National IQs predict educational attainment in math,reading and science across 56 nations

The results of the 2006 PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) study of reading comprehension, mathematical ability, and science understanding administered to 15 year olds in 56 countries [OECD (2007). PISA 2006: Science Competencies for Tomorrow's World. Paris: OECD.] are examined to assess the predictive validity of the national IQs presented by Lynn and Vanhanen [Lynn, R., & Vanhanen, T. (2002). IQ and the wealth of nations. Westport, CT: Praeger., Lynn, R., & Vanhanen, T. (2006). IQ and global inequality. Augusta, GA: Washington Summit Books.], and to assess the contributions of national differences in IQ and educational variables to national differences in educational attainment. It was found that national scores in reading comprehension, mathematical ability, and science understanding are correlated with Lynn & Vanhanen (L & V) national IQs at 0.84; corrected for attenuation, 0.935. This establishes the high validity of Lynn & Vanhanen national IQs. The contribution of national differences in IQ and education variables to national differences in educational attainment obtained in the 2006 PISA 56 nation study showed that the predictive validity of IQ alone was 0.84, and that national IQs together with one economic and two education variables had the validity 0.90 in predicting PISA 2006 results.     

Share and Share Alike or Winner Take All?: The Influence of Social Value Orientation upon Choice and Recall of Negotiation Heuristics

Two experiments test the hypothesis that social value orientation influences choice and recall of heuristics in individuals preparing for negotiation. Consistent with predictions, Study 1 shows that in the preparation phase, negotiators with a prosocial value orientation choose more cooperative heuristics (e.g., “equal split is fair”) than competitive heuristics (e.g., “your gain is my loss”) while negotiators with a competitive social value orientation do the reverse. Negotiators with an individualistic social value orientation do not discriminate in their choice between cooperative and competitive heuristics. Study 2 shows that following preparation, prosocial negotiators recall more cooperative than competitive heuristics while individualists and competitors do the reverse. Additional measures suggest that prosocial negotiators prefer cooperative heuristics because these are seen as morally appropriate, whereas individualists and competitors prefer competitive heuristics because these are seen as effective.     

Social anxiety modulates visual exploration in real life – but not in the laboratory

In clinical reports, individuals high on social anxiety are often described to avoid gaze at other people, whereas several experimental studies employing images of persons yielded conflicting results. Here, we show that gaze avoidance crucially depends on the possibility of social interactions. We examined gaze behaviour in individuals with varying degrees of social anxiety in real-life and in a second group of participants using a closely matched laboratory condition. In the real-life situation, individuals with a higher degree of social anxiety had a reduced bias to look at near persons compared to individuals with a lower degree of social anxiety, while gaze behaviour in the laboratory group was not modulated by social anxiety. This effect was specific to social attention since there was no corresponding effect regarding fixations on objects. The presence of anxiety effects in real-life but not in the laboratory condition, where participants do not expect to be evaluated by gazed-at conspecifics, points to critical deficits of current laboratory research paradigms in eliciting authentic social attentional mechanisms, possibly leading to spurious results.     

Investigating the Relation between Gender Typicality and Pressure to Conform to Gender Norms

Sex Roles - Previous research suggested that gender typicality and pressure to conform to gender norms were unrelated; however, this may have been due to how gender typicality was assessed (i.e.,...     

Who Is to Blame? Children's and Adults' Moral Judgments Regarding Victim and Transgressor Negligence

Research has documented that individuals consider outcomes, intentions, and transgressor negligence when making morally relevant judgments (Nobes, Panagiotaki, & Engelhardt, 2017). However, less is known about whether individuals attend to both victim and transgressor negligence in their evaluations. The current study measured 3- to 6-year-olds (N = 70), 7- to 12-year-olds (N = 54), and adults' (N = 97, ages 18–25 years) moral judgments about scenarios in which an accidental transgression occurred involving property damage or physical harm. Participants were either assigned to conditions where the victim or the transgressor was negligent. Results revealed attention to negligence among all participants across a range of different moral judgment measures (including acceptability judgments, punishment judgments, and attributions of blame), with age-related increases in attention to negligence evident. Results provide novel evidence that children and adults consider not just outcomes and intentions, but also the role of negligence in both victims and transgressors, when making social decisions.     

Measuring Multicultural Training Reactance: Initial Instrument Psychometrics

Resistant behaviors in multicultural courses are a common dilemma within counselor education. On the basis of psychological reactance theory (J. W. Brehm, 1966), the authors created a multicultural training reactance scale to measure the construct. Exploratory factor analysis and initial reliability and validity data are presented, followed by suggestions that address course reactions. Los comportamientos resistentes en los cursos multiculturales son un dilema frecuente en la educación de consejeros. Basándose en la teoría de reactancia psicológica (J. W. Brehm, 1966), los autores crearon una escala de reactancia en la capacitación multicultural para medir el constructo. Se presenta un análisis factorial exploratorio, así como datos iniciales de fiabilidad y validez, seguidos por sugerencias que abordan las reacciones al curso.     

Examining the effectiveness of brief interventions to strengthen a positive implicit relation between women and STEM across two timepoints

Social Psychology of Education - The current study assessed the impact of three brief interventions aimed at influencing implicit gender bias in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)...     

A Reverse Outcome Bias: The Influence of Multiple Reference Points on the Evaluation of Outcomes and Decisions

Two experiments examined the influence of multiple reference points on the evaluation of outcomes and decisions that lead to those outcomes. Norm theory is applied as a conceptual framework for understanding the conditions under which alternative norms may be evoked by the decision context and how they are subsequently used as reference points in the evaluation process. Of primary interest, in these studies, was how an outcome is evaluated when two reference points, the status quo and an evoked alternative, provide conflicting information about the "goodness" of the outcome (the outcome is good from the perspective of one reference point and bad from the perspective of the other). A gambling paradigm, based on regret theory, is employed to address these questions. We find that an alternative outcome is more likely to be evoked as a reference point when: (1) it is certain that another choice would have led to the alternative outcome; (2) a social comparison other receives the alternative outcome; and (3) the alternative outcome is in a different evaluative domain than the outcome received (i.e., is negative when the outcome received is positive). When these conditions hold, and the alternative outcome is used as a reference point for evaluation, the evaluations which result are quite counterintuitive: winners are rated as more regretful over their choices than losers are considered to be less satisfied with their outcomes than losers, and are rated as having made poorer quality decision than losers, who made the same choice! The latter finding represents a complete reversal of the outcome bias often observed in judgments of decisions made under uncertainty.     

Multiple reference points in satisfaction and fairness assessment

Most studies of reference point effects have used a single referent, such as a price, a salary, or a target. There is considerable evidence that the judged fairness of, or satisfaction with, an outcome is significantly influenced by discrepancies from such single referents. In many settings, however, more than one reference point may be available, so the subject may be confronted simultaneously with some referents above, some at, and some below the focal outcome. Little is known about the simultaneous impact of such multiple reference points. We examine here the effects of two referents on ratings of salary satisfaction and fairness. Subjects were presented with a series of scenarios that described a salary offer made to a hypothetical MBA graduate and provided information about the salary offers made to either one or two other similar graduates. For each scenario, subjects judged how fair the focal graduate would feel the offer to be, and how satisfied he or she would be with it. Satisfaction ratings displayed asymmetric effects of comparisons: the pain associated with receiving a salary lower than another MBA is greater than the pleasure associated with a salary higher than the other student by the same amount. Fairness ratings showed a different pattern of asymmetric effects of discrepancies from the reference salaries: the focal graduate's salary was judged somewhat less fair when others received lower offers, and much less fair when others received higher offers. The asymmetric effects occurred for both reference points, suggesting that the focal salary was compared separately to each of the referents rather than to a single reference point formed by prior integration of the referents. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hypnotic pseudomemories,prehypnotic warnings,and the malleability of suggested memories

This study used Orne's nocturnal events paradigm to test the effects of warning highly hypnotizable participants about the possibility of hypnotic false memories. We found that warnings reduced suggestibility but not false memories during hypnosis. Fewer warned participants (12/32, 38 per cent) than unwarned participants (12/16, 75 per cent) accepted the suggestion to hear a noise that awakened them when they were age-regressed to a night of the previous week. However, an analysis of only those persons who accepted the suggestion during hypnosis showed that the warning had no effect on their posthypnotic pseudomemories: among this group, 75 per cent of warned versus 58 per cent of unwarned persons stated immediately after hypnosis that the noise occurred in reality (i.e., reported a pseudomemory). During a final confidential assessment, 58 per cent of the warned participants who had accepted the noise suggestion reported a pseudomemory, versus 50 per cent of the unwarned participants. Comparing pseudomemory rates across all participants, regardless of whether they passed or failed the noise suggestion, 28 per cent of warned participants versus 44 per cent of unwarned participants reported pseudomemories, a nonsignificant difference. Finally, warned and unwarned participants were equally confident in their false memories. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.