A processing fluency explanation of bias against migrants

This research investigated whether people are biased against migrants partly because they find migrants more difficult to cognitively process than nonmigrants. In Study 1, 181 undergraduate students evaluated migrant and nonmigrant members of two minimal groups and reported the difficulty that they experienced in thinking about each type of target. Participants rated migrants less positively than nonmigrants, and difficulty ratings partially mediated this effect. Study 2 (N = 191) replicated these findings and demonstrated similar findings for individuals who had been excluded from minimal groups. This evidence implies that migrant bias can be explained partly in terms of the difficulty that people have in processing information about migrants, and that it is related to migrants’ exclusion from their original group.     

Reducing prejudice via direct and extended cross-group friendship

One of the most exciting developments in intergroup contact theory is the idea that a certain type of contact, cross-group friendship, might be particularly effective at reducing prejudice. In this chapter we review research on two types of cross-group friendship. Direct cross-group friendship refers to friendships that develop between members of different groups. Extended cross-group friendship, on the other hand, refers to vicarious experience of cross-group friendship, the mere knowledge that other ingroup members have cross-group friends. We consider the relationship between both types of cross-group friendship and prejudice and the processes that mediate and moderate these relationships. The research highlights the respective strengths and weaknesses of direct and extended cross-group friendship and illustrates how they might be practically combined in efforts to improve intergroup relations.     

Inter-individual variability of forces and modular muscle coordination in cycling: A study on untrained subjects

The aim of this study was to investigate the muscle coordination underlying pedaling in untrained subjects by using the muscle synergies paradigm, and to connect it with the inter-individual variability of EMG patterns and applied forces. Nine subjects performed a pedaling exercise on a cycle-simulator. Applied forces were recorded by means of instrumented pedals able to measure two force components. EMG signals were recorded from eight muscles of the dominant leg, and Nonnegative Matrix Factorization was applied to extract muscle synergy vectors W and time-varying activation coefficients H. Inter-individual variability was assessed for EMG patterns, force profiles, and H. Four modules were sufficient to reconstruct the muscle activation repertoire for all the subjects (variance accounted for >90% for each muscle). These modules were found to be highly similar between subjects in terms of W (mean r = .89), while most of the variability in force profiles and EMG patterns was reflected, in the muscle synergy structure, in the variability of H. These four modules have a functional interpretation when related to force distribution along the pedaling cycle, and the structure of W is shared with that present in human walking, suggesting the existence of a modular motor control in humans.     

Memory for symmetry and perceptual binding in patients with schizophrenia

The present study investigated the use of perceptual binding processes in schizophrenic (SC) patients and matched healthy controls, by examining their performance on the recall of symmetrical (vertical, horizontal and diagonal) and asymmetrical patterns varying in length between 2 and 9 items. The results showed that, although SC patients were less accurate than controls in all conditions, both groups recalled symmetrical patterns better than asymmetrical ones. The impairment of SC patients was magnified with supra-span symmetrical arrays, and they were more likely to reproduce symmetrical patterns as asymmetrical, particularly at medium and high length levels. Hierarchical regression analyses further indicated that the between-group differences in the recall of supra-span vertical and horizontal arrays, which require a greater involvement of visual pattern processes, remained significant after removing the variance associated with performance on asymmetrical patterns, which primarily reflects intrafigural spatial processes. It is proposed that schizophrenia may be associated with a specific deficit in the formation and retrieval of the global visual images of studied patterns and in the use of the on-line information about the type of symmetry being tested to guide retrieval processes.     

Laterality effects in the spinning dancer illusion: The viewing‐from‐above bias is only part of the story

The ‘silhouette illusion’, representing the silhouette of a female dancer pirouetting about her vertical axis, is a bistable stimulus created by Japanese web designer Nobuyuki Kayahara. Although the dancer can be perceived as spinning either clockwise or counterclockwise, the clockwise rotation is usually preferred. Troje and McAdam (i‐Perception, 2010, 1, 143) showed that this clockwise bias can be attributed to the tendency to assume a viewpoint from above rather than from below, given that the dancer is portrayed from a vantage point that is not perpendicular to the axis of rotation. Here, we tested whether another possible factor contributing to the observers’ interpretation of this bistable stimulus might be the tendency to perceive movements of the right rather than the left foot. We confirmed both the viewing‐from‐above bias and our hypothesis. The bias to perceive movements of the right leg might be a generalization to lower limbs of a perceptual frequency effect already observed for upper limbs. Such a perceptual and attentional bias towards the right hand/foot could account for the greater ability to predict the outcome of sport actions when observing right‐ rather than left‐limbed movements, and thus the left‐handers' and left‐footers' advantage observed in a variety of interactive sports.     

A confirmatory study of the relations between workplace sexism,sense of belonging,mental health,and job satisfaction among women in male‐dominated industries

The present study investigated the mediating role of sense of belonging in the relations between workplace sexism and (a) mental health and (b) job satisfaction. Participants were 190 women from a large Australian trade union that represented mainly male‐dominated jobs. They completed an online survey that contained measures of sexism, sense of belonging in the industry, mental health, and job satisfaction. As predicted, sense of belonging mediated the associations between organizational sexism and both mental health and job satisfaction. In addition, sense of belonging mediated the association between interpersonal sexism and mental health. These results are discussed in relation to strategies for supporting women and mitigating the effects of sexism in male‐dominated workplaces. The Open Science Framework webpage for this project is at: https://osf.io/a3yqc/ .     

De Finetti coherence and the product law for independent events

Synthese - In an earlier paper the present author proved that de Finetti coherence is preserved under taking products of coherent books on two finite sets of independent events. Conversely, in this...