Perceived racism and cardiovascular reactivity and recovery to personally relevant stress.

This study evaluated cardiovascular responses (CVR) to an active speech task with blatantly discriminatory (BRC) versus neutral (NRC) stimuli and an anger recall task in a sample of Black men (N = 73; age 18 to 47). Diastolic blood pressure scores were higher for NRC versus BRC stimuli during anger recall (p = .05). Moreover, persons in the NRC group who perceived high levels of racism (vs. no racism or BRC group) during active speech showed larger increases in blood pressure across postspeech rest, anger recall, and subsequent rest (p = .03). The notable elevation in CVR in response to an ambiguous event extends current models of racism suggesting that subtle racism is a psychosocial stressor that erodes health through chronically elevated CVR.     

Reinforcement and the organisation of behaviour in golden hamsters: Differential overshadowing of a CS by different responses

Are different responses differentially associable with their consequences? An overshadowing design was used to try to answer this question for three responses previously studied in golden hamsters. In Experiment I, scrabbling was rapidly suppressed by electric shock punishment, and it overshadowed a tone which occurred between scrabbling and shock. In Experiment II, no evidence of response-shock association was obtained when open rearing was the punished response, and open rearing did not overshadow the tone. Punishment had some effect on face washing, but there was no statistically significant overshadowing with this response. These results are consistent with the idea that differences in punishment suppression among these three responses have an associative basis. They also demonstrate the usefulness of a novel paradigm for studying “preparedness” of response-reinforcer associations.     

Binocular cues in the perception of distance of a point source of light

The ability to make egocentric distance estimates of a single point source of light, seen in darkness and without the cues of changing size and luminance, was investigated in sixteen observers. The attenuation required to maintain constant luminance, when the target was viewed from different distances, was shown to follow the inverse square law providing the angle subtended by the light was less than 20 s arc. Distance changes were also simulated by means of a split mirror which produced vergence cues, or by test lenses to provide accommodation cues. Over the range 0.5 to 9.2 m distance estimates were surprisingly accurate, although there was some overestimation of near and underestimation of far distances. Most observers made good judgements when only convergence cues were varied, whereas no observers made consistently good judgements when only accommodation cues were varied. The difficulties are discussed in terms of the accommodation-convergence link. When distance was simulated by changing convergence and accommodation cues, estimates were not as good as when real distance was changed. Since good estimates were made with brief target exposures, these judgements were not based on subsequent convergence or accommodation changes. It is suggested that the metric or reference against which the apparently absolute judgements were made was the efferent demand signal associated with a 'resting' position of convergence in darkness.     

Terror Management and Personality: Variations in the Psychological Defense Against the Awareness of Mortality

Drawing on terror management theory (TMT), we discuss the psychological motivations that shape personality at two levels: the characteristically human personality common to us all and the individual differences that distinguish some people from others. TMT posits that the motivation to protect the self against deep-rooted fears about mortality drives people to maintain meaningful, reliable conceptions of reality and positive evaluations of themselves, two broad tendencies that form the foundation of every person’s personality. We review studies showing that mortality reminders increase efforts to bolster cultural sources of meaning and self-esteem in similar ways across individuals and cultures. TMT also posits that individual differences in personality partly reflect the different sources of meaning and self-esteem that people invest in to assuage mortality fears. We review evidence that individual differences predict the degree and direction of people’s defensive responses to mortality reminders. Directions for future research are discussed.