Impact of perceived consensus on stereotypes about obese people: a new approach for reducing bias.

In 3 experiments, the authors tested the effect of perceived social consensus on attitudes toward obese people. Participants completed self-report measures of attitudes toward obese people prior to and after manipulated consensus feedback depicting attitudes of others. In Study 1 (N=60), participants decreased negative and increased positive stereotypes after learning that others held more favorable attitudes toward obese people. In Study 2 (N=55), participants improved attitudes when they learned about favorable attitudes of obese people from an in-group versus an out-group source. In Study 3 (N=200), a consensus approach was compared with other stigma reduction methods. Social consensus feedback influenced participants' attitudes and beliefs about causes of obesity. Providing information about the uncontrollable causes of obesity and supposed scientific prevalence of traits also improved attitudes.     

Teachability of Reflective Processes in Written Composition

Reflective thought, as sustained in writing, is attributed to two-way communication between a content problem space and a rhetorical problem space. An instructional experiment involving sixth-graders aimed at helping them sustain such a two-way process independently, in place of the more typical one-way process of generating content and writing it out. Instruction included modeling of thinking aloud, both by instructors and students, use of cues to stimulate self-questioning during planning monologues, and direct strategy instruction emphasizing dialectical synthesis of conflicting ideas. Increased numbers of reflective statements in thinking-aloud protocols and rated reflectiveness of compositions indicate gains were made at the level of reflection on individual ideas.     

The Experience of Gender Incongruity in the Christian Church: A Qualitative Study

Journal of Religion and Health - This study was designed to understand the interaction between Christian faith and gender incongruence. An anonymous online survey was advertised to the...     

Colour blindness adversely impacts face recognition

ABSTRACT

Whether colour information contributes to the process of face recognition remains controversial. We examine this question here by evaluating the face recognition performance of individuals who are colour blind. Specifically, we compared the performance profile of colour blind and matched control individuals on a colour face recognition task where shape information was progressively degraded. The colour blind participants performed significantly more poorly than controls on this task, as revealed through multiple dependent measures. There was, however, no difference between these two groups on a standardized grayscale control task of face recognition, ruling out a generic face recognition deficit. These results both uncover a face recognition deficit in colour blind individuals and provide evidence for the contribution of colour to everyday facial recognition.