Exposure to intergroup conspiracy theories promotes prejudice which spreads across groups

This research experimentally examined the effects of exposure to intergroup conspiracy theories on prejudice and discrimination. Study 1 (N = 166) demonstrated that exposure to conspiracy theories concerning immigrants to Britain from the European Union (vs. anti-conspiracy material or a control) exacerbated prejudice towards this group. Study 2 (N = 173) found the same effect in a different intergroup context – exposure to conspiracy theories about Jewish people (vs. anti-conspiracy material or a control) increased prejudice towards this group and reduced participants’ willingness to vote for a Jewish political candidate. Finally, Study 3 (N = 114) demonstrated that exposure to conspiracy theories about Jewish people not only increased prejudice towards this group but was indirectly associated with increased prejudice towards a number of secondary outgroups (e.g., Asians, Arabs, Americans, Irish, Australians). The current research suggests that conspiracy theories may have potentially damaging and widespread consequences for intergroup relations.     

Reducing risky behavior with habit reversal: A review of behavioral strategies to reduce habitual hand-to-head behavior

Habit reversal training (HRT) has been a mainstay of behavior analysts' repertoire for nearly the last 50 years. HRT has been effective in treating a host of repetitive behavior problems. In the face of the current coronavirus pandemic, HRT has practical public health importance as a possible intervention for reducing hand-to-head behaviors that increase the risk of viral infection. The current paper provides a brief review of HRT for hand-to-head habits that is designed for a broad audience and concludes with practical suggestions, based on HRT, for reducing face-touching behaviors.     

Narrative access and production in preschoolers' false belief reasoning

False belief tests seem to show the apparent acquisition at around age 4 of an ability to understand the representational status of mind. In this article, preschoolers' performance on a false belief task was manipulated in terms of their grasp of its narrative base. Five experiments are reported in which 3-year-olds were helped to become familiar with the events that comprise the false belief procedure by going through a picture book version of the task, before being asked to judge the protagonist's mental state. In Experiment 1, children who had failed a traditional task succeeded if they narrated the book version back to the experimenter, particularly if they were fluent in their story recall. Experiment 2 showed that this success occurred either if the child recited the story or if she or he was taken through each page twice in succession. Experiment 3 combined the most effective procedures with a younger group of children (mean age 3;3) and revealed 95% success as long as they could recall the prerequisite events. Experiments 4 and 5 probed possible limiting conditions for success by inserting an extra episode in the story and changing the format of the test question. The results suggest that the structure of 3-year-olds' event memories is central to their poor performance in the traditional false belief task—a clear grasp of the false belief “narrative” is necessary for successful performance. When they are given the opportunity to link discrete events into a coherent narrative, they have no problem demonstrating an understanding of others' minds—being able to recount the narrative is sufficient for successful performance.     

Student volunteer social support and infant intervention: A case study

The emphases in infant mental health have been in the three areas of supporting the mother-infant dyad through education, psychotherapy to help parents resolve emotional conflicts that interfere with the parent-infant interaction, and support during the acute crisis that follows an abnormal birth. The case described herein involves a child with a genetic defect born to competent parents, a chronic stressful situation that does not fit these categories. It became apparent in the first few months after the birth that both the child and parents were in need of some help in coping with the situation. An intervention was designed to help provide both the necessary stimulation for the baby and the needed emotional support for the family, while it acknowledged their skill and competencies as parents. This was done through the help of college student volunteers, who assisted the mother in the home. Developmental data recorded at birth, 7 months, 12 months, and 39 months indicate that the child is severely multiply handicapped. Interview data with the parents at those times document their personal and family difficulties, the eventual resolution as a family in dealing with this problem, and the importance of the volunteer help during that process.     

Arguing for a New Form of Taxation: Lifetime Hourly Averaging

This article presents an argument for a new form of tax calculation. Firstly it is argued that Hypothetical Insurance is the best method to determine the correct type of distributive policies and the precise amounts that should be redistributed. Hourly averaging is then presented as a new candidate policy for both assisting the less economically fortunate and taxing the more economically fortunate. The article then argues that hourly averaging compares favourably against rival policies as a hypothetical insurance choice.     

What is learned in sequential learning? An associative model of reward magnitude serial-pattern learning

A computational model of sequence learning is described that is based on pairwise associations and generalization. Simulations by the model predicted that rats should learn a long monotonic pattern of food quantities better than a nonmonotonic pattern, as predicted by rule-learning theory, and that they should learn a short nonmonotonic pattern with highly discriminable elements better than 1 with less discriminable elements, as predicted by interitem association theory. In 2 other studies, the model also simulated behavioral "rule generalization," "extrapolation," and associative transfer data motivated by both rule-learning and associative perspectives. Although these simulations do not rule out the possibility that rats can use rule induction to learn serial patterns, they show that a simple associative model can account for the classical behavioral studies implicating rule learning in reward magnitude serial-pattern learning.     

Still the Heart of Darkness: The Ebola Virus and the Meta-Narrative of Disease in The Hot Zone

Still the Heart of Darkness analyzes Richard Preston's best-selling account of an Ebola virus outbreak in Reston, Virginia in 1989. Through a textual examination of The Hot Zone, this essay demonstrates how Preston grounds his narrative about the threat of rare emerging viruses from the third world in terms of the colonialist discourse about Africa as the white man's grave, most notably Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. By foregrounding previous outbreaks in Africa, Preston simultaneously darkens its landscape and inscribes the Ebola filovirus as an external biological threat to Americans in a post-Cold War world with porous borders.     

Salient stimuli in advertising: the effect of contrast interval length and type on recall

Salient auditory stimuli (e.g., music or sound effects) are commonly used in advertising to elicit attention. However, issues related to the effectiveness of such stimuli are not well understood. This research examines the ability of a salient auditory stimulus, in the form of a contrast interval (CI), to enhance recall of message-related information. Researchers have argued that the effectiveness of the CI is a function of the temporal duration between the onset and offset of the change in the background stimulus and the nature of this stimulus. Three experiments investigate these propositions and indicate that recall is enhanced, providing the CI is 3 s or less. Information highlighted with silence is recalled better than information highlighted with music.