Social dominance orientation,prejudice, and discrimination: A new computer-based method for studying discriminatory behaviors

A number of studies have shown that the scale of social dominance orientation (SDO), used to measure the degree of preference for inequality among social groups, is a predictive measure of social and political attitudes toward stigmatized outgroups. However, the relationship between SDO and discrimination has received little attention. The main goal of this study was to assess the validity of a new computer-based method used to measure discriminatory behaviors in a laboratory setting. An additional goal was to test the mediating role of prejudice in the relation between SDO and discrimination. The results provide a first validation of this new method and demonstrate that the effect of SDO on discrimination is mediated by prejudice.     

Index of suspicion: feeling not believing

Throughout the U.S., state laws require professionals who work with children to report cases of suspected child abuse to child protection services. Both practically and conceptually, however, significant problems arise from a lack of clarity regarding the threshold that has been set for reporting. Specifically, there is no consensus as to what constitutes reasonable suspicion, and little direction for how mandated reporters should gauge their legal and professional responsibilities when they harbor suspicion. In this paper we outline the context of the problem, discuss the nature and scope of its conceptual underpinnings, and offer recommendations for moving towards a concrete, practical solution.     

Senior capstone design and ethics: A bridge to the professional world

A senior level capstone design experience has been developed and offered with a particular emphasis on many of the professional issues raised in Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) Engineering Criterion IV. The course has sought to develop student awareness of the ethical foundation of the engineering profession, the global and societal framework within which engineers practice, and the environmental impact on engineering. The capstone design course also focused upon improving the technical communications skills of the graduating senior class with both extensive instruction in writing and multiple workshops dealing with the art of making an effective oral presentation. The effectiveness of the design course was assessed using Kirkpatrick’s model for evaluating training programs. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the “Ethics and Social Responsibility in Engineering and Technology” meeting, New Orleans, 2003.     

Object permanence in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus)

A series of 9 search tasks corresponding to the Piagetian Stages 3-6 of object permanence were administered to 11 common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus). Success rates varied strongly among tasks and marmosets, but the performances of most subjects were above chance level on the majority of tasks of visible and invisible displacements. Although up to 24 trials were administered in the tests, subjects did not improve their performance across trials. Errors were due to preferences for specific locations or boxes, simple search strategies, and attentional deficits. The performances of at least 2 subjects that achieved very high scores up to the successive invisible displacement task suggest that this species is able to represent the existence and the movements of unperceived objects.     

Perceptions of Ethical Behaviour among Business Faculty in Canada

Faculty members at Canadian business schools were surveyed regarding their ethical perceptions of behaviours related to undergraduate instruction. Fifty-five behavioural statements were listed and respondents were asked to rate the extent to which they felt each behaviour was ethical or unethical. The only item that respondents endorsed as unequivocally unethical (90% indicated it was definitely unethical) was Becoming sexually involved with an undergraduate in one of your classes. We also compared the results of our sample to those of an American sample. Overall, an interesting pattern of differences emerged between the responses obtained in Canada and the U.S. In general, the direction of the significant differences was such that Canadian professors viewed the behaviours in question as less ethical than did their American counterparts.     

Another evaluation of touch and helping behavior

Although positive effect of touch on compliance has been widely reported, new evaluation was made with an unusual request. 80 male bus drivers were solicited by a male or a female confederate to take the bus despite having too little money for the fare. Bus drivers were briefly touched by the confederate during solicitation. Analysis showed that bus drivers who were touched accepted the request more favorably but only when made by a female.     

Time-to-contact estimation of accelerated stimuli is based on first-order information

The goal of this study was to test whether 1st-order information, which does not account for acceleration, is used (a) to estimate the time to contact (TTC) of an accelerated stimulus after the occlusion of a final part of its trajectory and (b) to indirectly intercept an accelerated stimulus with a thrown projectile. Both tasks require the production of an action on the basis of predictive information acquired before the arrival of the stimulus at the target and allow the experimenter to make quantitative predictions about the participants' use (or nonuse) of 1st-order information. The results show that participants do not use information about acceleration and that they commit errors that rely quantitatively on 1st-order information even when acceleration is psychophysically detectable. In the indirect interceptive task, action is planned about 200 ms before the initiation of the movement, at which time the 1st-order TTC attains a critical value.     

On discontinuities in motor learning: a longitudinal study of complex skill acquisition on a ski-simulator

The qualitative behavioral reorganizations that occurred during the acquisition of a complex motor skill were examined. Five novice participants practiced for 39 sessions of ten 1-min trials on a modified version of the ski-simulator. Analyses focused on the motion of the apparatus platform, modeled as a self-sustained oscillator. At the beginning of the experiment, all participants adopted a behavior that could be modeled with a highly nonlinear stiffness function and a Rayleigh damping function. The behavior in the final part of the experiment was captured by a qualitatively different model, with a linear stiffness function and a van der Pol damping behavior. The transition from the initial to the final model was gradual and was marked in most cases by an abrupt increase of oscillation frequency. During the transition stage, the 2 damping behaviors seemed alternately exploited within each trial. The results are discussed in the framework of the dynamical systems approach to motor coordination and learning, considering motor skill acquisition as a phase transition.     

Visual perspective taking for avatars in a Simon task

In modern digital applications, users often interact with virtual representations of themselves or others, called avatars. We examined how these avatars and their perspectives influence stimulus–response compatibility in a Simon task. Participants responded to light/dark blue stimuli with left/right key presses in the presence of a task-irrelevant avatar. Changes in stimulus–response compatibility were used to quantify changes in the mental representation of the task and perspective taking toward this avatar. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that perspective taking for an avatar occurred in orthogonal stimulus–response mappings, causing a compatibility effect from the avatar’s point of view. In the following two experiments we introduced a larger variety of angular disparities between the participant and avatar. In Experiment 3, the Simon effect with lateralized stimulus positions remained largely unaffected by the avatar, pointing toward an absence of perspective taking. In Experiment 4, after avatar hand movements were added in order to strengthen the participants’ sense of agency over the avatar, a spatial compatibility effect from the avatar’s perspective was observed again, and hints of the selective use of perspective taking on a trial-by-trial basis were found. Overall, the results indicate that users can incorporate the perspective of an avatar into their mental representation of a situation, even when this perspective is unnecessary to complete a task, but that certain contextual requirements have to be met.