Antecedents of fathers’ perception of child behavior at child age 12 months

This study investigates whether fathers’ adverse childhood experiences (ACE) and attachment style reported during pregnancy predict fathers’ perception of child behavior assessed 12 months postpartum, expressed by the Parenting Stress Index (PSI), Child Domain. Prospective fathers (N = 835) were recruited to “The Little in Norway (LiN) study” (Moe & Smith) at nine well-baby clinics in Norway, with data collection composed of five time points during pregnancy and two time points postpartum (6 and 12 months). The main analyses included linear regression, path-analysis modeling, and intraclass correlation based on mixed effects modeling. First, linear regression analyses showed that neither fathers’ ACE nor attachment style significantly predicted perceived child behavior postpartum directly. Furthermore, path analyses showed that ACE and less secure attachment style (especially avoidant attachment) measured early in pregnancy strongly predicted negatively perceived child behavior, mediated by fathers’ mental health symptoms during pregnancy and partner disharmony postpartum. Second, intraclass correlation analyses showed that fathers’ perceived child behavior showed substantial stability between 6 and 12 months postpartum. Family interventions beginning in pregnancy may be most beneficial given that fathers’ early experiences and perceptions of attachment in pregnancy were associated with later partner disharmony and stress.     

The effects of gendered information in stories on preschool children’s development of gender stereotypes

Social-cognitive theory posits that children learn gender stereotypes through gendered information. The present study examined whether children learn new gender stereotypes from stories when unknown words are linked to a gendered protagonist or context information. In Experiment 1, 40 3- to 6-year-old preschoolers were read stories with either a gendered protagonist embedded within a non-gendered context, or a non-gendered protagonist embedded within a gendered context. In Experiment 2, the same sample of children were read stories with the protagonist and the context displaying congruent or incongruent gender information. Each story featured an unknown activity linked with the stereotypical content. Both experiments indicate that the children rated the activity according to both the gender of the context and of the protagonist; however, the effect of the latter was stronger. In addition, children showed higher interest in the unknown activity if the protagonist’s gender matched their own sex. Thus, gender information in stories influences how children perceive unknown words.     

Robots as Malevolent Moral Agents: Harmful Behavior Results in Dehumanization,Not Anthropomorphism

A robot's decision to harm a person is sometimes considered to be the ultimate proof of it gaining a human-like mind. Here, we contrasted predictions about attribution of mental capacities from moral typecasting theory, with the denial of agency from dehumanization literature. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated mind perception for intentionally and accidentally harmful robotic agents based on text and image vignettes. Experiment 3 disambiguated agent intention (malevolent and benevolent), and additionally varied the type of agent (robotic and human) using short computer-generated animations. Harmful robotic agents were consistently imbued with mental states to a lower degree than benevolent agents, supporting the dehumanization account. Further results revealed that a human moral patient appeared to suffer less when depicted with a robotic agent than with another human. The findings suggest that future robots may become subject to human-like dehumanization mechanisms, which challenges the established beliefs about anthropomorphism in the domain of moral interactions.     

Indicators of Affect Dynamics: Structure,Reliability, and Personality Correlates

Researchers are increasingly interested in the affect dynamics of individuals for describing and explaining personality and psychopathology. Recently, the incremental validity of more complex indicators of affect dynamics (IADs; e.g. autoregression) has been called into question (Dejonckheere et al., 2019), with evidence accumulating that these might convey little unique information beyond mean level and general variability of emotions. Our study extends the evidence for the construct validity of IADs by investigating their redundancy and uniqueness, split-half reliability based on indices from odd-numbered and even-numbered days, and association with big five personality traits. We used three diverse samples that assessed daily and momentary emotions, including community participants, individuals with personality pathology, and their significant others (total N = 1192, total number of occasions = 51 278). Mean and variability of affects had high reliability and distinct nomological patterns to big five personality traits. In contrast, more complex IADs exhibited substantial redundancies with mean level and general variability of emotions. When partialing out these redundancies by using residual variables, some of the more complex IADs had acceptable reliability, but only a few of these showed incremental associations with big five personality traits, indicating that IADs have limited validity using the current assessment practices. © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology     

To Challenge the Morning Lark and the Night Owl: Using Smartphone Sensing Data to Investigate Day–Night Behaviour Patterns

For decades, day–night patterns in behaviour have been investigated by asking people about their sleep–wake timing, their diurnal activity patterns, and their sleep duration. We demonstrate that the increasing digitalization of lifestyle offers new possibilities for research to investigate day–night patterns and related traits with the help of behavioural data. Using smartphone sensing, we collected in vivo data from 597 participants across several weeks and extracted behavioural day–night pattern indicators. Using this data, we explored three popular research topics. First, we focused on individual differences in day–night patterns by investigating whether ‘morning larks’ and ‘night owls’ manifest in smartphone-sensed behavioural indicators. Second, we examined whether personality traits are related to day–night patterns. Finally, exploring social jetlag, we investigated whether traits and work weekly day–night behaviours influence day–night patterns on weekends. Our findings highlight that behavioural data play an essential role in understanding daily routines and their relations to personality traits. We discuss how psychological research can integrate new behavioural approaches to study personality.     

Ethical Decision Making in Autonomous Vehicles: The AV Ethics Project

Science and Engineering Ethics - The ethics of autonomous vehicles (AV) has received a great amount of attention in recent years, specifically in regard to their decisional policies in accident...     

Ethnic-racial identity,relatedness, and school belonging for adolescent New Zealanders: does student gender make a difference?

Social Psychology of Education - Attitudes toward ethnic and racial identity have been linked to both wellbeing and maladaptive outcomes that affect belonging at school. Further, relatedness (or...     

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