

Social traumatization is targeted at entire victim groups and occurs in a societal context. The classification of posttraumatic stress disorders in DSM-5, which intentionally fails to differentiate between different types of traumatic events, ignores the social factors of traumatogenic pathologies. Whereas clinical practice unanimously embraces the thorough exploration of patients’ individual life experiences and history of suffering, taking the relevant social and environmental factors into account, in the classification systems (DSM-5 and ICD-10) it has been decided to address posttraumatic disorders as individual pathologies and not as social phenomena. Even equating social trauma with a disease may foster this partial exclusion, which in turn can contribute to perpetuation of the posttraumatic condition.     

A job demands-resources perspective on salespersons’ market intelligence activities in new product development

Research shows that R&D's use of sales’ market intelligence positively influences innovation performance. However, little is known about whether this effect hinges on salespersons’ engagement towards and perceptions of market intelligence activities (MIA). Moreover, research remains incomplete regarding the drivers of salespersons’ MIA engagement. Using dyadic data from 359 salespersons and 239 R&D managers in a multi-level model based on the job demands-resources theory, we demonstrate that the positive effect of R&D's use of sales’ market intelligence on innovation performance is especially pronounced when salespersons’ market intelligence generation is high and role ambiguity is low. We also show that although salespersons’ self-set MIA goals are a strong driver of their MIA engagement, not assigning salespersons MIA goals may be a double-edged sword: in the short run, salespersons might engage in MIA voluntarily. However, in the long run, they could incur psychological costs in terms of role ambiguity and conflict, preventing them from engaging in MIA.     

Information Centrism and the Nature of Contexts

Information Centrism is the view that contexts consist of information that can be characterized in terms of the propositional attitudes of the conversational participants. Furthermore, it claims that this notion of context is the only one needed for linguistic theorizing about context-sensitive languages. We argue that Information Centrism is false, since it cannot account correctly for facts about truth and reference in certain cases involving indexicals and demonstratives. Consequently, contexts cannot be construed simply as collections of shared information.     

‘Now My Life in Syria Is Finished’: Case Studies on Religious Identity and Sectarianism in Narratives of Syrian Christian Refugees in Austria

Using semi-structured life story interviews with Syrian Christian refugees in Austria, this article investigates the impact on identity of the conflict in Syria and the resulting act of seeking refuge outside Syria. It suggests that the sectarian dynamics of the war affect religious minorities in particular, and the method of using biographical case studies allows an analysis of how the sectarianization discourse is used by interviewees to construct their autobiographical narratives of life as refugees. The results, taken from four case studies, show that in each case, religion is a strong marker, providing a framework for self-interpretation in a period of change and/or disruption. In most cases, post-flight identity as a matter of ‘translocational’ positioning is constructed within the framework of sectarianism. The argument of the article is twofold: first, sectarianism provides a setting for Syrian Christians that is appropriated through diverse biographical patterns. Second, sectarianism as a narrative strategy is modelled by and responds to contexts in the host society. The results of this study aim to offer important suggestions for understanding the particular experience of Christian refugees settling in the European diaspora.