Incorporating if...then...personality signatures in person perception: beyond the person-situation dichotomy

Three studies investigated conditions in which perceivers view dispositions and situations as interactive, rather than independent, causal forces when making judgments about another's personality. Study 1 showed that perceivers associated 5 common trait terms (e.g., friendly and shy) with characteristic if...then... (if situation a, then the person does x, but if situation b, then the person does y) personality signatures. Study 2 demonstrated that perceivers used information about a target's stable if...then... signature to infer the target's motives and traits; dispositional judgments were mediated by inferences about the target's motivations. Study 3 tested whether perceivers draw on if...then... signatures when making judgments about Big Five trait dimensions. Together, the findings indicate that perceivers take account of person-situation interactions (reflected in if...then... signatures) in everyday explanations of social behavior and personality dispositions. Boundary conditions are also discussed.     

Stereotypes as dominant responses: on the "social facilitation" of prejudice in anticipated public contexts

This article challenges the highly intuitive assumption that prejudice should be less likely in public compared with private settings. It proposes that stereotypes may be conceptualized as a type of dominant response (C. L. Hull, 1943; R. B. Zajonc, 1965) whose expression may be enhanced in public settings, especially among individuals high in social anxiety. Support was found for this framework in an impression formation paradigm (Experiment 1) and in a speeded task designed to measure stereotypic errors in perceptual identification (Experiment 2). Use of the process dissociation procedure (B. K. Payne, L. L. Jacoby, & A. J. Lambert, in press) demonstrated that these effects were due to decreases in cognitive control rather than increases in stereotype accessibility. The findings highlight a heretofore unknown and ironic consequence of anticipated public settings: Warning people that others may be privy to their responses may actually increase prejudice among the very people who are most worried about doing the wrong thing in public.     

Parent engagement in an original and culturally adapted evidence-based parenting program,Legacy for Children™

Legacy for Children™ (Legacy) is an evidence-based program focused on promoting sensitive, responsive parenting for socioeconomically disadvantaged families. Legacy has recently been culturally and linguistically adapted for Spanish-monolingual Latino families and is being piloted in partnership with an early childhood education program. We conducted a mixed methods study to identify barriers and facilitators to engagement, using program monitoring data sources from both participant and group leader perspectives. We conducted qualitative analyses of open-ended data to identify distinct barriers (e.g., employment challenges, health-related challenges and appointments) and facilitators (e.g., other mothers in group, interest in program topics) to engagement that emerged across English and Spanish language curriculum versions; curriculum-specific barriers and facilitators were also documented. We interpret these findings in light of quantitative data on measures of engagement, showing that participants in the Spanish curriculum evidenced comparable levels of parent–group leader relationship quality relative to the English group, and higher levels of parent's group support/connectedness and overall satisfaction. These results offer promising considerations for optimizing families’ engagement in parenting programs in the context of early care and education settings.     

Masked suffix priming and morpheme positional constraints

Although masked stem priming (e.g., dealer–DEAL) is one of the most established effects in visual word identification, it is less clear whether primes and targets sharing a suffix (e.g., kindness–WILDNESS) also yield facilitation. In a new take on this issue, we show that prime nonwords facilitate lexical decisions to target words ending with the same suffix (sheeter–TEACHER) compared to a condition where the critical suffix was substituted by another one (sheetal–TEACHER) or by an unrelated nonmorphological ending (sheetub– TEACHER). We also show that this effect is genuinely morphological, as no priming emerged in noncomplex items with the same orthographic characteristics (sportel–BROTHEL vs. sportic–BROTHEL vs. sportur–BROTHEL). In a further experiment, we took advantage of these results to assess whether suffixes are recognized in a position-specific fashion. Masked suffix priming did not emerge when the relative order of stems and suffixes was reversed in the prime nonwords—ersheet did not yield any time saving in the identification of teacher as compared to either alsheet or obsheet. We take these results to show that –er was not identified as a morpheme in ersheet, thus indicating that suffix identification is position specific. This conclusion is in line with data on interference effects in nonword rejection and strongly constrains theoretical proposals on how complex words are identified. In particular, because these findings were reported in a masked priming paradigm, they suggest that positional constraints operate early, most likely at a prelexical level of morpho-orthographic analysis.     

Erratum to: Reducing the Floor Effect in the SF-6D: A Feasibility Study

Applied Research in Quality of Life -     

AN EVALUATION OF THE NUMBER OF PRESENTATIONS OF TARGET SOUNDS DURING STIMULUS—STIMULUS PAIRING TRIALS

We evaluated the differential effects of 2 variations of a stimulus–stimulus pairing procedure on the vocalizations of 2 children with autism. For both participants, presenting 1 sound per pairing trial resulted in a higher rate of vocalizations than 3 sounds per pairing trial.     

You promised you'd change: How incremental and entity theorists react to a romantic partner's promised change attempts

Research from multiple domains suggests that individuals benefit from having other people in their lives who endorse an incremental mindset, believing in humans' capacity to change and improve through effort. We hypothesize, however, that people high in incrementalism may have unrealistic expectations about the ease of change, leading them to become frustrated with others who promise change (change-strivers) but achieve only partial success. In a longitudinal study, change-strivers made promises of change to their romantic partners and attempted to keep those promises over two weeks. Romantic partners who were higher in incrementalism were initially more optimistic that change-strivers would successfully change, but subsequently more distrustful toward change-strivers whose change attempts failed. Furthermore, partners high in incrementalism were more likely to attribute failure to the change-striver's lack of effort, rather than to the difficulty of the behaviors. The findings highlight circumstances when incremental mindsets may have costs in relationships.     

Multicultural web-based motivational interviewing for clients with a first-time DUI offense

Culturally and linguistically appropriate interventions are needed to reduce the risk of driving under the influence (DUI) recidivism among diverse populations. Using core elements of Motivational Interviewing, we developed a culturally relevant web-MI intervention (web-MI) in English and Spanish to serve as a standalone or adjunctive program in DUI educational settings and evaluated its feasibility and acceptability among clients with first-time DUI offenses. We conducted an iterative formative assessment using focus groups with staff (n = 8) and clients (n = 27), and usability interviews with clients (n = 21). Adapting MI for the web was widely accepted by staff and clients. Clients stated the web-MI was engaging, interactive and personal, and felt more comfortable than past classes and programs. Spanish-speaking clients felt less shame, embarrassment, and discomfort with the web-MI compared to other in-person groups. Results support the viability of web-MI for DUI clients at risk for recidivism and highlight the importance of adapting the intervention for diverse populations. Key decisions used to develop the web-MI are discussed.     

Areas of Marital Dissatisfaction Among Long‐Term Couples

To better understand relational dissatisfaction and duration of long‐term married couples, this study surveyed 30 couples married at least 40 years with the Marital Satisfaction Inventory. Findings suggest various areas of dissatisfaction (e.g., affective communication, conflict over child rearing) and relationship among and link to other areas of dissatisfaction (e.g., finances, sex).