Women's reactions to ingroup members who protest discriminatory treatment: The importance of beliefs about inequality and response appropriateness

Our goal was to identify factors that shape women's responses to ingroup members who protest gender discrimination. We predicted and found that women who perceived gender discrimination as pervasive regarded a protest response as being more appropriate than a no protest response and expressed greater liking and less anger towards a female lawyer who protested rather than did not protest an unfair promotion decision. Further, beliefs about the appropriateness of the response to discrimination contributed to evaluations of the protesting lawyer. Perceptions that the complaint was an appropriate response to the promotion decision led to more positive evaluations of an ingroup discrimination protester. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Right hand presence modulates shifts of exogenous visuospatial attention in near perihand space

To investigate attentional shifting in perihand space, we measured performance on a covert visual orienting task under different hand positions. Participants discriminated visual shapes presented on a screen and responded using footpedals placed under their right foot. With the right hand positioned by the right side of the screen, mean cueing effects were significantly greater for targets presented on the right compared to the left side, at the shortest stimulus onset asynchrony. The right hand still affected attention when the left foot was used to respond and when the right hand was crossed over the midline, indicating that this effect is not restricted to the right hemifield and cannot be accounted for by greater stimulus–response compatibility with the right (responding) foot. These experiments provide preliminary evidence that the presence of the right hand can modulate shifts of visual attention but emphasise the importance of stimulus–response compatibility effects in such investigations.     

Effects of COMT genotype on behavioral symptomatology in the 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome.

The 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome (DiGeorge/velocardiofacial syndrome) is associated with elevated rates of psychosis, and is also characterized by severe attentional difficulties and executive dysfunction. Behavioral manifestations of this syndrome could result from haploinsufficiency of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene, located within the 22q11 region. The goal of the present study was to examine COMT genotype in relation to behavioral symptomatology in this syndrome. Val158/108Met was genotyped in 38 patients (16 Met/-, 22 Val/-) with confirmed 22q11.2 deletions who had received the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) as part of a comprehensive evaluation. Results indicated that the Val genotype was associated with significantly greater internalizing and externalizing behavioral symptomatology in children with 22q11.2 deletions. Val allele status was associated with a greater-than-four-fold increase in risk for clinically significant behavior problems in children with this syndrome. These data are consistent with previous findings of increased psychopathology associated with the Val genotype in normal individuals and suggest that a functional genetic polymorphism in the 22q11 region may influence behavior in individuals with COMT haploinsufficiency.     

Defensive Responding on the MMPI-2 in Pre-Surgical Candidates

The MMPI-2 is frequently used for a variety of pre-surgical evaluations that can have life changing consequences for the patient being examined. While it intuitively makes sense that a proportion of examinees will attempt to downplay distress in order to avoid any perceived questions about their surgical candidacy, this hypothesis has received scant research attention. This study cluster analyzed the MMPI-2 L, F, & K validity scales for 890 pre-surgical candidates. Depending on the standard utilized, between one-third and two-thirds of our sample displayed some degree of defensive responding. These results suggest that traditional markers of test validity may need to be adjusted in populations with high base rates for defensiveness. The difficulty in ascribing personality characteristics based on validity scale scores and directions for further research are also discussed.     

Meanings of Education for University Students: Academic Motivation and Personal Values as Predictors

We conducted two studies to determine the meanings that undergraduate students ascribe to their education and how these meanings relate to relevant psychological constructs: academic motivation and values. Ten meanings emerged: career preparation, independence, finding direction for the future, learning, self-development, taking the next step, making social connections, changing the world, stress, and escape. Support was found for many of the predicted relationships. For example, enjoyment motivation positively predicted all of the meanings, except taking the next step, stress, and escape. Also as expected, the values of intellectualism and academic achievement positively predicted learning, self-development, and changing the world. However, contrary to expectations, valuing physical development also emerged as a significant predictor of several of the meanings of education.     

Three kinds of rhymes: An ERP study

In a simple prime-target visual rhyming paradigm, pairs of words, nonwords, and single letters elicited similar event-related potential (ERP) rhyming effects in young adults. Within each condition, primes elicited contingent negative variation (CNV) while nonrhyming targets elicited more negative waveforms than rhyming targets within the 320-500ms (N400/N450) time window. The target rhyming effect, apparently primarily an index of phonological processing, was similar across conditions but tended to be smaller in mean amplitude for letters. One of the first reports of such a letter rhyming effect in the ERP literature, these findings could be important developmentally because letter rhyme tasks simultaneously index the two best predictors of ease of learning to read: letter name knowledge and phonological awareness.     

Feminist Consciousness Among Russians and Americans

Most empirical research on feminist consciousness has been conducted with North American women. In this study we examined feminist consciousness and attitudes toward women's issues among Russian and American women and men. Survey data from undergraduate students provide evidence of both cross-cultural and gender-related differences. Women scored higher than men on 4 of the 5 aspects of feminist consciousness measured in this study. American students scored higher on three aspects of feminist consciousness; however, Russian students were higher on sensitivity to sexism. Data concerning attitudes toward specific women's issues are also presented. Findings suggest that judgments about feminist consciousness based solely on these attitudes could lead to misconceptions about levels of feminist consciousness across cultures.     

A Relational Approach to Career Counseling: Theoretical Integration and Practical Application

This article reviews the current status of career theory in practice and presents a theoretical overview of relational theory and its logical extension to the career domain. Despite the emergence of literature regarding the interconnectedness of career progress and the quality of relationships in one's life (e.g., D. L. Blustein, 2001; D. L. Blustein, M. S. Prezioso, & D. E. P. Schultheiss, 1995; D. E. P. Schultheiss, H. M. Kress, A. J. Manzi, & J. M. Glasscock, 2001), counseling practice is limited by the absence of a meaningful approach to intervene in clients' relational and career worlds. The relational career counseling approach moves counseling toward a contextually based relational perspective to facilitating career progress. This approach is illustrated with a case example.     

Hiding and finding: The relationship between visual concealment and visual search

As an initial step toward developing a theory of visual concealment, we assessed whether people would use factors known to influence visual search difficulty when the degree of concealment of objects among distractors was varied. In Experiment 1, participants arranged search objects (shapes, emotional faces, and graphemes) to create displays in which the targets were in plain sight but were either easy or hard to find. Analyses of easy and hard displays created during Experiment 1 revealed that the participants reliably used factors known to influence search difficulty (e.g., eccentricity, target—distractor similarity, presence/absence of a feature) to vary the difficulty of search across displays. In Experiment 2, a new participant group searched for the targets in the displays created by the participants in Experiment 1. Results indicated that search was more difficult in the hard than in the easy condition. In Experiments 3 and 4, participants used presence versus absence of a feature to vary search difficulty with several novel stimulus sets. Taken together, the results reveal a close link between the factors that govern concealment and the factors known to influence search difficulty, suggesting that a visual search theory can be extended to form the basis of a theory of visual concealment.