The “Making and Unmaking” of Prejudice Against Australian Muslims and Gay Men and Lesbians: The Role of Religious Development and Fundamentalism

Despite the growing international interest in the relation between religion and prejudice, there has been a dearth of studies conducted within Australia. We used the Faith Development Scale (FDS) to examine the relation between religious maturity and attitudes toward Muslims and toward gay men and lesbians in an Australian context using a sample of churchgoers from the Perth metropolitan area (N = 139). Respondents who scored lower on the FDS were more prejudiced toward both target groups than were high scorers. Furthermore, participants who scored lower on the FDS were more prejudiced against gay men and lesbians than they were against Muslim Australians. The FDS was a better predictor of attitudes toward the two groups than was the Quest Scale. Contrary to overseas studies, we found that religious fundamentalists held more prejudiced attitudes toward gay men and lesbians than toward those of a different religion (Australian Muslims). Right-wing political orientation was also found to be predictive of prejudice against Australian Muslims and against gay men and lesbians independently of religious development. Results suggest that religious maturity, as well as fundamentalism and right-wing political views, plays an important role in the “making” or “unmaking” of prejudice against Australian Muslims and against gay men and lesbians. Evidence is presented that suggests that the Quest Scale and the FDS are measuring different aspects of religious development.     

Domain‐specific impulsivity in school‐age children

Impulsivity is a salient individual difference in children with well‐established predictive validity for life outcomes. The current investigation proposes that impulsive behaviors vary systematically by domain. In a series of studies with ethnically and socioeconomically diverse samples of middle school students, we find that schoolwork‐related and interpersonal‐related impulsivity, as observed by teachers, parents, and the students themselves, are distinct, moderately correlated behavioral tendencies. Each demonstrates differentiated relationships with dimensions of childhood temperament, Big Five personality factors, and outcomes, such as report card grades. Implications for theoretical conceptions of impulsivity as well as for practical applications (e.g. domain‐specific interventions) are discussed.     

Probing the Brain Substrates of Cognitive Processes Responsible for Context Effects on Recognition Memory

ABSTRACT

Context effects on episodic recognition memory involve separable contributions of target-context binding, additive familiarity, and configural constancy. Here we examine whether these factors reflect contributions of processes attributed to different brain substrates. First, we challenged frontal and medial temporal lobe-based cognitive capacities in healthy young adults, employing divided attention tasks at encoding and retrieval, and extended retrieval delay, respectively. Target-context binding effects were specifically attenuated by delay, but not by divided attention. In a second experiment, older adults were identified by neuropsychological testing as having different levels of frontal and medial temporal lobe-dependent cognitive functions. Consistent with Experiment 1, older adults with low medial temporal lobe function exhibited reduced target-context binding effects, but levels of frontal function did not modulate binding effects. These findings indicate that unlike source memory, context effects on memory are associated with the integrity of medial temporal lobe-based processes but not with the integrity of frontal lobe-based processes. Our findings also emphasize the importance of discriminating between functional subgroups in the attempt to characterize memory processes in older adults.     

Genetic Mediation of the Associations Among Motor and Perceptual Speed and Adult Cognitive Abilities

Quantitative genetic analyses were conducted to determine the genetic mediation of the associations among motor speed, perceptual speed, and cognitive abilities in normal aging. Measures of motor performance, perceptual speed, and cognitive functioning in four domains (crystallized, fluid, spatial, and memory) were available from the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging. The sample included 206 twin pairs ranging in age from 44 to 82 years. A Motor Speed factor was constructed from 17 timed measures of motor performance. Heritability of Motor Speed was .26 in middle-aged twins and .00 in older twins. Results indicated that genetic variance in cognitive functioning in the middle-aged cohort may be defined by working memory, whereas genetic variance in the older cohort was defined by perceptual speed. Indications of a nonshared environmental component in the association among motor speed, perceptual speed, and spatial abilities suggest possible frontal lobe involvement.     

The effect of self-distancing on adaptive versus maladaptive self-reflection in children

Although children and adolescents vary in their chronic tendencies to adaptively versus maladaptively reflect over negative feelings, the psychological mechanisms underlying these different types of self-reflection among youngsters are unknown. We addressed this issue in the present research by examining the role that self-distancing plays in distinguishing adaptive versus maladaptive self-reflection among an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of fifth-grade public schoolchildren. Children were randomly assigned to analyze their feelings surrounding a recent anger-related interpersonal experience from either a self-immersed or self-distanced perspective. They then rated their negative affect and described in writing the stream of thoughts they experienced when they analyzed their feelings. Children's stream-of-thought essays were content analyzed for the presence of recounting statements, reconstruing statements, and blame attributions. Path analyses indicated that children who analyzed their feelings from a self-distanced perspective focused significantly less on recounting the "hot," emotionally arousing features of their memory (i.e., what happened to me?) and relatively more on reconstruing their experience. This shift in thought content--less recounting and more reconstruing--led children in the self-distanced group to blame the other person involved in their recalled experience significantly less, which in turn led them to display significantly lower levels of emotional reactivity. These findings help delineate the psychological mechanisms that distinguish adaptive versus maladaptive forms of self-reflection over anger experiences in children. Their basic findings and clinical implications are discussed.     

When and why do ideal partner preferences affect the process of initiating and maintaining romantic relationships?

Three studies explored how the traits that people ideally desire in a romantic partner, or ideal partner preferences, intersect with the process of romantic relationship initiation and maintenance. Two attraction experiments in the laboratory found that, when participants evaluated a potential romantic partner's written profile, they expressed more romantic interest in a partner whose traits were manipulated to match (vs. mismatch) their idiosyncratic ideals. However, after a live interaction with the partner, the match vs. mismatch manipulation was no longer associated with romantic interest. This pattern appeared to have emerged because participants reinterpreted the meaning of the traits as they applied to the partner, a context effect predicted by classic models of person perception (S. E. Asch, 1946). Finally, a longitudinal study of middle-aged adults demonstrated that participants evaluated a current romantic partner (but not a partner who was merely desired) more positively to the extent that the partner matched their overall pattern of ideals across several traits; the match in level of ideals (i.e., high vs. low ratings) was not relevant to participants' evaluations. In general, the match between ideals and a partner's traits may predict relational outcomes when participants are learning about a partner in the abstract and when they are actually in a relationship with the partner, but not when considering potential dating partners they have met in person.     

The effects of self-regulatory strength, content, and strategies on close relationships

This article reviews the growing literature on the effects of self-regulatory strength (how much self-regulatory ability people have), self-regulatory content (the goals toward which people self-regulate), and self-regulatory strategies (the manner in which people self-regulate) on close relationships. The extant literature indicates that close relationships benefit when relationship partners (a) have greater versus less self-regulatory strength, (b) prioritize relationship-promotion goals versus self-protection goals, (c) facilitate versus obstruct each other's personal goal pursuits, (d) enact positive relationship behaviors using approach versus avoidance strategies, and (e) pursue shared goals using complementary versus similar regulatory focus strategies. Future research could fruitfully (a) delve deeper into the influences of self-regulatory content and strategies on relationships and (b) integrate multiple lines of research examining the effects of self-regulation on relationships.     

Middle class and marginal? Socioeconomic status, stigma, and self-regulation at an elite university

In four studies, the authors investigated the proposal that in the context of an elite university, individuals from relatively lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds possess a stigmatized identity and, as such, experience (a) concerns regarding their academic fit and (b) self-regulatory depletion as a result of managing these concerns. Study 1, a correlational study, revealed the predicted associations between SES, concerns about academic fit, and self-regulatory strength. Results from Studies 2 and 3 suggested that self-presentation involving the academic domain is depleting for lower (but not higher) SES students: After a self-presentation task about academic achievement, lower SES students consumed more candy (Study 2) and exhibited poorer Stroop performance (Study 3) relative to their higher SES peers; in contrast, the groups did not differ after discussing a nonacademic topic (Study 3). Study 4 revealed the potential for eliminating the SES group difference in depletion via a social comparison manipulation. Taken together, these studies support the hypothesis that managing concerns about marginality can have deleterious consequences for self-regulatory resources.     

Continuous visual control of interception

People generally try to keep their eyes on a moving target that they intend to catch or hit. In the present study we first examined how important it is to do so. We did this by designing two interception tasks that promote different eye movements. In both tasks it was important to be accurate relative to both the moving target and the static environment. We found that performance was more variable in relation to the structure that was not fixated. This suggests that the resolution of visual information that is gathered during the movement is important for continuously improving predictions about critical aspects of the task, such as anticipating where the target will be at some time in the future. If so, variability in performance should increase if the target briefly disappears from view just before being hit, even if the target moves completely predictably. We demonstrate that it does, indicating that new visual information is used to improve precision throughout the movement.