Biased language use in stereotype maintenance: the role of encoding and goals

In 4 studies, the authors investigated the relative impact of biased encoding of information and communication goals on biased language use. A category label (linguistic expectancy bias, Study 1) or a group label (linguistic intergroup bias, Study 2) was presented either before or after a story that participants were asked to communicate. Biased language use only emerged when participants learned about the group membership of the actor or the category label before hearing the story. However, communication goals had an effect on language use at the retrieval stage, independent of encoding (Studies 3 and 4). Although communication goal effects seemed to overwhelm encoding effects, encoding still influenced language use under externally imposed time pressure (Study 3) and self-imposed time constraints (Study 4). This research reaffirms the importance of both cognitive and communicative processes in stereotype maintenance and highlights the conditions under which they each operate.     

The role of pain behaviour and family caregiver responses in the link between pain catastrophising and pain intensity: A moderated mediation model

Objectives: This study investigated the mediating role of pain behaviours in the association between pain catastrophising and pain intensity and explored the moderating role of family caregivers’ responses to pain in the link between pain behaviours and pain intensity.

Methods: The sample consisted of 154 chronic pain patients and their family caregivers. Patients completed questionnaires regarding pain intensity, pain catastrophising, pain behaviours and their caregivers’ responses to their pain. Family caregivers reported their responses to the patients’ pain.

Results: Pain catastrophising was associated with pain intensity (r = 0.37) and pain behaviours partly mediated this association. The positive association between pain behaviours and pain intensity was significant only if patients reported that their family caregivers showed high levels of solicitous (effect = .49) and distracting responses (effect = .58), and if caregivers reported to show high levels of solicitous responses (effect = .51). No support was found for negative responses as a moderator neither based on patients’ perception of negative responses nor based on caregivers’ perception of negative responses.

Conclusions: The findings are in line with the idea that family caregivers’ solicitous and distracting responses convey to patients that their condition is serious, which may reinforce patients’ pain and pain behaviours, especially in those who catastrophise.     

Nonlinear principal components analysis: introduction and application

The authors provide a didactic treatment of nonlinear (categorical) principal components analysis (PCA). This method is the nonlinear equivalent of standard PCA and reduces the observed variables to a number of uncorrelated principal components. The most important advantages of nonlinear over linear PCA are that it incorporates nominal and ordinal variables and that it can handle and discover nonlinear relationships between variables. Also, nonlinear PCA can deal with variables at their appropriate measurement level; for example, it can treat Likert-type scales ordinally instead of numerically. Every observed value of a variable can be referred to as a category. While performing PCA, nonlinear PCA converts every category to a numeric value, in accordance with the variable's analysis level, using optimal quantification. The authors discuss how optimal quantification is carried out, what analysis levels are, which decisions have to be made when applying nonlinear PCA, and how the results can be interpreted. The strengths and limitations of the method are discussed. An example applying nonlinear PCA to empirical data using the program CATPCA (J. J. Meulman, W. J. Heiser, & SPSS, 2004) is provided.     

Interidentity amnesia for neutral,episodic information in dissociative identity disorder

Interidentity amnesia is considered a hallmark of dissociative identity disorder (DID) in clinical practice. In this study, objective methods of testing episodic memory transfer between identities were used. Tests of both recall (interference paradigm) and recognition were used. A sample of 31 DID patients was included. Additionally, 50 control subjects participated, half functioning as normal controls and the other half simulating interidentity amnesia. Twenty-one patients subjectively reported complete one-way amnesia for the learning episode. However, objectively, neither recall nor recognition scores of patients were different from those of normal controls. It is suggested that clinical models of amnesia in DID may be specified to exclude episodic memory impairments for emotionally neutral material.     

What Values in Design? The Challenge of Incorporating Moral Values into Design

Recently, there is increased attention to the integration of moral values into the conception, design, and development of emerging IT. The most reviewed approach for this purpose in ethics and technology so far is Value-Sensitive Design (VSD). This article considers VSD as the prime candidate for implementing normative considerations into design. Its methodology is considered from a conceptual, analytical, normative perspective. The focus here is on the suitability of VSD for integrating moral values into the design of technologies in a way that joins in with an analytical perspective on ethics of technology. Despite its promising character, it turns out that VSD falls short in several respects: (1) VSD does not have a clear methodology for identifying stakeholders, (2) the integration of empirical methods with conceptual research within the methodology of VSD is obscure, (3) VSD runs the risk of committing the naturalistic fallacy when using empirical knowledge for implementing values in design, (4) the concept of values, as well as their realization, is left undetermined and (5) VSD lacks a complimentary or explicit ethical theory for dealing with value trade-offs. For the normative evaluation of a technology, I claim that an explicit and justified ethical starting point or principle is required. Moreover, explicit attention should be given to the value aims and assumptions of a particular design. The criteria of adequacy for such an approach or methodology follow from the evaluation of VSD as the prime candidate for implementing moral values in design.     

Neuroticism and responses to social comparison among cancer patients

The present study examined how the effects of three audiotapes containing different types of social comparison information on the mood of cancer patients depended on the level of neuroticism. On the procedural tape, a man and woman discussed the process of radiation therapy, on the emotion tape, they focussed on emotional reactions to their illness and treatment, while on the coping tape they focussed on the way they had been coping. A validation study among 115 students showed that the tapes were perceived as they were intended. The main study was conducted among 226 patients who were about to undergo radiation therapy. Compared to patients in the control group, as patients were higher in neuroticism, they reported less negative mood after listening to the procedural and the coping tape. Furthermore, as patients were higher in neuroticism, they reported less negative mood after listening to the coping tape than to the emotion tape. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Prejudice in the police: On the processes underlying the effects of selection and group socialisation

The principal aim of this study is to determine why police officers are generally found to be more prejudiced towards disadvantaged groups than are the standard population. Two independent processes were expected to account for this effect: Selection and group socialisation. Using a cross‐sectional design (N = 170), firstly, we compared, newly recruited police officers with a control population (selection effect), and secondly, police officers with 1 year of training with the newly recruited ones (group socialisation effect). Results reveal a significant effect of both selection and group socialisation, the two being underlined by distinct processes; right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA) in the case of the former and internalisation of a prejudice norm in the case of the latter. Finally, the results show that group identification moderates the change in internalisation of the prejudice norm. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.