Eye color Predicts Disagreeableness in North Europeans: Support in Favor of Frost (2006)

The current study investigates whether eye color provides a marker of Agreeableness in North Europeans. Extrapolating from Frost’s (2006) research uncovering an unusually diverse range of hair and eye color in northern Europe, we tested the hypothesis that light eyed individuals of North European descent would be less agreeable (a personality marker for competitiveness) when compared to their dark eyed counterparts, whereas there would be no such effect for people of European descent in general. The hypothesis was tested in Australia to provide consistent environmental conditions for both groups of people. Results support the hypothesis. Implications and conclusions are discussed.     

Sociocultural Predictors of Physical Appearance Concerns among Adolescent Girls and Young Women from China

This research assessed the extent to which sociocultural predictors of body dissatisfaction implicated in Western studies extend to the prediction of physical appearance concerns among young women and adolescent girls in Southwest China. In Study 1, 408 Chinese university-age women completed measures of fatness concern (FC), facial appearance concerns (FAC), sociocultural influence (i.e., appearance pressure, comparison, teasing), and demographics. In hierarchical regression analyses, appearance pressure and comparison predicted both FC and FAC, independent of other factors. In Study 2, effects of appearance pressure and comparison were replicated among middle school (n = 346) and high school (n = 563) girls. Together, findings suggest that appearance pressure and social comparison correspond with specific body image concerns of young females in China.     

Visual search and foraging compared in a large-scale search task

It has been argued that visual search is a valid model for human foraging. However, the two tasks differ greatly in terms of the coding of space and the effort required to search. Here we describe a direct comparison between visually guided searches (as studied in visual search tasks) and foraging that is not based upon a visually distinct target, within the same context. The experiment was conducted in a novel apparatus, where search locations were indicated by an array of lights embedded in the floor. In visually guided conditions participants searched for a target defined by the presence of a feature (red target amongst green distractors) or the absence of a feature (green target amongst red and green distractors). Despite the expanded search scale and the different response requirements, these conditions followed the pattern found in conventional visual search paradigms: feature-present search latencies were not linearly related to display size, whereas feature-absent searches were longer as the number of distractors increased. In a non-visually guided foraging condition, participants searched for a target that was only visible once the switch was activated. This resulted in far longer latencies that rose markedly with display size. Compared to eye-movements in previous visual search studies, there were few revisit errors to previously inspected locations in this condition. This demonstrates the important distinction between visually guided and non-visually guided foraging processes, and shows that the visual search paradigm is an equivocal model for general search in any context. We suggest a comprehensive model of human spatial search behaviour needs to include search at a small and large scale as well as visually guided and non-visually guided search.     

Is Character Fate,or Is There Hope to Change My Personality Yet?

Different perspectives on personality development propose a range of possible degrees to which traits are free to change, from hardly at all to very much. This essay reviews the empirical evidence on just how consistent and changeable personality traits are across the life course. To gain a thorough perspective on personality trait development, we review developmental studies that focus on three different types of change: rank‐order consistency, mean level change, and individual level change. Starting in late childhood, personality traits exhibit modest levels of rank‐order consistency that increase with age. In addition personality traits show mean level changes, especially in young adulthood, that are consistent with the idea of increasing maturity. Finally, despite these general trends in personality continuity and change, there is evidence that individuals may change in ways that contradict general trends and that these individual differences in change are related to life experiences.     

Contextual control of slot-machine gambling: replication and extension

Participants were trained and tested to select stimuli of differing physical quantities in the presence of 2 color contextual cues for more than and less than. Following more than and less than relational training, participants allocated the majority of their responses to the slot machine that shared formal properties of color with the contextual cue for more than, despite the identical payout probabilities of the slot machines.     

Not yet human: implicit knowledge, historical dehumanization, and contemporary consequences

Historical representations explicitly depicting Blacks as apelike have largely disappeared in the United States, yet a mental association between Blacks and apes remains. Here, the authors demonstrate that U.S. citizens implicitly associate Blacks and apes. In a series of laboratory studies, the authors reveal how this association influences study participants' basic cognitive processes and significantly alters their judgments in criminal justice contexts. Specifically, this Black-ape association alters visual perception and attention, and it increases endorsement of violence against Black suspects. In an archival study of actual criminal cases, the authors show that news articles written about Blacks who are convicted of capital crimes are more likely to contain ape-relevant language than news articles written about White convicts. Moreover, those who are implicitly portrayed as more apelike in these articles are more likely to be executed by the state than those who are not. The authors argue that examining the subtle persistence of specific historical representations such as these may not only enhance contemporary research on dehumanization, stereotyping, and implicit processes but also highlight common forms of discrimination that previously have gone unrecognized.     

Colour for Representationalists

Redness is the property that makes things look red in normal circumstances. That seems obvious enough. But then colour is whatever property does that job: a certain reflectance profile as it might be. Redness is the property something is represented to have when it looks red. That seems obvious enough. But looking red does not represent that which looks red as having a certain reflectance profile. What should we say about this antinomy and how does our answer impact on the contest between realism and subjectivism about colour? I address the issues through the lens of a representationalist position on colour experience.     

Impulsivity, anger, and psychopathy: the moderating effect of ethnicity

The present research tested the four-factor Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL:SV) latent variable model for structural invariance across ethnicity in a large sample of civil psychiatric patients. In addition, it also examined how Barratt (1994) impulsivity and Novaco (1994) anger latent variables were related to the psychopathy dimensions within and across ethnicity. The data were analyzed with Mplus (Muthen & Muthen, 2001), and results indicated that the four-factor model was invariant across Caucasian and African American males in terms of both item factor loadings and thresholds. However, differential relations between the external correlates and the psychopathy dimensions were found across groups, suggesting that the association between impulsivity and psychopathy may be moderated by ethnicity.     

Simple arithmetic processing: surface form effects in a priming task

Models of numerical processing vary on whether they assume common or separate processing pathways for problems represented in different surface forms. The present study employed a priming procedure, with target naming task, in an investigation of surface form effects in simple addition and multiplication operations. Participants were presented with Arabic digit and number word problems in one of three prime-target relationships, including congruent (e.g., '2+3' and '5'), incongruent (e.g., '9+7' and '5') and neutral (e.g., 'X+Y' and '5') conditions. The results revealed significant facilitatory effects in response to congruent digit stimuli at SOAs of 300 and 1000ms, in both operations. In contrast, inhibitory effects were observed in response to incongruent word stimuli in both the addition and multiplication operations at 300ms, and in the addition operation at 1000ms. The overall priming effects observed in the digit condition were significantly greater than in the word condition at 1000ms in the multiplication operation and at 300ms in the addition operation. The results provide support to separate pathway accounts of simple arithmetic processing for problems represented in different surface forms. An explanation for variation in processing due to differences in access to visual and phonological representations is provided.     

Self-efficacy and work-related performance: the integral role of individual differences

The present study estimated the unique contribution of self-efficacy to work-related performance controlling for personality (the Big 5 traits), intelligence or general mental ability, and job or task experience. Results, based on a meta-analysis of the relevant literatures, revealed that overall, across all studies and moderator conditions, the contribution of self-efficacy relative to purportedly more distal variables is relatively small. Within moderator categories, there were several cases in which self-efficacy made unique contributions to work-related performance. For example, self-efficacy predicted performance in jobs or tasks of low complexity but not those of medium or high complexity, and self-efficacy predicted performance for task but not job performance. Overall, results suggest that the predictive validity of self-efficacy is attenuated in the presence of individual differences, though this attenuation does depend on the context.