It's not my fault: when and why attributions to prejudice protect self-esteem

This study tested the hypothesis that awareness of the possibility of being a target of discrimination can provide individuals with a means of self-esteem protection when they are faced with negative outcomes. Men and women contemplated being rejected from a course due to sexism, personal deservingness, or an exclusively external cause. Regardless of gender, participants in the sexism condition blamed themselves less, attributed the rejection less to internal causes, and anticipated feeling less depressed than those in the personal deservingness condition. Furthermore, the more participants discounted the rejection--blamed it more on discrimination than themselves--the less depressed emotions they anticipated feeling. Discounting did not buffer participants from feeling hostility or anxiety. These findings advance our understanding of when and why attributions to prejudice protect emotional well-being.     

There is more to anger coping than "in" or "out"

There is growing dissatisfaction with a dichotomized "anger-in" versus "anger-out" view of anger coping. Three studies using student and community adultsamples revealed a broader understanding of the nature of anger coping styles and led to the development of the new Behavioral Anger Response Questionnaire (BARQ). The BARQ is empirically derived and factorially validated and has good psychometrics. Results suggest that dichotomizing anger responses as "in" versus "out" is too coarse and that a 6-factor model may be more appropriate. The 6 factors identified here are Direct Anger-Out, Assertion, Support-Seeking, Diffusion, Avoidance, and Rumination. Women reported use of a wider range of anger coping styles, especially more social support-seeking and more use of anger diffusion strategies than men.     

Income Source and Race Effects on New-Neighbor Evaluations1

Two studies investigated the effect of income source and race on ratings of and objections to potential neighbors. Equivalent amounts of income from different sources included work only, work and public assistance, or work and a small inheritance. The race variable included African American, European American, or Hispanic. Subjects for Study 1 were undergraduate psychology students. Subjects for Study 2 were homeowners. Class bias was not a symbolic way to express race bias. There was a clear distinction between class bias and race bias in expression and function. Results indicate that class bias was used when subjects gave ratings of new neighbors. These biased ratings do not correlate with measures of racism. Furthermore, results indicate that objections to the new neighbors were more frequent for those gaining income from sources other than work. The findings indicate that class prejudice based on income source is primary and openly expressed, whereas racial prejudice does not appear as an important contributing factor in this context.     

Introduction to the Special Issue on Developmental Disabilities

This special issue of the Journal of Genetic Counseling focuses on developmental disabilities and includes commentaries, original research, personal accounts, and practice guidelines.     

Treating disturbed emotional regulation in sexual offenders: The potential applications of mindful self-regulation and controlled breathing techniques

It has been noted that some offenders are characterized by problems in the appropriate regulation of emotional states. Deficits in emotional regulation are particularly pertinent in sexual offenders. Therefore, therapeutic programs should, in part, focus on the development of effective strategies for the control of emotional arousal. In this review, we will provide an outline of how anatomical structures including the amygdala and regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) are involved in the appropriate regulation of emotion. It is argued in this paper that the effective control of emotional states may be helped through the adoption of a group of meditational practices, known as mindfulness techniques, which have emerged from Buddhist philosophy. These techniques involve slow, deep breathing and have been shown to affect vagal modulation of the heart and the functioning of specific neural circuits which are critically involved in emotional regulation.     

Development of decision making: sequential versus integrative rules

Decisions can be made by applying a variety of decision-making rules-sequential rules in which decisions are based on a sequential evaluation of choice dimensions and the integrative normative rule in which decisions are based on an integration of choice dimensions. In this study, we investigated the developmental trajectory of such decision-making rules. In the Gambling Machine Task, participants choose between options that differ in three dimensions: frequency of loss, amount of loss, and certain gain. The task was administered to 231 children and adolescents (age range=8-17 years). Latent group analysis of their performance allowed precise classification of the underlying decision rules. The majority of participants used sequential decision rules, and the number of evaluated dimensions in these rules increased with age. Integrative rule use decreased with age. We discuss these results in light of traditional developmental theories and fuzzy trace theory.     

Hierarchical integration of agency and communion: a study of influential moral figures

The purpose of this research is to (a) identify which of recent history's influential figures did and which did not personify moral excellence, and (b) to examine the motives that drove these individuals along such divergent paths. In Study 1, 102 social scientists evaluated the moral qualities of influential figures from Time Magazine's lists. In Study 2, we selected the 15 top ranking of these figures to comprise a moral exemplar group and the bottom 15 to comprise a comparison group of similarly influential people. We measured the motivational aspects of their personality (agency and communion) by content-analyzing extant speeches and interviews. Moral exemplars exhibited the hierarchical integration of agency and communion by treating agentic motives as a means to an end of communal motives. Comparison subjects, by contrast, personified unmitigated agency by treating motives of agency as both a means to an end and an end unto itself. These results imply that both the strength and structure of a person's motives account for moral behavior.