Stereotype Directionality and Attractiveness Stereotyping: Is Beauty Good or is Ugly Bad?

Dion, Berscheid, and Walster (1972), in their seminal article, labeled the attribution of positive characteristics to attractive people the "beauty-is-good" stereotype. The stereotyping literature since then provides extensive evidence for the differential judgment and treatment of attractive versus unattractive people, but does not indicate whether it is an advantage to be attractive or a disadvantage to be unattractive. Two studies investigated the direction of attractiveness stereotyping by comparing judgments of positive and negative attributes for medium vs. low and medium vs. high attractive faces. Taken together, results for adults (Experiment 1) and children (Experiment 2) suggest that most often, unattractiveness is a disadvantage, consistent with negativity bias (e.g., Rozin & Royzman, 2001) but contrary to the "beauty-is-good" aphorism.     

Risk factors for depression in early adolescence

The purpose of this study was to identify salient risk factors for depression in early adolescence from a group of common predictors. The following nine predictors were examined: (1) perceived quality of peer relationships, (2) perceived parental nurturance, (3) perceived parental rejection, (4) self-esteem, (5) body image, (6) pubertal status, (7) SES, (8) conduct problems, and (9) hyperactivity/inattention. The sample of 2,014 12 and 13 year olds was also divided by gender to examine potential sex differences in risk factors for depression. Finally, several mediational models were investigated. Self-esteem emerged as the strongest predictor of depression in both genders; parental behavior also emerged as an important risk factor. Therefore, these two variables are discussed as targets for those developing intervention and prevention programs.     

Transformations of mathematical and stimulus functions

Following a pretest, 8 participants who were unfamiliar with algebraic and trigonometric functions received a brief presentation on the rectangular coordinate system. Next, they participated in a computer-interactive matching-to-sample procedure that trained formula-to-formula and formula-to-graph relations. Then, they were exposed to 40 novel formula-to-graph tests and 10 novel graph-to-formula tests. Seven of the 8 participants showed substantial improvement in identifying formula-to-graph relations; however, in the test of novel graph-to-formula relations, participants tended to select equations in their factored form. Next, we manipulated contextual cues in the form of rules regarding mathematical preferences. First, we informed participants that standard forms of equations were preferred over factored forms. In a subsequent test of 10 additional novel graph-to-formula relations, participants shifted their selections to favor equations in their standard form. This preference reversed during 10 more tests when financial reward was made contingent on correct identification of formulas in factored form. Formula preferences and transformation of novel mathematical and stimulus functions are discussed.     

Adults' ability to detect children's lying

Adults are poor deception detectors when examining lies told by adults, on average. However, there are some adults who are better at detecting lies than others. Children learn to lie at a very young age, a behavior that is socialized by parents. Yet, less is known about the ability to detect children's lies, particularly with regard to individual differences in the ability to detect this deception. The current study explored adult raters' ability to discern honesty in children who lied or told the truth about committing a misdeed. Results showed that adults are no better at detecting children's lies than they are with adult lies. In particular, adults were very poor at identifying children's honest statements. However, individual differences did emerge, suggesting that the ability to detect lying in children might be facilitated by relevant experience working with children. Implications for legal and mental health contexts are discussed.     

Online Story Comprehension among Children with ADHD: Which Core Deficits are Involved?

Children with ADHD have difficulty understanding causal connections and goal plans within stories. This study examined mediators of group differences in story narrations between children ages 7-9 with and without ADHD, including as potential mediators both the core deficits of ADHD (i.e., inattention, disinhibition, planning/working memory) as well measures of phonological processing and verbal skills. Forty-nine children with ADHD and 67 non-referred children narrated a wordless book and completed tasks assessing the core deficits of ADHD, phonological processing, and verbal skills. Results revealed that, although no shorter than those of non-referred children, the narratives of children with ADHD contained fewer elements relating to the story's causal structure and goal plan. Deficits in sustained attention accounted for the most variance in these differences. Results have implications for understanding and ameliorating the academic problems experienced by children with ADHD.     

Anticipating partners’ responses: Examining item and source memory following interactive exchanges

Within the context of an interactive anagram-solving task, the present studies tested predictions about the role of cognitive anticipation in both source and item memory. After working in pairs to solve anagram problems, participants were surprised by a source-monitoring test focused on the source of solutions (self vs. partner, Experiment 1) or a standard recognition test focused on the solutions themselves (Experiment 2). With the intention of affecting the opportunity to anticipate partners' solutions, two variables were manipulated: anagram difficulty (easy vs. hard) and the delaybetween the presentation of an anagram problem and theprompt tha t designated one member of each pair as the anagram solver. Consistent w i th predictions, asthe opportunity t oanticipate partners'solutions increased, there was a decrease in source accuracy suggesting increased confusion about whether the solution had been self- or partner-generated. Generation-effect failures were observed in item memory. However, these failures reflected increases in item memory for partners' responses rather than decreases in memory for self-generated ones. These studies suggest that when opportunities to anticipate partners' responses are available, self-generative activities may be associated with both self-and partner-generated items, influencing the expression of the generation effect.     

Effects of team and organizational commitment – A longitudinal study

Retention management, i.e., keeping qualified employees, is a top priority for contemporary organizations. Commitment, and especially team commitment, can be the key to mastering this challenge. There is a lack of longitudinal research concerning the development and the direction of the effects of team commitment over time. In a longitudinal field-study design with three points of measurement, a total of 360 employees in 52 semi-autonomous industrial teams were surveyed over a period of three years. On the one hand, organizational commitment showed stronger effects on organization-related criteria (job satisfaction and intention to leave). These effects were consistent over the three points of measurement. Team commitment, on the other hand, affected team-related criteria (team performance and altruism). Longitudinal analyses confirmed the effects of organizational commitment on job satisfaction and intention to leave, and of team commitment on team performance and altruism. Moreover, these effects increased over time. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

The costs of today’s jobs: Job characteristics and organizational supports as antecedents of negative spillover

This study examined job characteristics and organizational supports as antecedents of negative work-to-nonwork spillover for 1178 U.S. employees. Based on hierarchical regression analyses of 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce data and O∗NET data, job demands (requirements to work at home beyond scheduled hours, job complexity, time and strain) had positive relationships, and job resources (autonomy and skill development) and organizational supports (flexible work arrangements and two work-life culture facets) had negative relationships to negative spillover, but not all relationships held when multiple predictors were examined. Organizational supports did not moderate relationships of job characteristics to negative spillover, and relative weights analysis indicated that job characteristics accounted for the majority of explained variance in negative spillover. The findings underscore the importance of job characteristics, and suggest that job characteristics and organizational supports both need to be considered when developing work-life policies intended to reduce employees’ negative work-to-nonwork spillover.     

Collaboration Talk: The Folk Theories of Nano Research

The nano initiative in the US and elsewhere encourages and promotes various forms of multi-stakeholder activities, such as industrial collaborations. Forming part of the discourse of expectations around emerging technologies, collaboration is an important resource holding together different practices of knowledge production. In the conversations between policy and science, collaboration becomes a measurable entity and a measure in itself, figuring in the evaluations of the performance of individual faculty and research centres; however, the policy metaphor of ‘collaboration’ stands for a variety of different forms and shapes of interactions between university and industry. From a discourse analysis perspective, ‘folk theories’ of nano collaboration help to explore the dynamics of the university/industry boundary in the scientific organisational discourse as in a recent series of interactions with scientists, university officials and technology transfer officers in a number of US universities. What does the introduction of the new entity (nano) mean for scientists, and for university practices of technology transfer and commercialisation, in terms of trying to accommodate individual ‘nano’ cases into university regulations and procedures? How are these practices and experiences discussed in terms of collaboration? Assessments of value of collaboration ranged between polarised views, raising questions about occasions, audiences and communities of assessors invoked in the construction of acceptable accounts of nano collaboration. Metaphors and analogies were used to mobilise specific meanings in the discourses of the innovative potential of emerging fields. As such, assessments of the potential of terms pertinent to the emerging discourses, such as collaboration, would be better based on the assumption of shared meanings, not fixed and given, but actively achieved.