Examining Applicants' Attributions for Withdrawal From a Selection Procedure

This study applied the attribution framework described by Weiner (1986) to understand the psychological reasons applicants withdrew from a police officer selection process, as well as the consequences of their attributions for withdrawal. Individuals ( n = 196) who withdrew from the selection process were contacted and were asked to indicate their primary reason for withdrawal; and then rated this reason on locus, stability, and controllability dimensions. They also reported future application expectancies. Results indicate minority and female applicants appeared to indicate different reasons for withdrawing than did White and male applicants. Finally, race and controllability interacted in the prediction of reapplication expectancies, such that the relationship between expectancies and controllability was negative for White applicants and positive for minority applicants.     

Is Moving Gendered? The Effects of Residential Mobility on the Psychological Well-Being of Men and Women

To reexamine the negative psychological effects of residential mobility, secondary analyses were conducted using a representative sample. Mobility had significant effects on depression, after controlling for social class, marital status, gender, and employment. In separate analyses by gender, the mobility effect was significant for women only. The “exposure” hypothesis, that women experience more stress, was partially supported: housework, children, and career sacrifices predicted depression, but did not account for the mobility effect. The “vulnerability” hypothesis, that women respond differently to stressors, was partly supported: weak social ties affected women more than men, but did not account for mobility effects. It appears that moving may contribute to gender differences in depression.     

Reactions of third-graders to recognition allocation after being peer-imitated

Being imitated has generally been regarded as a positive experience conducive to reciprocal imitation of and increased attraction to one’s imitator. An experiment on 3rd-graders, in an adaptation of a Thelen-Kirkland paradigm, investigates whether the receipt of public recognition for a good product would simply amplify those positive effects, or would tend to reverse them, and explores whether gender would moderate models, reactions under such conditions. Recognition allocation was manipulated by having an “authority” award a symbolic star solely to the model, to the confederate imitator alone, to the confederate nonimitator alone, or to no one. The results suggested that the boys rather than girls showed amplification effects of receiving sole recognition: they reciprocally imitated more, and expressed greater attraction to, their same-sex imitator than did the girls. Overall, models expressed relatively less attraction to the imitator than to the nonimitator. When interviewed, the models were equally divided as to which of the two deserved the recognition when they themselves or their imitator received it, but they stated unequivocally that the nonimitator who received the recognition deserved it. They also clearly stated a preference for those tasks on which they themselves had been imitated—given that they themselves or their imitator had received recognition credit, compared to models in the nonimitator-recognition and control conditions. It is clear that recognition allocation is an important construct that should be considered in investigating models, reactions to being imitated, particularly in the light of its significance in the adult world, at least of this culture. Several directions are proposed for pursuing this construct further.     

Consolidation,wider reflection,and policy: Response to ‘Super‐recognisers: From the lab to the world and back again’

Here, David Robertson and Markus Bindemann respond to a recent BJP Target Article on ‘super‐recognisers’ (SRs). They outline the need to consider human factors that could influence SR performance after selection and the need for a co‐ordinated effort to ensure best practice in the implementation of SRs in applied contexts.     

Will They Listen to Me? An Examination of In-Group Gender Bias in Children’s Communication Beliefs

Sex Roles - We assessed developmental and gender differences in children’s beliefs about their peers’ communication styles. We hypothesized that children hold more favorable beliefs...     

The Effects of Phonological Short-Term Memory and Speech Perception on Spoken Sentence Comprehension in Children: Simulating Deficits in an Experimental Design

The roles of phonological short-term memory (pSTM) and speech perception in spoken sentence comprehension were examined in an experimental design. Deficits in pSTM and speech perception were simulated through task demands while typically-developing children (N \(=\) 71) completed a sentence-picture matching task. Children performed the control, simulated pSTM deficit, simulated speech perception deficit, or simulated double deficit condition. On long sentences, the double deficit group had lower scores than the control and speech perception deficit groups, and the pSTM deficit group had lower scores than the control group and marginally lower scores than the speech perception deficit group. The pSTM and speech perception groups performed similarly to groups with real deficits in these areas, who completed the control condition. Overall, scores were lowest on noncanonical long sentences. Results show pSTM has a greater effect than speech perception on sentence comprehension, at least in the tasks employed here.     

PATERNAL AND MATERNAL REFLECTIVE FUNCTIONING IN THE WESTERN AUSTRALIAN PEEL CHILD HEALTH STUDY

While past research on the care of infants has been mostly with mothers, in recent times there has been a renewed attention to the father–infant relationship. This study examined differences between mother and father parental reflective functioning (PRF) or parental mentalizing; that is, the parental capacity to reason about their own and their children's behaviors by taking into consideration intentional mental states. Data were collected from 120 couples with a 1‐year‐old child who were participants in the West Australian Peel Child Health Study. Parental mentalizing was assessed using the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ; Luyten, Mayes, Nijssens, & Fonagy, 2017 ). Results showed that mother and father mentalizing with their children was independent and that mothers scored slightly higher levels of mentalizing than did fathers. Paternal mentalizing was weakly associated with family income and father education, and was more strongly associated with family functioning than with maternal mentalizing. Implications for theorizing on PRF and fatherhood more generally are discussed.     

Food‐Safety Practices in the Domestic Kitchen: Demographic,Personality, and Experiential Determinants1

The impact of consumer behavior in determining the safety of foods prepared at home has focused so far on the role of isolated consumer practices. In addition, demographic factors have been applied primarily to explain differences between individuals. In this paper, the use of psychological factors to predict scores on the integrated food‐safety score is advocated. In order to assess the relevance of psychological constructs to food‐safety behaviors, several relations are tested at the same time in a structural equation model in which it is demonstrated that the inclusion of psychological determinants leads to a better model for the prediction of food‐related behaviors in comparison to demographic factors alone.