Implicit Measures Reveal Evidence of Personal Discrimination

A well-known result, the person–group discrimination discrepancy (PGDD), shows that members of disadvantaged groups believe that other members of their social groups are discriminated against, but that they themselves are not. In this paper, we test whether this explicit self-protective strategy is also obtained on indirect measures of personal discrimination. Three experiments, using both explicit (self-report) and implicit (IAT) measures of discrimination showed that although members of disadvantaged groups do not explicitly report self-discrimination (replicating previous research), they do reveal self-discrimination on the implicit measure. That the PGDD effect is bound to explicit measurement should be recognized both when implementing research protocols and when understanding the effects of discrimination whether it is consciously recognized or not.     

Self-regulation and STEM persistence in minority and non-minority students across the first year of college

Social Psychology of Education - Psychological factors have been implicated in STEM persistence but remain poorly understood. In particular, the role of self-regulation—the cognitive,...     

Hope as a Mediator of Bullying Involvement and Emotional Difficulties in Children

This study investigated hope as a mediator between children’s bullying involvement and emotional difficulties in a sample of 1,060 school‐age children (Grades 3–6). Results from structural equation modeling suggested that victimization leads to emotional difficulties both directly and indirectly through hope. Perpetration was indirectly associated with emotional difficulties. Findings highlight the role of children’s cognitive‐motivational process for emotional well‐being in response to bullying involvement. Implications for counseling interventions are discussed.     

The Secret Lives of Liberals and Conservatives: Personality Profiles,Interaction Styles,and the Things They Leave Behind

Although skeptics continue to doubt that most people are “ideological,” evidence suggests that meaningful left‐right differences do exist and that they may be rooted in basic personality dispositions, that is, relatively stable individual differences in psychological needs, motives, and orientations toward the world. Seventy‐five years of theory and research on personality and political orientation has produced a long list of dispositions, traits, and behaviors. Applying a theory of ideology as motivated social cognition and a “Big Five” framework, we find that two traits, Openness to New Experiences and Conscientiousness, parsimoniously capture many of the ways in which individual differences underlying political orientation have been conceptualized. In three studies we investigate the relationship between personality and political orientation using multiple domains and measurement techniques, including: self‐reported personality assessment; nonverbal behavior in the context of social interaction; and personal possessions and the characteristics of living and working spaces. We obtained consistent and converging evidence that personality differences between liberals and conservatives are robust, replicable, and behaviorally significant, especially with respect to social (vs. economic) dimensions of ideology. In general, liberals are more open‐minded, creative, curious, and novelty seeking, whereas conservatives are more orderly, conventional, and better organized.     

Pretherapy Cognitive Dispositions and Treatment Outcome in Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Insomnia

This study consisted of secondary analyses of data from 2 randomized clinical trials to test whether pretherapy cognitions predict CBT outcomes. The sample consisted of 155 primary insomnia patients with sleep maintenance complaints. Of these, 98 were randomized to CBT, 23 were assigned to progressive muscle relaxation training (PMR), and 34 were assigned to a control (sham therapy or wait-list) condition (CON). All patients completed the Dysfunctional Beliefs and Attitudes about Sleep Scale (DBAS), a sleep-related Self-Efficacy Scale (SES) and nightly sleep diaries for 2 weeks prior to receiving their assigned treatment. They then completed sleep diaries throughout an 8-week acute treatment period and during a 2-week period at a posttherapy follow-up. A subset of the sample (n = 67) also completed polysomnography immediately before and after completing their assigned treatment. Preliminary regression analyses conducted with a small subset (n = 15) of the patients receiving CBT showed those with relatively high levels of unhelpful sleep-related beliefs (Type 1 patients), as reflected by their pretherapy responses to the DBAS and SES questionnaires, showed markedly greater reductions in nocturnal wakefulness in response to CBT than did those (Type 2 patients) reporting less pronounced sleep-related beliefs. Given these findings, we used the regression equation derived from our initial analyses to dichotomize our entire sample into Type 1 (n = 82; 52.9%) and Type 2 (n = 73; 47.1%) subgroups. Subsequent comparisons showed CBT-treated Type 1 patients had significantly less wake time after sleep onset during most of the 8-week treatment phase than did the Type 1 and 2 individuals assigned to either PMR or CON. Relative to patients assigned to the PMR and CON conditions, CBT-treated Type 1 patients showed better performance across multiple subjective and objective benchmarks of clinically significant improvement, whereas the CBT-treated Type 2 patients did not. Results suggest that insomnia patients' pretherapy cognitive dispositions predict CBT outcome, and those with a pronounced sense of sleep-related helplessness are best suited for this treatment which targets this cognitive stance.     

Corpora of Vietnamese Texts: Lexical effects of intended audience and publication place

This article has two primary aims. The first is to introduce a new Vietnamese text-based corpus. The Corpora of Vietnamese Texts (CVT; Tang, 2006a) consists of approximately 1 million words drawn from newspapers and children's literature, and is available online at www.vnspeechtherapy.com/vi/CVT. The second aim is to investigate potential differences in lexical frequency and distributional characteristics in the CVT on the basis of place of publication (Vietnam or Western countries) and intended audience: adult-directed texts (newspapers) or child-directed texts (children's literature). We found clear differences between adult- and child-directed texts, particularly in the distributional frequencies of pronouns or kinship terms, which were more frequent in children's literature. Within child- and adult-directed texts, lexical characteristics did not differ on the basis of place of publication. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.     

Creating false memories for events that occurred before versus after the offset of childhood amnesia

We examined whether false images and memories for childhood events are more likely when the event supposedly took place during the period of childhood amnesia. Over three interviews, participants recalled six events: five true and one false. Some participants were told that the false event happened when they were 2 years old (Age 2 group), while others were told that it happened when they were 10 years old (Age 10 group). We compared participants' reports of the false event to their reports of a true event from the same age. Consistent with prior research on childhood amnesia, participants in the Age 10 group were more likely than participants in the Age 2 group to remember their true event and they reported more information about it. Participants in the Age 2 group, on the other hand, were more likely to develop false images and memories than participants in the Age 10 group. Furthermore, once a false image or memory developed, there were no age-related differences in the amount of information participants reported about the false event. We conclude that childhood amnesia increases our susceptibility to false suggestion, thus our results have implications for court cases where early memories are at issue.     

Data management and accountability in behavioral and biomedical research.

Regulations recently enacted by the Public Health Service and the National Science Foundation to address misconduct in scientific research were designed primarily to curtail deliberate forms of misconduct, such as fabrication or falsification of findings; however, researchers may also be held accountable for inadvertent deficiencies in data management. This article examines some of the problems in data quality control, documentation, and data retention that can occur when computers are used in scientific research. It focuses on deficiencies that could make it difficult to verify the integrity of research data or to reproduce statistical analyses. Strategies for prevention of data management problems are recommended.     

Controlling behavior experiments with BASIC on 6502-based microcomputers

A combination of high-level BASIC and transparent machine language routines forms an inexpensive (about $800), powerful, and easy-to-use microcomputer system for behavior research, based on the AIM-65. The interrupt-driven machine language routines keep track of real time, poll inputs, and are not typically modified for different experiments. Expandable machine language listings that support eight input lines and eight output lines on the AIM-65 are presented. The user-written BASIC program controls experiments and records data. BASIC programs for simple reinforcement schedules are used as examples. The software is readily transferred to other 6602-based microcomputers with BASIC.