Social–Emotional Factors and Academic Outcomes Among Elementary‐Aged Children

Social–emotional comprehension involves encoding, interpreting, and reasoning about social–emotional information, and self‐regulating. This study examined the mediating pathways through which social–emotional comprehension and social behaviour are related to academic outcomes in two ethnically and socioeconomically heterogeneous samples totaling 340 elementary‐aged children. In both samples, social–emotional comprehension, teacher report of social behaviour, and academic outcomes were measured in a single school year. In both samples, structural equation models showed that the relationship between social–emotional comprehension and reading was mediated by socially skilled behaviour. In one sample, but not the other, the relationship between social–emotional comprehension and math was mediated by socially skilled behaviour. This paper advances our understanding of the mechanisms through which social–emotional factors are associated with academic outcomes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Influence of Neighborhood Aesthetics,Safety, and Social Cohesion on Perceived Stress in Disadvantaged Communities

Limited research has explored how specific elements of physical and social environments influence mental health indicators such as perceived stress, or whether such associations are moderated by gender. This study examined the relationship between selected neighborhood characteristics and perceived stress levels within a primarily low‐income, older, African‐American population in a mid‐sized city in the Southeastern U.S. Residents (n = 394; mean age=55.3 years, 70.9% female, 89.3% African American) from eight historically disadvantaged neighborhoods completed surveys measuring perceptions of neighborhood safety, social cohesion, aesthetics, and stress. Multivariate linear regression models examined the association between each of the three neighborhood characteristics and perceived stress. Greater perceived safety, improved neighborhood aesthetics, and social cohesion were significantly associated with lower perceived stress. These associations were not moderated by gender. These findings suggest that improving social attributes of neighborhoods may have positive impacts on stress and related benefits for population health. Future research should examine how neighborhood characteristics influence stress over time.     

College Campus Community Readiness to Address Intimate Partner Violence Among LGBTQ+ Young Adults: A Conceptual and Empirical Examination

This paper provides an overview of a conceptual model that integrates theories of social ecology, minority stress, and community readiness to better understand risk for and outcomes of intimate partner violence (IPV) among LGBTQ+ college students. Additionally, online survey data was collected from a sample of 202 LGBTQ+ students enrolled in 119 colleges across the United States to provide preliminary data on some aspects of the proposed model. Results suggested that students generally thought their campuses were low in readiness to address IPV; that is, students felt that their campuses could do more to address IPV and provide IPV services specific to LGBTQ+ college students. Perceptions of greater campus readiness to address IPV among LGBTQ+ college students was significantly and positively related to a more favorable LGBTQ+ campus climate and a greater sense of campus community. Additionally, IPV victims were more likely to perceive higher levels of campus community readiness than non‐IPV victims. There was no association between IPV perpetration and perceptions of campus community readiness. Greater sense of community was marginally and inversely related to IPV victimization and perpetration. Sense of community and LGBTQ+ campus climate also varied to some extent as a function of region of the country and type of institution. Implications for further development and refinement of the conceptual model, as well as future research applying this model to better understand IPV among sexual minority students are discussed.     

Distraction from emotional information reduces biased judgements

Biases arising from emotional processes are some of the most robust behavioural effects in the social sciences. The goal of this investigation was to examine the extent to which the emotion regulation strategy of distraction could reduce biases in judgement known to result from emotional information. Study 1 explored lay views regarding whether distraction is an effective strategy to improve decision-making and revealed that participants did not endorse this strategy. Studies 2–5 focused on several established, robust biases that result from emotional information: loss aversion, desirability bias, risk aversion and optimistic bias. Participants were prompted to divert attention away from their feelings while making judgements, and in each study this distraction strategy resulted in reduced bias in judgement relative to control conditions. The findings provide evidence that distraction can improve choice across several situations that typically elicit robustly biased responses, even though participants are not aware of the effectiveness of this strategy.     

Examining Ethicality Judgements of Theft Behavior: The Role of Moral Relativism

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether situational factors predict ethicality judgments of theft behavior, and whether the effect of situational factors is moderated by moral relativism.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Data were obtained across two laboratory experiments using undergraduate business students attending a Canadian university (n = 372). Student participants viewed a videotaped vignette of an employee informed that he had been caught stealing sales commission. In the vignettes, we manipulated two situational factors: whether or not (a) the theft has monetary consequences for the organization, and (b) similar theft is commonplace within the organization.

Findings

In Experiment 1, both situational factors interacted with moral relativism in the prediction of ratings of unethical conduct. In Experiment 2, using a within-participant research design, we achieved an interaction between the organizational consequences manipulation and moral relativism, although we obtained a considerably stronger effect size for the interaction compared to the first experiment.

Implications

We discuss implications of our findings and suggest avenues for future research. In particular, we consider the possibility that managers may not share a common frame-of-reference when considering the ethicality of theft. This could affect whether and the extent to which theft behavior is reprimanded.

Originality/Value

Our study contributes to research on employee theft, and also adds incrementally to our understanding of how both situational factors and moral relativism jointly influence perceptions of theft behavior.

     

The Moral Foreign-Language Effect

Many have argued that moral judgment is driven by one of two types of processes. Rationalists argue that reasoned processes are the source of moral judgments, whereas sentimentalists argue that emotional processes are. We provide evidence that both positions are mistaken; there are multiple mental processes involved in moral judgment, and it is possible to manipulate which process is engaged when considering moral dilemmas by presenting them in a non-native language. The Foreign-Language Effect (FLE) is the activation of systematic reasoning processes by thinking in a foreign language. We demonstrate that the FLE extends to moral judgment. This indicates that different types of processes can lead to the formation of differing moral judgments. One implication of the FLE is that it raises the possibility that moral judgments can be made more systematic, and that the type of processing used to form them might be relevant to normative and applied ethics.     

Visual perspective in remembering and episodic future thought

According to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis, remembering and episodic future thinking are supported by a common set of constructive processes. In the present study, we directly addressed this assertion in the context of third-person perspectives that arise during remembering and episodic future thought. Specifically, we examined the frequency with which participants remembered past events or imagined future events from third-person perspectives. We also examined the different viewpoints from which third-person perspective events were remembered or imagined. Although future events were somewhat more likely to be imagined from a third-person perspective, the spatial viewpoint distributions of third-person perspectives characterizing remembered and imagined events were highly similar. These results suggest that a similar constructive mechanism may be at work when people remember events from a perspective that could not have been experienced in the past and when they imagine events from a perspective that could not be experienced in the future. The findings are discussed in terms of their consistency with—and as extensions of—the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis.     

Exploring the Toolkit of Emotion: What Do Sadness and Anger Do for Us?

What do negative emotions do for people? We present a framework that defines the function of emotions as the degree to which discrete emotions result in better outcomes in particular types of situations. Focusing on sadness and anger, we review evidence related to the situations that elicit these emotions; the cognitive, physiological, and behavioral changes associated with the emotions; and the extent to which these changes result in demonstrably better outcomes in the type of situation that elicits the emotion. Sadness is elicited by perceived goal loss without possibility of restoration given current abilities and is associated with deliberative reasoning, reduced physiological activity, and behavioral expression. There is preliminary evidence suggesting that sadness can permit coping with loss, and that expression of sadness can recruit others to assist in goal attainment. Anger is elicited by perceived goal loss that can be prevented if an obstacle is overcome and is associated with heuristic reasoning, increased physiological activity, and behavioral expression. There is evidence that expression of anger prompts others to remove themselves as obstacles, and preliminary evidence that anger can promote overcoming obstacles and goal attainment. Like precision tools, specific emotions are best utilized to resolve particular problems.     

Marital Processes Linking Gender Role Attitudes and Marital Satisfaction Among Mexican‐Origin Couples: Application of an Actor–Partner Interdependence Mediation Model

Informed by dyadic approaches and culturally informed, ecological perspectives of marriage, we applied an actor–partner interdependence mediation model (APIMeM) in a sample of 120 Mexican‐origin couples to examine (a) the associations linking Mexican immigrant husbands’ and wives’ gender role attitudes to marital satisfaction directly and indirectly through marital processes (i.e., warmth and negativity) and (b) whether the associations between spouses’ gender role attitudes and marital processes were moderated by wives’ employment. Although previous research has identified spouses’ gender role attitudes as potential predictors of spouses’ marital satisfaction, no study has examined these links in a dyadic model that elucidates how gender role attitudes may operate through processes to shape marital satisfaction and conditions under which associations may differ. We found that when spouses reported less sex‐typed attitudes, their partners reported feeling more connected to them and more satisfied with the marriage, regardless of whether wives were employed. Our results suggest that marital satisfaction was highest for those Mexican‐origin couples in which marital partners were less sex‐typed in their attitudes about marital roles to the extent that partners’ attitudinal role flexibility promoted spouses’ feelings of warmth and connection to their partner.     

Afraid of one afraid of all: When threat associations spread across face-types

Fear can be acquired for objects not inherently associated with threat (e.g. birds), and this threat may generalize from prototypical to peripheral category members (e.g. crows vs. penguins). When categorizing people, pervasive stereotypes link Black men to assumed violence and criminality. Faces with Afrocentric features (prototypical) are more often associated with threat and criminality than non-Afrocentric (peripheral) faces regardless of whether the individual is Black or White. In this study, using a priming paradigm, threat associations related to negative racial stereotypes were tested as a vehicle for spreading fear across face-type categories. Results showed more negative than positive judgments for White face targets but only when the prime was primarily non-Afrocentric (i.e. Eurocentric). Black face targets were judged more negatively than positively regardless of prime. This suggests some cognitive processes related to threat generalizations of objects extend to complex social categories.