Exceptions to the Rule: The Effects of Remorse,Status, and Gender on Decision Making1

One of several general rules suggested by past work is that it is advantageous to exhibit remorse when one has committed a transgression. A pair of experiments searched for the boundary conditions of this rule. In Experiment 1, mock jurors rated a remorseful defendant as more guilty when the law was fair than when the law was unfair. In contrast, an unremorseful defendant was viewed as equally guilty under both fairness levels. Study 2 conceptually replicated this result, and revealed a 3‐way interaction among remorse, status, and gender. It is argued that these findings illustrate the importance of violation of expectations on evaluation and judgment, inside the courtroom and elsewhere.     

Youth Athletes' Interpretations of Punitive Coaching Practices

This study examined the use of punitive coaching strategies in youth sport and the nature of these experiences for youth athletes. Semistructured interviews and concept maps were conducted with 12 competitive male and female hockey athletes 11–13 years of age. Data were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. Results revealed that punishments occurred in competitive youth hockey, in the forms of benching, yelling, exercises, cleaning up equipment, and alternating positions. Findings are interpreted to suggest that punishments hindered developmental needs of youth athletes, including a positive sense of self and positive relationships with others. Implications for healthy youth development are discussed.     

Achievement Motivation,Expected Coworker Performance,and Collective Task Motivation: Working Hard or Hardly Working?1

Social loafing is the tendency of individuals to work less hard collectively than individually. The present study examined the joint influence of achievement motivation and expected coworker effort on collective task performance. Participants (N= 107) who qualified and were available after pretesting on an achievement motivation scale were randomly assigned to a work condition and coworker effort condition. Dyads were asked to generate as many uses for a knife as possible within a 12‐min time period. Participants low in achievement motivation engaged in social loafing, but only when expected coworker effort was high, whereas participants high in achievement motivation did not engage in social loafing, regardless of expected coworker effort. The implication of achievement motivation for collective task performance settings is discussed.     

Motivation gains in performance groups: paradigmatic and theoretical developments on the Köhler effect

In contrast to many demonstrations of social loafing, relatively few studies have documented group motivation gains. One such exception was O. K?hler's (1926, 1927) finding that team members working together did better at a taxing persistence task than would be expected from their individual performances, particularly when there was a moderate discrepancy in coworkers' capabilities. In Experiment 1, we developed a paradigm within which K?hler's overall motivation gain effect could be replicated, although the discrepancy in coworkers' capabilities did not moderate these motivation gains (after statistical artifacts were taken into account). Experiment 2 indicated that this motivation gain occurred under conjunctive but not under additive task demands, suggesting that the instrumentality of one's contribution to valued outcomes is a more likely explanation of the K?hler effect than social comparison processes.     

I owe you: age-related similarities and differences in associative memory for gains and losses

Older adults often experience associative memory impairments but can sometimes remember important information. The current experiments investigate potential age-related similarities and differences associate memory for gains and losses. Younger and older participants were presented with faces and associated dollar amounts, which indicated how much money the person “owed” the participant, and were later given a cued recall test for the dollar amount. Experiment 1 examined face-dollar amount pairs while Experiment 2 included negative dollar amounts to examine both gains and losses. While younger adults recalled more information relative to older adults, both groups were more accurate in recalling the correct value associated with high-value faces compared to lower-value faces and remembered gist-information about the values. However, negative values (losses) did not have a strong impact on recall among older adults versus younger adults, illustrating important associative memory differences between younger and older adults.     

Matching Law and Sensitivity to Therapist’s Attention in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

The Psychological Record - A social skills deficit is one of the core symptoms in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and has been hypothesized to be related to a deficit in social...     

Effects of Parent Emotion Socialization on the Neurobiology Underlying Adolescent Emotion Processing: A Multimethod fMRI Study

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Parents’ emotion socialization (ES) practices impact socioemotional development throughout adolescence. Little is known, however, regarding...