Effects of divided attention and social categorization on the own-race bias in face recognition

Perceivers remember own-race faces more accurately than other-race faces (i.e., Own-Race Bias). In the current experiments, we manipulated participants' attentional resources and social group membership to explore their influence on own and other-race face recognition memory. In Experiment 1, Chinese participants viewed own-race and Caucasian faces, and between-subjects we manipulated whether participants attention was divided during face encoding. We found that divided attention eliminated the Own-Race Bias in memory due to a reduction of memory accuracy for own-race faces, implicating that attention allocation plays a role in creating the bias. In Experiment 2, Chinese participants completed an ostensible personality test. Some participants were informed that their personality traits were most commonly found in Caucasian (i.e., other-race) individuals, resulting in these participants sharing a group membership with other-race targets. In contrast, other participants were not told anything about the personality test, resulting in the default own-race group membership. The participants encoded the faces for a subsequent recognition memory test either with or without performing a concurrent arithmetic distracting task. Results showed that other-race group membership and reducing attention during encoding independently eliminated the typical Own-Race Bias in face memory. The implications of these findings on perceptual-expertise and social-categorization models are discussed.     

Ecological perception affords an explanation of object permanence

In this paper I aim to present an explanation of object permanence that is derived from an ecological account of perceptually based action. In understanding why children below a certain age do not search for occluded objects, one must first understand the process by which these children perform certain intentional actions on non-occluded items; and to do this one must understand the role affordances play in eliciting retrieval behaviour. My affordance-based explanation is contrasted with Shinskey and Munakata's graded representation account; and although I do not reject totally the role representations play in initiating intentional action I nevertheless maintain that only by incorporating direct perception into an account of object permanence can a fuller understanding of this phenomenon be achieved.     

Personal and cultural differences in responding to criticism in three countries

The present study investigated whether verbal aggression, argument approach, argument avoidance or assertiveness had any effect on how participants in three countries responded to criticism. Consistent with the first hypothesis, men were significantly more aggressive, assertive, less avoidant, and approached argument more than women. However, men did not respond more assertively to criticism. As predicted in the second hypothesis, US Americans responded more assertively to criticism than did Japanese and Chinese. The third hypothesis predicted that verbal aggression, argument approach, argument avoidance and assertiveness would be associated with a more assertive response to criticism. The data obtained were only partially consistent with the third hypothesis. While only a small number of participants in this study indicated that they would respond to criticism with silence, US Americans used silence to mean anger while for Chinese silence showed personal embarrassment. Very few Japanese selected silence as an option for responding to a neighbor's criticism. The implications of these results are discussed.     

A Study of the Benefit of Social and Religious Support on Church Members During Times of Crisis

A majority of Americans participate in religious services and identify themselves as members of a faith community. Understanding the role that religion plays in people's lives is essential to developing a comprehensive model of social support during times of crisis. The purpose of the current study was to identify the resources of social support that are helpful for church members during times of crisis. Although research on the impact of social support has identified several types of support—and the function of such support—to people undergoing difficult times, researchers have not looked at the impact of religious beliefs and participation in religious communities on social support to any significant extent. The current study collected questionnaire data from 23 members of one congregation who experienced a personal crisis. Analysis of the data shows that religious beliefs and the support provided by the religious community were seen as extremely helpful in times of crisis. Implications for incorporating people's religious beliefs and participation in religious communities into future investigations of social support are discussed.     

Anger management style and emotional reactivity to noxious stimuli among chronic pain patients and healthy controls: the role of endogenous opioids.

OBJECTIVE: Previous work suggests that elevated trait anger-out exacerbates pain responses in part through endogenous opioid dysfunction. The authors examined whether this opioid dysfunction affects not only perceived pain intensity, but also emotional responses to being hurt. DESIGN: 79 chronic low back pain (LBP) patients and 46 healthy controls received opioid blockade (8 mg naloxone i.v.) and placebo in randomized, counterbalanced order in separate sessions. During each session, participants sequentially experienced finger pressure pain and ischemic forearm pain tasks, with emotional state assessed at baseline and postpain. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Blockade effects indexing opioid modulation of emotional reactivity were derived by subtracting placebo from blockade condition emotional reactivity. RESULTS: Significant Participant Type x Anger-Out interactions on blockade effects indicated that in LBP participants but not in controls, greater anger-out was associated with deficient opioid modulation of anxiety, anger, and fear reactivity to noxious stimulation. Across participant types, greater anger-in was associated with impaired opioid modulation of anxiety and fear reactivity. Anger-in opioid effects were partially due to overlap with general negative affect. CONCLUSIONS: Opioid dysfunction associated with trait anger-out may affect not only perceived pain intensity, but also pain-related suffering in individuals with chronic pain conditions. Implications for understanding the health effects of anger management styles are discussed.