Eliciting and maintaining ruminative thought: the role of social-evaluative threat

This study tested whether a performance stressor characterized by social-evaluative threat (SET) elicits more rumination than a stressor without this explicit evaluative component and whether this difference persists minutes, hours, and days later. The mediating role of shame-related cognition and emotion (SRCE) was also examined. During a laboratory visit, 144 undergraduates (50% female) were randomly assigned to complete a speech stressor in a social-evaluative threat condition (SET; n = 86), in which an audience was present, or a nonexplicit social-evaluative threat condition (ne-SET; n = 58), in which they were alone in a room. Participants completed measures of stressor-related rumination 10 and 40 min posttask, later that night, and upon returning to the laboratory 3-5 days later. SRCE and other emotions experienced during the stressor (fear, anger, and sadness) were assessed immediately posttask. As hypothesized, the SET speech stressor elicited more rumination than the ne-SET speech stressor, and these differences persisted for 3-5 days. SRCE-but not other specific negative emotions or general emotional arousal-mediated the effect of stressor context on rumination. Stressors characterized by SET may be likely candidates for eliciting and maintaining ruminative thought immediately and also days later, potentially by eliciting shame-related emotions and cognitions.     

Should social savvy equal good spatial skills? The interaction of social skills with spatial perspective taking

Real-world perspective-taking problems frequently involve interactions among individuals, suggesting a potential social element to this seemingly spatial problem. Previous studies have suggested that the agency of the target in a perspective-taking task might influence reasoning. This hypothesis is tested directly by manipulating whether one takes the perspective of a potential agent or an object. The results were striking: Even though no overall differences in performance were observed with and without agents, performance was differentially associated with social skills. In particular, participants with better social skills were more accurate than less social peers when the target was a potential agent, whereas no such relationship was observed when the target was an object. These results suggest that bringing domain-specific investigations to bear on real-world problems requires understanding how that domain exists in the broader context of interacting skills and biases.     

Gender Dynamics in Mexican American Families: Connecting Mothers’, Fathers’, and Youths’ Experiences

Study goals were to examine the conditions under which congruent and incongruent patterns of parents’ division of household labor and gender role attitudes emerged, and the implications of these patterns for youth gender development. Questionnaire and phone diary data were collected from mothers, fathers, and youths from 236 Mexican American families living in the southwestern US. Preliminary cluster analysis identified three patterns: Traditional divisions of labor and traditional attitudes, egalitarian divisions of labor and egalitarian attitudes, and an incongruent pattern, with a traditional division of labor but egalitarian attitudes. MANOVAs, and follow-up, mixed- and between-group ANOVAs, revealed that these groups of families differed in parents’ time constraints, socioeconomic resources, and cultural orientations. Mothers in the congruent egalitarian group worked more hours and earned higher incomes as compared to mothers in the congruent traditional and incongruent groups, and the emergence of the incongruent group was grounded in within-family, interparental differences in work hours and incomes. Parents’ patterns of gendered practices and beliefs were linked to their youths’ housework participation, time with mothers versus fathers, and gender role attitudes. Youths in the congruent traditional group reported more traditional gender role attitudes than did youths in the congruent egalitarian and incongruent groups, and gender atypical housework participation and time with parents were only observed in the congruent egalitarian group. Findings demonstrate the utility of a within-family design to understand complex gendered phenomena, and highlight the multidimensional nature of gender and the importance of contextualizing the study of ethnic minorities.     

Development of Clinical Psychology and Mental Health Resources in Vietnam

In this paper, we discuss development of the Vietnam National University graduate Clinical Psychology Program, which has the goal of training both Vietnamese researchers who will develop and evaluate culturally appropriate mental health treatments, as well as Vietnamese clinicians who will implement and help disseminate these evidence-based treatments. We first review the background situation in Vietnam regarding mental health, and its infrastructure and training needs, and discuss the process through which the decision was made to develop a graduate program in clinical psychology as the best approach to address these needs. We then review the development process for the program and its current status, and our focus on the schools as a site for service provision and mental health task shifting. Finally, we outline future goals and plans for the program, and discuss the various challenges that the program has faced and our attempts to resolve them.     

Cue interactions in flavor preference learning: a configural analysis

Four experiments showed that the preference normally established to a neutral flavor cue that was paired with maltodextrin was attenuated when that cue was conditioned in compound with another flavor--overshadowing. Furthermore, two experiments showed that the preference for a neutral flavor conditioned as part of a compound was further attenuated if the other element in that compound was separately paired with the reinforcer--blocking. These results stand in contrast to a number of previous compound flavor preference conditioning experiments, which have not revealed reliable cue competition effects. These discrepant findings are discussed in terms of the effects of within-compound associations and a configural perspective on potentiation. Modeling of this configural perspective predicts that a compound of two separately trained cues will elicit a similar response to the individual cues themselves--absence of summation. Two experiments confirmed this prediction.     

Return Migrant or Diaspora: An Exploratory Study of New-Generation Chinese–Canadian Youth Working in Hong Kong

The circular movement of migrants between their homelands and adopted countries has problematized the previous linear understanding of return migration. However, the concept of circular migration tends to apply to migrants whose movement is enabled by their extensive pre-migration connections with their homelands. In this paper, we report findings of a study on a group of new-generation Chinese–Canadian youth working in Hong Kong. Although, like many return migrants, this group of young people had economic reasons for moving to Hong Kong (their parents' homeland), they do not position themselves as return migrants. Instead, they have kept a strong Canadian identity by maintaining unique friendship circles and perceiving Canada as a home to which they will one day return. We highlight in this paper some implications of their experiences for transnational migration studies.     

Spatial Skills and Self-Perceived Masculinity: Considering College Major STEM-ness,Directionality, and Gender

Sex Roles - The sex-role mediation hypothesis suggests that a masculine self-concept promotes male-typed cognition, including spatial skills. Support for the hypothesis is mixed, limited by small...     

Nostalgia and Temporal Life Satisfaction

Recent research has shown that nostalgia, an apparently past-oriented emotion, may render the present self more positive and promote a brighter outlook on the future. The current study examined whether experimentally induced nostalgia would impact the levels of and associations among past, present, and future life satisfaction. Among 250 university students (86 males and 164 females, aged 16–26 years), nostalgia was manipulated through the recollection of nostalgic (vs. ordinary) events. In support of our hypotheses, the results showed that nostalgic experiences not only led to a larger contrast between past life satisfaction versus present and future life satisfaction, but also weaker associations between past and future life satisfaction and between present and future life satisfaction. Overall, the findings suggest that nostalgic experiences can render more distinct judgements on temporal life satisfaction.