Talking loudly but lazing at work—Behavioral effects of stereotypes are context dependent

Recent research suggests that stereotype activation is context dependent. In the current research, we tested whether this context‐dependence also generalizes to behavioral effects of stereotypes. Extending previous findings, we could show that activation of the category “Italians” in a work context (but not in an interaction context) resulted in slow behavior (Experiment 1), whereas it increased the loudness of speech in an interaction context (but not in a work context; Experiment 2). Our results further strengthen the notion of context‐specific mental representations of stereotypes. Stereotypic attributes become activated and exert their influence on behavior in close correspondence with the current situation. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Belastungen von Bachelor- und Diplom-Studierenden

Background

The restructuring of the European educational system in line with the Bologna process forms a source of complaints in German universities because of the rigid structure of the curricula and higher pressure to perform. By comparison of students in the former diploma system with students in the bachelor master system during the period of restructuring it was analyzed if the changes in the educational system affect psychological distress in a negative way.

Methods

The analysis of 535 datasets from the psychotherapeutic outpatient department for students of the university Göttingen in the years between 2006 and 2010 was carried out to clarify if students in the bachelor master system suffered more from severe psychological distress than students of the former German diploma system. Dependent variables are a questionnaire comprising current problems and the global severity index (GSI) from the symptom checklist (SCL)-90-R. The confounding factors resulting from course of study and stud -time in the period of the restructuring have been controlled.

Results

The bachelor master students who sought help were not generally suffering from more psychological distress than diploma students. However, in comparison to students from the former diploma system they suffered more from psychological distress and problems resulting from the study situation and organization in the first semesters.

Conclusions

Psychotherapeutic university outpatient departments have to be aware of the changing demand. The study organization has to be changed to be more student friendly, especially in the beginning. An adequate infrastructure for psychotherapeutic university outpatients has to be provided.     

Empathy is a beautiful thing: Empathy predicts imitation only for attractive others

Research shows that we spontaneously imitate people. Moreover, empathy predicts the degree of this non‐conscious imitation. Little is known, however, if or how this expression of empathy is influenced by stable physical characteristics of our interaction‐partners. In two studies, we tested whether attractiveness of others moderated the relation between empathy and imitation. While seeing a woman performing joystick movements, participants either imitated, or non‐imitated these movements. Results showed that the higher participants empathy score, the faster they imitated an attractive person. The level of empathy did not predict the degree of imitation of unattractive targets. The findings demonstrate that the expression of empathy through imitation can be moderated by attractiveness, thereby introducing a new dimension to the conditionality of empathy.     

Top-down control of attention: it's gradual, practice-dependent, and hierarchically organized

When searching for a "pop-out" target, interference from a salient but irrelevant distractor can be reduced or even prevented under certain circumstances. Here, five experiments were conducted to further our understanding of three different aspects of top-down interference reduction: first, whether or not qualitatively different search modes can account for different reduction patterns; second, whether distractor practice plays a causal role in reduction; and third, how specific reduction is, that is, whether interference by intradimensional distractors can be reduced as effectively as interference by cross-dimensional distractors. The results provide evidence that interference reduction does not critically depend on the implementation of a feature search mode, but rather on practice with the distractor, that is, the acquisition of an effective suppression strategy. In addition, they suggest that interference reduction is based on hierarchically organized feature weighting ("dimension weighting"), rather than on completely independent feature weighting.     

Biased information search in group decision making

Research has shown that people prefer supporting to conflicting information when making decisions. Whether this biased information search also occurs in group decision making was examined in three experiments. Experiment 1 indicated that groups as well as individuals prefer supporting information and that the strength of this bias depends on the distribution of the group members' initial decision preferences. The more group members had chosen the same alternative prior to the group discussion (group homogeneity), the more strongly the group preferred information supporting that alternative. Experiment 2 replicated these results with managers. Experiment 3 showed that the differences between homogeneous and heterogeneous groups reflect group-level processes. Higher commitment and confidence in homogeneous groups mediated this effect. Functional and dysfunctional aspects of biased information seeking in group decision making are discussed.     

Causal cognition in a non-human primate: field playback experiments with Diana monkeys

Crested guinea fowls (Guttera pucherani) living in West African rainforests give alarm calls to leopards (Panthera pardus) and sometimes humans (Homo sapiens), two main predators of sympatric Diana monkeys (Cercopithecus diana). When hearing these guinea fowl alarm calls, Diana monkeys respond as if a leopard were present, suggesting that by default the monkeys associate guinea fowl alarm calls with the presence of a leopard. To assess the monkeys' level of causal understanding, I primed monkeys to the presence of either a leopard or a human, before exposing them to playbacks of guinea fowl alarm calls. There were significant differences in the way leopard-primed groups and human-primed groups responded to guinea fowl alarm calls, suggesting that the monkeys' response was not directly driven by the alarm calls themselves but by the calls' underlying cause, i.e. the predator most likely to have caused the calls. Results are discussed with respect to three possible cognitive mechanisms - associative learning, specialized learning programs, and causal reasoning - that could have led to causal knowledge in Diana monkeys.     

Correspondence effects with manual gestures and postures: a study of imitation

In this study, the authors applied methods and theories from research of stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) to action imitation. In 6 experiments, they adopted the logic of the Simon paradigm (B. Hommel & W. Prinz, 1996) to explore interference between task-relevant symbolic stimulus features (color) and task-irrelevant iconic stimulus features (2 hand gestures and 2 postures). The same 2 hand gestures served as responses. Pronounced correspondence effects for both gestures and postures showed up throughout. In line with theories of SRC, the authors account for these correspondence effects in terms of overlap arising between stimulus and response features in a common representational domain. As a specific extension of this approach, they propose 2 functionally independent mechanisms: One operates movement-based when dynamic information is provided, and the other operates state-based with static postures as stimuli. Implications for theories of both SRC and action imitation are discussed.