Cross-cultural differences in memory: the role of culture-based stereotypes about aging

The extent to which cultural stereotypes about aging contribute to age differences in memory performance is investigated by comparing younger and older Anglophone Canadians to demographically matched Chinese Canadians, who tend to hold more positive views of aging. Four memory tests were administered. In contrast to B. Levy and E. Langer's (1994) findings, younger adults in both cultural groups outperformed their older comparison group on all memory tests. For 2 tests, which made use of visual stimuli resembling ideographic characters in written Chinese, the older Chinese Canadians approached, but did not reach, the performance achieved by their younger counterparts, as well as outperformed the older Anglophone Canadians. However, on the other two tests, which assess memory for complex figures and abstract designs, no differences were observed between the older Chinese and Anglophone Canadians. Path analysis results suggest that this pattern of findings is not easily attributed to a wholly culturally based account of age differences in memory performance.     

Dissociating averageness and attractiveness: attractive faces are not always average

Although the averageness hypothesis of facial attractiveness proposes that the attractiveness of faces is mostly a consequence of their averageness, 1 study has shown that caricaturing highly attractive faces makes them mathematically less average but more attractive. Here the authors systematically test the averageness hypothesis in 5 experiments using both rating and visual adaptation paradigms. Visual adaptation has previously been shown to increase both preferences for previously viewed face types (i.e., attractiveness) and their perceived normality (i.e., averageness). The authors used a visual adaptation procedure to test whether facial attractiveness is dependent upon faces' proximity to average (averageness hypothesis) or their location relative to average along an attractiveness dimension in face space (contrast hypothesis). While the typical pattern of change due to visual adaptation was found for judgments of normality, judgments of attractiveness resulted in a very different pattern. The results of these 5 experiments conclusively support the proposal that there are specific nonaverage characteristics that are particularly attractive. The authors discuss important implications for the interpretation of studies using a visual adaptation paradigm to investigate attractiveness.     

Apocalypse soon? Dire messages reduce belief in global warming by contradicting just-world beliefs

Though scientific evidence for the existence of global warming continues to mount, in the United States and other countries belief in global warming has stagnated or even decreased in recent years. One possible explanation for this pattern is that information about the potentially dire consequences of global warming threatens deeply held beliefs that the world is just, orderly, and stable. Individuals overcome this threat by denying or discounting the existence of global warming, and this process ultimately results in decreased willingness to counteract climate change. Two experiments provide support for this explanation of the dynamics of belief in global warming, suggesting that less dire messaging could be more effective for promoting public understanding of climate-change research.     

Social Desirability and Attitudes Toward the Disabled

This study explored the influence of social desirability (SD) on responses of non-handicapped persons to three attitude-toward-disability scales under conditions that varied the personally evaluative nature of the testing situation. The design of the study was based on an adaptation-level model. 280 undergraduates were divided into 3 experimental groups. All were administered the SD scale. Each group was then exposed to one of 3 sets of instructions that varied the emphasis on personal evaluation. Subjects were then administered 3 attitude-toward-disability scales that differed in degree of test structure. Results indicate that those who had high SD needs responded with significantly more positive attitudes toward the disabled on each of the attitude scales. Variations in test instructions were effective in modifying responses of high SD subjects on two of the scales.     

Assessing Coparenting Relationships in Daily Life: The Daily Coparenting Scale (D-Cop)

We describe the development and validation of the Daily Coparenting Scale (D-Cop), a measure of parents’ perceptions of daily coparenting quality, to address the absence of such a daily measure in the field. A daily measure of coparenting can help us to better identify specific mechanisms of short-term change in family processes as well as examine within-person variability and processes as they are lived by participants in their everyday lives. Mothers and fathers, from 174 families with at least one child age 5 or younger, completed a 14-day diary study. Utilizing multilevel factor analysis, we identified two daily coparenting factors at both the between- and within-person level: positive and negative daily coparenting. The reliabilities of the overall D-Cop and individual positive and negative subscales were good, and we found that parents’ reports of coparenting quality fluctuated on a daily basis. Also, we established the initial validity of the D-Cop, as scores related as expected to (a) an existing and already validated measure of coparenting and to (b) couple relationship quality, depressive symptoms, and child behavior problems. Further, fluctuations in daily couple relationship feelings related to fluctuations in daily coparenting quality. The D-Cop and its subscales functioned almost identically when only utilizing 7 days of data instead of 14 days. We call for future work to study day-by-day fluctuations and dynamics of coparenting to better illuminate family processes that lead to child and family outcomes in order to improve the efficacy of family interventions.     

A cross-culturally standardized set of pictures for younger and older adults: American and Chinese norms for name agreement,concept agreement,and familiarity

The present study presents normative measures for 260 line drawings of everyday objects, found in Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980), viewed by individuals in China and the United States. Within each cultural group, name agreement, concept agreement, and familiarity measures were obtained separately for younger adults and older adults. For a subset of 57 pictures (22%), there was equivalence in both name agreement and concept agreement, and for an additional subset of 29 pictures (11%), there was nonequivalent name agreement but equivalent concept agreement, across all culture-by-age groups. The data indicate substantial differences across culture-by-age groups in name agreement percentages and number of distinct name responses provided. We discovered significant differences between older and younger American adults in both name agreement percentages (67 pictures, or 26%) and concept agreement percentages (44 pictures, or 17%). Written naming responses collected for the entire set of Snodgrass and Vanderwart pictures showed shifts in both naming and concept agreement percentages over the intervening decades: Although correlations in name agreement were strong (r = .71,p < .001) between our younger American samples and those of Snodgrass and Vanderwart, name agreement percentages have changed for a substantial proportion (33%) of the 260 pictures; moreover, 63% of the stimuli for which Snodgrass and Vanderwart reported concept agreement now appear to differ. We provide comprehensive comparison statistics and tests for both the present study and prior ones, finding differences across numerous item-level measures. The corpus of data suggests that substantial differences in all measures can be found across age as well as culture, so that unequivocal conclusions with respect to cross-cultural or age-related differences in cognition can be made only when appropriate stimuli are selected for studies. Data for all 260 pictures, for each of the four groups, and all supporting materials and tests are freely archived athttp://agingmind.cns.uiuc.edu/Pict Norms. The full set of these norms may be downloaded fromwwwpsychonomic.org/archive/.