When collective memories of victimhood fade: Generational evolution of intergroup attitudes and political aspirations in Belgium

Collective memory theories propose that groups' remembrances of their past depend upon their current social situation. In Belgium, a significant proportion of Dutch speakers share a collective memory of past victimisation by French speakers and fight for an ever‐larger autonomy of their region. Yet, as the respective economic, political and social situations of the linguistic regions of Belgium recently evolved with a reversal of fortunes, the current experience of younger Dutch speakers does not fit the traditional memory anymore. We thus predicted that the collective memories of victimhood would decline amongst them, thus bringing changes in intergroup attitudes and political aspirations. Three generations were compared in a survey of 1226 French‐speaking and 1457 Dutch‐speaking individuals. For both groups, younger generations evidenced less regionalist and more integrative positions than older ones. However, these effects were stronger for Dutch‐speaking respondents, and for them, collective memory of victimhood mediated the relation linking age and identification with Belgium, intergroup attitudes and political aspirations. We concluded that the current social context has decisive consequences for collective remembrances, which, in turn, impact intergroup relations and political attitudes and choices.     

Online Hate and Zeitgeist of Fear: A Five-Country Longitudinal Analysis of Hate Exposure and Fear of Terrorism After the Paris Terrorist Attacks in 2015

Acts of terror lead to both a rise of an extended sense of fear that goes beyond the physical location of the attacks and to increased expressions of online hate. In this longitudinal study, we analyzed dynamics between the exposure to online hate and the fear of terrorism after the Paris attacks in November 13, 2015. We hypothesized that exposure to online hate is connected to a perceived Zeitgeist of fear (i.e., collective fear). In turn, the perceived Zeitgeist of fear is related to higher personal fear of terrorism both immediately after the attacks and a year later. Hypotheses were tested using path modeling and panel data (N = 2325) from Norway, Finland, Spain, France, and the United States a few weeks after the Paris attacks in November 2015 and again a year later in January 2017. With the exception of Norway, exposure to online hate had a positive association with the perceived Zeitgeist of fear in all our samples. The Zeitgeist of fear was correlated with higher personal fear of terrorism immediately after the attacks and one year later. We conclude that online hate content can contribute to the extended sense of fear after the terrorist attacks by skewing perceptions of social climate.     

The Development of a Short Form of an Irrational/Rational Beliefs Scale

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - This study developed a short form of the Attitudes and Beliefs Scale-2 (ABS-2), a measure of Ellis’s irrational and rational...     

Informed horses are influential in group movements,but they may avoid leading

In species that move in cohesive groups, animals generally reach decisions through socially distributed processes, and individual knowledge is expected to influence collective decision making. Pooling of information should not be considered a general rule, however, since conflicts of interest may occur between group members. When resources are limited or highly attractive, higher-ranking individuals can prevent others from accessing food, and subordinates may have an interest in withholding information about its location. We investigated the role individual knowledge may play in recruitment processes in four groups of horses (Equus caballus). Animals were repeatedly released in a food search situation, in which one individual had been informed about the location of a preferred food, while another was a naïve control subject. Horses that were informed about the location of the feeding site were seen to approach the food source more steadily and were followed by a higher number of group members than their uninformed counterparts. Recruitment processes appeared mostly passive. Among the informed subjects, lower-ranking individuals were overall less followed than the higher-ranking ones. Most lower-ranking horses arrived alone at the feeding site. Non-followed informed subjects spent less time in active walk and used direct paths less frequently than followed animals, and they were joined by fewer partners at the attractive food source and spent more time feeding alone. This indicates that the influence of informed individuals on the behavior of other group members was a mixed process. Some horses brought nutritional benefits to their conspecifics by leading them to food supplies, whereas the behavior of others might be functionally deceptive.     

Territorial prior residence,size asymmetry,and escalation of aggression in convict cichlids (Cichlasoma nigrofasciatum Günther)

The present study was designed to assess the effects of resident versus intruder size differences upon the territorial prior-residence effect and level of territorial aggression in convict cichlids. Prior to a direct territorial dominance encounter, pairs of fish were randomly composed for one of three experimental treatment conditions: 1) the resident having a body-length 20–30% larger than that of the intruder, 2) the intruder having a body-length 20–30% larger than the resident, or 3) the combatants' body-lengths differing by no more than 5%. After a 3-day territorial acclimation period in their individual territories, the subject designated as the intruder was introduced to the resident's territory. For each encounter the pairmember that attacked first and the one that ultimately established dominance were recorded. Also measured during the encounter were the total number of bites, resident bites, intruder bites, and jaw-locking frequency and duration. The results revealed that there was a significant resident advantage in the resident-larger group. The intruder-larger group resulted in a significant intruder dominance advantage. However, no significant dominance advantage occurred in the same-size group. As predicted by game theory, there was significantly less escalation of aggression in contests in which one combatant held both designated asymmetric cues (prior residence, size) than in contests in which one combatant had prior residence, or when these two asymmetric cues were divided between the pairmembers. The size asymmetry is more important in determining dominance than the prior-residence asymmetry, for the particular size-difference range selected in the present study.     

Attachment and temperament in early childhood; implications for later behavior problems

In the context of a French validation study, the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) was administered to more than 3000 French speaking mothers of 5‐year‐old children. Scores were factor‐analyzed. Principal components analysis revealed four dimensions: externalizing and internalizing behavior problems, immaturity and somatoform disorders. Another sample of 40 mothers participated in a longitudinal study, filling in the CBCL when their children were 5 years old. These children had been observed previously in the Strange Situation (SSP) at 21 months. Several dichotomous variables derived from the SSP (e.g. secure versus insecure, proximal versus distal interaction with the mother, avoidant behavior) have been used as predictors of the four dimensions extracted from the CBCL. Hierarchical regressions showed that proximal behaviors with the mother, which reflect temperamental characteristics independently of the quality of attachment, predicted internalizing problems, whereas avoidance of the mother, or insecure–avoidant attachment, predicted internalizing as well as externalizing problems at 5 years of age. These results show that attachment and temperament, as assessed by the SSP, may each have specific implications for later behavior problems. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Complex and subtle structural changes in prefrontal cortex induced by inhibitory control training from childhood to adolescence

A number of training interventions have been designed to improve executive functions and inhibitory control (IC) across the lifespan. Surprisingly, no study has investigated the structural neuroplasticity induced by IC training from childhood to late adolescence, a developmental period characterized by IC efficiency improvement and protracted maturation of prefrontal cortex (PFC) subregions involved in IC. The aim of the present study was to investigate the behavioral and structural changes induced by a 5‐week computerized and adaptive IC training in school‐aged children (10‐year‐olds) and in adolescents (16‐year‐olds). Sixty‐four children and 59 adolescents were randomly assigned to an IC (i.e. Color‐Word Stroop and Stop‐Signal tasks) or an active control (AC) (knowledge‐ and vocabulary‐based tasks) training group. In the pre‐ and posttraining sessions, participants performed the Color‐Word Stroop and Stop‐signal tasks, and an anatomical resonance imaging (MRI) was acquired for each of them. Children's IC efficiency improved from the pre‐ to the posttraining session in boys but not in girls. In adolescents, IC efficiency did not improve after IC training. Similar to the neuroplastic mechanisms observed during brain maturation, we observed IC training‐related changes in cortical thickness and cortical surface area in several PFC subregions (e.g. the pars opercularis, triangularis, and orbitalis of the inferior frontal gyri) that were age‐ and gender‐specific. Because no correction for multiple comparisons was applied, the results of our study provide only preliminary evidence of the complex structural neuroplastic mechanisms at the root of behavioral changes in IC efficiency from pre‐ to posttraining in school‐aged children and adolescents.     

Excessive Worrying as a Central Feature of Anxiety during the First COVID-19 Lockdown-Phase in Belgium: Insights from a Network Approach

Since the WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic on March 11, 2020, the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has profoundly impacted public health and the economy worldwide. But there are not the only ones to be hit. The COVID-19 pandemic has also substantially altered mental health, with anxiety symptoms being one of the most frequently reported problems. Especially, the number of people reporting anxiety symptoms increased significantly during the first lockdown-phase compared to similar data collected before the pandemic. Yet, most of these studies relied on a unitary approach to anxiety, wherein its different constitutive features (i.e., symptoms) were tallied into one sum-score, thus ignoring any possibility of interactions between them. Therefore, in this study, we seek to map the associations between the core features of anxiety during the first weeks of the first Belgian COVID-19 lockdown-phase (n = 2,829). To do so, we implemented, in a preregistered fashion, two distinct computational network approaches: a Gaussian graphical model and a Bayesian network modelling approach to estimate a directed acyclic graph. Despite their varying assumptions, constraints, and computational methods to determine nodes (i.e., the variables) and edges (i.e., the relations between them), both approaches pointed to excessive worrying as a node playing an especially influential role in the network system of the anxiety features. Altogether, our findings offer novel data-driven clues for the ongoing field’s larger quest to examine, and eventually alleviate, the mental health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.