Cross-cultural differences in children's choices, categorizations, and evaluations of truths and lies

This study examined cross-cultural differences and similarities in children's moral understanding of individual- or collective-oriented lies and truths. Seven-, 9-, and 11-year-old Canadian and Chinese children were read stories about story characters facing moral dilemmas about whether to lie or tell the truth to help a group but harm an individual or vice versa. Participants chose to lie or to tell the truth as if they were the character (Experiments 1 and 2) and categorized and evaluated the story characters' truthful and untruthful statements (Experiments 3 and 4). Most children in both cultures labeled lies as lies and truths as truths. The major cultural differences lay in choices and moral evaluations. Chinese children chose lying to help a collective but harm an individual, and they rated it less negatively than lying with opposite consequences. Chinese children rated truth telling to help an individual but harm a group less positively than the alternative. Canadian children did the opposite. These findings suggest that cross-cultural differences in emphasis on groups versus individuals affect children's choices and moral judgments about truth and deception.     

(Why) do I think what you think? Epistemic social tuning and implicit prejudice

This research examines whether people who experience epistemic motivation (i.e., a desire to acquire knowledge) came to have implicit attitudes consistent with the apparent beliefs of another person. People had lower implicit prejudice when they experienced epistemic motivation and interacted with a person who ostensibly held egalitarian beliefs (Experiments 1 and 2). Implicit prejudice was not affected when people did not experience epistemic motivation. Further evidence shows that this tuning of implicit attitudes occurs when beliefs are endorsed by another person, but not when they are brought to mind via means that do not imply that person's endorsement (Experiment 3). Results suggest that implicit attitudes of epistemically motivated people tune to the apparent beliefs of others to achieve shared reality.     

Preschoolers' aggression, affiliation, and social dominance relationships: An observational, longitudinal study

This study of 61 preschool children used an observational, longitudinal design to examine the degree to which social dominance relationships account for time-related change in rates of aggression and affiliation across a school year. Specific hypotheses reflected the view that, over time, behavioral function should change in accord with the stability of social dominance relationships, social norms, and on-going developmental processes. Results showed that change in rates of aggression was non-linear (i.e., increasing then decreasing over the year), that physical and verbal forms of aggression were associated with distinct longitudinal trajectories, and that these trajectories were related to rates of affiliation and visual regard. As predicted, social dominance accounted for significant variation in these patterns. Implications for theory, future research, and school practitioners are discussed.     

Autobiographical memory specificity and emotional disorder

The authors review research showing that when recalling autobiographical events, many emotionally disturbed patients summarize categories of events rather than retrieving a single episode. The mechanisms underlying such overgeneral memory are examined, with a focus on M. A. Conway and C. W. Pleydell-Pearce's (2000) hierarchical search model of personal event retrieval. An elaboration of this model is proposed to account for overgeneral memory, focusing on how memory search can be affected by (a) capture and rumination processes, when mnemonic information used in retrieval activates ruminative thinking; (b) functional avoidance, when episodic material threatens to cause affective disturbance; and (c) impairment in executive capacity and control that limits an individual's ability to remain focused on retrieval in the face of distraction.     

Awareness and Attitudes Regarding Prenatal Testing among Texas Women of Childbearing Age

Despite increased visibility and availability of prenatal testing procedures, very little is known about the attitudes among the populace toward these procedures. Using a computer assisted telephone interview of pregnant and non-pregnant women of childbearing age we analyze awareness and attitudes regarding prenatal tests among a diverse group of women of childbearing age in Texas. We also examine maternal characteristics associated with awareness and the willingness to undergo these procedures. While 89% were aware that such tests are available, younger, black and less educated women were less likely to know about prenatal tests for birth defects. Seventy-two percent of respondents said they would want their baby tested while Hispanic and black women were significantly more likely to express an interest than non-Hispanic whites. This study demonstrates the variability of knowledge and beliefs and confirms the importance of taking time to understand an individual’s personal beliefs, knowledge and attitudes about prenatal diagnosis.     

Hippocampal differentiation without recognition: an fMRI analysis of the contextual cueing task

A central role of the hippocampus is to consolidate conscious forms of learning and memory, while performance on implicit tasks appears to depend upon other structures. Recently, considerable debate has emerged about whether hippocampal-dependent tasks necessarily entail task awareness. In the contextual cueing task, repetition facilitation is implicit, but impaired in patients with amnesia. Whether the hippocampus alone or other MTL structures are required is unclear. Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed hippocampal activity that differentiates novel from repeated arrays. This pattern of results was observed without recognition of the repeating arrays. This finding provides support for the claim that the hippocampus is involved in processes outside the domain of conscious learning and memory.     

Dehumanization: A New Perspective

Dehumanization has traditionally been understood as an extreme form of prejudice that enables violence and cruelty. Recent work indicates that it can also take subtle and everyday forms. We give an overview of early contributions to the psychological study of dehumanization before reviewing recent research on the attribution and denial of humanness. We emphasize our own research program, which proceeds from a theoretical analysis of two distinct senses of humanness, which when denied to others yield two forms of dehumanization. In one form, people are denied uniquely human attributes and likened to animals, and in the other, they are denied essentially human attributes and likened to machines. We discuss the ways in which these two forms of dehumanization are manifest in perceptions of individuals and groups, and speculate on the cognitive and motivational processes involved.     

Gender Roles in Immigrant Families: Parenting Views, Practices, and Child Development

Ecological and acculturation frameworks are especially central to understanding the experiences of immigrant populations and to date, current research has yielded new conceptual and methodological tools for documenting the cultural and developmental processes of children and their families. This special issue of 12 articles focuses on immigrant families and the importance of gender along various dimensions: parental roles, parent–child relationships, child outcomes. The collection of articles also represents various innovative methodologies used, including quantitative and qualitative approaches.     

Cohesiveness, coach's interpersonal style and psychological needs: Their effects on self-determination and athletes' subjective well-being

GoalThe goal of this study was to test the impact of cohesiveness and coaches' controlling interpersonal style on athletes' perceptions of autonomy, competence and relatedness. A contextual motivation sequence [Vallerand, R. J. (1997). Toward a hierarchical model of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 29 (pp. 271–360). New York: Academic Press.] was tested whereby social factors supporting the satisfaction of basic needs would increase the level of sport self-determination, which in turn, should predict subjective well-being in athletes.MethodThe proposed sequence was tested with 197 basketball players using structural equation modeling. The hypothesized model was supported.ResultsPerceptions of cohesiveness positively predicted the satisfaction of the basic needs. Perceptions of coaches' controlling interpersonal style negatively impacted feelings of autonomy. In turn, psychological needs predicted self-determination in sports ensuing greater sport satisfaction and positive emotions in sports. Tests of indirect effects also supported the mediating role of psychological needs and self-determination.ConclusionResults are discussed in light of the different types of motivational antecedents and their influence on the psychological needs.     

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) do not develop contingent reciprocity in an experimental task

Chimpanzees provide help to unrelated individuals in a broad range of situations. The pattern of helping within pairs suggests that contingent reciprocity may have been an important mechanism in the evolution of altruism in chimpanzees. However, correlational analyses of the cumulative pattern of interactions over time do not demonstrate that helping is contingent upon previous acts of altruism, as required by the theory of reciprocal altruism. Experimental studies provide a controlled approach to examine the importance of contingency in helping interactions. In this study, we evaluated whether chimpanzees would be more likely to provide food to a social partner from their home group if their partner had previously provided food for them. The chimpanzees manipulated a barpull apparatus in which actors could deliver rewards either to themselves and their partners or only to themselves. Our findings indicate that the chimpanzees’ responses were not consistently influenced by the behavior of their partners in previous rounds. Only one of the 11 dyads that we tested demonstrated positive reciprocity. We conclude that contingent reciprocity does not spontaneously arise in experimental settings, despite the fact that patterns of behavior in the field indicate that individuals cooperate preferentially with reciprocating partners.