An age apart: the effects of intergenerational contact and stereotype threat on performance and intergroup bias

An experimental study examined the effect of intergenerational contact and stereotype threat on older people's cognitive performance, anxiety, intergroup bias, and identification. Participants completed a series of cognitive tasks under high or low stereotype threat (through comparison with younger people). In line with stereotype threat theory, threat resulted in worse performance. However, this did not occur if prior intergenerational contact had been more positive. This moderating effect of contact was mediated by test-related anxiety. In line with intergroup contact theory, more positive contact was associated with reduced prejudice and reduced ingroup identification. However this occurred in the high threat, but not low threat, condition. The findings suggest that positive intergenerational contact can reduce vulnerability to stereotype threat among older people.     

Cognitive appraisal and attributional correlates of depressive symptoms in children

This study examined differences in cognitive appraisal and causal attributions in response to a task among schoolchildren reporting high and low depressive symptomatology. From a sample of 361 fifth- and sixth- grade students, 72 children were classified as depressed or nondepressed on the basis of their scores on the Children's Depression Inventory. They were then presented with modified Picture Arrangement problems from the WISC- R and questioned about their performance. Pretask expectations, evaluations, and future expectations of performance for the self and that of same- aged peers were assessed, as well as causal explanations for solvable and unsolvable problems. Despite similar performance, the depressed group of children provided lower evaluations for themselves than for others on all three measures of self- appraisal, whereas the nondepressed group did not show this tendency. Further, the attribution results indicated that the two groups differed in their explanations for failure, with the depressed group emphasizing the importance of ability in failure and the nondepressed group emphasizing factors other than ability. Overall, the results provide support for the presence of negative cognitions and self- defeating attributional style among depressed relative to nondepressed children, as well as pointing to the importance of social comparison processes in depression.This research was supported by studentships to Nancy Meyer from the Manitoba Health Research Council and subsequentlv from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and by a grant to Dennis Dyck from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Councel of Canada. The research was done in partial fulfillment of the first author's master's degree in the Department of Psychology at the University of Manitoba.We would like to thank Rhea Brooks, April Machej, and Colleen Singbeil, for their assistance in the study; John Schallow, John Whitely, Lillian Esses, and Mike Thomas, for their helpful suggestions; and the teachers, administrators, and parents of Assiniboine South #3 School Division, for their cooperation and support.     

A step too far? Leader racism inhibits transgression credit

Prior research established that when in‐group leaders commit serious transgressions, such as breaking enforceable rules or engaging in bribery, people treat them leniently compared with similarly transgressive regular group members or out‐group leaders (‘transgression credit’). The present studies test a boundary condition of this phenomenon, specifically the hypothesis that transgression credit will be lost if a leader's action implies racist motivation. In study 1, in a corporate scenario, a transgressive in‐group leader did or did not express racism. In study 2, in a sports scenario, an in‐group or out‐group leader or member transgressed rules with or without a racist connotation. Both studies showed that in‐group transgressive leaders lost their transgression credit if their transgression included a racial connotation. Wider implications for constraining leaders' transgressions are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tough Love: The Normative Conflict Model and a Goal System Approach to Dissent Decisions

Most rebels have a cause, and the expression of internal criticism and dissent is vital for healthy civic and collective functioning. Here, we review the normative conflict model (NCM), which posits that social identities are key to understanding conformity and deviance in group contexts. The NCM hypothesizes that strongly identified group members are willing to articulate critical and dissenting opinions when they believe that doing so is in the interest of the collective. In this paper, we conceptually advance the NCM by exploring how responses to group norms can be understood from a goal system perspective, conceptualizing dissent decisions as often involving choices between conflicting goals. We review the evidence for this approach to dissent and outline a range of future directions.     

THE END OF NEO-LIBERALISM AND THE BEGINNINGS OF INTEGRAL ECONOMICS

A burgeoning policy shift from neo-liberal economics is underway, with leadership by presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). His platform positions stem in part from his negative experiences with neo-liberalism when he was Mayor of Cleveland more than 30 years ago. Although his response as Mayor was based on confrontation politics, examples of community-based economies built on collaborative planning, ownership, and management have since become more widely known. We can now show that the successful Grameen Bank and the Mondragon Cooperatives were constructed on principles consistent with Integral Science.     

Mood-congruent free recall bias in anxiety

The present study evaluated the status of mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals following incidental encoding of target words. In the first experiment, high trait anxiety individuals showed increased recall of threat-related information after an orienting task promoting lexical processing of target words. In a second experiment, both lexical and semantic orienting tasks were performed at study. In this experiment, anxious individuals displayed a mood-congruent recall bias only for target information processed at a lexical level. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Group transformation: How demonstrability promotes intra-group cooperation in social dilemmas

Intra-group cooperation in a social dilemma is increased after a group has discussed and reached a decision, especially if the dilemma is easily understood (‘demonstrable’). This paper examines how demonstrability affects the decision of a group that consists entirely of participants who are initially non-cooperative. Thirty-eight 6-person groups with unanimous prior preference for cooperation or non-cooperation discussed a prisoner’s dilemma before making a group decision. When demonstrability was low groups reflected the prior (either cooperative or non-cooperative) preferences of their members. When demonstrability was high we found that groups showed no effect of prior preference. Specifically, groups of prior non-cooperators made more cooperative group decisions and subsequently their members remained cooperative when asked to express preferences individually. The combined advantages of group process and high demonstrability for facilitating optimal cooperation are discussed.     

Rats place greater value on rewards produced by high effort: An animal analogue of the “effort justification” effect

The effort justification phenomenon, in which greater value is given to rewards that require more effort to obtain, is frequently explained in terms of cognitive dissonance (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959). Here, we employed a novel combination of operant and lick analysis techniques to show that rats place more value on a sucrose reward when it follows high effort than when the same reward follows low effort. This is the first demonstration of a direct analogue of the effort justification phenomenon in nonhuman animals. As the behavior of rats is normally considered in terms of relatively simple mechanisms, the current results question the need for complex cognitive accounts for the effort justification phenomenon (in rats or humans). As an alternative, we examine the possibility that high effort produces an aversive state that enhances reward value by a process of contrast.