Extrinsic rewards undermine altruistic tendencies in 20-month-olds

The current study investigated the influence of rewards on very young children's helping behavior. After 20-month-old infants received a material reward during a treatment phase, they subsequently were less likely to engage in further helping during a test phase as compared with infants who had previously received social praise or no reward at all. This so-called overjustification effect suggests that even the earliest helping behaviors of young children are intrinsically motivated and that socialization practices involving extrinsic rewards can undermine this tendency.     

Speaking after the Phenomenon: the Promise of Things and the Future of Phenomenology

Phenomenology speaks not directly of phenomena but rather of the appearing of phenomena. In so speaking it moves from the level of things with generic or proper names to the level of universal terms. In speaking and thinking the phenomenon Phenomenology comes “after” in the twofold sense of being too late and desiring for that which is to come. This paper explores this place of phenomenology with respect to the relation of faith and reason, the manner of speaking phenomenologically and the affective and temporal situation of experience. Drawing on the pre-modern concept of the transcendentals and on an account of emphatic consciousness of things, this article argues that the future of phenomenology is as a form of metaphysics which remains focused on experience and the “promise” of things that guides and structures perception.     

Social Competence at the Playground: Preschoolers During Recess

Social interactions at the playground have been represented as a rich learning opportunity to hone and master social skills at preschool years. Specifically, all forms of social play (fantasy, role, exercise or rough‐and‐tumble) have been related to children's social competence. The main goal of this study was to examine whether it is a certain kind of social play which facilitates the development of social competence, or if it is just the opportunity for interacting during recess that provides children with an optimal environment for social learning. A total of 73 preschoolers (4–6 years old) were videotaped at the school's playground. Teachers provided assessments of children's social competence. Children's interactions at the playground were assessed through an innovative measuring method, based on radio‐frequency identification devices. The results showed a positive association between exercise play and children's social competence. In contrast with the literature, both forms of pretend play, fantasy and role play were unrelated to children's social competence. Smaller peer groups and longer interactions also demonstrated a positive association with these preschoolers' social competence. The study shows the importance of outdoor physical play for preschoolers' social success. Moreover, the study suggests that the environment in which children play has an important effect on the adaptive nature of their play. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social Support and Neighborhood Stressors Among African American Youth: Networks and Relations to Self-Worth

Although neighborhood stressors have a negative impact on youth, and social support can play a protective role, it is unclear what types and sources of social support may contribute to positive outcomes among at-risk youth. We examined the influences of neighborhood disadvantage and social support on global self-worth among low-income, urban African American youth, both concurrently and longitudinally. We examined social support from both a structural and functional perspective, and tested the main-effects and the stress-buffering models of social support. Participants included 82–130 youth, in 6th–8th grade, who completed self-report measures. Network support results suggest participants received emotional, tangible, and informational support most often from mothers and other female relatives, with friends, fathers, and teachers also playing important roles. Model testing accounted for neighborhood stressors and support from various sources, revealing support from close friends was associated with concurrent self-worth; whereas, parent support predicted self-worth longitudinally, above and beyond initial levels of self-worth. The findings provide evidence for the main-effects model of social support and not the stress-buffering model. Our findings illustrate the importance of extended family networks and the types of support that youth rely upon in African American impoverished communities, as well as how support contributes to global self-worth. Implications and suggestions for future research and intervention are discussed.     

Frequency of nightmares and gender significantly predict distressing dreams of German athletes before competitions or games

Important sports events are highlights and stressful situations in every athlete's career. This stress might alter the dream content of athletes and consequently evoke disturbed dreaming. In this study, the authors asked 840 German athletes from various sports about distressing dreams on the nights before an important competition or game. About 15% of the athletes stated that they experienced at least 1 distressing dream before an important competition or game during the preceding 12 months. An almost equal number of athletes reported at least 1 distressing dream in their sports career. With respect to the base rate, in about 3% of the events a distressing dream occurred. Reported dream content referred mainly to athletic failure. The main risk factor for an athlete experiencing a distressing dream before a competition appears to be the frequency of experienced nightmares in general. Future research should use diary techniques to study the impact of distressing dreams on the next-day athletic performance in a competition or game.     

Young children share the spoils after collaboration

Egalitarian behavior is considered to be a species-typical component of human cooperation. Human adults tend to share resources equally, even if they have the opportunity to keep a larger portion for themselves. Recent experiments have suggested that this tendency emerges fairly late in human ontogeny, not before 6 or 7 years of age. Here we show that 3-year-old children share mostly equally with a peer after they have worked together actively to obtain rewards in a collaboration task, even when those rewards could easily be monopolized. These findings contrast with previous findings from a similar experiment with chimpanzees, who tended to monopolize resources whenever they could. The potentially species-unique tendency of humans to share equally emerges early in ontogeny, perhaps originating in collaborative interactions among peers.     

重建社会实践

《重建社会实践》是F.伽塔里应《交往世界》杂志的稿约所写的一篇文章,也是作者临终前留给人类的最后一份礼物。面对霸权主义横行、唯科技主义泛滥、人口暴增、能源危机、环境污染、贫富悬殊、集权制度和恐怖主义等一系列国际问题,伽塔里提出了“重建社会实践”的方案。这是一个从政治、经济、法律、科技、心理、生态等多方面统筹兼顾的全球性协调治理的方略。今天读来仍然是那么发人深思。     

The Dominance,Prestige, and Leadership Account of Social Power Motives

The power motive predicts influential social behaviour; however, its heterogeneous conceptualisations have produced inconsistent results. To overcome this problem, we developed and validated a unitary taxonomy of social power motives based on established delineations of social hierarchies: the dominance, prestige, and leadership account. While we could measure these motives both reliably and distinctively (study 1), we also showed they strongly related to a common power desire (study 2). Assessing their nomological networks (studies 3 and 4), we demonstrated distinct associations between the dominance motive (D: wanting to coerce others into adhering to one's will) and anger and verbal aggression; the prestige motive (P: wanting to obtain admiration and respect) and the fear of losing reputation and claiming to have higher moral concerns; the leadership motive (L: wanting to take responsibility in and for one's group) and emotional stability and helping behaviour. Furthermore, while D uniquely predicted agonistic/retaliatory behaviour in dictator games (study 5), L uniquely predicted the attainment of higher employment ranks in various professions (study 7). Finally, at least to some degree, P and L related positively, and D negatively to prosocial donating behaviour (study 6). This taxonomy represents a novel and powerful approach to predicting influential social behaviour. © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Bullying in youth sport training: A nationwide exploratory and descriptive research in Portugal

We describe and analyse the incidence and nature of bullying behaviours in male adolescent athletes (n = 1458), from 9 different sports, and 97 sport clubs, across Portugal. We collected information about the prevalence of roles in bullying, types of bullying, the frequency and duration of episodes, the location and activities in which they occur, the number of athletes involved, the feelings of those involved, communication of victims and bullies about their involvement in bullying episodes, the reasons ascribed, coping strategies and victim support sources. Altogether about 10% of athletes reported having been victimized, 11% participated in bullying episodes as bullies, and 35% as bystanders. Bullying episodes were usually characterized by low frequency and low duration and were most frequently verbal bullying inside the sport club. However, when episodes became repeated and with long duration,this tended to generalize to multiple types of bullying (especially verbal and social) and multiple places where episodes occurred, in sport clubs and also in competition. We conclude that bullying in youth sport training is an important topic; there is a need for both prevention and early broadly based intervention which involves coaches, peers and family.