Personality trait inferences of Turkish immigrant and neutral targets: An experimental study

Sandal, G. M. Bye, H. H. & Pallesen, S. (2012). Personality trait inferences of Turkish immigrant and neutral targets: An experimental study. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53, 528–533. The study investigated whether personality traits attributed to immigrant targets differ from personality inferences made for a neutral target, and whether trait attributions differ for assimilated and integrated immigrant targets. Participants (n = 340) were randomized to one of three conditions in which they read the same story about a person, but where the person was described as either: (a) an assimilated Turkish immigrant; (b) an integrated Turkish immigrant; or (c) neutral (no nationality or religious practice indicated). Subsequently, they rated the personality of the described person on the NEO‐Five Factor Inventory (observer rating version) and completed the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (Impression Management scale) with reference to themselves. Both immigrant targets were rated as significantly higher on extraversion and lower on neuroticism than the neutral target. The integrated target was rated as more open than the neutral target, and as higher than the assimilated target on neuroticism when controlling for impression management.     

Autonomy support and achievement goals as predictors of perceived school performance and life satisfaction in the transition between lower and upper secondary school

A self-determination theory perspective on motivation assumes that basic need support is a prerequisite for motivation, achievement, and well-being in several domains of life. In the present cross-sectional study, a representative sample of 2.594 Norwegian students in their final year of lower secondary education and their first year of upper secondary education responded to a survey measuring the students’ perceptions of their teachers’ autonomy support, the students’ personal achievement goals, perceived school performance, and life satisfaction. The purpose was to investigate the structural relation between these variables, as well as grade level and gender differences. The results showed that all achievement goals (mastery, performance approach and performance avoidance) were positively predicted by autonomy support. Perceived school performance and life satisfaction were predicted by autonomy support and achievement goals, but there were some grade and gender specific relations. Furthermore, students in their first year of upper secondary education had a higher mean level of all motivational variables. Finally, mastery goals were more important for girls than boys, whereas performance goals were more important for boys than girls. In conclusion, both academic achievement (perceived school performance) and life satisfaction may be considered as important indicators of adjustment to life, and they are related to the students’ perception of teachers’ autonomy support as well as the students’ own motivation for learning. However, the mean level of these variables is partly accounted for by grade level and gender.     

Determinable Properties and Overdetermination of Causal Powers

Do determinable properties such as colour, mass, and height exist in addition to their corresponding determinates, being red, having a mass of 1 kilogram, and having a height of 2 metres? Optimists say yes, pessimists say no. Among the latter are Carl Gillett and Bradley Rives who argue that optimism leads to systematic overdetermination of causal powers and hence should be rejected on the grounds that the position is ontologically unparsimonious. In this paper I defend optimism against this charge by showing that overdetermination of causal powers cannot plausibly be avoided when grounding what I call joint powers. It is therefore not clear why the optimist should be worried about the overdetermination of causal powers that follows from positing determinable properties.     

Confabulating reasons for behaving bad: The psychological consequences of unconsciously activated behaviour that violates one's standards

Numerous studies have been conducted to demonstrate that behaviours are frequently activated unconsciously. The present studies investigate the downstream psychological consequences of such unconscious behaviour activation, building on work on the explanatory vacuum and post‐priming misattribution. It was hypothesized that unconsciously activated behaviours trigger a negative affective response if the behaviour violates a personal standard and that this negative affect subsequently motivates people to confabulate a reason for the behaviour. Results provided evidence for this mediated moderation model. Study 1 showed that participants who were primed to act less prosocially indeed reported increased levels of negative affect and, as a result, were inclined to confabulate a reason for their behaviour. Study 2 replicated these findings in the domain of eating and provided evidence for the moderating role of personal standards as well as the entire mediated moderation model. These findings have relevant theoretical implications as they add to the modest number of studies that demonstrate that the effect of unconscious priming may extend well beyond performing the primed behaviour itself to influence subsequent affect and attribution processes. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intramodal and crossmodal pairing and anchoring in comparisons of successive stimuli

Two experiments were conducted to study effects of modality, temporal position, and their interaction on comparisons of successive stimuli. In Experiment 1, intramodal (tone–tone and line–line) and crossmodal (tone–line and line–tone) stimulus pairs, with two interstimulus intervals (ISIs), 400 and 2,000 ms, were presented. Participants indicated which stimulus was the “stronger.” Time-order errors (TOEs) were assessed using the D% measure and were found in all types of pairs. Variation in TOEs across conditions was well accounted for by changes in parameters (stimulus weights, reference levels) in an extended version of Hellström’s sensation weighting (SW) model. With an ISI of 2,000 ms, the first stimulus had a lower weight (less impact on the response) than did the second stimulus. More negative TOEs were found with the longer ISI in all pair types except tone–line. In Experiment 2, participants indicated which of two lines was the longer or which of two tones was the louder. An intra- or crossmodal anchor, or no anchor, was interpolated between the stimuli. Anchoring tended to reduce the weight of the first stimulus, suggesting interference with memory, and to yield negative TOEs. Intramodal anchors yielded reduced weights of both stimuli, most dramatically for tones, suggesting an additional effect of stimulus interference. Response times decreased with crossmodal anchors. For line–line pairs, strong negative TOEs were found. In both experiments, the variation in TOE across conditions was well accounted for by the SW model.     

Freedom as Non-domination and Democratic Inclusion

According to neo-republicans, democracy is morally justified because it is among the prerequisites for freedom as non-domination. The claim that democracy secures freedom as non-domination needs to explain why democratic procedures contribute to non-domination and for whom democracy secures non-domination. This requires an account of why domination is countered by democratic procedures and an account of to whom domination is countered by access to democratic procedures. Neo-republican theory of democracy is based on a detailed discussion of the former but a scant discussion of the latter. We address this lacuna by interpreting the two most influential principles of inclusion, the all-subjected principle and the all-affected principle, in light of neo-republican commitments. The preliminary conclusion is that both principles are able to capture relations of domination between the democratic state and the people controlled by it in the relevant sense. Yet, the state has virtually unlimited powers to control residents, but only limited powers to interfere in the lives of non-residents. Republican aspirations are therefore more in tune with the all-subjected principle according to which only residents in the territory of the state should be granted rights to political participation.     

Age differences in the neural response to emotional distraction during working memory encoding

Age-related declines in attention and working memory (WM) are well documented and may be worsened by the occurrence of distracting information. Emotionally valenced stimuli may have particularly strong distracting effects on cognition. We investigated age-related differences in emotional distraction using task-fMRI. WM performance in older adults was lower for emotional compared with neutral distractors, suggesting a disproportional impairment elicited by emotional task-irrelevant information. Critically, older adults were particularly distracted by task-irrelevant positive information, whereas the opposite pattern was found for younger adults. Age groups differed markedly in the brain response to emotional distractors; younger adults activated posterior cortical regions and the striatum, and older adults activated frontal regions. Also, an age by valence interaction was found for IFG and ACC, suggesting differential modulation of attention to task-relevant emotional information. These results provide new insights into age-related changes in emotional processing and the ability to resolve interference from emotional distraction.