A 32-society investigation of the influence of perceived economic inequality on social class stereotyping

There is a growing body of work suggesting that social class stereotypes are amplified when people perceive higher levels of economic inequality—that is, the wealthy are perceived as more competent and assertive and the poor as more incompetent and unassertive. The present study tested this prediction in 32 societies and also examines the role of wealth-based categorization in explaining this relationship. We found that people who perceived higher economic inequality were indeed more likely to consider wealth as a meaningful basis for categorization. Unexpectedly, however, higher levels of perceived inequality were associated with perceiving the wealthy as less competent and assertive and the poor as more competent and assertive. Unpacking this further, exploratory analyses showed that the observed tendency to stereotype the wealthy negatively only emerged in societies with lower social mobility and democracy and higher corruption. This points to the importance of understanding how socio-structural features that co-occur with economic inequality may shape perceptions of the wealthy and the poor.     

Political distrust,perceived threat,and intentions to engage in normative and violent collective action: A mixed-methods study

In three studies, we examined the role of distrust and perceived threat in intentions to engage in normative and violent non-normative collective action. A field-based qualitative study of 35 pro-democracy protestors during the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-Extradition protests revealed that perceived threat to Hong Kong values alongside distrust of political institutions spurred collective action engagement and support for defensive violent collection action. In Study 2, a questionnaire (N = 639) testing pro-democracy action intentions demonstrated direct paths on both normative and violent collective action intentions from distrust and threat. In Study 3 (N = 133), experimental trust and threat manipulations demonstrated a significant association between distrust and threat on violent collective action intentions and acceptance, and a significant interaction on acceptance of violent collective action. Our results reveal the importance of distrust and threat in attitudinal support for, and engagement in, collective action and their role in transitioning from non-violent to violent collective action.     

The Influence of Motor Imagery on Postural Sway: Differential Effects of Type of Body Movement and Person Perspective

The present study examined the differential effects of kinesthetic imagery (first person perspective) and visual imagery (third person perspective) on postural sway during quiet standing. Based on an embodied cognition perspective, the authors predicted that kinesthetic imagery would lead to activations in movement-relevant motor systems to a greater degree than visual imagery. This prediction was tested among 30 participants who imagined various motor activities from different visual perspectives while standing on a strain gauge plate. The results showed that kinesthetic imagery of lower body movements, but not of upper body movements, had clear effects on postural parameters (sway path length and frequency contents of sway). Visual imagery, in contrast, had no reliable effects on postural activity. We also found that postural effects were not affected by the vividness of imagery. The results suggest that during kinesthetic motor imagery participants partially simulated (re-activated) the imagined movements, leading to unintentional postural adjustments. These findings are consistent with an embodied cognition perspective on motor imagery.     

Yes I can: Expected success promotes actual success in emotion regulation

People who expect to be successful in regulating their emotions tend to experience less frequent negative emotions and are less likely to suffer from depression. It is not clear, however, whether beliefs about the likelihood of success in emotion regulation can shape actual emotion regulation success. To test this possibility, we manipulated participants' beliefs about the likelihood of success in emotion regulation and assessed their subsequent ability to regulate their emotions during a negative emotion induction. We found that participants who were led to expect emotion regulation to be more successful were subsequently more successful in regulating their emotional responses, compared to participants in the control condition. Our findings demonstrate that expected success can contribute to actual success in emotion regulation.     

Is the Divide a Chasm?: Bridging Affective Science with Clinical Practice

This special section endeavors to facilitate the integration of biologically-based assessments of emotion into the clinical setting. This goal is consistent with the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) initiative, which aims to identify transdiagnostic biobehavioral mechanisms that underlie mental disorders. We focus on four challenges to applying biologically-informed research on emotion and emotion regulation to clinical contexts: (1) How do we assess emotion in an RDoC framework? (2) How do we integrate measures of emotion with other systems in a wider context? (3) What do physiological indices of emotion tell us about clinical phenomena? and (4) How do we integrate physiological assessments into clinical practice? Throughout this comment, we refer to the articles in this special section to make our points, and, when possible, offer suggestions for future work to continue to address these challenges.     

Shaking That Icky Feeling: Effects of Extinction and Counterconditioning on Disgust-Related Evaluative Learning

Learned disgust appears to play an important role in certain anxiety disorders, and can be explained by the process of evaluative conditioning, in which an affective evaluative reaction evoked by an unconditional stimulus (US) is transferred to a conditional stimulus (CS). Much remains unknown about how disgust-related evaluative learning can be effectively eliminated. Study 1 of the present investigation examined the effects of extinction on reducing the negative evaluation of a CS that was acquired during disgust conditioning. Participants completed acquisition trials, with a disgusting picture as US and two neutral pictures as CS (CS + was paired with the US; CS- was unpaired), followed by extinction trials ("CS only"; experimental condition) or a filler task (control condition). Extinction trials reduced acquired US expectancy to the CS +, but did not extinguish negative evaluations of the CS +. Study 2 examined the effects of counterconditioning on evaluative learned disgust. After disgust acquisition trials, counterconditioning trials followed in which the CS + was paired with a pleasant US (experimental condition) or a filler task (control condition). Counterconditioning trials reduced acquired US expectancy to the CS + and reduced evaluative conditioned disgust. Implications of the potential differential effects of extinction and counterconditioning on evaluative learning for exposure-based treatment of specific anxiety disorders are discussed.     

Social information in equine movement gestalts

One model of signal evolution is based on the notion that behaviours become increasingly detached from their original biological functions to obtain a communicative value. Selection may not always favour the evolution of such transitions, for instance, if signalling is costly due to predators usurping signal production. Here, we collected inertial movement sensing data recorded from multiple locations in free-ranging horses (Equus caballus), which we subjected to a machine learning algorithm to extract kinematic gestalt profiles. This yielded surprisingly rich and multi-layered sets of information. In particular, we were able to discriminate identity, breed, sex and some personality traits from the overall movement patterns of freely moving subjects. Our study suggests that, by attending to movement gestalts, domestic horses, and probably many other group-living animals, have access to rich social information passively but reliably made available by conspecifics, a finding that we discuss in relation with current signal evolution theories.     

Good and Bad Sides of Self-Compassion: A Face Validity Check of the Self-Compassion Scale and an Investigation of its Relations to Coping and Emotional Symptoms in Non-Clinical Adolescents

To demonstrate that the positive and negative subscales of Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) are very different in nature, we conducted a series of face validity checks on the items of this questionnaire among psychologists and psychology students (Study 1). Furthermore, a survey was administered to a convenience sample of non-clinical adolescents to examine the relations between various SCS subscales and symptoms of anxiety and depression as well as coping styles (Study 2). The results of the face validity checks revealed that the positive subscales seem to be well in line with the protective nature of self-compassion as they were mainly associated with cognitive coping and healthy functioning, whereas the negative subscales were chiefly associated with psychopathological symptoms and mental illness. The survey data demonstrated that the positive SCS subscales were positively correlated with adaptive coping (r’s between .22 and .50) and negatively correlated with symptoms of anxiety and depression (r’s between ?.19 and ?.53), while the negative subscales were positively correlated with symptoms (r’s between .49 and .61) and maladaptive coping strategies such as passive reacting (r’s between .53 and .56). Additional analyses indicated the negative subscales of the SCS accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in symptoms, whereas the unique contribution of the positive SCS subscales was fairly marginal. We caution to employ the total SCS score that includes the reversed negative subscales as such a procedure clearly inflates the relation between self-compassion and psychopathology.     

Do Occupational Performance and Social Support Predict Health and Well-Being Among Mothers of Preterm Infants?

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Giving birth to a preterm infant has significant implications on the mother’s life. The purpose of this study was to compare occupational performance...