Similarity and Helping Behavior on the Web: The Impact of the Convergence of Surnames Between a Solicitor and a Subject in a Request Made by E‐Mail1

Similarity between a solicitor and a subject traditionally enhances helping behavior. An experiment was carried out in a computer‐mediated context. Fifty students received an e‐mail containing a 40‐question survey on their food habits, which required 15 to 20 min of their time to respond. This questionnaire came from a hypothetical student of the university in which the participants were registered. In half of the cases, the surname of the solicitor, which appeared in his or her electronic address, was the same as the surname of the target. Results show that compliance to the request was significantly higher in the same‐sumame condition than in the different‐surname condition. The response delay was significantly shorter in the same‐surname condition than in control condition.     

Social Comparison, Perceived Control, and Occupational Burnout

Deux études transversales ont porté sur 72 officiers des douanes (recherche no. 1) et sur cent officiers de police (recherche no. 2) dans le but d’approfondir la relation entre la direction de la comparaison sociale et des variables comme le burnout, des plaintes relatives à la santé ou la satisfaction liée au travail. La comparaison sociale a été mesurée par la fréquence avec laquelle les sujets disaient se comparer avec des salariés mieux et moins bien lotis sur plusieurs dimensions professionnelles. On a mené des analyses de corrélation plusieurs et de médiation pour mettre à l’épreuve deux hypothèses complémentaires. Premièrement, la comparaison ascendante était supposée être positivement liée au contrôle perçu et à la satisfaction professionnelle, et négativement aux ennuis de santé et au burnout. Deuxièmement, le contrôle perçu devait avoir un impact sur la relation entre la direction de la comparaison et des variables comme le burnout, les plaintes relatives à la santé ou la satisfaction liée au travail. Les résultats des deux études ont partiellement validé ces attentes et montré que seule la composante émotionnelle du burnout, l’épuisement émotionnel, était affectée par la direction de la comparaison sociale et médiatisée par le contrôle perçu. Two cross‐sectional studies were conducted among 72 customs officers (Study 1) and 100 police officers (Study 2) to examine the relationship between the direction of social comparison and outcomes such as occupational burnout, health complaints, and job satisfaction. Social comparison was measured by the frequency at which participants reported that they compared themselves with better‐off and worse‐off employees on several work‐related dimensions. Correlation and mediation analyses were conducted to test two complementary hypotheses. Firstly, upward comparison was expected to be positively related to perceived control and job satisfaction, and negatively related to health complaints and occupational burnout. Secondly, perceived control was expected to mediate the relationship between comparison direction and psychological outcomes such as burnout, health complaints, and job satisfaction. The results of both studies partially supported these predictions and showed that only the emotional component of burnout—emotional exhaustion—was affected by social comparison direction and mediated by perceived control.     

Hierarchy of interactive functions in father‐mother‐baby three‐way games

In developmental research, the family has mainly been studied through dyadic interaction. Three‐way interactions have received less attention, partly because of their complexity. This difficulty may be overcome by distinguishing between four hierarchically embedded functions in three‐way interactions: (1) participation (inclusion of all participants), (2) organization (partners keeping to their roles), (3) focalization (sharing a common focus) and (4) affective contact (being in tune). We document this hierarchical model on a sample of 80 families observed in the Lausanne Trilogue Play situation across four different sites. Hierarchy between functions was demonstrated by means of Guttman scalability coefficient. Given the importance of the child's development in a threesome, the pertinence of this model for family assessment is discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bridging the gap on Facebook: assessing intergroup contact and its effects for intergroup relations

In line with Allport's contact hypothesis, previous research showed that direct intergroup contact can reduce prejudices. However, establishing face-to-face contact is not always feasible. We postulate that Facebook-groups are a setting where direct and observed intergroup contact can develop, reducing prejudices and increasing mutual acceptance. Analyzing the comments of nine Facebook-groups with the destructive and constructive conflict scale, our results indicated that the expression of prejudices decreased and that of mutual acceptance increased over time, both for in- and outgroup members of the Facebook-groups. Only the expression of less prejudices, but not that of more mutual acceptance was predicted by intergroup contact. The influence of group-based motivations on the engagement in intergroup contact is discussed, and the overall findings are integrated in Steele and Brown's process model of media practices.     

Implicit learning of what comes when and where within a sequence: The time-course of acquiring serial position-item and item-item associations to represent serial order

Much research has been conducted aimed at the representations and mechanisms that enable learning of sequential structures. A central debate concerns the question whether item-item associations (i.e., in the sequence A-B-C-D, B comes after A) or associations of item and serial list position (i.e., B is the second item in the list) are used to represent serial order. Previously, we showed that in a variant of the implicit serial reaction time task, the sequence representation contains associations between serial position and item information (Schuck, Gaschler, Keisler, & Frensch, 2011). Here, we applied models and research methods from working memory research to implicit serial learning to replicate and extend our findings. The experiment involved three sessions of sequence learning. Results support the view that participants acquire knowledge about order structure (item-item associations) and about ordinal structure (serial position-item associations). Analyses suggest that only the simultaneous use of the two types of knowledge acquisition can explain learning-related performance increases. Additionally, our results indicate that serial list position information plays a role very early in learning and that inter-item associations increasingly control behavior in later stages.     

Orientation-specific aftereffects to mentally generated lines

After staring at a pattern of tilted lines, subsequent lines appear to be tilted in the opposite direction (direct tilt aftereffect, TAE). In a previous fMRI study we have demonstrated a direct TAE solely induced by the mental imagination accompanied by adaptation of orientation-selective neurons located in the extrastriate cortex, supporting the assumption of a perception-like coding of mental images. In this study we enlarge and specify the evidence for a perception-like coding of orientation-imagination. First, we replicated the previously detected direct TAE induced by line imagination with altered design-variations to control possible perceptual task confounds. Second, we tried to induce two other orientation-specific aftereffects: indirect TAE and contrast-threshold elevation aftereffect by mental imagery. The results replicate a robust direct TAE by mental imagery and by visual stimulation, with no influence of attentional resource allocation or perceptual task confounds. We could not induce an indirect TAE, but observed a perception bias in the opposite direction of the indirect TAE. The mental imagery of lines induced no orientation-selective contrast-threshold elevation aftereffect. In general, mental imagery seems to influence visual perception, indicating that perceptual resources are used by mental imagery. However, the utilisation of visual resources seems to be somewhat different from utilisation by perception.     

The influence of suggestibility on memory

We provide a translation of Binet and Henri's pioneering 1894 paper on the influence of suggestibility on memory. Alfred Binet (1857-1911) is famous as the author who created the IQ test that bears his name, but he is almost unknown as the psychological investigator who generated numerous original experiments and fascinating results in the study of memory. His experiments published in 1894 manipulated suggestibility in several ways to determine effects on remembering. Three particular modes of suggestion were employed to induce false recognitions: (1) indirect suggestion by a preconceived idea; (2) direct suggestion; and (3) collective suggestion. In the commentary we suggest that Binet and Henri's (1894) paper written over 115 years ago is still highly relevant even today. In particular, Binet's legacy lives on in modern research on misinformation effects in memory, in studies of conformity, and in experiments on the social contagion of memory.     

The Family Alliance Assessment Scales: Steps Toward Validity and Reliability of an Observational Assessment Tool for Early Family Interactions

We present the first steps in the validation of an observational tool for father-mother-infant interactions: the FAAS (Family Alliance Assessment Scales). Family-level variables are acknowledged as unique contributors to the understanding of the socio-affective development of the child, yet producing reliable assessments of family-level interactions poses a methodological challenge. There is, therefore, a clear need for a validated and clinically relevant tool. This validation study has been carried out on three samples: one non-referred sample, of families taking part in a study on the transition to parenthood (normative sample; n = 30), one referred for medically assisted procreation (infertility sample; n = 30) and one referred for a psychiatric condition in one parent (clinical sample; n = 15). Results show that the FAAS scales have (1) good inter-rater reliability and (2) good validity, as assessed through known-group validity by comparing the three samples and through concurrent validity by checking family interactions against parents’ self-reported marital satisfaction.     

Similarity on the rebound: inhibition of similarity assessment leads to an ironic postsuppressional rebound

A widely held but rarely tested assumption among cognitive scientists is that different cognitive tasks may rely upon a single basic cognitive process. Using an established methodology to examine the suppression and subsequent rebound of mental operations, the present research indicates that suppressing use of similarity in one domain results in the subsequent rebound of similarity assessment in a different domain, suggesting that both domains rely on the same underlying cognitive process. In two studies, we demonstrate that leading people to suppress natural similarity assessment in one task produces increased reliance on similarity in subsequent, different, and apparently unrelated tasks. In Experiment 1, participants led to suppress similarity in a concentration task subsequently made more errors in a false-memory paradigm than did control participants. In Experiment 2, participants suppressing similarity in a categorization task made more false-memory errors and perceived more similarity between word pairs than participants who did not suppress. The findings suggest that the cognitive process of similarity assessment may be a domain-general process, such that it is widespread across a number of different mental tasks.