What does "being American" mean? A comparison of Asian American and European American young adults

Two studies found that the meaning of "being American" differs for Asian Americans and European Americans. In Study 1, Hmong and European American undergraduates described what "being American" meant to them. In Study 2, Chinese American and European American undergraduates described what "American culture" meant to them. Responses were coded for references to cultural exposure, customs/traditional behavior, ethnic diversity, political ideology, and patriotism. Across both studies, Asian Americans referred to American customs and traditional behavior more than European Americans. European Americans referred to patriotism more than Hmong (in Study 1) and to ethnic diversity more than Chinese Americans (in Study 2). The authors suggest that these differences reflect the distinct statuses, concerns, and experiences of Asian Americans and European Americans.     

Modification of the human blink reflex by transient and sustained features of acoustic prestimulation

The effects of acoustic stimuli whose onsets and durations were controlled to vary their transient and sustained features on the size of a subsequently elicited blink reflex were examined in humans. Prestimuli both with and without transient features inhibited the reflex when they preceded the eliciting stimulus by brief lead intervals, showing that acoustic transients are sufficient, but not necessary, for reflex inhibition. Inhibition evoked by transient and sustained stimulus features showed partial summation, and inhibition evoked by stimuli with only transient and with transient and sustained features showed similar decay functions with increasing lead intervals. Blink augmentation was found at longer lead intervals early but not late in a session, and was more evident in women than men. Prestimuli with only transient features were more effective than those with both transient and sustained features, showing that sustained stimulus energy at the time of reflex elicitation is not only not necessary for blink augmentation, but also diminishes it.     

Be mindful in love: Exploring the interpersonal effects of spouse mindfulness on employee work and family outcomes

Mindfulness has received increasing attention from scholars and practitioners, and considerable research has demonstrated the intrapersonal effects of mindfulness at work or at home. Research to date, however, has overlooked potential interpersonal effects of mindfulness across the work and family domains. Drawing on the spillover-crossover model and the mindfulness literature, we investigate the effects of spouse mindfulness at home on employee work and family outcomes. We test our model using dyadic experience-sampling data collected from 125 focal employees and their spouses over 10 consecutive workdays. The results indicated that, at the within-person level, spouse mindfulness at home was positively associated with employee authentic emotional sharing at home, which, in turn, was positively associated with employee positive effect at home but negatively associated with employee negative affect at home. The results also indicated that spouse mindfulness at home had a positive indirect effect on family satisfaction at home and work engagement during the next morning through enhancing employee authentic emotional sharing at home. We discuss the implications of these findings and directions for the mindfulness research.     

The cognitive foundations of cultural stability and diversity

The existence and diversity of human cultures are made possible by our species-specific cognitive capacities. But how? Do cultures emerge and diverge as a result of the deployment, over generations and in different populations, of general abilities to learn, imitate and communicate? What role if any do domain-specific evolved cognitive abilities play in the emergence and evolution of cultures? These questions have been approached from different vantage points in different disciplines. Here we present a view that is currently developing out of the converging work of developmental psychologists, evolutionary psychologists and cognitive anthropologists.     

Journal reviews

Abstract

This article addresses the parental alienation syndrome, which is the process by which one parent overtly or covertly speaks or acts in a derogatory manner to or about the other parent during or subsequent to a divorce proceeding, in an attempt to alienate the child or children from that other parent.     

Twinning behaviour of TWIP steel studied by Taylor factor analysis

The twinning behaviour of Twinning-induced plasticity (TWIP) steel has been studied by analysing the grain orientation and the Taylor factor, based on microstructural and electron backscatter diffraction device observations. It is demonstrated that the Taylor factor can give an important guideline for determining the deformation mode of TWIP steel. The higher the Taylor factor, the easier the formation of twins and thus a tendency for the deformation mode to be mechanical twinning, while a low Taylor factor corresponds to a slip deformation mode. When the loading temperature is relatively low, the high Taylor factor regions increase and thus deformation twinning becomes easier while slip becomes more difficult, leading to increased tensile stress and decreased elongation.     

Wheel chairs and arm chairs: A novel experimental design for the emotional Stroop effect

The emotional Stroop effect demonstrates that people are slower to name the ink colour of emotionally charged words than that of neutral words. Attributing this slowdown to emotionality or threat requires that the emotion and neutral words presented are equal on all extraneous variables. However, it is impossible in principle to match the two types of words on all conceivable variables. To address the problem, we presented the same set of words, polarised to be negative in one condition and neutral in another by using appropriate prime words that produced the desired valence through idiomatic two-word expressions. Across two studies, participants took longer to name the colour of the same words when they were rendered negative than when they were rendered neutral. This difference reflects a true emotional Stroop effect given the control provided for all potentially confounding variables tied to the target stimuli. The new procedure also enables researchers to calculate item-specific emotional Stroop effects for the first time.     

Paths to Learning Ten-Structured Understandings of Teen Sums: Addition Solution Methods of Japanese Grade 1 Students

A group of 64 Israeli twelfth-grade students of two different ethnic backgrounds participated in an experiment exploring the effects of argumentative design and social identity on the learning of a charged, ethnicity-related historical controversy. Students were divided into two learning conditions: an argumentative-disciplinary condition and a conventional textbook-based control condition. Students wrote short essays about Israel's “Melting Pot” policy of immigration absorption, prior to and after evaluation of historical sources and discussion. In the argumentative-disciplinary condition the final argumentative level of writing and the frequencies of stand and plot change were higher than in the control essays. As for confirmation bias, primary plot, stand, and argumentative level of pre-essays predicted final outcomes in the conventional textbook-based learning condition; no such relation existed in the argumentative-disciplinary condition. Narratives from the different ethnic groups differed in the frequency, direction, and degree of change, all toward improved in-group image. The design decisions toward the facilitation of argumentative activity seemed to facilitate narrative change, while social identity needs seemed to motivate it.     

Self-consciousness,role discrepancy,and depressive affect

Abstract

Two studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that depressive affect is a joint function of private self-consciousness and the extent to which an individual's self-concept is discrepant from the requirements of a significant role. In the first study, the role of college student was empirically defined using a technique developed by Burke and Tully (1977). As predicted, the discrepancy between this role definition and subjects' self-ratings was a more significant predictor of depressive affect among high than low private self-conscious individuals. In the second study, measurements were taken at two time periods that were spaced six weeks apart. In a replication of the results of Study 1, the discrepancy between the role definition and subjects' self-ratings was a more significant predictor of depressive affect at Time 1 among high than low self-conscious individuals. In addition, discrepancy at Time 1 was a significant predictor of depression at Time 2 among high but not low self-conscious individuals. On the other hand, depression at Time 1 was unrelated to discrepancy at Time 2 among high self-conscious subjects. On the basis of these results, it is concluded that high private self-consciousness combined with role-identity discrepancy is associated with increased risk of depression. Finally, additional analyses suggested that depression may itself function to increase subsequent self-consciousness.