A nation challenged: the impact of foreign threat on America's tolerance for diversity

Three experiments investigated how perceived foreign threats to the United States can influence Americans' endorsement of assimilation and multiculturalism as models for foreign and domestic intergroup relations. The initial study, conducted during the 6-month anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks (9/11), discovered that a diverse group of Americans preferred assimilation as a foreign policy and multiculturalism as a domestic policy. After reading that foreigners were supporting the dominant global status of the United States, however, Americans in Experiment 2 no longer expressed this preference for assimilation as a model for foreign intergroup relations. Experiment 3 discovered that Americans primed with 9/11 (i.e., a foreign threat) revealed higher levels of national identity than did those primed with the Columbine massacre (i.e., a domestic threat); moreover, level of national identity predicted support for multiculturalism as a domestic policy and assimilation as a foreign policy.     

Cultural influences on neural substrates of attentional control

Behavioral research has shown that people from Western cultural contexts perform better on tasks emphasizing independent (absolute) dimensions than on tasks emphasizing interdependent (relative) dimensions, whereas the reverse is true for people from East Asian contexts. We assessed functional magnetic resonance imaging responses during performance of simple visuospatial tasks in which participants made absolute judgments (ignoring visual context) or relative judgments (taking visual context into account). In each group, activation in frontal and parietal brain regions known to be associated with attentional control was greater during culturally nonpreferred judgments than during culturally preferred judgments. Also, within each group, activation differences in these regions correlated strongly with scores on questionnaires measuring individual differences in culture-typical identity. Thus, the cultural background of an individual and the degree to which the individual endorses cultural values moderate activation in brain networks engaged during even simple visual and attentional tasks.     

Human Dignity—A Theological and Confucian Discussion

Abstract :  There is no doubt in the Christian tradition that humans are created in the image of God, which establishes the fundamental difference between humans and animals. However, problems concerning differences between humans have become more serious in theological discussions today with regard to human dignity. While theologians of the West argue for recognition of and respect for human dignity for every individual human being through legislation in the political system, one must not overlook the fact that in China, the emphasis of Confucian anthropology on the cultivation of moral personality is of vital importance for the practice and domination of politicians.     

Relations between baseline contingencies and equivalence probe performances

Following the emergence of two three-member equivalence classes (A1B1C1 and A2B2C2), 5 college students were exposed to one or more changes in the reinforcement contingencies controlling baseline conditional discriminations. AC relations were either reversed (i.e., C2 was reinforced and C1 punished when A1 was the sample; C1 was reinforced and C2 punished when A2 was the sample) or arranged randomly (i.e., C2 and C1 were reinforced and punished equally often in the presence of A1 and A2). In a third condition, the original AB and AC relations were reversed. Results showed that although baseline conditional discrimination performances were under the control of reinforcement contingencies, and performances on symmetry trials varied with baseline responding for 3 of 4 subjects when contingencies were reversed, performances on transitivity probes remained consistent with the initial equivalence class. These inconsistencies between probe and baseline performances were striking because conditional discriminations are thought to be the determinants of equivalence class performance. Similarly, the contrast between performances on symmetry and transitivity probes was of theoretical interest because equivalence classes are defined by congruent patterns of responding on probe trials.     

Exposure effects and associative learning

The contributions of initial stimulus affect and of associative learning to the effects of repeated stimulus exposures were examined in two experiments. Stimuli that were initially positive and stimuli that were initially negative were presented for different number of times, and subjects rated these stimuli afterward on a number of affective dimensions. In all cases, except when negative affect was associatively paired with every stimulus exposure, affective responses became increasingly more positive with increasing exposures. The results were taken to indicate that the exposure effect can overcome an initially negative stimulus affect when the conditions of the mere exposure hypothesis are satisfied. Initial stimulus affect and associative learning of affect were shown to be independent factors, the first influencing the intercept of the exposure function, the second its slope.     

Acquisition of arbitrary conditional discriminations by young normally developing children

Three experiments investigated conditions designed to facilitate acquisition of arbitrary conditional discriminations in 3- to 6-year-old normally developing children. In Experiment 1, 6 subjects failed to master the arbitrary match-to-sample task under conditions of differential reinforcement alone, but 7 subjects did so when instructions or instructions and sample naming were added. In Experiment 2, sample naming introduced in a blocked-trial arrangement resulted in acquisition, but only when the sample name was a nonsense syllable provided by the experimenter (5 of 7 subjects) and not when the sample name was generated by the subject (0 of 5 subjects). Experiment 3 demonstrated the effectiveness of a training sequence involving thematically related stimuli as an intermediate step facilitating the transition from identity to novel arbitrary relations. The difficulties in mastering arbitrary conditional discriminations shown here imply that further analyses with young children will be particularly important in efforts to investigate the development of theoretically important stimulus relations.     

The real problem for postmodernism

This essay is a critique of postmodernism and its relationship to family therapy. It is argued that the strengths of a postmodern approach (its relativism and narrative focus) are not unique but shared by traditions, modern and antiquarian, which the advocates of postmodernism now seek to displace both in the academy and the clinic. The negative baggage of accepting the emerging postmodernist orthodoxy is created, in the main, by the abandonment of a realist ontology. A variety of points are made about the relationship between postmodernism and general systems theory to highlight this point. At the end, critical or sceptical social realism is offered as a positive alternative to naïve realism or postmodernism. Some notes are made in conclusion about the implications of the essay's arguments for family therapists.     

Active and Avoidant Coping and Coping Efficacy as Mediators of the Relation of Maternal Involvement to Depressive Symptoms among Urban Adolescents

Our study tested an extension of the social resource model in an urban sample of 129 African American and 114 European American adolescents. Maternal involvement was positively related to the use of active and avoidant coping strategies among youth of both ethnicities. Additionally, use of active coping strategies was related to greater coping efficacy, which, in turn, was associated with less depressive symptomatology. For African Americans, avoidant coping was related to greater coping efficacy, which, in turn, was associated with less depressive symptoms. For European Americans, avoidant coping was not significantly related to coping efficacy. Our findings underscore the importance of examining developmental models across ethnic/racial groups and suggest that adolescent mental health programs may benefit from culturally sensitive attention to coping beliefs and practices.