Admissions of racism in discourse on migration in Greece: Beyond the norm against prejudice?

The turn to language in social psychology is closely related to the study of prejudice as racist discourse has been the subject matter of some of the ground‐breaking discourse analytic work. A widely accepted argument was that there seems to be a norm against prejudice informing Western societies: people commonly engage in denials of prejudice when they make negative comments about minorities. Recent work has argued that, due to ideological shifts in the wider societal context or because denying prejudice may not be people's only rhetorical concern, it is possible to find people admitting prejudice. We examine how people in Greece, Greek majority and immigrants, formulate admissions of racism in interviews on migration and citizenship in Greece. Drawing on Ideological Dilemmas and Critical Discursive Social Psychology, we argue that these admissions ironically operate within the norm against prejudice and discuss our findings in relation to the wider socio‐political Greek context.     

Increased parasympathetic activity and ability to generate positive emotion: The influence of the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism on emotion flexibility

Cross-species behavioral research suggests that a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene (rs6265, Val66Met), influences behavioral inflexibility. This SNP has not yet been linked to variability in emotion-related behaviors, despite broader evidence suggesting an association may be present. This investigation explored the role of the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism in emotion response behaviors measured during a lab-based emotional provocation. Specifically, the influence of BDNF Val66Met in emotion flexibility was explored in a sample of healthy adults (N?=?120), emotion responses were recorded during the emotional provocation on multiple dimensions, in response to emotionally-evocative videos of negative then positive valence. These results suggest that Met carriers exhibit decreased parasympathetic responding, and reduced ability to generate positive emotion, relative to Val homozygotes. These findings are the first to suggest an association between the Met allele and a pattern of responding indicative of emotion inflexibility that might afford greater risk for psychopathology.     

The Role of Character Strengths and Importance of Family on Mexican American College Students' Career Decision Self‐Efficacy

This study examined how character strengths and the importance of family influenced Mexican American college students' (N = 129) career decision self‐efficacy. Findings from a multiple regression analysis indicated that psychological grit and curiosity were significant predictors of career decision self‐efficacy. The authors discuss the importance of these findings and provide recommendations for future research.     

Discrimination and Reversal Learning by Toddlers Aged 15-23 Months

Few studies have investigated simple discrimination and discrimination reversal learning by children younger than 2 years. Extant research has shown that teaching discrimination reversals may be challenging with this population. We used social reinforcement and correction procedures to teach simple simultaneous discrimination and discrimination reversal tasks involving three pairs of animal pictures displayed in a paper notebook. Participants were eight typically developing toddlers aged 15-23 months. All learned at least one simple discrimination/discrimination reversal problem. Four children learned all problems and showed evidence of learning set formation. Perhaps surprisingly, discrimination reversals were sometimes learned more rapidly than original discriminations. The procedures suggest a potentially efficient methodology for investigating more complex aspects of relational learning in toddlers.

     

Effects of Monitoring and Social Reprimands on Instruction-Following in Undergraduate Students

The effects of the magnitude of nonverbal consequences, monitoring, and social consequences on instruction-following were evaluated. Twenty-four undergraduates were exposed to a matching-to-sample procedure. The undergraduates underwent four experimental phases that differed regarding the presence or absence of the observer and the correspondence or non-correspondence of the instructions with the nonverbal contingency. In Experiments 1 and 2, the magnitudes of the nonverbal consequences were manipulated, and in Experiment 3, the effects of verbal reprimands on instruction-following were evaluated. The results revealed that alterations in the magnitudes of nonverbal consequences did not influenced the performances of the participants and that monitoring increased the probability that the participants would follow the instructions but not to an extent sufficient to maintain performance when the consequences did not correspond to the nonverbal contingency. The inclusion of verbal reprimands was necessary to achieve this effect. These results support the proposition that social control is important for maintaining instruction-following.

     

French Validation of the Overexcitability Questionnaire 2: Psychometric Properties and Factorial Structure

Overexcitability corresponds to an overall response to stimulations in 5 domains: psychomotor, sensual, intellectual, imaginational, and emotional. The aim of this study was to develop a French version of the Overexcitability Questionnaire 2 (OEQ2) and to expand its psychometric properties. Two studies were conducted: one with a sample of 474 adolescents and another with a sample of 436 adults. Internal consistency, factorial structure, and validity (correlations with intelligence, personality, and alexithymia) were examined. The French OEQ2 showed satisfactory psychometric properties, thus advocating for its use in further research on overexcitability and in clinical practice.     

Sexual Orientation and Substance Use: The Moderation of Parental Attachment

There is a substantial amount of research exploring patterns of sexual orientation and substance use, often finding increased substance use for non-heterosexuals. An additional body of research explores the concept of family support from a number of perspectives. There is a noted lack of overlay between family support, sexual orientation, and substance use. This research uses data from Waves III and IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine how parental attachment, as a measure of family support, may moderate the association between sexual orientation and substance use. We test the notion that as parental attachment increases, substance use patterns will decrease for both heterosexual and non-heterosexual individuals. We also hypothesize that parental attachment will have a stronger effect of decreasing substance use for non-heterosexuals than for heterosexuals.     

How the Eyes Tell Lies: Social Gaze During a Preference Task

Social attention is thought to require detecting the eyes of others and following their gaze. To be effective, observers must also be able to infer the person's thoughts and feelings about what he or she is looking at, but this has only rarely been investigated in laboratory studies. In this study, participants' eye movements were recorded while they chose which of four patterns they preferred. New observers were subsequently able to reliably guess the preference response by watching a replay of the fixations. Moreover, when asked to mislead the person guessing, participants changed their looking behavior and guessing success was reduced. In a second experiment, naïve participants could also guess the preference of the original observers but were unable to identify trials which were lies. These results confirm that people can spontaneously use the gaze of others to infer their judgments, but also that these inferences are open to deception.