Effects of terrorism on attitudes and ideological orientation

A quasi‐experimental study on the effects of terrorism on racial prejudice and ideological orientation is presented. Two independent samples were contacted before and after the Islamic terrorist attacks against railways in Madrid (11 March 2004). Anti‐Arab and anti‐Semite prejudices, authoritarianism and ideological orientations (liberal against conservative) were evaluated. Results showed that those terrorist attacks provoked changes in a reactionary and conservative direction: stronger prejudices not only against the target group (Arabs), but against another uninvolved group (Jewish); an increase in authoritarianism; stronger attachment to traditional conservative values, and a reduction in the attachment to liberal values. The results are interpreted in terms of the System‐Justification Theory, the Motivated Social Cognition model of Conservatism and the Right‐Wing Authoritarianism. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Being similar while judging right and wrong: The effects of personal and situational similarity on moral judgements

This study investigated the effects of similarity with the transgressor and the victim on the perceived immorality of the transgression. Participants read two stories describing a person that cheated on their partner and a police officer that mistreated somebody. In the first story we manipulated participants' personal similarity to the transgressor and in the second their personal similarity to the victim. In each story, participants' past situational similarity to the target character was assessed according to their previous experiences of being in the same position. Results show that both personal and past situational similarity to the transgressor determine less severe moral judgements, while personal and past situational similarity with the victim have the opposite effect. We also tested several potential mediators of these effects, derived from competing theoretical accounts of the influence of similarity on perceived responsibility. Empathy emerged as mediating most of the effects of similarity on moral judgements, except those induced by past situational similarity with the victim. The foreseen probability of being in a similar situation mediated only the effects of similarity to the transgressor, and not those of similarity to the victim. Overall, results highlight the complex mechanisms of the influences of similarity on moral judgements.     

Validation and adaptation of the PACES scale of enjoyment of the practice of physical activity for Spanish adolescent girls

The goal of this study is to validate a Spanish version of the Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale (PACES, Kendzierski & DeCarlo, 1991), in the population of Spanish adolescent girls, and also to obtain a reduced version of the scale. For this purpose, reliability analysis was conducted, and construct validity was assessed in two steps: exploratory factor analysis and structural equation model with confirmatory factor analysis. The scale was administered to a sample of 2777 adolescent girls of Secondary Education, ages between 12-18 years. The results show the reliability of the instrument and the construct validity with a good fit of the model. The adapted scale was reduced to six items, a shorter and efficient scale that allows us to measure the enjoyment of physical activity.     

Social representations and intergroup conflicts: Who's smoking here?

We studied the influence of explicitating a social conflict between smokers and nonsmokers on the social representations held about tobacco. Two representations were found: a psychological' representation which was defined by psychological explanations of the causes of beginning to smoke, a characterization of smokers as psychologically disturbed, and negative feelings towards smokers; a second defensive representation which attributes smoking to social factors, and hold both a positive stereotype of smokers and positive feelings towards smokers. The percentage of smokers who adhere to the defensive representation increased significantly when the conflict was made salient. Non-smokers were not influenced by the explicitation of the social conflict. The structure of each representation was analyzed. It was found that in the psychological' representation the structuring element was the negative stereotype of smokers. By contrast, the structuring element in the defensive representation was identification with smokers. The implicatlons of this data for theories of both intergroup relations and social representations are discussed.     

Social representations of drugs,causal judgment and social perception

The aim of this study was to analyse the influence of social representation on both social perceptions and social judgments. In the first stage of this study, 47 drug users and 80 ‘normal’ subjects were asked to respond to a questionnaire about representations of drugs. Three weeks later we contacted the same subjects. They were asked to answer some questions about a fictitious story in which an actor labelled as ‘a drug user’ or ‘a person’ disputed with a trader. Three different social representations of drugs were found. It was shown that these social representations were anchored in different social groups which were defined by their proximity to the world of drugs. Subjects who were themselves drug users shared an accepting or an ambivalent social representation of drugs but they also made the most negative judgements about the causes of a fictitious dispute between a trader and a drug addict. Moreover, these subjects had the most negative perception of the drug addict. Furthermore, some factors which increase the salience of social representations were studied. The effect on social perception and causal attributions of the interaction between social representations, the context and personal involvement in drugs was also shown. Some relations between the theory of social representations and the theories about asymmetrical intergroup relationships are exposed.     

African American and Mexican American Youths’ College Adjustment and Perceptions of Parental Academic Socialization: Interactions Between Ethnicity and Parental Education

In a sample of 283 African American and Mexican American college students, we investigated the effects of ethnicity and parental education on three dimensions of parental academic socialization (PAS), active involvement, autonomy support, and demanding hard work, and their impact on college adjustment. Controlling for parental education, African Americans reported higher parental active involvement. Academic self-efficacy mediated the effects of both demanding hard work and autonomy support on college adjustment, controlling for parental education. Moderated mediation models suggested that effects of both demanding hard work and autonomy support on academic self-efficacy were stronger for African Americans than for Mexican Americans.     

Psychophysical judgment of curvatures

In this study we explored psychophysical judgments (magnitude estimation) of the curvature of visual lines. Prior research has lacked a rigorous definition of curvature, but here it was defined as the reverse of the ray of the osculating circle tangent to the curve in the given point. Four different functions were evaluated: hyperbole, sinusoid, parabola, and a cubic function. Using the method of magnitude estimation to judge 20 exemplar curves from each of the families, three respondents made a total of 1440 estimations each. Responses to all four families of curves were fit well by Stevens' power function with an exponent less than 1. One application of this research is the use of such curves as variables in assessing illusions of curvature.     

The Presentation of Self in Letters of Application: A Mixed‐Method Approach

The application letter, as the first phase of employment‐seeking, is an opportunity for a job applicant to make a favorable impression on a potential employer. In the current study, the author used a mixed‐method approach to empirically explore strategies for self‐presentation in job application letters and determine the methods used in the letters and their lexical content. An array of self‐presentation strategies, both structural (relating to the formal aspect of the letters) and tactical (involving specific tactics or strategies), were identified and discussed. Job candidates’ self‐evaluation strategies in application letters may contribute to a more accurate assessment of interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies. The results suggest that lexical and meaning levels of analysis in letters of application should be treated as distinct.     

Executive Resources and Item-Context Binding: Exploring the Influence of Concurrent Inhibition,Updating, and Shifting Tasks on Context Memory

Previous research has demonstrated that context memory performance decreases as a result of cognitive load. However, the role of specific executive resources availability has not been specified yet. In a dual-task experiment, participants performed three kinds of concurrent task engaging: inhibition, updating, or shifting operations. In comparison with a no-load single-task condition, a significant decrease in item and context memory was observed, regardless of the kind of executive task. When executive load conditions were compared with non-specific cognitive load conditions, a significant interference effect was observed in the case of the inhibition task. The inhibition process appears to be an aspect of executive control, which relies on the same resource as item-context binding does, especially when binding refers to associations retrieved from long-term memory.     

Good and bad effects of phonological similarity on word and nonword recall: The role of beginnings and ends

This study explored whether earlier results of differential (harmful vs. helpful) short-term memory effects of shared syllables at nonword beginnings compared to ends could be replicated for lists of bisyllabic real words. We studied immediate serial recall of lists that had phonologically redundant syllables at the beginnings or ends of two-syllable words or nonwords. The results showed that redundancy at the beginning had a negative effect on both types of material. Redundancy at the end did not impair memory for nonwords but harmed the serial recall of words. Irrespective of lexicality, lists of beginning-redundant items were more difficult to recall than end-redundant items. The distribution of errors suggested that the better recall of end-redundant lists compared to beginning-redundant lists was related to a positive effect at encoding and/or retention, independent of effects at recall, for both words and nonwords.