When birds of a feather flock together and when they do not: status composition, social dominance orientation, and organizational attractiveness

Although similarity-attraction notions suggest that similarity--for example, in terms of values, personality, and demography--attracts, the authors found that sometimes demographic similarity attracts and sometimes it repels. Consistent with social dominance theory (J. Sidanius & F. Pratto, 1999), they demonstrated in 3 studies that when prospective employees supported group-based social hierarchies (i.e., were high in social dominance orientation), those in high-status groups were attracted to demographic similarity within an organization, whereas those in low-status groups were repelled by it. An important theoretical implication of the findings is that social dominance theory and traditional similarity-attraction notions together help explain a more complex relationship between demographic similarity and attraction than was previously acknowledged in the organizational literature.     

Athletic Participation, Fraternity Membership, and Sexual Aggression Among College Men: A Meta-analytic Review

A meta-analysis of the data relating either college athletic participation or fraternity membership to attitudes and behaviors associated with sexual aggression was conducted with 29 studies which yielded 57 effect sizes. Membership in each male group was associated to a moderate extent with rape-supportive attitudes, and to a smaller extent with self-report of sexually aggressive behavior. There was much variability in the data that could be partially predicted by variables such as the size of the college, the validity of the study, and the age of the research participants. The involvement of these all-male groups in the perpetuation of hypermasculine attitudes (Mosher and Sirkin 1984) in a patriarchal culture was discussed.     

Friendship Similarity During Early Adolescence: Gender and Racial Patterns

We studied the relationship of reciprocity, gender, and racial composition (Caucasian, African American, cross-race) of adolescent friendship dyads to similarity and proximity in 136 young adolescents. We found that adolescents selected friends who were of the same gender and race and that female dyads were more similar than male dyads on verbal achievement and several personality dimensions. Caucasian dyads were more similar than African American dyads on verbal achievement, mental alertness, and dominance. African American adolescents had more contact with their best friends outside school, whereas Caucasian adolescent friends had more in-school contact. African American students had fewer reciprocal relationships than the Caucasian students. Cross-race friendships were less reciprocal than same-race friendships. Race and gender were important in determining friendship patterns. Similarity and proximity were more important than reciprocity in understanding early adolescent friendships.     

Coping with traumatic stress in journalism: a critical ethnographic study

Journalists who witness trauma and disaster events are at risk for physical, emotional, and psychological injury. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a critical ethnographic study among 31 Canadian journalists and photojournalists with regard to coping strategies used to buffer the effects of being exposed to trauma and disaster events and work-related stress. The findings are the result of in-depth individual interviews and six workplace observations with journalists across Canada. The most commonly reported coping strategies were: avoidance strategies at work, use of black humor, controlling one's emotions and memories, exercise and other physical activities, focusing on the technical aspects, and using substances. Recommendations for addressing the effects of work-related stress within this population are provided.     

Prospective predictors of body dissatisfaction in adolescent girls and boys: a five-year longitudinal study

This study investigated prospective risk factors for increases in body dissatisfaction in adolescent girls and boys in the Eating Among Teens Project. At the time of first assessment (Time 1), participants were a cohort of early adolescent girls (N=440) and boys (N=366) and a cohort of middle adolescent girls (N=946) and boys (N=764). Participants were followed up 5 years later (Time 2). Potential prospective risk factors examined included body mass index, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, parent dieting environment, peer environment, and psychological factors. Predictors of Time 2 body dissatisfaction were Time 1 body dissatisfaction, body mass index, socioeconomic status, being African American, friend dieting and teasing, self-esteem, and depression. However, the profile of predictors differed across the samples.     

Neural substrates for verbal working memory in deaf signers: fMRI study and lesion case report

The nature of the representations maintained in verbal working memory is a topic of debate. Some authors argue for a modality-dependent code, tied to particular sensory or motor systems. Others argue for a modality-neutral code. Sign language affords a unique perspective because it factors out the effects of modality. In an fMRI experiment, deaf participants viewed and covertly rehearsed strings of non-sense signs; analyses focused on regions responsive in both sensory and rehearsal phases. Compared with previous findings in hearing subjects, deaf subjects showed a significantly increased involvement of parietal regions. A lesion case study indicates that this network is left-dominant. The findings support the hypothesis that linguistic working memory is supported by modality-specific neural systems, but some modality-neutral systems may also be involved.     

Your work is interfering with our life! The influence of a significant other on employee job search activity

This research draws on family systems theory to examine the influence of the significant other on employees’ job search behaviours. Data from 102 matched pairs of employees and their significant others showed that significant others’ perception of the employee's work‐to‐family conflict was positively related to the employee's job search activity after controlling for employee self‐reported work‐to‐family conflict. Contributions and implications are discussed.     

Language Organization and Reorganization in Epilepsy

The vast majority of healthy individuals are left hemisphere dominant for language; however, individuals with left hemisphere epilepsy have a higher likelihood of atypical language organization. The cerebral organization of language in epilepsy has been studied with invasive procedures such as Wada testing and electrical cortical stimulation mapping (ESM), and more recently, with noninvasive neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Investigators have used these techniques to explore the influence of unique clinical features inherent in epilepsy that might contribute to the reorganization of language, such as location of seizure onset, age of seizure onset, and extent of interictal epileptiform activity. In this paper, we review the contribution of these and other clinical variables to the lateralization and localization of language in epilepsy, and how these patient-related variables affect the results from these three different, yet complementary methodologies. Unlike the abrupt language changes that occur following acute brain injury with disruption of established language circuits, converging evidence suggests that the chronic nature of epileptic activity can result in a developmental shift of language from the left to the right hemisphere or re-routing of language pathways from traditional to non-traditional areas within the dominant left hemisphere. Clinical variables have been shown to contribute to cerebral language reorganization in the setting of chronic seizure disorders, yet such factors have not been reliable predictors of altered language networks in individual patients, underscoring the need for language lateralization and localization procedures when definitive identification of language cortex is necessary for clinical care.     

Recognition of novel faces after single exposure is enhanced during pregnancy

Protective mechanisms in pregnancy include Nausea and Vomiting in Pregnancy (NVP) (Fessler, 2002; Flaxman and Sherman, 2000), increased sensitivity to health cues (Jones et al., 2005), and increased vigilance to out-group members (Navarette, Fessler, and Eng, 2007). While common perception suggests that pregnancy results in decreased cognitive function, an adaptationist perspective might predict that some aspects of cognition would be enhanced during pregnancy if they help to protect the reproductive investment. We propose that a reallocation of cognitive resources from nonessential to critical areas engenders the cognitive decline observed in some studies. Here, we used a recognition task disguised as a health rating to determine whether pregnancy facilitates face recognition. We found that pregnant women were significantly better at recognizing faces and that this effect was particularly pronounced for own-race male faces. In human evolutionary history, and today, males present a significant threat to females. Thus, enhanced recognition of faces, and especially male faces, during pregnancy may serve a protective function.