Reducing STD/HIV Stigmatizing Attitudes Through Community Popular Opinion Leaders in Chinese Markets

Reducing STDs and HIV/AIDS incidence requires campaigns designed to change knowledge, attitudes, and practices of risky sexual behavior. In China, a significant obstacle to such changes is the stigma associated with these diseases. Thus 1 campaign intervention strategy is to train credible community leaders to discuss these issues in everyday social venues. This study tested the effectiveness of such an approach on reducing HIV/AIDS stigma, across 2 years, from a sample of over 4,500 market vendors, in 3 conditions. Results showed an increasing growth in market communication about intervention messages, and concomitant declines in stigmatizing attitudes, across time, with the greatest changes in community popular opinion leaders, significant changes in intervention nonopinion leaders, and little change in the control markets.     

Creative Problem Solving in Small Groups: The Effects of Creativity Training on Idea Generation,Solution Creativity,and Leadership Effectiveness

This investigation evaluated the degree to which creativity training, idea generation instruction, and creative process impacted idea production, creativeness of solutions, and leadership effectiveness. Three sets of hypotheses were tested with a 114 groups of adults. First, groups whose members had some (i.e., one CPS course) or advanced training (i.e., graduate-level study in creativity or creativity professionals) were significantly more effective at idea generation than groups without training. Furthermore, leaders with some and advanced training were perceived to be significantly more effective than those with no creativity training. With respect to creativeness of solutions, the advanced training groups outperformed all others. The second set of hypotheses focused on the effectiveness of idea generation instruction (i.e., instructions without brainstorming, brainstorming, and brainstorming with criticism). Analysis revealed no significant difference for idea generation instruction relative to idea production or creativeness of solutions. The final set of hypotheses examined the use of a simple process structure for groups without prior creativity training (i.e., distinct phases for idea generation and solution development). Analysis revealed that those meetings that followed a simple process structure out performed groups that did not follow a process for both idea generation and creativeness of solutions. Further results are presented and implications discussed.     

Audience Design in Multiparty Conversation

How do speakers design what they say in order to communicate effectively with groups of addressees who vary in their background knowledge of the topic at hand? Prior findings indicate that when a speaker addresses a pair of listeners with discrepant knowledge, that speakers Aim Low, designing their utterances for the least knowledgeable of the two addressees. Here, we test the hypothesis that speakers will depart from an Aim Low approach in order to efficiently communicate with larger groups of interacting partners. Further, we ask whether the cognitive demands of tracking multiple conversational partners' perspectives places limitations on successful audience design. We find that speakers can successfully track information about what up to four of their partners do and do not know in conversation. When addressing groups of 3–4 addressees at once, speakers design language based on the combined knowledge of the group. These findings point to an audience design process that simultaneously represents the perspectives of multiple other individuals and combines these representations in order to design utterances that strike a balance between the different needs of the individuals within the group.     

A COMPARISON OF PEER-DIRECTED AND TEACHER-DIRECTED EMPLOYMENT INTERVIEW TRAINING FOR MENTALLY RETARDED ADULTS

Interview skills deficits may limit employment prospects of mentally retarded adults. Although numerous papers highlight the importance of interview skills, few have validated effective strategies for use with mentally retarded persons. Further, there has been a lack of research contrasting rival interview skills training strategies. The present study was conducted with two mentally retarded young adults. It contrasted peer-directed instruction, in which both participants were equally deficient in the target skills, with teacher-directed instruction. Results of the investigation indicated that instruction, rehearsal, and feedback may be effective strategies regardless of who provides instruction. Comparisons of teacher-directed and peer-directed instruction indicated little or no difference in the effectiveness of the two procedures. However, the peer-directed procedure involved considerably less staff time than did the teacher-directed procedure.     

Emotional experiences during engagement in intrinsically and extrinsically motivated tasks

Previous theories of intrinsic motivation have traditionally ignored the experiential or subjective aspects of engagement in intrinsically and extrinsically motivated tasks. Part of the reason for the lack of research in this area was our ignorance of which emotions to study. Data are presented here from two studies designed to produce the first systematic evidence of changes in basic emotional states during task engagement. Our findings suggest that intrinsic and extrinsic tasks can be differentiated according to the emotional changes subjects retrospectively report about their engagement with these tasks, and point the way to future research incorporating emotion as an important variable to consider.The first author was supported in part by a Minority Fellowship administered by the American Psychological Association under a Clinical Training Grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (5 T01 MH13833), and by a Regents Fellowship from the University of California, Berkeley.     

Affective state mediates causal attributions for success and failure

The influence of affect on causal attributions for success and failure was examined in this experiment. A positive, neurtral, or negative mood was induced in subjects who then learned they had either succeeded or failed an aptitude test taken previously. Relative to neutral mood control conditions, subjects in both positive and negative mood conditions showed a pronounced self-serving bias, particularly following success. The finding is interpreted as self-regulation of affective state. Specifically, causal attribution of success to internal factors can sustain or enhance positive affect; attribution of failure to external factors can diminish negative affect. Ancillary analyses corroborated this interpretation.     

The Utility of Problem-solving Training that Emphasises Selfmanagement Principles

This study examined the usefulness of an 8-week applied problem-solving training program. Specifically, the study examined (a) whether problem-solving training that emphasised self-management principles would be useful, (b) if the effects of training would persist over time, (c) whether an individual difference variable (problem-solving appraisal) would affect training outcomes, and (d) whether the cognitive responses of the subjects during the course of training were related to their problem-solving appraisal or the change process. Results indicated that problem solving training was effective at enhancing students’ problem-solving appraisal, and that the self-report changes were maintained at a 1 year follow-up. In particular, training seemed most useful for students who initially appraised their problem solving very negatively. Finally, the results suggested that the process-oriented cognitive responses were related to students' initial problem-solving self-appraisal as well as the impact of training. Implications of the results are discussed in terms of counselling interventions, problem solving training, the interpersonal influence process, and future research.