An experimental study of interethnic competition in segregated schools

Decomposed matrix games were used to study interethnic competition in the triethnic school system of a southwestern city. The sample consisted of sixth-grade males from segragated schools. In addition to the data from the matrix games, brief questionnaire measures of internal vs. external locus of control, self-esteem, and authoritarianism were also obtained. The results on the game matrices indicated that the anglos competed more and were less trusting than the blacks or chicanos. The questionnaire results indicated that the blacks were highest on feelings of external control and on authoritarianism, while the chicanos were lowest in self-esteem. Cooperative interethnic work groups were suggested as a means of coping with the problems that these differences might be expected to cause in integrated schools.     

Private self-consciousness, canned laughter, and responses to humorous stimuli

Sefl-focused attention is hypothesized to (a) intensify emotional responses; (b) diminish susceptibility to suggestion; and (c) increase the consistency of self-report and behavior. These hypotheses were tested by having 82 undergraduates varying in private self-consciousness (PrSC) listen to humorous stimuli presented either with (laugh track group) or without (no laugh track group) canned laughter. Subjects' funniness ratings and overt laughter served as dependent measures. Regression analyses revealed that PrSC and funniness ratings were negatively correlated in the laugh track group, but uncorrelated in the no laugh track group. In contrast, PrSC and overt laughter were positively correlated in both groups. The association between funniness and laughter appeared stronger in high than in low PrSC subjects. Interpreted in light of research indicating that funniness ratings represent affect-free evaluations of humor stimuli, whereas laughter represents amusement, these results suggest that self-focus (a) intensified subjects' amusement; (b) decreased the extent to which their evaluations of the stimuli were biased by canned laughter; and (c) increased the consistency between their (self-reported) cognitive and (overt behavioral) affective responses (although this finding was equivocal).     

The influence of status and sex-typing on assessments of occupational outcome

In order to investigate the relative strengths of status and sex-typing of occupations on evaluations of job outcomes, this study varied sex of subject, sex of stimulus person, status of occupation, sex-typing of occupation, and job outcome in a three-between, two-within factorial design. Contrary to previous research, subjects' beliefs about stimulus persons' affective reactions to job outcomes were not consistent with rigid sex-typing of jobs. Instead, the data suggest that crossing the sex-typing barrier in occupations is receiving growing acceptance, and that subjects are aware of sex segregation and discrimination in the labor force. Other data suggest that subjects' beliefs about job outcomes are influenced by belief in a just world.The authors wish to thank Walter G. Stephan for commenting on an earlier version of this article.     

Attributions for Exam Performance

The expectancy confirmation and egotism approaches to attributions in achievement settings are contrasted in this study. It was found that students in two psychology classes expected to do well on their exams and that these expectations were based on internal factors (ability, effort). Post-test attributions were determined almost entirely by the simple valence of the outcome (success-failure). High outcomes were associated with internal attributions and low outcomes were associated with external attributions. It appears that students who perform poorly avoid the blame for failure by making ego-defensive external attributions and that these attributions enable them to make unreasonably high predictions for future performance. Some limited support was found for the notion that attribution may be affected by the degree to which outcomes confirm or disconfirm expectations.     

L’analisi psicologica generale del godimento musicale

traduzione dal tedesco di Riccardo Martinelli     

Risk seeking for losses modulates the functional connectivity of the default mode and left frontoparietal networks in young males

Value-based decision making (VBDM) is a principle that states that humans and other species adapt their behavior according to the dynamic subjective values of the chosen or unchosen options. The neural bases of this process have been extensively investigated using task-based fMRI and lesion studies. However, the growing field of resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) may shed light on the organization and function of brain connections across different decision-making domains. With this aim, we used independent component analysis to study the brain network dynamics in a large cohort of young males (N = 145) and the relationship of these dynamics with VBDM. Participants completed a battery of behavioral tests that evaluated delay aversion, risk seeking for losses, risk aversion for gains, and loss aversion, followed by an RSFC scan session. We identified a set of large-scale brain networks and conducted our analysis only on the default mode network (DMN) and networks comprising cognitive control, appetitive-driven, and reward-processing regions. Higher risk seeking for losses was associated with increased connectivity between medial temporal regions, frontal regions, and the DMN. Higher risk seeking for losses was also associated with increased coupling between the left frontoparietal network and occipital cortices. These associations illustrate the participation of brain regions involved in prospective thinking, affective decision making, and visual processing in participants who are greater risk-seekers, and they demonstrate the sensitivity of RSFC to detect brain connectivity differences associated with distinct VBDM parameters.     

Correcting false information in memory: Manipulating the strength of misinformation encoding and its retraction

Information that is presumed to be true at encoding but later on turns out to be false (i.e., misinformation) often continues to influence memory and reasoning. In the present study, we investigated how the strength of encoding and the strength of a later retraction of the misinformation affect this continued influence effect. Participants read an event report containing misinformation and a subsequent correction. Encoding strength of the misinformation and correction were orthogonally manipulated either via repetition (Experiment 1) or by imposing a cognitive load during reading (Experiment 2). Results suggest that stronger retractions are effective in reducing the continued influence effects associated with strong misinformation encoding, but that even strong retractions fail to eliminate continued influence effects associated with relatively weak encoding. We present a simple computational model based on random sampling that captures this effect pattern, and conclude that the continued influence effect seems to defy most attempts to eliminate it.     

Evidence for a unitary goal concept in 12-month-old infants

We investigated whether infants can transfer their goal attribution between situations that contain different types of information about the goal. We found that 12-month-olds who had attributed a goal based on the causal efficacy of a means-end action generated expectations about the actor's action in another scenario in which the actor could choose between alternative outcomes. This finding suggests that, by 12 months, infants possess a unitary concept of goal.     

Could positive affect help engineer robot control systems?

Emotions have long been seen as counteracting rational thought, but over the last decades, they have been viewed as adaptive processes to optimize human (but also animal) behaviour. In particular, positive affect appears to be a functional aspect of emotions closely related to that. We argue that positive affect as understood in Kuhl’s PSI model of the human cognitive architecture appears to have an interpretation in state-of-the-art hybrid robot control architectures, which might help tackle some open questions in the field.