Racial bias in decisions made by mock jurors evaluating a case of sexual harassment

White (N = 161) and Black (N = 152) college students served as mock jurors in a simulated civil case in which a female plaintiff accused a male defendant of sexual harassment. The authors experimentally manipulated the race (Black or White) of the litigants and asked the mock jurors to decide whether the defendant was guilty; to rate the certainty of their belief in the defendant's guilt; and, when they judged the defendant guilty, to recommend an award to the plaintiff. Mock jurors of both races tended to favor litigants of their own race and their own gender. Racial bias was highest among White male jurors and lowest among White female jurors.     

Controlling your environment and yourself: Implications for career success

Given the complex and rapidly changing nature of the current work environment, individuals' capabilities to effectively influence their environment and regulate their behavior may be critical to career success. Drawing from the model of emergent interactive agency (Bandura, 1989), the current research examines this perspective, focusing on proactive personality and self-control as predictors of extrinsic and intrinsic career success. Although some studies have investigated proactive personality as a predictor of success, less research has focused on factors involved in this relationship and very little work has examined self-control in the context of career success. Study 1 involved a cross-sectional design with 249 full-time employees who completed measures assessing personality and career-related variables. Study 2 involved a longitudinal design with 1568 individuals who were rated on self-control during childhood and completed career-related measures approximately 20 years later. Study 1 results indicated proactive personality and self-control related to extrinsic career success (salary and occupational prestige) through educational attainment. Study 2 results indicated self-control related to extrinsic career success (salary and occupational prestige) through educational attainment and intrinsic career success (career satisfaction) through occupational opportunity for achievement. These findings contribute to the knowledge base regarding career success by highlighting the relevance of active control tendencies that are externally focused (proactive personality) as well as those that are internally focused (self-control) and identifying key factors linking these traits to career success.     

Lost in translation? Psychometric properties and construct validity of the English Essen Climate Evaluation Schema (EssenCES) social climate questionnaire

The social climate of correctional (forensic) settings is likely to have a significant impact on the outcome of treatment and the overall functioning of these units. The Essen Climate Evaluation Schema (EssenCES) provides an objective way of measuring social climate that overcomes the content, length, and psychometric limitations of other measures. But the English translation of the EssenCES has yet to be sufficiently validated for use in forensic settings in the United Kingdom. The current study presents psychometric properties (factor structure and internal consistency) and an examination of construct validity with the English EssenCES. Satisfactory internal consistency was found for all EssenCES scales, and the expected three-factor structure was confirmed with both staff and residents and in prison and secure hospital settings using confirmatory factor analysis. Evidence to support construct validity was established using multilevel models, which showed statistically significant associations between scores on the EssenCES and scores on the Working Environment Scale, institutional aggression, and site security. Future validation work and potential practical applications of the EssenCES are discussed.     

Children's questions about interparent conflict and violence: what's a mother to say?

This research examined the relation between mothers' responses to children's questions about interparent conflict and children's adjustment. Participants were 134 mothers and their children (70 boys, 64 girls), aged 7 to 10. In each family, an act of intimate-partner violence (IPV) had recently occurred. Mothers' responses to children's questions about interparent conflict were assessed via a semistructured interview coded to reflect the extent to which the mothers' responses addressed the content of the children's questions. Mothers and children reported on physical IPV. Mothers also reported on interparent conflict, parent-child aggression, and maternal warmth. Children's adjustment was assessed via mothers' and children's reports at two time points 6 months apart. The extent to which mothers' responses addressed the content of the children's questions about interparent conflict was negatively associated with children's adjustment problems, after accounting for the frequency of physical IPV, frequency of interparent conflict, parent-child aggression, and maternal warmth. These associations emerged cross-sectionally and prospectively. However, in those prospective analyses that accounted for children's baseline levels of adjustment, maternal responsiveness was not associated with later children's adjustment problems.     

Age-related differences in interhemispheric visuomotor integration measured by the redundant target effect

Presentation of bilateral redundant visual stimuli produces faster reaction times (RT) than presentation of a single unilateral stimulus; an effect known as the redundant target effect (RTE; Miller, 1982), and is a means of testing interhemispheric visuomotor integration (Ouimet, 2009). RTEs that exceed expectations, based on Miller's race model of inequality (RMI), are referred to as "enhanced RTEs" and imply neural coactivation. Paradoxically, enhanced RTEs are observed in cases of corpus callosum disruption. The Hemispheric Coactivation Hypothesis accounts for this paradox by positing that bihemispheric processing occurs to both unilateral and bilateral stimuli in the normal brain, but occurs only with bilateral stimuli in the disconnected brain. Neuroimaging has revealed decreases in the microstructural integrity of the corpus callosum with age (Ota et al., 2006), but research investigating the bilateral RTE in healthy older individuals is lacking. The present study investigated the bilateral RTE in healthy younger and healthy older adults using simple RT and choice RT tasks. Our prediction that older individuals would show significantly larger RTEs than younger individuals was found to be true for both tasks. Tests of the RMI produced little evidence for coactivation. The crossed-uncrossed difference, generally used as a means of testing visuomotor interhemispheric transfer, was also investigated, but no age effects were found. The observation of greater RTE in age is congruent with the Hemispheric Coactivation hypothesis (Miller, 2004) in which callosal disconnection is associated with increased RTE.     

Individual differences in adolescents' sympathetic and parasympathetic functioning moderate associations between family environment and psychosocial adjustment

The present study tested whether individual differences in autonomic nervous system functioning interact with environmental risk factors to predict adolescents' psychosocial functioning. The authors assessed skin conductance and respiratory sinus arrhythmia at rest and during laboratory stressors in 110 14-year-olds. Subsequently, adolescents and their mothers provided both questionnaire and daily diary data (over 10 days) on emotional and interpersonal functioning. The authors found stronger associations between environmental risk factors (having a single-mother household or a mother with high internalizing problems) and psychosocial outcomes (externalizing problems, daily negative affect, and daily interaction quality) among youths with specific patterns of tonic and stress-induced sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activity, but the pattern of moderating effects differed between boys and girls. The findings support the notion that individual differences in autonomic functioning index variation in youth's susceptibility to environmental risk factors.     

Gossip as an effective and low-cost form of punishment

The spreading of reputational information about group members through gossip represents a widespread, efficient, and low-cost form of punishment. Research shows that negative arousal states motivate individuals to gossip about the transgressions of group members. By sharing information in this way groups are better able to promote cooperation and maintain social control and order.     

Oculomotor inhibition of return: How soon is it “recoded” into spatiotopic coordinates?

When, in relation to the execution of an eye movement, does the recoding of visual information from retinotopic to spatiotopic coordinates happen? Two laboratories seeking to answer this question using oculomotor inhibition of return (IOR) have generated different answers: Math?t and Theeuwes (Psychological Science 21:1793?C1798, 2010) found evidence for the initial coding of IOR to be retinotopic, while Pertzov, Zohary, and Avidan (Journal of Neuroscience 30:8882?C8887, 2010) found evidence for spatiotopic IOR at even shorter postsaccadic intervals than were tested by Math?t and Theeuwes (Psychological Science 21:1793?C1798, 2010). To resolve this discrepancy, we conducted two experiments that combined the methods of the previous two studies while testing as early as possible. We found early spatiotopic IOR in both experiments, suggesting that visual events, including prior fixations, are typically coded into an abstract, allocentric representation of space either before or during eye movements. This type of coding enables IOR to encourage orienting toward novelty and, consequently, to perform the role of a foraging facilitator.     

Emotional Environments: Selective Permeability,Political Affordances and Normative Settings

Topoi - I begin this article with an increasingly accepted claim: that emotions lend differential weight to states of affairs, helping us conceptually carve the world and make rational decisions. I...