Memory for faces: Are caricatures better than photographs?

Because photographs capture an individual at a moment in time, they contain fleeting features as well as more stable ones. Caricature line drawings, however, include stable features and emphasize distinctive ones. As such, caricatures are closer to schematic memory representations than are photographs. Three experiments using faces of public figures test the hypothesis that caricatures yield better performance than do photographs. Contrary to hypothesis, photographs lead to better performance than do line-drawing caricatures in three different tasks: name recall, face recognition, and name-face verification reaction time. Photographs are also rated as more characteristic or representative of their targets than are line-drawing caricatures.     

Feeling Economically Dependent on One's Job: Its Origins and Functions With Regard to Worker Well-Being

The origins and functions of feeling economically dependent on one's job were examined among a sample of 168 hospital workers. As predicted, economic dependency was found to be greater the more dependents workers have, the less money they earn from their jobs, the less other income they have in their family units, the more they adhere to an instrumental work orientation, and the less mobile they perceive themselves to be. Also as predicted, it was found that economic dependency fully mediated the relationship between 4 of the 5 antecedents (number of dependents, other income, instrumental values, and perceived mobility) and the subjective well-being of workers. Job-related income was observed to have both direct and indirect effects. Further, the relationship between economic dependency and subjective well-being was negative. These latter findings are discussed and implications drawn for the future use of the economic dependency construct.     

Developmental trends in the use of perceptual and conceptual attributes in grouping,clustering, and retrieval

In Experiment I, two tasks were administered to children aged 4, 5, and 9 in order to investigate preference for perceptual versus conceptual attributes in grouping of common objects, and in various aspects of memory. The grouping task revealed a clear chronological progression: color and form determined the youngest children's grouping about equally; form dominated in the 5-year-olds; and most of the oldest children grouped primarily by conceptual attributes. In the memory task, three lists—one organized by color, one by form, one by superordinate category—were presented for free, followed by cued recall. Clustering showed the developmental shift from color to form to concept, while cued recall showed conceptual superiority at all ages. Experiment II replicated the memory task, yielding the same results. The results were discussed in terms of the relative abstractness and predictability of conceptual versus perceptual attributes and the difficulty of abstraction in encoding and the function of predictability in retrieval.     

Parenting Self‐Construals of Mothers With a Serious Mental Illness: Efficacy,Burden, and Personal Growth1

We explored parenting self‐construals among mothers with serious mental illness (n= 379). Mothers reported feeling moderately positively about themselves as parents, more efficacious than inefficacious, more positive than negative, more valued than disvalued; but also at least somewhat restricted and burdened by motherhood. Factor analyses revealed 3 parenting self‐construal factors: efficacious, burdened, and parenting as a personal growth experience. In hierarchical regression analyses, parenting self‐construal factors significantly added to prediction of parenting behaviors and attitudes (nurturance, explanatory parenting style, and parenting stress), once demographic, mental health history, and current social context variables (support, stress, and current mental health) were taken into account. Maternal parenting self‐efficacy increased (while self‐construal of parenting as a burden decreased) positive parenting style.     

Temporal changes in the affective experience of new fathers and their spouses

Our aim was to study temporal changes in fathers' affective experience during the first year of parenthood. For comparison, data also were collected from their spouses. Fifty‐five Israeli couples comprised the initial sample, and both partners were interviewed during the prepartum period and at 3, 6, and 12 months' postpartum. Measures of emotionality, positive affect, negative affect, and mood regarding self, infant, and spouse/marriage were derived by finely coding parents' answers to interview questions. Analyses show that, for fathers and mothers, time effects were most substantial between the prepartum period and 3 months postpartum, and most of the changes were in a positive direction. Fathers and mothers showed continuity in positive affect and in negative affect, respectively. Overall, the sample experienced heightened positive affect and more positive moods after the birth of their infant than prior to it.     

Expecting to Work,Fearing Homelessness: The Possible Selves of Low‐Income Mothers1

We explored the content of possible selves of low‐income mothers and the strategies they have to work on their possible selves. Positive expected possible selves focus on getting a job, making ends meet, and caregiving. Negative to‐be‐avoided possible selves focus on failing to make ends meet, losing (or not getting) jobs, and problems with mental health. Immediate social context—rather than demographic characteristics or global work–family variables—was associated with content of possible selves. Controlling for demographic and work–family variables, job‐focused possible selves (and strategies to attain them) were more salient; and caregiving and mental‐health‐related possible selves were less salient to mothers in job‐training programs vs. welfare offices.     

The Central Role of Group-Based Hatred as an Emotional Antecedent of Political Intolerance: Evidence from Israel

In recent years, political scientists have shifted the focus of explaining political phenomena from the purely cognitive perspective to an integrated emotion-cognition one. Yet most studies which examine antecedents of political intolerance ignore the potential role played by "gut feelings" or group-based negative emotions in endorsing those attitudes. Moreover, even the few studies that deal with emotions and intolerance concentrate exclusively on the role of groups of emotions (positive vs. negative, dispositional vs. surveillance) or on basic emotions (anger or fear) and ignore the potential influence of more complex discrete emotions like hatred on political intolerance. Hence, the main goal of this study was to create a deeper understanding regarding the role of discrete negative emotions in increasing political intolerance among different groups of individuals in different contexts. In order to do so, the relations between political intolerance and three group-based negative emotions (hatred, anger, and fear) were tested by means of four large-scale nationwide surveys. Within the surveys, various intolerance measurement methods were used in various contexts (wartime vs. no-war/routine periods) and among individuals with different levels of political sophistication. Results, obtained via multiple regression analysis and structural equation modeling, show that: (1) Group-based hatred is the most important antecedent of political intolerance even when controlling for important intolerance inducers such as perceived threat. (2) Other group-based negative emotions like anger or fear influence political intolerance wholly through the mediation of hatred or perceived threat. (3) The role of group-based hatred in inducing political intolerance is more substantial in the face of heightened existential threat and among unsophisticated individuals than among sophisticated ones.     

Between the face and the voice: Bakhtin meets Levinas

The essay draws on a little-known fragment from M.M. Bakhtin’s Draft Exercise Notebooks of 1943 to highlight both the affinities and the divergences of the respective philosophical projects of Bakhtin and Emmanuel Levinas. The first part of the discussion follows their parallel itineraries through several points of convergence, from a sense of profound philosophical disenchantment to a conception of the ethical subject as living on borderlines, facing the other, irremediably vulnerable and infinitely responsible. The second part focuses on the “dialogic impasse” and its attempted resolution through gestures of triangulation, evidenced in Levinas’s “third” and Bakhtin’s “superaddresee.” The third part of the discussion, beginning with Bakhtin’s and Levinas’s different readings of Dostoevsky, focuses on the ultimate divergence of their philosophical positions, and suggests that Bakhtin’s discursive conception of subjectivity may point the direction towards a more viable thinking of a post-metaphysical ethics.

Identity-based motivation and health

People do not always take action to promote health, engaging instead in unhealthy habits and reporting fatalism about health. One important mechanism underlying these patterns involves identity-based motivation (D. Oyserman, 2007), the process by which content of social identities influences beliefs about in-group goals and strategies. Seven studies show the effect of identity-based motivation on health. Racial-ethnic minority participants view health promotion behaviors as White middle class and unhealthy behaviors as in-group defining (Studies 1 and 2). Priming race-ethnicity (and low socioeconomic status) increases health fatalism and reduces access to health knowledge (Studies 3 and 4). Perceived efficacy of health-promoting activities is undermined when racial-ethnic minority participants who identify unhealthy behavior as in-group defining are asked to consider their similarities to (middle-class) Whites (Studies 5-7).