Who distinguishes between sinners and sins at the implicit level of awareness?

Several researchers have investigated the possibility that people indeed can love individuals who are engaged in behaviors that are considered unacceptable. In the present research, the authors evaluated the possibility that people distinguish between presumably sinful persons and presumably sinful behaviors at a cognitive level that does not involve conscious intent and awareness: the implicit (nonconscious) level of awareness. Participants performed a speeded-response task, the Implicit Association Test. Results indicated that participants were able to make such a (person vs. behavior) distinction and that in doing so, they manifested positive implicit evaluations of sinful people relative to sinful actions.     

A Witness Breaks His Silence: The Meaning of a Therapist's Response to an Adolescent's Self-Destruction

I describe the case of a self-mutilating adolescent girl and my dilemma, as her therapist, about telling her parents about her self-abuse. I use two complementary, mutually enhancing relational theories of trauma—Ferenczi's (1933) and Davies and Frawley's (1994)—to help understand the minefield I was in. Davies and Frawley describe certain relational configurations that are typical of trauma victims. I believe that it is not only unavoidable but therapeutically vital for therapists to participate in these configurations so they can know the patient's experience in a personal way. It is also crucial that they be witnesses who provide recognition for the patient's pain and, in so doing, relieve the intolerable feeling of isolation that Ferenczi proposed was the most basic trauma. In addition, I discuss the observation that some people who have not been previously traumatized in any gross way manifest characteristics of trauma.     

The relationship between self-reported received and perceived social support: A meta-analytic review

Social support is broad term encompassing a variety of constructs, including support perceptions (perceived support) and receipt of supportive behaviors (received support). Of these constructs, only perceived support has been regarded as consistently linked to health, and researchers have offered differing assessments of the strength of the received-perceived support relationship. An overall estimate of the received-perceived support relationship would clearly further the dialogue on the relationship between received and perceived support and thus assist in the theoretical development of the field. This study evaluated all available studies using the Inventory of Socially Supportive Behaviors (ISSB; Barrera, Sandler, & Ramsey, 1981, American Journal of Community Psychology, 9, 435–447) and any measure of perceived social support. Using effect sizes from 23 studies, we found an average correlation of r = .35, p < .001. Implications of this estimate for further development of models of social support as well as interventions to enhance social support are discussed.     

Playing an action video game reduces gender differences in spatial cognition

We demonstrate a previously unknown gender difference in the distribution of spatial attention, a basic capacity that supports higher-level spatial cognition. More remarkably, we found that playing an action video game can virtually eliminate this gender difference in spatial attention and simultaneously decrease the gender disparity in mental rotation ability, a higher-level process in spatial cognition. After only 10 hr of training with an action video game, subjects realized substantial gains in both spatial attention and mental rotation, with women benefiting more than men. Control subjects who played a non-action game showed no improvement. Given that superior spatial skills are important in the mathematical and engineering sciences, these findings have practical implications for attracting men and women to these fields.     

Racial socialization, racial identity, and Black students' adjustment to college

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of racial socialization and racial identity on adjustment in Black college students. Self-report questionnaires were administered to 141 Black college students from a predominantly White university and racially diverse college. The findings suggest that racial socialization positively contributes to academic adjustment. An internalized-multicultural identity positively contributed to overall college adjustment, and pre-encounter miseducated racial identity negatively contributed. Internalized Afrocentric racial identity was negatively related to overall college adjustment. Implications for multicultural social scientists and directions for future research are discussed.     

Inhibition of return to social signals of fear

The present study examined whether inhibition of return (IOR) is modulated by the fear relevance of the cue. Experiment 1 found similar magnitude of IOR was produced by neutral and fear faces and luminance matched cues. To allow a more sensitive measure of endogenously directed attention, Experiment 2 removed a central reorienting cue and more precisely measured the time course of IOR. At stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 500, 1,000 and 1,500 ms, fear face and luminance matched cues resulted in similar IOR. These findings suggest that IOR is triggered by event onsets and disregards event value. Views of IOR as an adaptive "foraging facilitator," whereby attention is guided to promote optimal sampling of important environmental events, are discussed.     

Evidence from a response choice task reveals a selection bias in the attentional cueing paradigm

In a typical attentional cueing paradigm, irrelevant peripheral cues produce early facilitation (fast responses) followed by later inhibition (slow responses) to cued locations. Here we examine whether cues not only influence the speed with which responses are produced, but also impact or bias which location is ultimately selected as requiring a response. Specifically, can cues influence not only the speed with which we respond but also influence the behavior produced? To examine this question, a choice localization task was used in which no targets were presented, and subjects were asked to choose which effector (left hand, right hand) to use in response to a centrally presented tone. Thus, following either a left or right peripheral cue, and then a central tone, subjects were free to respond with either their left or right hand. Early facilitation and later inhibition with this choice procedure were found in both response times and the proportion of responses to the cued and uncued locations. These results suggest that there are processes which initially bias response selection toward cued locations and then subsequently bias response selection away from cued locations.