Power in stereotypically masculine domains: a Social Influence Strategy X Stereotype Match model

This work examines the hypothesis that stereotypes of groups to which low-power people belong should influence the perceptions and behavior of powerful people only when those stereotypes are both contextually relevant (e.g., women in masculine domains) and provide information of relevance given powerful people's beliefs about the relation between subordinates and goal attainment. Findings across two studies supported predictions. In a masculine domain, when high-power men were attentive to subordinate weaknesses that may produce thwarts to goal attainment, stereotypes of women defined the contextually relevant shortcomings of women, and stereotype-consistent high-power behaviors ensued. In contrast, when powerful men were attentive to subordinate strengths that may enhance goal strivings, stereotypes of women were uninformative (i.e., did not contain information about relevant strengths); female and male employees were responded to and, in turn, performed and reacted similarly. The implications of these findings for theorizing on the relation between power and stereotyping are discussed.     

Secure and defensive high self-esteem

Long-standing theories have suggested high self-esteem (SE) can assume qualitatively different forms that are related to defensiveness. The authors explored whether some high-SE individuals are particularly defensive because they harbor negative self-feelings at less conscious levels, indicated by low implicit SE. In Study 1, participants high in explicit SE but low in implicit SE showed the highest levels of narcissism--an indicator of defensiveness. In Studies 2 and 3, the correspondence between implicit and explicit SE predicted defensive behavior (in-group bias in Study 2 and dissonance reduction in Study 3), such that for high explicit-SE participants, those with relatively low implicit SE behaved more defensively. These results are consistent with the idea that high SE can be relatively secure or defensive.     

Factor structure of the Beck Depression Inventory in a university sample

Factor analysis was performed on the Beck Depression Inventory with a university sample to examine its potential multidimensionality. A principal components analysis with an oblimin and varimax rotation produced a two-factor solution. These factors were labeled Cognitive-Affective and Physiological and accounted for approximately 39% of the common variance. This finding is consistent with multidimensionality of the inventory and with a similar study of college students. The commonalities of the two studies suggest the reliability (internal consistency) of the Cognitive-Affective and Physiological constructs among "minimally" depressed university samples.     

Attendance probabilities of participants in a human experiment

This study investigated how different prompting strategies affected the attendance probabilities of 60 undergraduate students participating in an experiment. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: no prompt, phone-message prompt, or phone-voice prompt. Analysis showed that participants in the no-prompt condition attended the study at a rate of 50%. Participants who received a phone-message prompt attended at a rate of 55%, while participants who received a phone-voice prompt attended at a rate of 100%.     

Conceptual interrelatedness and caricatures

Concepts are interrelated to the extent that the characterization of each concept is influenced by the other concepts, and are isolated to the extent that the characterization of one concept is independent of other concepts. The relative categorization accuracy of the prototype and caricature of a concept can be used as a measure of concept interrelatedness. The prototype is the central tendency of a concept, whereas a caricature deviates from the concept's central tendency in the direction opposite the central tendency of other acquired concepts. The prototype is predicted to be relatively well categorized when a concept is relatively independent of other concepts, but the caricature is predicted to be relatively well categorized when a concept is highly related to other concepts. Support for these predictions comes from manipulations of the labels given to simultaneously acquired concepts (Experiment 1) and of the order of categories during learning (Experiment 2).     

Teachers' screening for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: comparing multinational samples on teacher ratings of ADHD

This study evaluates a measurement model for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The DSM-IV divides 18 symptoms into two groups, inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive. Elementary school teachers rated 21,161 children in 4 locations: Spain, Germany, urban US, and suburban US. Confirmatory factor analysis suggested that the 2-factor model (inattention, hyperactivity/impulsivity) shows the best fit. A third factor, impulsivity, was too slight to stand-alone. Children with academic performance problems were distinguished by inattention, but children with behavior problems typically had elevations in inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Between-site differences were statistically significant, but so small that we conclude that same measurement model fits all 4 samples in 2 continents.     

Putting personality in social context: extraversion, emergent leadership, and the availability of rewards

The present research tested relations between extraversion and emergent leadership among men in situations that differed in potential reward availability. Four-person groups of men engaged in a Leaderless Group Discussion (LGD) task and were randomly assigned to be evaluated by an attractive female observer, an attractive male observer, or not be evaluated. Evolutionary theories suggest that impressing a female evaluator in an intrasexually competitive situation should hold greater reward potential for men than impressing either a male evaluator or no evaluator. Accordingly, more extraverted men (who are more sensitive to reward cues) should display more group leadership when being evaluated by a woman than either a man or no one. Self-and peer ratings confirmed that more extraverted men were significantly more likely to emerge as leaders, but only in the female-evaluator condition. The results are discussed in terms of the interplay between personality, situational factors, and evolutionary principles.     

Elementary subtraction

Four experiments examined performance on the 100 "basic facts" of subtraction and found a discontinuous "stair step" function for reaction times and errors beginning with 11 - n facts. Participants' immediate retrospective reports of nonretrieval showed the same pattern in Experiment 3. The degree to which elementary subtraction depends on working memory (WM) was examined in a dual-task paradigm in Experiment 4. The reconstructive processing used with larger basic facts was strongly associated with greater WM disruption, as evidenced by errors in the secondary task: this was especially the case for participants with lower WM spans. The results support the R. S. Siegler and E. Jenkins (1989) distribution of associations model, although discriminating among the alternative solution processes appears to be a serious challenge.     

Endogenous shifts of covert attention operate within multiple coordinate frames: evidence from a feature-priming task

The locations of visual objects and events in the world are represented in a number of different coordinate frameworks. For example, a visual transient is known to attract (exogenous) attention and facilitate performance within an egocentric framework. However, when attention is allocated voluntarily to a particular visual feature (ie endogenous attention), the location of that feature appears to be variously encoded either within an allocentric framework or in a spatially invariant manner. In three experiments we investigated the importance of location for the allocation of endogenous attention and whether egocentric and/or allocentric spatial frameworks are involved. Primes and targets were presented in four conditions designed to vary systematically their spatial relationships in egocentric and allocentric coordinates. A reliable effect of egocentric priming was found in all three experiments, which suggests that endogenous shifts of attention towards targets defined by a particular feature operate in an egocentric representation of visual space. In addition, allocentric priming was also found for targets primed by their colour or shape. This suggests that attending to targets primed by nonspatial attributes results in facilitation that is localised in more than one coordinate frame of spatial reference.