How are depression and autobiographical memory retrieval related to culture?

This study investigated how culture influences the association between autobiographical memory retrieval and depression. Thirty clinically depressed patients and 30 controls, 15 each from Britain and Taiwan, completed the English and Chinese versions of the Autobiographical Memory Cueing Task (AMT). Overall, the depressed individuals from both cultural groups retrieved significantly fewer specific and more categoric autobiographical memories than their matched, nondepressed controls. Within the control groups, the British participants retrieved significantly more specific autobiographical memories and fewer categoric memories than their Taiwanese counterparts. These results suggest that difficulty in retrieving specific autobiographical memories typical of depression may be a cognitive bias that occurs across cultures.     

More than meets the eye: the role of language in binding and maintaining feature conjunctions

We investigated the effects of language on vision by focusing on a well-known problem: the binding and maintenance of color-location conjunctions. Four-year-olds performed a task in which they saw a target (e.g., a split square, red on the left and green on the right) followed by a brief delay and then were asked to find the target in an array including the target, its reflection (e.g., red on the right and green on the left), and a square with a different geometric split. Errors were overwhelmingly reflections. This finding shows that the children failed to maintain color-location conjunctions. Performance improved when targets were accompanied by sentences specifying color and direction (e.g., "the red is on the left"), but not when the conjunction was highlighted using a nonlinguistic cue (e.g., flashing, pointing, changes in size), nor when sentences specified a nondirectional relationship (e.g., "the red is touching the green"). The relation between children's matching performance and their long-term knowledge of directional terms suggests two distinct mechanisms by which language can temporarily bridge delays, providing more stable representations.     

Tracing Leadership in Gifted Children

The aim of this study was to determine whether characteristics of leadership identified among adults also exist among young gifted children. The study was conducted in Israel among 63 gifted children aged 10 to 14 who completed the Leadership Questionnaire, constructed especially for this study. The characteristics found to distinguish between high and low scorers on leadership were responsibility, desire to dominate, consistency, physical energy, achievement orientation, expressive and persuasive powers, cooperation, adaptability, daring, self-confidence, and emotional equilibrium. The results confirmed our hypothesis that the characteristics of leadership identified in adults do exist among gifted children.     

Play it safe or go for the gold? A terror management perspective on self-enhancement and self-protective motives in risky decision making

Terror management theory (TMT) posits that bolstering self-esteem buffers mortality concerns; accordingly, in past research, heightening mortality salience (MS) increases self-enhancement. However, risky self-esteem-relevant decisions often present a choice between enhancing self-esteem by striving for excellence and protecting self-esteem by avoiding potential failure. Which strategy is preferred under MS? Combining TMT with insights from Steele, Spencer, and Lynch's (1993) resource model, the authors hypothesized and found that MS leads high, but not low, self-esteem participants faced with a risky decision to pursue opportunities for excellence despite substantial risk of failure (Studies 1 and 2); in Study 3, using a more impactful decision, this effect was replicated and it was furthermore found that mortality-salient low-self-esteem participants become more risk-averse. Furthermore, in Study 2, a self-affirmation prime, previously shown to reduce MS-induced defenses, eliminated the self-enhancement effect among high-self-esteem participants. Implications for understanding self-esteem, TMT, and risky decision making are briefly discussed.     

Self‐Harm Focus Leads to Greater Collective Guilt: The Case of the U.S.‐Iraq Conflict

Collective guilt from harm one's group has caused an out‐group is often undermined because people minimize or legitimize the harm done (i.e., they generate exonerating cognitions). When a group action has harmed both the in‐group and an out‐group, focusing people on “self‐harm”—ways in which the in‐group has harmed itself—may elicit more collective guilt because self‐harm is less likely to be exonerated. In Study 1, American participants who focused on how the invasion of Iraq had harmed the United States expressed greater collective guilt over harm inflicted on the people of Iraq than those who focused on Iraqi suffering. Study 2 showed that this effect is due to reductions in exonerating cognitions among people focused on self‐harm. We consider the implications of these findings for intergroup reconciliation, particularly in situations where two groups have been involved in open conflict.     

Wringing the perceptual rags: reply to IJzerman and Koole (2011)

We Landau, Meier, & Keefer (2010) reviewed a growing body of research demonstrating metaphors' far-reaching influence on social information processing. In their commentary, IJzerman and Koole (2011) claimed that we devoted insufficient attention to the origin of metaphors, and they reviewed research showing that bodily, social, and cultural experiences constrain metaphor development. Given the focus of our article and the tone of our admittedly cursory treatment of metaphors' origins, we view IJzerman and Koole's commentary less as a critique and more as a valuable extension of our analysis. We elaborate on this extension and address three related issues raised in the comment: metaphors and representational format, the explanatory value of a metaphor-enriched perspective over the embodied cognition perspective, and the direction of metaphoric mappings between concrete and abstract concepts.     

Ageism and death: effects of mortality salience and perceived similarity to elders on reactions to elderly people

The present research investigated the hypotheses that elderly people can be reminders of our mortality and that concerns about our own mortality can therefore instigate ageism. In Study 1, college-age participants who saw photos of two elderly people subsequently showed more death accessibility than participants who saw photos of only younger people. In Study 2, making mortality salient for participants increased distancing from the average elderly person and decreased perceptions that the average elderly person possesses favorable attitudes. Mortality salience did not affect ratings of teenagers. In Study 3, these mortality salience effects were moderated by prior reported similarity to elderly people. Distancing from, and derogation of, elderly people after mortality salience occurred only in participants who, weeks before the study, rated their personalities as relatively similar to the average elderly person's. Discussion addresses distinguishing ageism from other forms of prejudice, as well as possibilities for reducing ageism.     

Level I and level II abilities in Asian,white, and black children

All the Asian-American, white, and black children in grades 2 through 6 in a California school district were given a battery of tests including measures of IQ, scholastic achievement, and short-term memory. Factor analysis of the tests yielded two main factors identified as Level I (memory) and Level II (general intelligence) in Jensen's system. The three ethnic groups were compared with one another on uncorrelated Level I and Level II factor scores. At every grade level, bivariate means of the three groups occupy distinctly different quadrants in the factor space. Asians and whites differ on Level I (A < W) but not on Level II. Asians and blacks differ on Level II (A > B) but not on Level I. Whites and blacks differ (W > B) on both Levels I and II, but the white-black difference on Level I is less than one fourth as large as the white-black difference on Level II. A similar pattern of group differences is found for scores on tests of memory and nonverbal IQ. Scholastic achievement shows much smaller correlations with the Level I than with the Level II factor.