Discrimination and the positive-negative asymmetry effect: ideological and normative processes

Research using the minimal group paradigm demonstrates that categorization and ingroup identification can foster intergroup discrimination. However, the positive-negative asymmetry effect shows that less discrimination occurs when negative rather than positive outcomes are distributed. The normative hypothesis explains this asymmetry by the stronger inappropriateness of discrimination in negative than in positive outcome distributions. Results obtained in this minimal group paradigm study (N = 257) did not replicate the asymmetry effect: discrimination occurred in both positive and negative outcome distributions, even if norms against discrimination were stronger in negative than in positive outcome distributions. The absence of the asymmetry effect is explained by the effect of the discrimination-justifying ideology.     

A Goal‐Priming Approach to Cognitive Consistency: Applications to Judgment

A fundamental criterion of judgment is consistency among beliefs. To augment traditional methods for studying cognitive consistency, we treat it as a goal and present a priming method for increasing its activation. Three studies use three criteria to validate the method: an increase in the biased evaluation of incoming information, speed in a lexical decision task, and participants' direct reports of greater goal activation. The method is then used to verify the role of the consistency goal in three diverse judgment phenomena. Priming cognitive consistency increases the search for postdecisional supporting information (selective exposure to information), the agreement between preference and prediction (the desirability bias or wishful thinking), and the adjustment of a socially unacceptable implicit attitude to conform to the corresponding explicit attitude. One conclusion is that the cause of these phenomena is not only motivated reasoning (driven directionally by a desired outcome) but also the purely cognitive and nondirectional process of simply making beliefs more consistent. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Lateralized interference effects: evidence for a processing style by modality interaction

A time-sharing paradigm was used to study potential interference effects of concurrent successive-auditory/vocal, successive-visual/motor, simultaneous-auditory/vocal, and simultaneous-visual/motor tasks on right- and left-handed manual-motor behaviors of differential levels of difficulty. Participants were selected from each of three developmental levels from 9 through 20 years of age. Results suggested that processing style (i.e., successive or simultaneous) interacts with modality (i.e., auditory/vocal or visual/motor) in terms of lateralized interference effects; however, potential effects due to age level were obfuscated by differential concurrent-task difficulties.     

Encoding differences affect the number and precision of own-race versus other-race faces stored in visual working memory

Other-race faces are discriminated and recognized less accurately than own-race faces. Despite a wealth of research characterizing this other-race effect (ORE), little is known about the nature of the representations of own-race versus other-race faces. This is because traditional measures of this ORE provide a binary measure of discrimination or recognition (correct/incorrect), failing to capture potential variation in the quality of face representations. We applied a novel continuous-response paradigm to independently measure the number of own-race and other-race face representations stored in visual working memory (VWM) and the precision with which they are stored. Participants reported target own-race or other-race faces on a circular face space that smoothly varied along the dimension of identity. Using probabilistic mixture modeling, we found that following ample encoding time, the ORE is attributable to differences in the probability of a face being maintained in VWM. Reducing encoding time, a manipulation that is more sensitive to encoding limitations, caused a loss of precision or an increase in variability of VWM for other-race but not own-race faces. These results suggest that the ORE is driven by the inefficiency with which other-race faces are rapidly encoded in VWM and provide novel insights about how perceptual experience influences the representation of own-race and other-race faces in VWM.

     

The own‐age face recognition bias is task dependent

The own‐age bias (OAB) in face recognition (more accurate recognition of own‐age than other‐age faces) is robust among young adults but not older adults. We investigated the OAB under two different task conditions. In Experiment 1 young and older adults (who reported more recent experience with own than other‐age faces) completed a match‐to‐sample task with young and older adult faces; only young adults showed an OAB. In Experiment 2 young and older adults completed an identity detection task in which we manipulated the identity strength of target and distracter identities by morphing each face with an average face in 20% steps. Accuracy increased with identity strength and facial age influenced older adults' (but not younger adults') strategy, but there was no evidence of an OAB. Collectively, these results suggest that the OAB depends on task demands and may be absent when searching for one identity.     

Heroin Use among Adolescents: A Multi-Theoretical Examination

Criminological examination of substance use is common in the extant literature; however, little research has examined heroin use among adolescents. Recent trends in drug use indicate a rise of heroin among adolescents indicating a need to provide theoretical explanations of this phenomenon. This study examines the efficacy of social learning theory and social bond theory to explain heroin use. The study uses a nationally representative sample of adolescents from the Monitoring the Future Survey (N = 2,465). The results support the central arguments from social structure social learning theory. First, the results show that social structure components have links with heroin use. Second, the results show that social learning theory mediates the effect of social structure measures on heroin use. The results are discussed.     

Potential Job Facilitation Benefits of “Water Cooler” Conversations: The Importance of Social Interactions in the Workplace

This study looked at the extent to which personality and cultural factors predicted participants’ perceptions of the importance private interactions played in the workplace. The 134 participants read a vignette (where a new employee socially interacted at low or high levels with co-workers) and completed the Big Five Inventory, Social Axioms Survey, and questions concerning expected workplace experiences. Results indicated employees who engaged in high levels of private interaction with co-workers were expected to be better liked, to receive better performance evaluations, were more likely to receive co-worker assistance, and were thought to be more likely chosen for future projects. However, the personality and social axiom variables studied did not significantly interact with social interaction to influence expectations of workplace outcomes.     

Beyond Numbers Versus Rights: Shifting the Parameters of Debate on Temporary Labour Migration

This paper seeks to move beyond what Martin and Ruhs described as the numbers versus rights equation in temporary labour migration programs. We do this by examining the ideology of temporary labour migration. This ideology has three key elements: temporariness, labour markets and rights. The paper describes how these concepts obscure key features of temporary labour migration programs. The argument is developed by examining points of contrast between current programs in place in the USA, Canada, Australia and the UK. The paper concludes by demonstrating how unmasking the power imbalances of this ideology will lead to new policy directions.     

Conceptualizing ‘social capital’ for health promotion in small local communities: a micro‐qualitative study

This paper reports on a micro‐qualitative case study of peoples' experiences of local community life in a south‐east English town. This material is used as the basis for a critical discussion of the suitability of Putnam's notion of social capital as a conceptual tool for the design and evaluation of ‘community strengthening’ policies and interventions. The study was motivated by a concern that too much debate about social capital has been conducted by academics and policy‐makers in a top‐down manner, with inadequate attention to the realities of life in the local communities that they refer to. Three‐hour semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 37 residents in two less affluent wards in our town of interest. Informants—half men and half women, and spread across the 15–75 age group—were encouraged to talk about their personal experiences of local community life. Interview findings are presented within the ‘norm’ categories of trust, neighbourliness and reciprocal help and support, and the ‘network’ categories of participation in informal networks, voluntary groupings and community activist groupings. Our case study points to a number of ways in which Putnam's concept needs to be refined if it is to inform ‘community strengthening’ policies and interventions in England. Far more notice needs to be taken of the role played by informal networks of friends and neighbours in the construction of local community life. Attention also needs to be given to the complex and shifting geographical spread of peoples' significant social networks. Putnam's conceptualization of cohesive local communities and his unitary notions of trust and local identity may also be unduly essentialist. In our particular communities of interest, they failed to capture the fluidity of local community norms and networks in a rapidly changing society. They also failed to do justice to the extent to which social distinctions—such as age, gender, ethnicity and housing tenure—shape and constrain the way in which people create, sustain and access social capital. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.