Exchanging social positions: Enhancing perspective taking within a cooperative problem solving task

When people occupy different social positions within a cooperative task they experience discrepant role and situation demands and thus have divergent perspectives. The reported research predicts that exchanging social positions within a cooperative task can overcome divergences of perspective. This prediction was tested in two experiments using the Communication Conflict Situation. The first experiment (n = 88) found that position exchange increased the ability of dyads to solve a communication conflict arising through discrepant perspectives. The second experiment (n = 120) found that the effect of position exchange exceeds that of purely cognitive perspective taking, thus suggesting that it cannot be reduced to a purely cognitive process. Exchanging social positions is a newly identified and powerful social mechanism through which perspective taking, within a cooperative task, can be enhanced. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Implicit sources of bias in employment interview judgments and decisions

This study empirically examined implicit sources of bias in employment interview judgments and decisions. We examined two ethnic cues, accent and name, as sources of bias that may trigger prejudicial attitudes and decisions. As predicted, there was an interaction between the applicant name and accent that affected participants’ favorable judgments of applicant characteristics. The applicant with the ethnic name, speaking with an accent, was viewed less positively by interviewers than the ethnic named applicant without an accent and non-ethnic named applicants with and without an accent. Furthermore, modern ethnicity bias had a negative association with the favorable judgments of the applicants, which, in turn, affected hiring decisions. Implications of the results, limitations of the study, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Animal Faux Pas: Two Legs Good Four Legs Bad for Theory of Mind,but Not in the Broad Autism Spectrum

Research shows that the general population varies with regard to both autistic traits and theory of mind (ToM) ability. Other work has shown that autistic individuals may not underperform on ToM tests when the agent of evaluation is anthropomorphic rather than typically human. Two studies examined the relation between ToM and autistic trait profiles in over 650 adults using either the standard Faux Pas Recognition Test (FPT) or an anthropomorphized version of the FPT (FPTa). Results showed that autistic trait profiles were related to faux pas detection ability in the FPT but not the FPTa. Furthermore, while those with the broad autism phenotype scored significantly worse than those who were typically developed on the FPT, scores did not significantly differ on the FPTa. These findings add to a growing body of work suggesting that ToM ability is not at a global deficit in those on the autistic spectrum, but may relate to the mindreading of specifically human agents.     

“He Must Learn What Being a Man is All About”: Negotiating the Male Code at the Louisiana State Penitentiary

Much of what has been written about masculinities inside prisons focuses on the pressure to live up to a hypermasculine ideal that privileges aggression, the concealment of vulnerability, and the victimization of weaker inmates. Believing this approach lacks nuance, I explore how prisoners writing in The Angolite, the Louisiana State Penitentiary’s prison newsmagazine, conceive of manhood. Incorporating hundreds of men’s voices into this discussion reveals the complexity of these prisoners’ lives as men—their emotional depth, friendships, and struggles to grow, learn, and better themselves—and compels us to reconsider what we think goes on inside prisons.     

Hitmen and the Spaces of Contract Killing: The Doorstep Hitman

This exploratory paper considers the spaces where hits take place within Britain. It concentrates on those hits that have occurred on the doorstep of the victim and offers analysis of why this location might be chosen. It suggests an emerging modus operandi (MO) of doorstep hits and how knowledge of this MO might be useful to law enforcement. Two cold cases are re‐considered in light of this MO. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Corticotropin-Releasing Factor and the Psychobiology of Early-Life Stress

ABSTRACT— Trauma and neglect during childhood are increasingly appreciated as factors in the etiology of adult mood and anxiety disorders. Much has been learned about the role of stress biology in the persisting effects of early adverse experience on adult psychopathology. Here we present an overview of developmental trauma in the psychobiology of depression and anxiety. We emphasize the role of corticotropin-releasing factor in the pathophysiology of these disorders, focusing on the transduction of early life trauma into adult psychopathology.     

Collaborative Research, Knowledge and Emergence

We use the notion of emergence to consider the sorts of knowledge that can be produced in a collaborative research project. The notion invites us to see collaborative work as a developmental dynamic system in which various changes constantly occur. Among these we examine two sorts of knowledge that can be produced: scientific knowledge, and collaborative knowledge. We argue that collaborative knowledge can enable researchers to reflectively monitor their collaborative project, so as to encourage its most productive changes. On the basis of examples taken from this special issue, we highlight four modes of producing collaborative knowledge and discuss the possible uses of such knowledge.

Exploring User-Centred Design in Practice: Some Caveats

This paper provides a nuanced perspective on the topic of user-centred design (UCD) in the human–computer interaction (HCI) field. After a brief outline of its emergence, we describe some of the central tenets of the approach, using the process model of Gulliksen et al. (Behav Inf Technol 22(6):397–409, 2003) as a well-documented exemplar. We then examine in more detail some of the difficulties one can encounter in performing user-centred design (UCD), illuminating these issues through vignettes from specific projects in which we have been involved. In this paper, we focus on issues that can arise in working with children and with people of differing mental abilities. Our argument is that, while a user-centred perspective is required at all times in the design team, the forms of participation of users in the design process needs to fit the context and can vary significantly from that presented as the prototypical UCD approach.