Cultural Adjustment and Social Justice Behaviour: The Role of Individual Differences in Multicultural Personality

The present study examined altruistic behaviour using broad personality traits (the Big Five) and the narrow personality trait of cultural adjustment (multicultural personality) while controlling for social justice attitudes and other demographic variables. Using an analogue version of a modified dictator game, 153 participants were required to divide a variable amount of money between themselves and a hypothetical recipient who was treated unfairly in a prior dictator game (based on results from a separate sample). We varied the race (Black and White) and gender (male and female) of the fictional recipient to present the individual as either advantaged or disadvantaged in society. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions with the recipient presented as (i) a White man, (ii) a White woman, or (iii) a Black man. A separate sample of 71 participants rated recipients as treated unfairly and as representing a marginalized group. Results showed that subscales of the Multicultural Personality Inventory predicted giving behaviour above and beyond the variance accounted for by broad personality traits and attitudes towards social justice. The discussion focuses on implications for research in social justice based on cultural adaptation and personality. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

The impact of an unpredictable context and intolerance of uncertainty on the electrocortical response to monetary gains and losses

There is growing evidence that unpredictability and uncertainty can alter reward system functioning. The present study examined the impact of (1) a task-irrelevant unpredictable relative to predictable context and (2) individual differences in intolerance of uncertainty (IU) on the reward-related positivity (RewP), an event-related potential (ERP) response to monetary gains relative to losses. Specifically, 64 participants listened to predictable and unpredictable tone sequences while electroencephalography was recorded during a monetary gambling task. Participants also completed the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale, which measures both cognitive distress (prospective IU) and behavioral inhibition (inhibitory IU) elicited by uncertainty, in addition to the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 and Penn State Worry Questionnaire. Results indicated that the RewP was reduced during the unpredictable relative to the predictable context. Greater self-reported anxiety elicited by the unpredictable context was associated with a decreased RewP, and a decreased RewP was associated with poorer lose-shift behavioral adjustment. Furthermore, the RewP mediated the relationship between self-reported anxiety elicited by the unpredictable context and lose-shift behavioral adjustment. The IU subscales demonstrated the opposite relationship with the RewP across both contexts—inhibitory IU was associated with an attenuated RewP and prospective IU was associated with an enhanced RewP. In contrast, anxiety, depression, stress, and worry symptomatology were not associated with the RewP. This is the first study to demonstrate that an unpredictable context and individual differences in the degree to which people cannot tolerate uncertainty impact an ERP measure of reward system functioning.     

Eye gaze influences working memory for happy but not angry faces

Previous research has shown that angry and happy faces are perceived as less emotionally intense when shown with averted versus direct gaze. Other work reports that long-term memory (LTM) for angry (but not happy) faces was poorer when they were encoded with averted versus direct gaze, suggesting that threat signals are diluted when eye contact is not engaged. The current study examined whether gaze modulates working memory (WM) for angry and happy faces. In stark contrast to LTM effects, WM for angry faces was not significantly modulated by gaze direction. However, WM for happy faces was significantly enhanced when gaze was averted versus direct. These findings suggest that in WM – when rapid processing and an immediate response is required – averted gaze may alter the meaning behind a smile, and make this kind of expression particularly salient for short-term processing.     

Judicial decision making: order of evidence presentation and availability of background information

An experiment was conducted to investigate both the effect of the order of presentation of defence and prosecution evidence and the prior availability of background information on assessment of guilt. Subjects were required to judge the defendant's probability of guilt either after each witness statement (step-by-step) or after having read all witness statements (end-of-sequence). In the step-by-step mode, an order effect was observed with later evidence exerting a greater impact on the subjects' judgment. This recency effect probably occurred because subjects used an anchoring-and-adjustment process: each new piece of evidence was averaged with an anchor judgment reflecting the overall assessment of previous items. In the end-of-sequence mode, on the other hand, the order effect depended on the background condition: if background information was provided a recency effect occurred, but if no background information was available a primacy effect was evident. This result might be explained by assuming that subjects tried to integrate witness information into a coherent cognitive pattern. As the judgment is memory-based in the end-of-sequence condition, recent information will be more available than earlier items. However, when no background information was presented, the first evidence items had to be processed at a more semantic, deeper level, resulting in a primacy effect that apparently outweighed the recency effect. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does knowing translate to doing? Practitioners’ experiences of Circle of Security-Parenting (COS-P) training and implementation

This study sought to understand how practitioners perceive and experience the Circle of Security-Parenting (COS-P) training, and further, how they integrate and implement it into practice, and how these experiences influence their use and understanding of the program and its underlying model. A thematic analysis of semistructured interviews at two time points (shortly after training and 3–6 months after training) was used to explore 12 practitioners’ experiences of COS-P training and subsequent implementation. Three main themes were identified; clinical salience, personal salience, and partial use of the program. The findings reflected participants’ common perception that the model is relevant and generalizable to a wide variety of contexts. It also highlighted potential barriers to implementation, particularly practitioners’ experiences using only components of the COS-P program in isolation. The results suggest practitioners’ assumptions about client complexities, vulnerabilities, and/or incapacities, can prompt practitioners to withhold the use of COS-P (in part or whole), thereby potentially neglecting key components required for client change. The only participants who implemented the COS-P training in full had additional training in Circle of Security.     

A comparison of token and tandem schedules of reinforcement on response patterns for adolescents with autism

Token schedules of reinforcement are ubiquitous in clinical settings, yet little research has thoroughly evaluated the effects of token schedules on responding in clinical settings. Basic research has shown token schedules of reinforcement produce lower response rates and larger pre‐ratio pauses compared to tandem schedules. The purpose of the current study was to determine whether the same effects are produced with adolescents with autism or related disorders. We examined response patterns under otherwise identical FR token and FR tandem schedules. Tokens suppressed responding for one participant only under high schedule values and for a second participant under common clinical schedule values; no difference in responding occurred between token and tandem schedules for two participants. These results support the systematic evaluation of token schedules of reinforcement in clinical settings. Additional applied research is needed on token schedules to further our understanding of the underlying mechanisms that contribute to the overall effectiveness of token economies.     

Autobiographical Misremembering: John Dean is not Alone

Survey respondents were asked to provide knowledge responses to public events and names that occurred as long ago as the 1930s and as recently as the 1980s. Respondents made errors that reflect the use of semantic and lexical memory systems, and reconstructive processes based on a semantic theme. Errors, as well as correct responses, are affected by whether the events originally occurred during the transition phase (early teens to mid-twenties). Responses indicate that events that occur during the transition phase are remembered better than events that occur during other life phases (in contradiction to the differential sampling hypothesis), but that events that occur during the transition phase can also promote error-prone reporting by interfering with other events or by promoting inaccurate reconstructions. The evidence suggests that the transition phase is not a monolithic entity, but that young adolescence differs from older transition phase ages by having a greater concentration on determining general properties of the world. Support is strongest for cognitive accounts of transition phase effects such as the first experience hypothesis, and results challenge physiological and evolutionary accounts that are tied to the transition phase promoting better memory. Finally, the more dramatic observed errors (such as inverting the subject and object of an event) point to possible undocumented instances of autobiographical misremembering. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The leftward cradling bias and prosody: an investigation of cradling preferences in the deaf community.

Popular theory on the tendency to cradle an infant to the left side points to the specialization of the right hemisphere for the perception and expression of emotion. J. S. Sieratzki and B. Woll (1996) recently suggested that more emphasis be placed on the auditory modality, specifically focusing on the role of prosodic information. In this study, the direction of the lateral cradling bias in a group of profoundly deaf children, a group of deaf adults, and a control group of adults with no hearing impairment was investigated. The authors found a strong leftward cradling bias in all groups, a bias that was, if anything, stronger in the deaf participants. Given that people who are profoundly deaf, especially those who have been deaf from birth, have not been exposed to auditory prosody, the data do not support the suggestion that such prosodic information is the basis for the leftward cradling bias.     

The effect of lexical, pragmatic, and morphological violations on reading time and deviance ratings of English and German sentences

Effects on reading time and deviance ratings of word-choice violations were studied at the surface code, propositional textbase, and situation model levels of representation in German and English sentences. Lexical violations (propositional textbase level) such as The housewife massaged the bread dough were rated as more deviant from normal language than were pragmatic violations (situation model level) such as The police officer shot the parking violator, although the pragmatic violations took longer to comprehend. The addition of a morphological (surface code) violation through the wrong form of an article (e.g., a ugly car) decreased reading time but only in cases where that material was deeply processed and where the morphology carried substantial syntactic information (e.g., in German, the definite article carries case, gender, and number information). The results thus confirmed the operation of comprehension strategies at multiple levels of representation and identified some cross-linguistic generality in comprehension and some language differences.     

Nonverbal assessment of the Big Five personality factors

The Nonverbal Personality Questionnaire (NPQ) is an experimental, structured, nonverbal measure of 16 personality traits. Its items lack verbal content and, therefore, the inventory is useful for cross‐cultural research. Our goal is this research was to select a subset of the NPQ items to form a new nonverbal questionnaire based on the Five‐Factor Model of personality. We describe the construction of the Five‐Factor Nonverbal Personality Questionnaire (FF‐NPQ), and present data on its psychometric properties. These data include scale internal consistencies, intercorrelations, convergences with verbal measures of the Big Five factors, discriminant validity correlations, correlations with peer ratings, and ability to predict socially important behaviour criteria such as smoking and alcohol consumption. In a second study, we report on the psychometric properties of the FF‐NPQ in an independent sample of respondents from seven different countries. The utility of the new nonverbal inventory for cross‐cultural research is discussed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.