UNIVERSALISM IN LAY CONCEPTIONS OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE: A CROSS-CULTURAL EXAMINATION

In two studies of Japanese and Australian university students, we examined the resource allocation rules of equity and equality. In both cultures, subjects were universalistic rather than relativistic in their judgments of fairness and alterability of these rules in the work place. They judged the equity rule to be unalterable by legislation or consensus. However, in both studies, the Japanese perceived equity to be less fair and equality to be less unfair than their Australian counterparts. In addition, study 2 indicated that cross-cultural differences in judgments of fairness were influenced by consideration of need. The age of the worker was a more important determinant of fairness judgments for Japanese than for Australians; the debt of a worker was a more important déterminant for Australians than for Japanese. The results are discussed with regard to the role of culture in conceptions of distributive justice.     

Perceived family environment as a moderator of young adolescents' life stress adjustment

A longitudinal design was employed to test the main and stress-moderating effects of young adolescents' perceived family environment (Family Environment Scales; FES; Moos & Moos, 1981) on their depression, anxiety, and self-esteem. This study was part of a larger longitudinal project (L. Cohen, Burt, & Bjorck, 1987) that demonstrated the significant cross-sectional effects of the young adolescents' controllable and uncontrollable negative events, and the significant longitudinal effects of the former. The present cross-sectional analyses demonstrated the hypothesized main effects of the FES scores; families perceived as cohesive, organized, and expressive were related to positive psychological functioning, whereas families perceived as conflict-ridden and controlling were related to negative functioning. However, in general these effects were nonsignificant in the longitudinal analyses. Although there were a number of significant Negative Events x FES interactions, in no instance did the pattern support the hypothesized stress-buffering role of positive family climate.     

Hindsight bias: An interaction of automatic and motivational factors?

If subjects are asked to recollect a former response after having been informed about the correct response, their recollection tends to approach the correct response. This effect has been termedhindsight bias. We studied hindsight bias in an experiment requiring numerical responses to almanac-type questions for physical quantities. We varied (1) the time at which the correct information was provided, (2) the encoding of the original responses by asking/not asking subjects to give a reason for the respective response, and (3) the motivation to recall correctly. We found that hindsight is less biased if reasons are given and if the correct information is provided at an earlier time. Motivation had only interactive effects: (1) With high motivation to recall correctly, the time the correct information was provided had no influence. (2) With reasons given, the variation of motivation showed no effect. These results rule out purely motivational and purely automatic explanations.     

Visual stimulation affects the perception of voluntary leg movements during walking

When a limb is used for locomotion, patterns of afferent and efferent activity related to its own motion are present as well as visual, vestibular, and other proprioceptive information about motion of the whole body. A study is reported in which it was asked whether visual stimulation present during whole-body motion can influence the perception of the leg movements propelling the body. Subjects were tested in conditions in which the stepping movements they made were identical but the amount of body displacement relative to inertial space and to the visual surround varied. These test conditions were created by getting the subjects to walk on a rotatable platform centered inside a large, independently rotatable, optokinetic drum. In each test condition, subjects, without looking at their legs, compared, against a standard condition in which the floor and drum were both stationary, their speed of body motion, their stride length and stepping rate, the direction of their steps, and the perceived force they exerted during stepping. When visual surround motion was incompatible with the motion normally associated with the stepping movements being made, changes in apparent body motion and in the awareness of the frequency, extent, and direction of the voluntary stepping movements resulted.     

Two forms of persistence in visual information processing

Iconic memory, which was initially regarded as a unitary phenomenon, has since been subdivided into several components. In the present work we examined the joint effects of two such components (visible persistence and the visual analog representation) on performance in a partial report task. The display consisted of 15 alphabetic characters arranged around the perimeter of an imaginary circle on the face of an oscilloscope. The observer named the character singled out by a bar-probe. Two factors were varied: exposure duration of the array (10, 50, 100, 150, 200, 300, 400 or 500 ms) and duration of blank period (interstimulus interval, ISI) between the termination of the array and the onset of the probe (0, 50, 100, 150, or 200 ms). Performance was progressively impaired as both exposure duration and ISI were increased. The results were explained in terms of a probabilistic combinatorial model in which the timecourses of visible persistence and of the visual analog representation are regarded as time-locked to the onset and to the end of stimulation, respectively. The impairing effect of exposure duration was attributed to the relatively high spatial demands of the task that could be met optimally by information in visible persistence (which declines as a function of exposure duration), but less adequately by information in the visual analog representation. A second experiment, employing a task with lesser spatial demands, confirmed this interpretation.     

Serotonergic and opiate interactions in the modulation of drug- and environmental-induced analgesia in the neonatal rat pup

Serotonergic and opiate interactions in the modulation of drug- and environmental-induced analgesia were assessed in 6-day-old Sprague-Dawley-derived rat pups using tail-flick testing procedures. In these experiments the serotonergic antagonist metergoline was observed to attenuate both the analgesia induced by the opiate agonist morphine and the analgesia induced by isolation from siblings and the dam, an environmental manipulation which has previously been shown to be associated with increases in opiate activity. In contrast, the opiate antagonist naloxone was observed to be ineffective in blocking not only analgesia induced by the serotonergic agonist quipazine, but also analgesia induced by long-term deprivation from the dam and food, a manipulation that has been previously reported to induce increases in serotonergic utilization. These results suggest that in the neonate, as in the adult, the serotonergic modulation of nociception appears to occur "downstream" from the opiate systems serving to regulate nociception following both drug- and environmental-induced alterations in pain sensitivity. Analgesia induced by long-term deprivation from food and the dam appears to be strongly related to increases in serotonergic activity and relatively unaffected by opiate antagonism, whereas analgesia induced by isolation from siblings and the dam may be related to increases in opiate activity, but modulated by serotonergic systems serving to regulate pain responsivity. Thus alterations in the environment, mediated at least in part by alterations in opiate and serotonergic activity, appear to play an important role in influencing the sensitivity of the neonate to pain stimuli.