Stranger at the gate: the effect of the plaintiff's use of an interpreter on juror decision-making

There exists a substantial literature examining the effect on juror decision-making of extraneous demographic characteristics of plaintiffs and defendants. In most of these studies, members of groups that are perceived as being minorities or as belonging to one of a variety of outgroups (lower socioeconomic status, immigrants) are treated more harshly by jurors, or are perceived as being less deserving or credible. In this study, the authors examine treatment by jurors of a relatively less well investigated outgroup: that of the non-English speaker. An experiment was conducted in which actual jurors in a large urban county were randomly assigned to view a videotape of a civil case. Three versions of the videotapes were identical except that, on one, the plaintiff required an interpreter to communicate and it is approximately three minutes longer than the other two. On the other two versions, the plaintiff spoke English, but differed in ethnicity (Hispanic or Anglo). The findings showed that the non-English-speaking plaintiff did not fare worse than the English speakers, and, in fact, was awarded higher mean damages than either of the English speakers.     

The Interplay Between Social Cynicism Beliefs and Person–Organization Fit on Work‐Related Attitudes Among Chinese Employees

In recent decades, person–organization (P–O) fit has been established as an important predictor of work‐related attitudes (e.g., Hoffman & Woehr, 2006 ; Kristof‐Brown, Zimmerman, & Johnson, 2005 ). However, research has revealed the existence of boundary conditions for effects of P–O fit (e.g., employees' personality, perceptions of other aspects of their jobs; Resick, Baltes, & Shantz, 2007 ). We argue that people's worldview may also moderate this process, adding predictive power above and beyond the established moderation effects of personality and other aspects of fit in the organization. To examine this possibility, we conducted a survey among Chinese employees from various organizations to examine the interaction between their social beliefs and P–O fit on their level of job satisfaction.     

Evaluation of a social skills program based on social learning theory, implemented in a school setting

Using a sample of 647 Canadian children in kindergarten to Grade 3 (325 boys, 322 girls), the present study evaluated the perceived effectiveness of Skillstreaming (McGinnis & Goldstein, 2003), a widely known social skills program implemented to target the development of four skill sets, i.e., listening, following directions, problem-solving, and knowing when to tell. Results indicated significant postprogram improvements in all skills as well as in ratings of overall prosociality obtained from both classroom teachers and mental health staff, with medium to large effect sizes obtained from teachers' and mental health professionals' ratings, respectively. Additional analyses yielded significant but weak moderator effects of grade and preprogram prosocial functioning for teacher ratings but no consistent moderator effects for children's sex or school location (i.e., urban versus rural) regardless of rater.     

Signaling when (and when not) to be cautious and self-protective: impulsive and reflective trust in close relationships

A dual process model is proposed to explain how automatic evaluative associations to the partner (i.e., impulsive trust) and deliberative expectations of partner caring (i.e., reflective trust) interact to govern self-protection in romantic relationships. Experimental and correlational studies of dating and marital relationships supported the model. Subliminally conditioning more positive evaluative associations to the partner increased confidence in the partner's caring, suggesting that trust has an impulsive basis. Being high on impulsive trust (i.e., more positive evaluative associations to the partner on the Implicit Association Test; Zayas & Shoda, 2005) also reduced the automatic inclination to distance in response to doubts about the partner's trustworthiness. It similarly reduced self-protective behavioral reactions to these reflective trust concerns. The studies further revealed that the effects of impulsive trust depend on working memory capacity: Being high on impulsive trust inoculated against reflective trust concerns for people low on working memory capacity.     

Letting go of little Albert: disciplinary memory, history, and the uses of myth

In 2009 American Psychologist published the account of an attempt to identify the infant “Albert B.,” who participated in Watson and Rayner's study of the conditioning of human fears. Such literal interpretations of the question “Whatever happened to Little Albert?” highlight the importance of historical writing that transcends the narrowly biographical and that avoids the obsessive hunt for “facts.” The author of a 1979 study of how secondary sources have told the story of Little Albert relates his attempts to purge incorrect accounts of that story from college textbooks. He renounces such efforts as misguided and suggests that myths in the history of psychology can be instructive, including the myth that the identity of Little Albert has been discovered. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

When fairness neither satisfies nor motivates: The role of risk aversion and uncertainty reduction in attenuating and reversing the fair process effect

It is widely acknowledged that procedural justice has many positive effects. However, some evidence suggests that procedural justice may not always have positive effects and may even have negative effects. We present three studies that vary in method and participant populations, including an archival study, a field study, and an experiment, using data provided by the general American population, Indian software engineers, and undergraduate students in the US. We demonstrate that key work-related variables such as people’s job satisfaction and performance depend on procedural justice, perceived uncertainty, and risk aversion such that risk seeking people react less positively and at times negatively to the same fair procedures that appeal to risk averse people. Our results suggest that one possible reason for these effects is that being treated fairly reduces people’s perception of uncertainty in the environment and while risk averse people find low uncertainty desirable and react positively to it, risk seeking people do not. We discuss the implications of our findings for theories of procedural justice including the uncertainty management model of fairness, the fair process effect, and fairness heuristic theory.     

How content and co‐viewers elicit emotional discomfort in moviegoing experiences: Where does the discomfort come from and how is it handled?

Although watching movies is typically enjoyable, they also can elicit discomfort. The present studies investigated what makes some moviegoing experiences emotionally uncomfortable. Using autobiographical memory (Study 1) and scenarios/vignettes methodology (Study 2), young adults remembered watching a movie that had made them uncomfortable or responded to scenarios about watching a particular type of movie with particular co‐viewers (e.g. violent movie with one's spouse). Movies eliciting discomfort were most often dramas (39%) or comedies (26%). Discomfort most often arose from content, particularly fairly explicit sex or violence, and secondarily from the presence of co‐viewers. Often the two interacted, for example, being uncomfortable watching explicit sex with one's parents. In terms of dealing with the discomfort, women were overall more direct and men more avoidant. A sizable minority was glad they had seen the film, in spite of the discomfort, and was open to seeing it again. Arguing from converging evidence, these different methodologies produced consistent results. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Maternal Affective Disorder and Children’s Representation of Their Families

Children’s perceptions of family relationship are related to their later emotional and social adjustment. This is of particular relevance in the context of family stressors such as maternal affective disorder. This study investigated the effects of maternal postnatal depression and anxiety on children’s family representations. In our sample of postnatally depressed mothers we also explored marital conflict as mediator between maternal psychopathology and children’s representations. Family drawings of 235 4–5 year-old children (93 control, 53 depressed and 89 anxious) were examined. When compared to controls, children of depressed, but not of anxious mothers, were more likely to draw themselves as less prominent than other family members and to represent a dysfunctional family, less likely to represent themselves with a happy face and showed a greater tendency of drawing bizarre pictures. Marital conflict mediated the association between maternal depression and dysfunctionality in drawings.     

Children's selective trust in native-accented speakers

Across two experiments, preschool-aged children demonstrated selective learning of non-linguistic information from native-accented rather than foreign-accented speakers. In Experiment 1, children saw videos of a native- and a foreign-accented speaker of English who each spoke for 10 seconds, and then silently demonstrated different functions with novel objects. Children selectively endorsed the silent object function provided by the native-accented speaker. In Experiment 2, children again endorsed the native-accented over the foreign-accented speaker, even though both informants previously spoke only in nonsense speech. Thus, young children demonstrate selective trust in native-accented speakers even when neither informant's speech relays meaningful semantic content, and the information that both informants provide is non-linguistic. We propose that children orient towards members of their native community to guide their early cultural learning.