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.     

Shedding Dialectical Tiers: A Social-Epistemic View

Is there a duty to respond to objections in order to present a good argument? Ralph Johnson argues that there is such a duty, which he refers to as the “dialectical tier“ of an argument. I deny the (alleged) duty primarily on grounds that it would exert too great a demand on arguers, harming argumentation practices. The valuable aim of responding to objections, which Johnson 's dialectical tier is meant to satisfy, can be achieved in better ways, as argumentation is a social-epistemic activity.     

Frühkindlicher Autismus

Eine kurze Geschichte der Diagnose des frühkindlichen Autismus leitet diesen übersichtsartikelein. Die autistische St?rung zeichnet sich durch drei Hauptsymptomgruppen aus: St?rung der sozialen Interaktion, St?rung der Kommunikation, und stereotype, eingeschr?nkte Verhaltensmuster und Interessen. Aktuelle Kenntnisse im Bereich der ?tiopathogenese wurden kurz zusammengefasst. Diagnostische und differenzialdiagnostische Grundlagen werden diskutiert. Ein kurzer überblick der Pharmakotherapie des Autismus schlie?t die übersicht.     

The Effect of Religious Short‐Term Mission Trips on Youth Civic Engagement

Religious short‐term mission trips are an increasingly popular form of American religious practice, especially among young people. Both organizers and participants often emphasize their transformative nature. However, scholarly efforts to evaluate systematically the social consequences of religious short‐term mission trips are lacking. To address this neglect, our article investigates whether going on a religious short‐term mission trip significantly differentiates youth who engage in civic actions from those who do not. Based on quantitative analysis of Wave I of the National Survey of Youth Religion (NSYR), we find that, controlling for other important factors, taking a mission trip significantly increases the likelihood of adolescents participating in various forms of civic activity, particularly religious‐based volunteer work. Drawing on prior scholarship on religious short‐term mission and similarly focused trips and in‐depth interview data from trip participants, we outline several theoretical mechanisms that likely explain the link between taking a mission trip and civic engagement.     

Parenting of 7‐month‐old infants at familial risk for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Patterns of interaction between parents and 7‐month‐old boys at familial risk for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and a comparison group were studied during a warm‐up and two play episodes. The sample included 78 (47 at‐risk, 31 comparison) mother–child and 45 (27 at‐risk, 18 comparison) father–child dyads. A coding system developed by G. Kochanska (1997, 1998) was used. Infants in the risk group did not differ from the comparison group in the rate of emission of infant‐related events. However, they received less adequate responsivity from both their fathers and their mothers to these events, and specifically to negative emotions or distress, than did the comparison group. Maternal psychopathology did not account for these findings. Mothers were more adequately responsive than were fathers, especially for physiological needs. The association between nonoptimal interaction in infancy and the development of ADHD is discussed.     

Social learning modulates the lateralization of emotional valence

Although neuropsychological studies of lateralization of emotion have emphasized valence (positive vs. negative) or type (basic vs. complex) dimensions, the interaction between the two dimensions has yet to be elucidated. The purpose of the current study was to test the hypothesis that recognition of basic emotions is processed preferentially by the right prefrontal cortex (PFC), whereas recognition of complex social emotions is processed preferentially by the left PFC. Experiment 1 assessed the ability of healthy controls and patients with right and left PFC lesions to recognize basic and complex emotions. Experiment 2 modeled the patient’s data of Experiment 1 on healthy participants under lateralized displays of the emotional stimuli. Both experiments support the Type as well as the Valence Hypotheses. However, our findings indicate that the Valence Hypothesis holds for basic but less so for complex emotions. It is suggested that, since social learning overrules the basic preference of valence in the hemispheres, the processing of complex emotions in the hemispheres is less affected by valence.     

Perceived agency in retirement and retiree drinking behavior: Job satisfaction as a moderator

Based on recent findings that post-retirement adjustment may be influenced by the conditions leading up to the decision to retire, we examine the impact of individual agency in the retirement decision on problematic drinking behavior, as well as the extent to which such an effect may itself depend upon the valence of the pre-retirement work experience. Using a sample of 304 blue-collar retirees, our findings indicate that, when controlling for pre-retirement drinking behavior, perceptions of retirement as the result of a more forced or involuntary decision are associated with greater alcohol consumption, while perceptions of retirement as the result of a more volitional or voluntary process are associated with lower levels of alcohol consumption and a lower risk of problematic drinking behavior. Our results also indicate that pre-retirement job satisfaction amplifies the former relationship, while attenuating the latter one.     

Set recognition as a window to perceptual and cognitive processes

The Set visual perception game is a fertile research platform that allows investigation of perception, with gradual processing culminating in a momentary recognition stage, in a context that can be endlessly repeated with novel displays. Performance of the Set game task is a play-off between perceptual and conceptual processes. The task is to detect (among the 12 displayed cards) a 3-card set, defined as containing cards that are either all similar or all different along each of four dimensions with three possible values. We found preference and reduced response times (RTs) for perceiving set similarity (rather than span) and for including cards sharing the most abundant value in the display, suggesting that these are searched preferentially (perhaps by mutual enhancement). RT decreases with number of sets in the display according to a horse race model, implying independence of simultaneous searches. Central cards are included slightly more often, but set card proximity seems irrelevant. A supplementary experiment determining dimensional salience showed consistent but individual preferences, yet these seemed not to affect set identification. Training induced gradual improvement, which generalized to a new version of the game, suggesting high-level learning. We conclude that elements of perception such as similarity detection are basic for finding sets in this task, as in other real-world perceptual and cognitive tasks, suggesting the presence of basic similarity-perceiving mechanisms. The findings confirm the conclusion that conceptual processes are affected by perception.