The malleable meaning of subjective ease

People can generate the same thoughts or process the same information with different degrees of ease, and this subjective experience has implications for attitudes and social judgment. In prior research, it has generally been assumed that the experience of ease or fluency is interpreted by people as something good. In the two experiments reported here, the meaning or value of ease was directly manipulated, and the implications for evaluative judgments were explored. Across experiments, we replicated the traditional ease-of-retrieval effect (more thought-congruent attitudes when thoughts were easy rather than difficult to generate) when ease was described as positive, but we reversed this effect when ease was described as negative. These findings suggest that it is important to consider both the content of metacognition (e.g., "those thoughts were easy to generate") and the value associated with that content (e.g., "ease is good" or "ease is bad").     

Prejudice and attitudes of acculturation: perspectives of autochthonous and immigrants

This study is framed in a wider research on the acculturation process through a new acculturation model. The aim of this paper is to analyse the mutual prejudice between ethnic groups in contact and its relation to their preferred acculturation attitude. A questionnaire composed by various scales was given to four groups of people living in municipalities with high rate of African immigrants in Almería: Maghrebis, Sub-Saharans, Spaniards who evaluated the Maghreb out-group and Spaniards who responded on the Sub-Saharan out-group. The results obtained indicate a relation between prejudice and acculturation attitude, as the lowest scores in prejudice are hold in each group by people preferring integration , whilst the highest ones come from those who bow to exclusion/marginalisation.     

Emotional intelligence as predictor of mental, social, and physical health in university students

This study examined the association between emotional intelligence (EI), anxiety, depression, and mental, social, and physical health in university students. The sample was made up of 184 university students (38 men and 146 women). El was evaluated by the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (Salovey, Mayer, Goldman, Turvey, and Palfai, 1995), which evaluates the three dimensions (Attention, Clarity, and Mood Repair). Anxiety was evaluated with the Trait Anxiety Questionnaire (Spielberger, Gorsuch, Lushene, Vagg, and Jacobs, 1983) and depression with the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, Rush, Shaw, and Emery, 1979). Mental, social, and physical health were evaluated with the SF-12 Health Survey (Ware, Kosinski, and Keller, 1996). Results showed that high Emotional Attention was positively and significantly related to high anxiety, depression, and to low levels of Role Emotional, Social Functioning, and Mental Health. However, high levels of emotional Clarity and Mood Repair were related to low levels of anxiety and depression, high Role Physical, Social Functioning, Mental Health, Vitality, and General Health. This study confirmed the predictive value of Attention, Clarity and Mood Repair regarding the levels of anxiety, depression, and areas related to mental, social, and physical health in university students.     

Memory failures appraisal in younger and older adults: role of individual difference and event outcome variables

The authors examined the role of individual difference and event outcome variables in younger and older adults' memory failures appraisal. Participants read vignettes that described fictitious younger characters (in their 20s-30s) or older characters (in their 60s-70s) who had experienced a minor or severe consequence of their forgetfulness. The authors solicited attribution ratings on the potential causes of the forgetfulness and memory opinion ratings. Younger and older adults' ratings were largely similar, although age differences occurred on the effort and luck attribution scales. The consequences of the forgetting had a sizable impact on both the attribution and memory opinion ratings. Individual differences in self-reported memory had a relatively small impact on causal attribution and memory opinion ratings. These results suggested that people weigh their judgments of fictitious forgetful characters against event outcomes more so than ageist beliefs that portray a negative image of cognitive competence in later life.     

Pragmatism and Developmentalism in Brazilian Educational Thought in the 1950s/1960

This article proposes to analyse some aspects of the appropriation of New School thinking in Brazil, particularly Deweyan pragmatism, in the 1950s and 1960s. The analysis is based on the assumption that the developmentalist ideology that punctuated the debate on the economic, political and social restructuring of the country in these two decades constituted fertile ground for the return and expansion of pragmatist thinking amongst Brazilian educators, articulating itself, sometimes in contradictory ways, with this ideology. The focus of the analysis will be on the writings of the group of educators which circulated around the figure of Anísio Teixeira, at the time director of the National Institute for Pedagogic Studies (INEP), an organ linked to the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC), which set itself the task of producing research that would support public policy in the field of education, as well as constituting itself as a center for teacher education and the stimulus and development of innovative experiences in the public school system. The appropriation of Deweyan pragmatism, in this context, had a triple perspective: pragmatism as scientific method, implying a specific conception of science, particularly the social sciences, with emphasis on the application of scientific knowledge in the solution of practical problems; as a way of democratic life; and as a synonym for experimentalism, in the sphere of schooling.     

Activation and Use of Racial Stereotypes in Personnel Decisions: A Test of Two Theories1

This research tested contrasting predictions about activation and use of racial stereotypes in personnel decisions. Devine's (1989) theory' holds that stereotyped inferences should be apparent when decisions are time constrained and judges have little opportunity to suppress automatically activated stereotypes. Gilbert & Hixon's (1991) busy-ness model implies that stereotypes are unlikely to be activated and to influence the decisions of judges unless these decisions are not time-constrained. Participants were allowed 90 s or 180 s to evaluate Black and White candidates for football managerial positions requiring aggressiveness (linebacker coach) or cognitive prowess (general manager). Only when decisions were not time constrained did participants show stereotyped judgments by favoring Whites for the general manager's position and overranking Blacks for linebacker coach. This pattern was consistent with Gilbert & Hixon's busy-ness model and contrary to Devine's theory of automatically activated stereotypes.     

Evaluation from the inside: Participatory evaluation of agricultural research in the Philippines

This paper discusses the experience of a Philippines-based agricultural research program, where participatory evaluation is embedded in a broader, user-centered participatory research approach. Three case projects illustrate and analyze participatory evaluation of agricultural research in a developing country context. Different evaluation types are identified and their use in different phases of the research process is discussed. These field experiences show how “evaluation from the inside” can contribute to effective research planning and implementation, particularly in enhancing sensitivity to user needs and situations. network for user participatory rootcrop R&D sponsored by the International Potato Center in Asia. Under his leadership, UPWARD has increasingly sought to build participatory monitoring and evaluation into the network’s research and development activities. He has a Ph.D. in communication and innovation studies from Wageningen Agricultural University in The Netherlands. Prior joining UPWARD, Campilan worked with the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction and the Philippine Root Crop Research and Training Center. His research interests include communication of innovations, institutional linkage development, participatory research methods and tools, and strengthening local knowledge systems. From 1991 until 1997 he was coordinator of Users’ Perspectives With Agricultural Research and Development (UPWARD) network. He was previously based in Latin America. His main research interests include the socioeconomic and cultural aspects of crop genetic diversity conservation and utilization involving ethnobotanical studies, on-farm conservation, and work on seed systems. He is also interested in research on rural enterprise development. He has been actively involved in capacity building initiatives among national agricultural researchers, especially in participatory research methods and planning techniques. He can be contacted CIP-ESEAP, Kebun Percobaan Muara, Jalan Raya Ciapus, Bogor 16610, Indonesia, fax (62 251) 316 264, e-mail: G.Prain@cgiar.org. Her major responsibilities include facilitating the network’s activities on sustainable crop management R&D and on capacity building in participatory approaches and methods. At the UPWARD coordinating office, she is in charge of training, publications, and information management. She has extensive training and hands on experience in the use of participatory methods and tools, particularly through a Philippines project on soil resource management for sweetpotato production. She has an MSc in family resource management and development communication from the University of the Philippines at Los Ba?os. Her research interests include sustainable crop management, strengthening local R&D capacity, and field testing participatory methods and tools.     

Innovative Moments as Developmental Change Levels: A Case Study on Meaning Integration in the Treatment of Depression

Innovative moments are alternative meanings to the problems expressed by clients and are organized into three levels. This study analyzes if these levels are not only change markers related to symptomatology outcomes, but also gradual steps in meaning development. A thematic analysis was carried out in a case of depression treated with narrative therapy. Results revealed three themes that evolved from level 1 to level 3. Levels 1 and 2 corresponded to one specific theme and almost all level 3 integrated different themes (polythematic). Level 3 innovative moments might be an integrative bridge allowing the construction of a more adaptive meaning framework.     

Hippocampal formation lesions impair performance in an odor-odor association task independently of spatial context

The rodent hippocampal system is known to play an important role in memory. Evidence that this role is not limited to spatial memory has come from studies using a variety of non-spatial memory tasks. One example is the social transmission of food preference paradigm, a task in which rats learn an odor-odor association with no explicit spatial memory component. However, because training and testing in this task typically take place in the same environment, it is possible that memory for the spatial context in which odors are experienced during training is critical to subsequent retention performance. If this is the case, it might be expected that lesions of the hippocampal system would impair memory performance by disrupting the establishment of a representation of the training environment. We addressed this issue by training rats in one spatial context and then testing them either in the same or a different spatial context. Normal control rats performed equally well when tested in an environment that was the same or different from that used during training, and the retention impairment exhibited by rats with hippocampus plus subiculum lesions was equivalent in the two test environments. These results support the view that the hippocampal system is necessary for the flexible expression of nonspatial memories even when the spatial context in which the memory is acquired is not critical to retrieval.