From Stigmatized Immigrants to Radical Right Voting: A Multilevel Study on the Role of Threat and Contact

This study examines the interplay between presence of stigmatized immigrants, threat, and intergroup contact that underlies radical right voting (voting propensity and actual district‐level vote results). On the one hand, low‐status immigrants are often stigmatized and depicted as threats. Thus, presence of stigmatized immigrants should heighten threat perceptions, thereby increasing radical right voting. On the other hand, as positive contact with stigmatized immigrants is known to reduce anti‐immigrant prejudice, it should also attenuate radical right voting. As predicted, multilevel path analyses with the Swiss Election Studies 2011 data (N = 1,736 respondents in 136 districts) revealed that the proportion of stigmatized immigrants (from former Yugoslavia and Albania) in districts heightened perceived threat. Threat perceptions, in turn, increased propensity to vote for the Swiss People's Party, the major radical right party. In contrast, experiencing positive, everyday contact with former Yugoslav and Albanian immigrants reduced voting propensity through attenuated threat perceptions. Contact and threat perceptions were also related to the actual vote through voting propensity.     

Psychische Störungen und Psychotherapie in der spätmodernen Gesellschaft

The development into a globalized network capitalism has brought enduring change to everyday experiences of humans and affected their self-images and concepts of normality. The new capitalism offered us a specific disturbance panorama which, however, in the language game of clinical diagnostics cannot be named and classified in its social framework. Here is a gap in professional reflection. Psychotherapy needs social diagnostics and for its part can contribute to it. Moreover, it is necessary for psychotherapy to develop its therapeutic technical operating level by a critical alertness for the structural conditions of human life and human suffering.     

Comparative judgments with missing information: a regression and process tracing analysis

We had participants decide which one of two applicants was better qualified for a scholarship. They also judged the difference between them (comparative judgment). The applicants were described by features (grades) in different subjects (dimensions). The grades on some dimensions were missing (unique dimensions) for an alternative while all the grades were available on other dimensions (common dimensions). In a conventional regression analysis, we found that decision makers gave more weight to dimensions when they were common than when they were unique. However, this commensurability effect was limited to medium important dimensions and did not apply to dimensions of high or low importance. We also observed how participants retrieved information for the choice alternatives and analysed how importance and commensurability are reflected in the processing prior to the decision. Features on more important or common dimensions were inspected earlier than features on less important or unique dimensions. Participants preferred dimensional transitions and inspected features on unique dimensions longer than their common counterparts. This finding suggested that participants used inferences when features were missing. We propose an outline of a decision heuristic to describe decision making with missing information.     

Are facial expressions of emotion produced by categorical affect programs or dynamically driven by appraisal?

The different assumptions made by discrete and componential emotion theories about the nature of the facial expression of emotion and the underlying mechanisms are reviewed. Explicit and implicit predictions are derived from each model. It is argued that experimental expression-production paradigms rather than recognition studies are required to critically test these differential predictions. Data from a large-scale actor portrayal study are reported to demonstrate the utility of this approach. The frequencies with which 12 professional actors use major facial muscle actions individually and in combination to express 14 major emotions show little evidence for emotion-specific prototypical affect programs. Rather, the results encourage empirical investigation of componential emotion model predictions of dynamic configurations of appraisal-driven adaptive facial actions.     

Cognitive ability,parenting and instruction in Vietnam and Germany

In a sample of N = 105 fifth graders from Vietnam and Germany, cognitive abilities (CogAT-Nonverbal, i.e. fluid figural, CogAT-Quantitative, i.e. crystallized mathematics), family attributes, parenting styles, leisure time activities, and attributes of school and instruction were compared. In spite of large cultural and economic differences, the general cognitive ability levels were similar (M_Vnm = 99.43 vs. M_Deu = 99.13 IQ points in current UK norms). This result is in contradiction to usual outcomes in developing countries. However, regarding family, parenting, school and instruction, differences were observed: German families had more books. German parents were less frequently married and German families less frequently consisted of both mother and father. Vietnamese parents had more children. Vietnamese parents showed higher levels of authoritarian and neglecting parenting. German children read more books. The Vietnamese did not attend kindergarten, had larger classes, more homework, and more private tuition. In a path analysis, parental educational level, number of books, burgher family, low birth order rank, amount of teaching, parental income, Confucian educational orientation and Vietnamese background all revealed a positive impact on children's intelligence.     

Ability rise in NAEP and narrowing ethnic gaps?

US National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results from 1971 to 2008 enable four different effects to be distinguished: Cohort rise effects, gap-narrowing between ethnic groups, trends due to demographic changes in by NAEP listed or not listed ethnic groups. NAEP means and percentiles in reading and mathematics were transformed to conventional IQs and SDs. The total increase from 1971 to 2008 was in the scale of 4.34 IQ points (dec = 1.17 IQ per decade). The ability distribution became more homogenous (down from SD = 15.00 in 1971 to SD = 13.56 in 2008). Increases were larger for younger students (9-year olds: 2.02 IQ per decade; 13-year olds: 1.20; 17-year olds: 0.30); larger at the lower ability level (10th percentile dec = 1.79 vs. 90th percentile dec = 1.03). The largest increase was for Blacks (Whites dec = 1.29 IQ, Hispanics 2.27, Blacks 3.04). White–Hispanic-differences were reduced from 11.59 to 8.46 IQ, White–Black from 16.33 to 9.94 IQ. If the racial composition of the population had not changed, the mean gain for the 17-year-old group would have been 2.47 IQ points higher. Had the gap between Whites and the two other groups not narrowed, the mean gain would have been 1.70 IQ points lower. Demographic change has accounted for a loss of 2.47 IQ points and according to cognitive human capital theory $2001 GDP per capita per year, but total ethnic gap-narrowing has provided a gain of $1377.     

The time course of presaccadic attention shifts

The dynamics of the allocation of attention during the preparation of saccadic eye movements was studied in a dual task paradigm. As the primary task, participants had to perform a saccade to letter-like items arranged on a clock face. The secondary task was a 2AFC discrimination task in which a discrimination target (DT) ('E' or '3') was presented among distractors, either at the saccade goal, or at a spatially separate, precued location. In the first experiment, the position of the DT was kept constant within an experimental block, while the saccade target location varied. In the second experiment, the location of the DT was varied while the saccade target remained the same within a block. The data demonstrate that attentional dynamics differs between the experiments--attention can shift to the saccade goal early or late during the saccade preparation period, depending on the task. Immediately before saccade onset, however, discrimination performance at the location of the saccade target is always superior to other locations, arguing for a strict and selective coupling between saccade preparation and attention.