Escalation in groups: Focus on information sampling

The purpose of this experiment was to examine if groups escalate more than individuals when information is not distributed to all group members. The experiment also attempted to replicate Bazerman, Beekun, and Schoorman's (1992) findings, that participants with high responsibility escalate more than participants with low responsibility. The task was a modified version of the Heeley Store Case (Bazerman et al., 1992). The dependent measures fell into three categories: rewards, appropriateness of layoff/demotion, and forecasted future performance. The results showed little support for the hypotheses. First, high responsibility participants escalated significantly more than low responsibility candidates for only one of the six measures. This may have been due to the fact that all participants felt responsible for their decisions. For the other dependent variables, the effect was either not significant or in the wrong direction. Second, no significant interaction was found between responsibility and decision-making context (individual, groups with all shared information, and groups with shared and unshared information). We then analyzed the data using a measure of felt responsibility as a covariate. The interaction between felt responsibility and decision-making context was significant only for layoff decision. For all of the other measures, no significant interaction was found. One possible reason why our hypotheses were not supported may have been that the groups felt a diffusion of responsibility. Larger groups may have also demonstrated the effects of group processes more effectively. No clear conclusions can be made regarding the influence of information sampling on escalation. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1998 meetings of the American Psychological Society.     

Computation of Conditional Probability Statistics by 8-Month-Old Infants

A recent report demonstrated that 8-month-olds can segment a continuous stream of speech syllables, containing no acoustic or prosodic cues to word boundaries, into wordlike units after only 2 min of listening experience (Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 1996). Thus, a powerful learning mechanism capable of extracting statistical information from fluent speech is available early in development. The present study extends these results by documenting the particular type of statistical computation–transitional (conditional) probability–used by infants to solve this word-segmentation task. An artificial language corpus, consisting of a continuous stream of trisyllabic nonsense words, was presented to 8-month-olds for 3 min. A postfamiliarization test compared the infants' responses to words versus part-words (trisyllabic sequences spanning word boundaries). The corpus was constructed so that test words and part-words were matched in frequency, but differed in their transitional probabilities. Infants showed reliable discrimination of words from part-words, thereby demonstrating rapid segmentation of continuous speech into words on the basis of transitional probabilities of syllable pairs.     

Distancing from a stigmatized social identity: State of the art and future research agenda on self-group distancing

Despite equal rights, minority groups such as ethnic minorities, LGBTQ + people, and people with mental or physical disabilities face discrimination on a day-to-day basis in subtle and hard-to-recognize forms. As discrimination slips beneath the surface, it becomes difficult to fight the stigma using collective social identity coping mechanisms. Instead, individual mobility responses such as distancing the self from the stigmatized identity (“self-group distancing”) become more viable as a way to improve one's individual standing. In this overview of the state of the art, we take a social identity lens to reflect on the current empirical knowledge base on self-group distancing as a coping mechanism and provide a framework on what self-group distancing is; when, where and why self-group distancing likely occurs; and what its consequences are at the individual and the collective level. The contributions in this special issue provide novel insights into how these processes unfold, and serve as a basis to set a future research agenda, for example on what can be done to prevent self-group distancing (i.e., interventions). Together, the insights highlight that while self-group distancing may seem effective to (strategically and temporarily) alleviate discomfort or to improve one's own position, on a broader collective level and over time self-group distancing tends to keep the current unequal social hierarchy in place.     

The effects of suppressing a negative autobiographical memory on concurrent intrusions and subsequent autobiographical recall in dysphoria

Depressed individuals endeavor to suppress intrusive thoughts and memories as a form of mood control. Two predictions from this literature were examined. The 1st was that attempts to suppress a preselected negative memory during a stream-of-consciousness (SOC) task in dysphoric individuals, relative to a no-suppress condition, would lead to relatively speeded access to other negative but not positive memories on a subsequent cue-word recall task. No such effects were predicted for nondysphoric controls. The 2nd prediction was that, across all participants who were asked to suppress memories, higher levels of depressed mood would be associated with more intrusions of the to-be-suppressed memory during the SOC and that this association would be stronger than the comparable relation in participants who were not asked to suppress memories. Results support both predictions.     

Four heads are better than one: combining face composites yields improvements in face likeness

Four participants constructed face composites, of familiar and unfamiliar targets, using Pro-Fit, with reference images present or from memory. The "mean" of all 4 composites, created by morphing (4-morph) was rated as a better likeness than individual composites on average and was as good as the best individual likeness. When participants attempted to identify targets from line-ups, 4-morphs again performed as well as the best individual composite. In a second experiment, participants familiar with target women attempted to identify composites, and the trend showed better recognition from multiple composites, whether combined or shown together. In a line-up task with unfamiliar participants, 4-morphs produced most correct choices and fewest false positives from target-absent or target-present arrays. These results have practical implications for the way evidence from different witnesses is used in police investigations.     

Scholastic Attainment Following Severe Early Institutional Deprivation: A Study of Children Adopted from Romania

The relationship between severe early institutional deprivation and scholastic attainment at age 11 in 127 children (68 girls and 59 boys) adopted from institutions in Romania was compared to the attainment of 49 children (17 girls and 32 boys) adopted within the UK from a non-institutional background. Overall, children adopted from Romania had significantly lower attainment scores than those adopted within the UK; the children within the Romanian sample who had spent 6 months or more in an institution had significantly lower attainment scores than those who had spent less than 6 months in an institution, but there was no additional risk of low attainment associated with longer institutional care after 6 months. The lower scholastic attainment in the children adopted from Romanian institutions, as compared with domestic adoptees, was mediated by IQ, and to a lesser degree, inattention/overactivity. When these factors were taken into account, only small between-group differences in attainment remained.     

Social axioms and values: a cross‐cultural examination

The relationships between social axioms, general beliefs that people hold about the social world, and values, defined as desirable goals for life, were examined in five cultural groups. Results show that the correlations between social axioms and Schwartz's (1992) values are generally low, suggesting that they represent two distinct types of construct. Based on a structural equation modelling approach, results further show that generally speaking, the five axiom dimensions are related to the value types in a meaningful and interpretable manner, and that these relationships are generally similar across the five cultural groups. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.