Implicit theories moderate the relation of positive future fantasies to academic outcomes

We hypothesized and observed that the degree to which students endorsed entity theories - the view that intelligence is fixed rather than malleable - attenuated the affective benefits and exacerbated the achievement drawbacks of positive fantasies in the academic domain. Positive fantasies only predicted low anger and anxiety for schoolchildren who did not strongly endorse entity theories (Study 1), and positive fantasies only predicted poor final school grades for vocational students who did strongly endorse entity theories (Study 2). An experiment indicated that for university students with stronger entity theories, positive fantasies demanded relatively little attention (Study 3), suggesting that positive fantasies obscure the opportunity for the preemptive self-regulation which promotes successful performance.     

A Brief Group Cognitive-Behavioral Program for the Prevention of Depressive Symptoms in Chinese College Students

Depression is a problem among college students in China. Yet the use of preventative group cognitive-behavioral (CB) intervention is rare. One hundred and eighty Chinese college students who were identified as being at risk for depression were randomly assigned to three groups: 1) a brief group cognitive–behavioral (CB) intervention, 2) a supportive group (SG) intervention, and 3) a wait-list control condition. The Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS), the Zung Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), and the Chinese College Student Adjustment Scale (CCSAS) were administered at pre-test, post-test, and six-month follow-up. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) conducted among the three groups revealed that the CB group demonstrated significantly less increase in measures of primary symptoms of anxiety and depression than the wait-list controls at post-test and six-month follow-up. The prevention effect of the SG group was significant only at the six-month follow-up. CB participants also showed significantly greater improvements in social adjustment than did SG participants and controls at the post-test and six-month follow-up.     

Family Expressiveness Mediates the Relation Between Cumulative Family Risks and Children’s Emotion Regulation in a Chinese Sample

Family expressiveness, a reflection of a family’s emotional environment, has been identified as a critical factor that influences children’s emotion regulation, yet research on this topic is limited, especially in varying cultural contexts. The present study addresses this research gap and expands on the extant literature by examining the influence of family expressiveness on children’s emotional development in the context of cumulative risks (e.g., low annual household income, parental psychological distress, parents’ education level, marital dissatisfaction and the family’s housing situation). Our final sample included one hundred and seventy-eight school-aged children (84 boys and 94 girls) and their biological parents. Results showed that higher scores on the familial risk index were related to increased emotion dysregulation and decreased adaptive emotion regulation, through the mediated effects of positive family expressiveness. Negative expressiveness, however, did not mediate the aforementioned links. Reasons for the different findings regarding positive expressiveness and negative expressiveness were discussed. These findings highlight the importance of cumulative risk on children’s emotional development in the Chinese cultural context and offer potential avenues to promote adaptive emotional development in the context of cumulative risks.     

Coping with Abusive Supervision: the Neutralizing Effects of Perceived Organizational Support and Political Skill on Employees’ Burnout

While research into the antecedents of burnout has steadily grown, the relationship between abusive supervision and burnout remains largely unknown. In addition, we know little about the contingencies under which abusive supervision may be related to employees’ burnout. This study aims to examine the contingency side of the abusive supervision-burnout relationship by addressing the exploratory question of whether perceived organizational support and individual differences in political skill play moderating roles in the abusive supervision-burnout relationship. The present article developed a model and tested it with data from a sample of 248 supervisor–subordinate dyads. We hypothesized and found that (1) Abusive supervision was positively associated with burnout; (2) the positive relationship between abusive supervision and burnout was moderated by the employees’ perceived organizational support in such a way that the relationship was weaker for employees who perceive higher rather than lower organizational support; (3) the positive relationship between abusive supervision and burnout was moderated by the employees’ political skill in such a way that the relationship was weaker for people with high, rather than lower level of political skill.     

Holistic processing is finely tuned for faces of one's own race

Recognizing individual faces outside one's race poses difficulty, a phenomenon known as the other-race effect. Most researchers agree that this effect results from differential experience with same-race (SR) and other-race (OR) faces. However, the specific processes that develop with visual experience and underlie the other-race effect remain to be clarified. We tested whether the integration of facial features into a whole representation-holistic processing-was larger for SR than OR faces in Caucasians and Asians without life experience with OR faces. For both classes of participants, recognition of the upper half of a composite-face stimulus was more disrupted by the bottom half (the composite-face effect) for SR than OR faces, demonstrating that SR faces are processed more holistically than OR faces. This differential holistic processing for faces of different races, probably a by-product of visual experience, may be a critical factor in the other-race effect.     

Differential item functioning by sex and race in the Hogan Personality Inventory

The authors examined measurement bias in the Hogan Personality Inventory by investigating differential item functioning (DIF) across sex and two racial groups (Caucasian and Black). The sample consisted of 1,579 Caucasians (1,023 men, 556 women) and 523 Blacks (321 men, 202 women) who were applying for entry-level, unskilled jobs in factories. Although the group mean differences were trivial, more than a third of the items showed DIF by sex (38.4%) and by race (37.3%). A content analysis of potentially biased items indicated that the themes of items displaying DIF were slightly more cohesive for sex than for race. The authors discuss possible explanations for differing clustering tendencies of items displaying DIF and some practical and theoretical implications of DIF in the development and interpretation of personality inventories.     

汉字词识别过程的形,音,义编码作用的研究

本文通过两个实验,采用汉字词形、音、义特征匹配任务,探讨了影响汉字词的形、音、义编码与提取方式的有关因素。实验一发现在速示条件下,对汉字词再认的成绩并不受字词的使用度的影响,反应时无明显变化,而主要受编码加工的深度影响。在形、音、义特征加工中,对音码的加工时间最长,再认的正确率最低;义码的加工时间较短,再认正确率最高;形码的反应时及再认成绩介于音码与义码之间。实验二在非速示条件下也获得了相同的结果。研究结果表明,在汉字词的形、音、义特征中,存在着编码加工深度的差异。