Social cognitive career theory and the prediction of interests and choice goals in the computing disciplines

We tested the fit of the social cognitive choice model [Lent, R.W., Brown, S.D., & Hackett, G. (1994). Toward a unifying social cognitive theory of career and academic interest, choice, and performance [Monograph]. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 45, 79-122] to the data across gender, educational level, and type of university among students in a variety of computing disciplines. Participants were 1208 students at 21 historically Black and 21 predominantly White universities. They completed measures of self-efficacy, outcome expectations, interests, goals, and social supports and barriers with respect to computing majors. The SCCT model yielded adequate fit to the data across each of the grouping variables. Implications for future research on SCCT’s choice hypotheses in the context of science and engineering-related fields are discussed.     

Images of Thin and Plus-Size Models Produce Opposite Effects on Women’s Body Image,Body Dissatisfaction,and Anxiety

Mainstream media’s promotion of dangerously thin female images likely lowers self-image satisfaction and contributes to pathological body concerns and disordered eating among women. We tested upward and downward social-comparison effects on self-evaluations by exposing 145 Spanish women to images of thin (upward) or overweight (downward) models. We also tested whether explicitly asking or not asking participants to compare themselves with the models would moderate social comparison effects. Exposure to thin models deteriorated body image while increasing body dissatisfaction and anxiety. Conversely, exposure to overweight models improved body image and decreased body dissatisfaction but it did not affect anxiety. Whether participants were asked to compare themselves to the models explicitly or implicitly had no effect on the participants’ responses. Furthermore, pre-existing body image concerns were not associated with the pre-to-post exposure effects. We propose that increasing the representation of normal weight and overweight women in media advertisements could help to neutralize or at least reduce the negative impact of media’s practice to idealize thin and overly thin women as symbols of female beauty.

     

Climatic warmth and national wealth: some culture‐level determinants of national character stereotypes

National character stereotypes are widely shared, but do not reflect assessed levels of personality traits. In this article we present data illustrating the divergence of stereotypes and assessed personality traits in North and South Italy, test hypotheses about the associations of temperature and national wealth with national character stereotypes in 49 cultures, and explore possible links to national values and beliefs. Results suggest that warmth and wealth are common determinants of national stereotypes, but that there are also idiosyncratic influences on the perceptions of individual nations. Published in 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Biassed processing of persuasive information: on the functional equivalence of cues and message arguments

Research on persuasion has shown that inferences based on heuristic or peripheral cues can bias the subsequent processing of persuasive messages. Two studies (total N = 296) examined the additional possibilities that a message argument can serve as a biassing factor and cue‐related information can serve as the target of processing bias. It was demonstrated that a message argument can bias (a) the processing of subsequent other message arguments (Study 1) and (b) the processing of subsequent cue information (Study 2). Results are discussed within dual‐process models and the recently developed unimodel of persuasion. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cognitive biases in human causal learning

The main aim of this work was to look for cognitive biases in human inference of causal relationships in order to emphasize the psychological processes that modulate causal learning. From the effect of the judgment frequency, this work presents subsequent research on cue competition (overshadowing, blocking, and super-conditioning effects) showing that the strength of prior beliefs and new evidence based upon covariation computation contributes additively to predict causal judgments, whereas the balance between the reliability of both, beliefs and covariation knowledge, modulates their relative weight. New findings also showed "inattentional blindness" for negative or preventative causal relationships but not for positive or generative ones, due to failure in codifying and retrieving the necessary information for its computation. Overall results unveil the need of three hierarchical levels of a whole architecture for human causal learning: the lower one, responsible for codifying the events during the task; the second one, computing the retrieved information; finally, the higher level, integrating this evidence with previous causal knowledge. In summary, whereas current theoretical frameworks on causal inference and decision-making usually focused either on causal beliefs or covariation information, the present work shows how both are required to be able to explain the complexity and flexibility involved in human causal learning.     

Preexposure effects in the spatial domain: Dissociation between latent inhibition and perceptual learning

In 4 experiments, rats were given intermixed or blocked preexposure to an array of landmarks that subsequently defined the location of a hidden goal in a Morris pool task. Previous research has shown that intermixed preexposure to pairs of adjacent landmarks retards learning whereas preexposure to individual landmarks facilitates subsequent learning (J. Prados, V. D. Chamizo, & N. J. Mackintosh, 1999). Accordingly, in Experiment 1, intermixed and blocked preexposure to pairs of adjacent landmarks was found to retard learning. In Experiment 2, however, a scheduling effect was found: Rats given intermixed preexposure to the individual landmarks learned faster than rats given blocked or no preexposure. Experiment 3 showed that intermixed (but not blocked) preexposure to pairs of landmarks resulted in a facilitatory effect when preexposure and test were carried out in different contexts. Experiment 4 replicated within a single experiment the main results observed in Experiments 1 and 3. This pattern of results suggests that intermixed preexposure engages learning processes other than latent inhibition that facilitate subsequent learning of the navigation task.     

Complexity and social psychology of organizations

This article presents complexity (nonlinearity, chaos, self-organisation, fractals...) as a new and emerging epistemological paradigm, an alternative to an old, simpler, and reductionist paradigm. According to this point of view, we try to view work organizations as complex adaptive systems (CAS). Lastly, we offer a review of the literature on the applications of complexity to Organizational Social Psychology.     

Evaluating the efficacy of a program to enhance college students' self-regulation learning processes and learning strategies

The present study examines the efficacy of a program designed to enhance college students'learning processes and study strategies. The program was organised around a number of letters written by a freshman, Gervásio (Rosário, Nú?ez, & González-Pienda, 2006), telling about his new experiences, troubles, and successes in the university. This intervention program is intended to promote a series of strategies (cognitive, meta-cognitive, and supportive) which allow students to manage their learning processes in a more proficient, successful, and autonomous way. The collected data suggest that students who had the opportunity to follow the program significantly improved their declarative knowledge about learning strategies, reduced their use of surface approaches to study, and extended the newly acquired skills to new and different tasks and assignments.     

Flexibility competencies: emotional organization management

The aim of this article is to analyse the transferral of flexibility from contemporary organizations to workers. Through the approach of management by competencies, organizations try to develop in their workers behaviours that are related to efficient job performance. In order to appraise the importance of this approach, we used a critical-rational perspective to discuss the productivity demands that are characteristic of advanced industrial societies. The article shows how the link between workers' flexibility management and their emotional competencies affects their lives, which, like the organizations, should be versatile and adaptable to change.