The insidious (and ironic) effects of positive stereotypes

The present research demonstrates that positive stereotypes – though often treated as harmless, flattering and innocuous – may represent an especially insidious means of promoting antiquated beliefs about social groups. Specifically, across four studies (and one replication), the authors demonstrate that exposure to positive stereotypes towards African Americans (i.e., they are superior athletes) are at once both especially unlikely to arouse skepticism and emotional vigilance while also especially likely to produce antiquated and harmful beliefs towards members of the target group (compared to both baseline conditions and exposure to negative stereotypes), including beliefs in the biological (or “natural”) underpinnings of group differences and, ironically, the application of negative stereotypes.     

Some Variables in the Blue (Red) Phenomenon

The relation between spontaneous color choices and ratings of the prototypicality, conspicuousness, and pleasantness of colors was studied in a sample of Dutch college students. Pleasantness, not prototypicality or conspicuousness, determined the four most frequent spontaneous choices—red, blue, green, and purple. Subjects considered blue the most pleasant of the 12 colors studied, which suggests a pleasantness explanation for the “blue phenomenon” found in some countries. The predominance of red as a spontaneous choice replicated the results of previous studies in the Netherlands. Red also was rated highest in prototypicality but was not rated higher by red choosers than by choosers of other colors, so that a simple prototypicality explanation was rejected. Further analysis showed that the predominance of red as the spontaneous choice of Dutch subjects can be explained by an interaction between prototypicality and pleasantness: Subjects tended to choose red when they rated it highly on both variables.     

Intuitive Covariation Assessment of the Illusory Correlation

Most of the research concerned with the illusory correlation is modeled after the seminal work of D. L. Hamilton and R. K. Gifford (1976). However, S. A. Haslam and C. McGarty (1994) have voiced concerns over the dependent measures used within this paradigm. Therefore, in this study, the authors tested a new dependent variable that has high face validity. This measure was modeled after the work of J. R. McGahan and R. Wight (1989) and consisted of a set of propositional statements representing either the illusory correlation, the contingency opposite the illusory correlation, or the noncontingency. A second purpose of this study was to validate other studies that have used dependent measures modeled after the work of J. R. McGahan and R. Wight (1989). Demonstrating that this measure can be used to detect a well-documented phenomenon (i.e., the illusory correlation) would strengthen the results and conclusions from other studies. To this end, results from 2 experiments indicate that this measure does provide a valid alternative to those measures that are commonly used in illusory correlation studies. The results thereby give credence to other studies that have used similar dependent measures.     

Syntactic Processing of Hebrew Sentences in Normal and Dyslexic Readers: Electrophysiological Evidence

The authors examined differences in brain activity as measured by amplitudes and latencies of event-related potential (ERP) components in Hebrew-speaking adult dyslexic and normal readers. The participants were measured while processing words' syntactic functions during reading of sentences with subject-verb-object syntactic order. The results suggested that among dyslexic and normal readers, N100 and P300 ERP components were sensitive to certain constituents of syntactic analysis for target words in accordance with their grammatical roles. The findings further demonstrated significant differences in ERP measures between dyslexic and normal readers. Compared with normal readers, dyslexic readers exhibited consistently higher amplitudes and longer latencies in both ERP components for the subject of the sentence. Significant, though less consistent, ERP variations were observed for other sentence elements. In addition, dyslexic readers differed from normal readers in their processing strategies. For normal readers, the verb-oriented, morphologically based strategy was found to be the most efficient for sentence processing in Hebrew, whereas the dyslexic readers demonstrated a more primitive mode of identification of words' grammatical roles, namely, the word-order strategy. The results support the hypothesis that there is a syntactic processing “weakness” in dyslexics.     

Perceptions of Children Who Lie: Influence of Lie Motive and Benefit

KILMARTIN (1994) suggested that masculine traits may result from externalizing defense style and that when unconscious and unwanted feminine traits about the self occur, they are dealt with in an external way, radier man being directiy resolved by the individual. However, this dieory has received little empirical support. Lobel and Winch (1986) measured defense style among male college students; they found mat men who scored higher in masculinity tended to score higher on acting out (finding an object to attack) and splitting (separating affect from content). Lobel and Winch concluded mat use of diese defense styles reflects avoidance of emotional expression. In turn, diese findings have been supported by research that has suggested mat men use avoidance coping strategies more man women do (McCall &; Struthers, 1994).     

Effects of Accelerated Reading Rate on Processing Words' Syntactic Functions by Normal and Dyslexic Readers: Event Related Potentials Evidence

In the present study, the authors examined differences in brain activity, as measured by amplitudes and latencies of event related potentials (ERP) components, in Hebrew-speaking adult dyslexic and normal readers when processing sentence components with different grammatical functions. Participants were 20 dyslexic and 20 normally reading male college students aged 18–27 years. The authors examined the processing of normal word strings in word–by-word reading of sentences having subject-verb-object (SVO) syntactic structure in self- and fast-paced conditions. Data revealed that in both reading conditions, the N100 and P300 ERP components were sensitive to internal processes such as recognition of words' grammatical functions. However, the results revealed that fast-paced reading rate might affect this process, as was reflected in the systematic changes of amplitudes and latencies of both ERP components. In accelerated reading, a significant decrease of latencies and increase of amplitudes in dyslexics were shown. It was also found that influence of fast-paced reading rate was realized in the full usage of the word-order strategy in sentence processing. In turn, this fact confirmed the hypothesis concerning a syntactic processing “weakness” in dyslexia.     

Contextual Cueing Effects Across the Lifespan

The authors evaluated age-related variations in contextual cueing, which reflects the extent to which visuospatial regularities can facilitate search for a target. Previous research produced inconsistent results regarding contextual cueing effects in young children and in older adults, and no study has investigated the phenomenon across the life span. Three groups (6, 20, and 70 years old) were compared. Participants located a designated target stimulus embedded in a context of distractor stimuli. During exposure, the location of the target could be predicted from the location of the distracters in each display. During test, these predictable displays were intermixed with new displays that did not predict the target location. Response times to locating predictable relative to unpredictable targets were compared. All groups exhibited facilitation effects greater than 0 (95% CIs [.02, .11], d = .4; [.01, .12], d = .4; and [.01, .10], d = .4, for the children, young adults, and older adults, respectively) indicating that contextual cueing is robust across a wide age range. The relative magnitude of contextual cueing effects was essentially identical across the age range tested, F(2, 103) = 1.71, ηρ² = .02. The authors argue that a mechanism that uses environmental covariation is available to all age ranges, but the expression of the contextual cueing may depend on the way it is measured.     

Reasons for Not Helping

Second-grade, fourth-grade, sixth-grade, high school, and college students (N = 140) were asked to describe situations in which they would not help someone else and their reasons for not helping in those situations. Younger subjects used perceived self-incompetence as a reason for not helping more frequently than did older subjects. In contrast, older subjects more frequently cited a desire not to violate another's personal situation and/or their own internalized values, laws, and rules as reasons not to help than did their younger counterparts. For a majority of the not-helping categories, however, no significant effect of age level was found, and indeed, some individuals in even the youngest age group expressed subtle and insightful reasons for not helping.     

The Role of Perspective Taking and Empathy in Children's Machiavellianism,Prosocial Behavior,and Motive for Helping

Fourth- and fifth-grade children (N = 117) were categorized into high- and low-empathy and affective-perspective-taking (APT) groups based on their scores on the Bryant (1982) empathy scale and a modified version of the Rothenberg (1970) and Silvern, Waterman, Sobesky, and Ryan (1979) APT measures. Children in the low-empathy/high-APT group had significantly higher Machiavellianism scores on Braginsky's (1970) measure than did children in the other empathy/APT groups. Highly empathic children were rated by their teachers as more helpful under certain circumstances and cited other-oriented reasons for their own helping behavior more frequently than did less empathic children.