When Authoritarians Confront Prejudice. Differential Effects of SDO and RWA on Support for Hate‐Speech Prohibition

Two nationwide representative studies (N = 653 adolescents; N = 1007 adults) investigated the psychological correlates of the intention to penalize public expressions of prejudice in the form of support for hate‐speech prohibition. We presented participants with preselected examples of hate speech from the Internet and other mass media and assessed their willingness to support the prohibition of public expressions of such remarks. Both studies found that social dominance orientation and right‐wing authoritarianism are positively correlated with outgroup prejudice, but they have differential effects on hate‐speech prohibition. Social dominance orientation was positively related to the acceptance of hate speech, whereas right‐wing authoritarianism was positively related to hate‐speech prohibition. In discussing this counterintuitive finding, we suggest that right‐wing authoritarians are particularly vigilant toward norm violations—and this makes them more punitive toward counternormative expressions of prejudice, such as hate speech.     

Emotional Distress Associated with Surgical Treatment and its Relationship with Coping Profiles Among Chronically ill Older Patients

The study determines the patterns of coping styles among older patients with hip osteoarthritis and assesses the derived profiles in terms of perceived stress and anxiety before and after arthroplasty. Sixty-one hospital patients (mean age 70.3 years) were analysed one day before arthroplasty and three months after. The participants were assessed with the Brief-COPE (coping style), PSS-10 (perceived stress) and STAI (anxiety) psychometric tests. Four coping patterns were yielded using data clustering: rational, enterprising (resourceful), potentially maladaptive and flexible. Repeated measures ANOVA indicated a main effect within subjects but did not indicate that decreases of stress and anxiety varied differently between groups. Cluster 1 (a coping profile characterised by high helplessness, low active coping, high avoidance) reported significantly greater stress and anxiety than all other groups before and after hip replacement, while clusters 2 (flexible), 3 (resourceful) and 4 (rational) were characterised by similar levels of anxiety and stress. Older patients with osteoarthritis might differ in terms of emotional response to surgical treatment. Screening for coping styles at admission to hospital may indicate more vulnerable individuals.     

Measuring Cultural and Creative Activities in European Cities: Challenges and Practical Problems with Existing Indices

For decades, the focus of cultural, social, and economic policies has been shifting to cities. Cities with the highest concentration of creative employment have demonstrated the greatest resilience in the post-2008 economic recovery. Although, over the last few years, there has been an explosion of cultural or creative related indices for cities, no single reference index is commonly accepted. The main thrust of this article is the provision of a systematic and practical framework for a common point of departure for future index developers. To this end, 38 of the most influential culture and creativity indices were reviewed. By adoption of the indicator-driven approach, 16 dimensions corresponding to aspects of culture and creativity were identified in the city context. These dimensions are presented in a novel taxonomy of 3 clusters that aims to distinguish indicators capturing core cultural and creative activities from those oriented on measuring cities’ organic background or socio-economic outcomes of the aforementioned activities. In addition, the main obstacles most commonly faced by index developers are described and grouped into 4 distinct conceptual challenges, namely (a) precision, (b) diversity, (c) comparability, and (d) spillover. Each challenge is discussed in detail, accompanied by a systematic approach to its solution.     

Is Symptomatic Long QT Syndrome Associated with Depression in Women and Men?

We examined whether long QT syndrome (LQTS) mutation carrier status or symptomatic LQTS are associated with depression, and whether there are sex differences in these potential relationships. The sample comprised 782 participants (252 men). Of the 369 genetically defined LQTS mutation carriers, 169 were symptomatic and 200 were asymptomatic. The control group consisted of 413 unaffected relatives. Depression was assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II). No association was found for LQTS mutation carrier status with depression. The multinomial logistic regression showed that LQTS mutation carrier men with arrhythmic events scored higher on depression compared with the control group, even when adjusting for age, β-blockers, antidepressants, and social support (OR = 1.09, 95 % CI [1.02, 1.15], p = .007). The binary logistic regression comparing symptomatic and asymptomatic LQTS mutation carriers showed that symptomatic LQTS was associated with depression in men (OR = 1.10, 95 % CI [1.03, 1.19], p = .009). The results were unchanged when additionally adjusted for education. These findings suggest that symptomatic LQTS is associated with depression in men but not in women. Overall, however, depression is more frequent in women than men. Thus, regular screening for depression in LQTS mutation carriers and their unaffected family members can be important.     

Does identification predict community involvement? Exploring consequences of social identification among the Jewish minority in Poland

Previous research indicated that people who strongly identify with their own group are more involved in the group's actions. The current study examines the relation between three dimensions of group identification (affect, ties, centrality) and forms of community involvement among members of the Jewish minority in Poland. The strength of ingroup ties predicted involvement in the ethnic minority community. The link between identification and involvement was mediated by the cultural dominance. The reported study was the first quantitative survey of the Jewish community in post‐War Poland. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Men's attraction to women's bodies changes seasonally

Humans exhibit seasonal variation in hormone levels, behaviour, and perception. Here we show that men's assessments of women's attractiveness change also seasonally. In five seasons (from winter 2004 to winter 2005) 114 heterosexual men were asked to assess the attractiveness of the same stimuli: photos of a female with three different waist-to-hip ratios; photos of female breasts, and photos of average-looking faces of young women. For each season, the scores given to the stimuli of the same category (body shape, breast, and face) were combined. Friedman's test revealed significant changes for body shape and breast attractiveness assessments across the seasons, but no changes for face ratings. The highest scores for attractiveness were given in winter and the lowest in summer. We suggest that the observed seasonality is related to the well-known 'contrast effect'. More frequent exposure to women's bodies in warmer seasons might increase men's attractiveness criteria for women's body shape and breasts.     

Directed forgetting and aging: the role of retrieval processes, processing speed, and proactive interference

The directed forgetting effect obtained with the item method is supposed to depend on both selective rehearsal of to-be-remembered (TBR) items and attentional inhibition of to-be-forgotten (TBF) items. In this study, we investigated the locus of the directed forgetting deficit in older adults by exploring the influence of recollection and familiarity-based retrieval processes on age-related differences in directed forgetting. Moreover, we explored the influence of processing speed, short-term memory capacity, thought suppression tendencies, and sensitivity to proactive interference on performance. The results indicated that older adults' directed forgetting difficulties are due to decreased recollection of TBR items, associated with increased automatic retrieval of TBF items. Moreover, processing speed and proactive interference appeared to be responsible for the decreased recall of TBR items.     

STOP-IT: Windows executable software for the stop-signal paradigm

The stop-signal paradigm is a useful tool for the investigation of response inhibition. In this paradigm, subjects are instructed to respond as fast as possible to a stimulus unless a stop signal is presented after a variable delay. However, programming the stop-signal task is typically considered to be difficult. To overcome this issue, we present software called STOP-IT, for running the stop-signal task, as well as an additional analyzing program called ANALYZE-IT. The main advantage of both programs is that they are a precompiled executable, and for basic use there is no need for additional programming. STOP-IT and ANALYZE-IT are completely based on free software, are distributed under the GNU General Public License, and are available at the personal Web sites of the first two authors or at expsy.ugent.be/tscope/stop.html.     

Annotation Theories over Finite Graphs

In the current paper we consider theories with vocabulary containing a number of binary and unary relation symbols. Binary relation symbols represent labeled edges of a graph and unary relations represent unique annotations of the graph’s nodes. Such theories, which we call annotation theories, can be used in many applications, including the formalization of argumentation, approximate reasoning, semantics of logic programs, graph coloring, etc. We address a number of problems related to annotation theories over finite models, including satisfiability, querying problem, specification of preferred models and model checking problem. We show that most of considered problems are NPTime- or co-NPTime-complete. In order to reduce the complexity for particular theories, we use second-order quantifier elimination. To our best knowledge none of existing methods works in the case of annotation theories. We then provide a new second-order quantifier elimination method for stratified theories, which is successful in the considered cases. The new result subsumes many other results, including those of [2, 28, 21].