Attachment security and intergroup contact

The contact hypothesis suggests that the interaction between members of different groups decreases prejudice. Moderators and mediators shaping this link have been investigated. However, research about the factors that facilitate contact is not frequent. This article examines secure attachment as an antecedent of contact. Three studies provide information about various aspects of the relationship between secure attachment and contact: security is positively associated with (a) intergroup contact, which in turn is related to reduced prejudice (Study 1); (b) implicit approach tendencies toward the outgroup (Study 2); and, once again, (c) with contact through the indirect effect of openness to exploration (Study 3). In the discussion, we recommend priming both secure and insecure schemas to investigate their unique effects on intergroup contact.     

Depressive Symptoms Are Associated with the Phenomenal Characteristics of Imagined Positive and Negative Future Events

Depressive symptoms are often found to be associated with the number of imagined positive and negative future episodes. Whereas most previous studies investigated the number of imagined events within a limited time period, our study focused on the phenomenal nature of future episodes and their relationships to depressive symptoms, as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Nonclinical participants (n = 183) rated the phenomenal qualities (vividness, contextual/sensory details, felt, importance, accessibility, and certainty) of future episodes generated in response to negative and positive cue words. We found that lower ratings on the phenomenal characteristics of the positive events were associated with higher BDI scores, while an opposite pattern was observed for the negative events. However, there was no relationship between the proportion of imagined episodes that were specific and the BDI scores. Altogether, these results suggest that depressive symptom severity is associated with a wide range of phenomenal characteristics of imagined future episodes.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Cross‐cultural Transportability of Situational Judgment Tests: How does a US‐based integrity situational judgment test fare in Spain?

Despite the globalization of HRM, there is a dearth of research on the potential use of contextualized selection instruments such as situational judgment tests (SJTs) in other countries than those where the selection instruments were originally developed. Therefore, two studies are conducted to examine the transportability of an integrity SJT that was originally developed in the United States to a Spanish context. Study 1 showed that most SJT scenarios (16 out of 19) that were developed in the United States were also considered realistic in a Spanish context. In Study 2, the item option endorsement patterns converged to the original scoring scheme, with the exception of two items. In addition, there were high correlations between the original US empirical scoring scheme and two empirical scoring schemes that were tailored to the Spanish context (i.e., mode consensus scoring and proportional consensus scoring). Finally, correlations between the SJT integrity scores and ratings on a self‐report integrity measure did not differ significantly from each other according to the type of scoring key (original US scoring vs. Spanish scoring keys). Overall, these results shed light on potential issues and solutions related to the cross‐cultural use of contextualized selection instruments such as SJTs.     

P300 amplitude variations,prior probabilities,and likelihoods: A Bayesian ERP study

The capability of the human brain for Bayesian inference was assessed by manipulating probabilistic contingencies in an urn-ball task. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in response to stimuli that differed in their relative frequency of occurrence (.18 to .82). A veraged ERPs with sufficient signal-to-noise ratio (relative frequency of occurrence > .5) were used for further analysis. Research hypotheses about relationships between probabilistic contingencies and ERP amplitude variations were formalized as (in-)equality constrained hypotheses. Conducting Bayesian model comparisons, we found that manipulations of prior probabilities and likelihoods were associated with separately modifiable and distinct ERP responses. P3a amplitudes were sensitive to the degree of prior certainty such that higher prior probabilities were related to larger frontally distributed P3a waves. P3b amplitudes were sensitive to the degree of likelihood certainty such that lower likelihoods were associated with larger parietally distributed P3b waves. These ERP data suggest that these antecedents of Bayesian inference (prior probabilities and likelihoods) are coded by the human brain.     

Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities: Do educators assign them a fully human status?

The present research investigates the humanity attributions to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). In three studies, professional educators, who worked in day‐care or community centers, were examined. Humanity attributions were assessed using emotion‐based and trait‐based measures. As expected, individuals with IDD were denied a fully human status: they were perceived as having more non‐uniquely than uniquely human attributes. Furthermore, a lower human status was assigned to individuals with IDD in relation to educators. We also discovered that humanity attributions, but not attitudes, were related to approach/avoidance responses. Altogether, findings show the importance of considering humanity perceptions in the study of social relationships of individuals with IDD. Dehumanizing perceptions can explain the differential treatment these individuals face in various social settings.     

The role of maladaptive anger in self-criticism: A quasi-experimental study on emotional processes

The present study examines the role of emotion in the self-critical process of individuals with anger problems. Self-criticism is a prevalent intra-personal feature which greatly impacts an individual’s emotion. So far, it is unclear, which emotions individuals with maladaptive anger experience when they work through their self-criticism. Using a quasi-experimental design, the present study compared n = 23 anger-prone under-graduate students to n = 22 controls on process indices of contempt, fear, shame, anger and global distress, as well as on their access to underlying need, as participants were working through personalized self-critical content. This was achieved using a single-session enactment from emotion-focused therapy, augmented with a standardized procedure for priming participants to focus on their unmet needs. Findings suggested that this work on self-criticism reduced for both groups distress, fear and shame, as well as increased assertive anger (McNemar tests significant at p = .05). More centrally, anger-prone individuals expressed more self-contempt (t(1, 44) = 3.65; p < .05), and they had more difficulty in accessing their underlying need (χ² = 5.35; p < .05), when compared to controls. These results have implications for clinical work with anger-prone individuals, and clarify key features in the use of enactment interventions when working towards emotional resolution. The present study also demonstrates the use of personalized stimuli in the context of clinically relevant quasi-experimental research on emotional processes.     

Independent priming of location and color in identification of briefly presented letters

Attention shifts are facilitated if the items to be attended remain the same across trials. Some researchers argue that this priming effect is perceptual, whereas others propose that priming is postperceptual, involving facilitated response selection. The experimental findings have not been consistent regarding the roles of variables such as task difficulty, response repetition, expectancies, and decision-making. Position priming, when repetition of a target position facilitates responses on a subsequent trial, is another source of disagreement among researchers. Experimental results have likewise been inconsistent as to whether position priming is dependent on the repetition of target features or has an independent effect on attention shifts. We attempted to isolate the perceptual components of priming by presenting brief (10–180 ms) search arrays to eight healthy observers. The task was to identify a color-singleton letter among distractors. All stimulus presentation contingencies were randomized, and responses were unspeeded, to avoid effects of observer expectation and postperceptual effects. Repeating target color and/or position strongly improved performance. The effects of color and position repetition were independent of one another and were stable across participants. The results argue for a strong perceptual component in priming, which biases selection toward recent target features and positions, showing that perceptual mechanisms are sufficient to produce priming in visual search and that such effects can be elicited with limited sensory evidence. The results are the first to demonstrate independent priming of color and position in the identification of briefly presented, postmasked stimuli.