Smiles as signals of lower status in football players and fashion models: Evidence that smiles are associated with lower dominance and lower prestige

Across four studies, the current paper demonstrates that smiles are associated with lower social status. Moreover, the association between smiles and lower status appears in the psychology of observers and generalizes across two forms of status: prestige and dominance. In the first study, faces of fashion models representing less prestigious apparel brands were found to be more similar to a canonical smile display than the faces of models representing more prestigious apparel brands.?In a second study, after being experimentally primed with either high or low prestige fashion narratives, participants in the low prestige condition were more likely to perceive smiles in a series of photographs depicting smiling and non-smiling faces. A third study of football player photographs revealed that the faces of less dominant (smaller) football players were more similar to the canonical smile display than the faces of their physically larger counterparts. Using the same football player photographs, a fourth study found that smiling was a more reliable indicator of perceived status-relevant personality traits than perceptions of the football players' physical sizes inferred from the photographs.     

The bank of standardized stimuli (BOSS): comparison between French and English norms

Throughout the last decades, numerous picture data sets have been developed, such as the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) set, and have been normalized for variables such as name and familiarity; however, due to cultural and linguistic differences, norms can vary from one country to another. The effect due specifically to culture has already been demonstrated by comparing samples from different countries where the same language is spoken. On the other hand, it is still not clear how differences between languages may affect norms. The present study explores this issue by collecting and comparing norms on names and many other features from French Canadian speakers and English Canadian speakers living in Montreal, who thus live in similar cultural environments. Norms were collected for the photos of objects from the Bank of Standardized Stimuli (BOSS) by asking participants to name the objects, to categorize them, and to rate their familiarity, visual complexity, object agreement, viewpoint agreement, and manipulability. Names and ratings from the French speakers are available in Appendix A, available in the supplemental materials. The results show that most of the norms are comparable across linguistic groups and also that the ratings given are correlated across linguistic groups. The only significant group differences were found in viewpoint agreement and visual complexity. Overall, there was good concordance between the norms collected from French and English native speakers living in the same cultural setting.     

Bias in self-motion perceived speed can enhance episodic memory

Prior experiences of a stimulus facilitate reprocessing of that stimulus on a subsequent occasion. This relative ease and speed with which information is processed is defined as fluency and can constitute a basis for memory judgment. Fluency can also be manipulated on line by perceptual bias (e.g., levels of noise), leading to an increase in recognition for items processed more fluently (e.g., items with less noise). Previous experiments using Remember-Know paradigm have shown an impact of perceptual fluency only on familiarity and not on recollection. Recent episodic memory models have postulated a strong link between episodic memory and spatial processes, especially with egocentric updating (Gomez et al. in Acta Psychol 132(3):221-227, 2009). The present experiment was conducted to determine whether self-motion fluency affects recognition performance and particularly has an impact on "Remember" responses. Thirty participants learned a 4-min path movie and then had to recognize among short paths if they were part of the learned path, followed by a Remember-Know procedure for recognized items. Self-motion fluency was manipulated with the presence of nimble acceleration applied on a small part of the recognition paths. Results show that the presence of a self-motion fluency increases significantly the proportion of remember responses solely on learned paths. This study spotlights for the first time a specific fluency effect on recollection and indicates an implication of egocentric-updating processing in episodic memory retrieval.     

Deconstructing the age-prevalence curve of alcohol dependence: why "maturing out" is only a small piece of the puzzle

Epidemiological studies have consistently demonstrated that heavy alcohol use and alcohol dependence (AD) tend to increase in adolescence and emerging adulthood and then show a large decline in the late 20s, a phenomenon called maturing out. This decline has been explained as an effect of "role incompatibility" in which involvement in new roles and activities interferes with a heavy drinking lifestyle. However, maturing out has been conceived mostly as a decrease in offset, with little attention paid to reductions in new onset or recurrence across decades of life. Moreover, although role incompatibility processes have been studied with young samples, little is known about the effect of life transitions (e.g., marriage, parenthood, changes in employment status) on AD later in life and whether similar effects are observed. Using longitudinal data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, a nationally representative epidemiologic survey, we examined the patterns of stability and change in AD across the life span and the differential effect of life transitions on AD across different age strata. Results showed that persistence of AD tended to increase with age, although not dramatically, and that onset and recurrence tended to decrease with age. Moreover, the effects of life transitions on the course of AD varied across the life span and were different for men and women. These results indicate that life transitions differentially affect the patterns of stability and change in younger versus older people, have a different impact for men and women, and highlight the need to consider the unique aspects of each stage of adult development on the course of AD.     

Psychologie communautaire et psychologie de la santé : l’implication de la recherche psychosociale dans la promotion de la santé

This paper presents the issues and main principles of community psychology and community research as well as associated relationships and viewpoints in terms of health psychology and social psychology. In this perspective, the paper presents the context in which community psychology has emerged and its fundamental principles such as empowerment, community involvement and the ecological model. Using two examples of research in prevention of HIV infection, the paper leads to a greater comprehension of how a particular community-based approach to involve affected populations may be particularly relevant, not only to better understand their beliefs and behaviors but also to try to encourage them to change current behaviors or generate new ones. Research with adolescents involved in promoting condom use illustrates the use of psychosocial models of behavior change through a community approach. A second research focus on medical and psychosocial innovation through the use of non-routine, rapid screening tests for HIV - which are neither carried out nor supervised by medical personnel - aims to highlight the impact of the development of preventive action by directly concerned communities. The article aims to present the innovative methodological and epistemological issues which underpin community research.     

Hair Color and Courtship: Blond Women Received More Courtship Solicitations and Redhead Men Received More Refusals

Previous research on the effect of hair color on people??s evaluation and behavior has revealed discrepant results and the real effect of both male and female hair color on their mating attractiveness has never been tested. In Study 1, female confederates wearing blond, brown, black or red colored wigs were observed while sitting in a nightclub. In Study 2, male confederates wearing different colored wigs asked women in a nightclub for a dance. It was found that blond women were more frequently approached by men whereas blond males did not receive more acceptances to their requests. However, in both conditions, red hair was associated with less attractiveness. Evolutionary theory and differences in mating preferences are used to explain the blond hair effect. Scarcity of red-haired individuals in the population and negative stereotypes associated with red hair are used to explain the negative effect of red hair.     

A critical evaluation of c as a measure of mnemonic resolution

It is known that visual working memory capacity is limited, but the nature of this limit remains a subject of controversy. Increasingly, two factors are thought to limit visual memory: an object-based limit associated with so-called "slots" models, and an information-based limit associated with resource models. Recently, Barton, Ester, and Awh (2009) introduced a measure of mnemonic resolution, which they dubbed c. We show here that c is critically flawed, and cannot be interpreted as a measure of resolution. We recommend strongly against its use and interpretation, and suggest alternatives approaches for researchers who want to explore mnemonic resolution.     

Sexual behavior in Spanish adolescents of divorced parents

Marital breakup has been associated with numerous behavioral problems in children, such as sexual risk behaviors. This research is the first to examine sexual behaviors of Spanish adolescents related to whether their parents were married or divorced. Participants were 342 boys and girls aged between 14 and 18 years. The sample provided confidential information about their sexual behavior and birth control methods. Significant differences were only found in percentages of adolescents who had engaged in mutual masturbation, intercourse, or oral sex, and who had practiced these sexual relations in the last six months, in both cases, they were higher when the parents had broken their marital relationship. Regarding adolescents of divorced parents, engaging in intercourse is more likely in older teenagers who live with a stepparent. Moreover, older adolescents who were younger when parents divorced and who live in a reconstituted family, have more sexual partners. These and other findings are discussed.     

Factor analysis of ipsative data: a simulation study

This paper introduces a summary on how to proceed to conduct a factor analysis when the input data are ipsative. The classical factor analysis procedures cannot be used because the covariance matrix is singular. Additionally, previous research on the optimal conditions to conduct factor analysis for ipsatized data is reviewed, and the results of a simulation study are presented. The study includes conditions of sample size, model complexity, and model specification (correct vs. incorrect). The results suggest that researchers should be careful when factor analyzing ipsatized data, particularly if they suspect that the model is incorrectly specified and includes a smaller number of factors.     

Incorporation and adaptation of the postmodern belief system

Every society develops a particular system of beliefs that summarizes its vision of socio-political organization, culture and interpersonal relationships. Each of these three basic dimensions has different forms, depending on the spatial and temporal context of societies. The belief system of the service societies is characterized by a democratic vision of social and political organization, rejection of radical social changes and high levels of interpersonal trust. This paper empirically examines the incorporation and adaptation of the postmodern belief system in a sample of university students. The participants belong to a country that is slowly integrating into the service societies. We used a scale of postmodernity to analyze the incorporation of the postmodern belief system. The results indicate that there is a peculiar combination of the three basic dimensions of the postmodern belief system, where the postmodern conceptions of culture and social relationships have lower acceptance.