Is Perceptual Priming Affected by Culture? A Study With German Middle-Class and Cameroonian Nso Farmer Children

The authors explored priming in children from different cultural environments with the aim to provide further evidence for the robustness of the priming effect. Perceptual priming was assessed by a picture fragment completion task in 3-year-old German middle-class and Cameroonian Nso farmer children. As expected, 3-year-olds from both highly diverging cultural contexts under study showed a priming effect, and, moreover, the effect was of comparable size in both cultural contexts. Hence, the children profited similarly from priming, which was supported by the nonsignificant interaction between cultural background and identification performance as well as the analysis of absolute difference scores. However, a culture-specific difference regarding the level of picture identification was found in that German middle-class children identified target as well as control pictures with less perceptual information than children in the Nso sample. Explanations for the cross-cultural demonstration of the priming effect as well as for the culturally diverging levels on which priming occurs are discussed.     

Grandmaternal and maternal ethnotheories about early child care.

Parenting ethnotheories represent an organized set of ideas about parents, children, and development that are shared by members of cultural groups. Because these ideas and beliefs reflect cultural models and serve as representational frameworks for parenting strategies, they need to change with historical time. To analyze these changes, the authors interviewed mothers and grandmothers of 3-month-old infants in 4 different cultural environments--urban German middle-class families (41 mothers, 22 grandmothers), urban Indian middle-class families (36 mothers, 12 grandmothers), rural Cameroonian Nso families (29 mothers, 20 grandmothers), and urban Cameroonian Nso families (28 mothers, 12 grandmothers)--in regard to their ideas about infant care. The interviews were analyzed according to content and discourse style. The results reveal that there is not only transmission of parental beliefs from one generation to the next but also variation in adaptation to changing environments. Although the global trend toward more independent cultural models of parenting is confirmed, the magnitude of change varies across the different cultural environments.     

Women's emotional responses to the pervasiveness of gender discrimination

In two experiments we found that women exhibited worse psychological well‐being in a context in which gender discrimination was pervasive compared to a context in which is was rare. In Study 1, women who read an essay suggesting that sexism is pervasive reported lower self‐esteem than women who read an essay suggesting that sexism is rare. In Study 2, we examined the effects of the pervasiveness of sexism when women were making an attribution for a single negative outcome. Women who attributed a negative evaluation to pervasive sexism exhibited less positive self‐esteem and affect compared to women who could attribute the negative evaluation to an isolated instance of discrimination or to a non‐sexist, external cause. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Constructing a minority group identity out of shared rejection: the case of international students

With a sample of international students, we investigated how perceptions of rejection by the host community are related to a sense of identification with other international students. Based on the rejection‐identification model (Branscombe, Schmitt, & Harvey, 1999 ) we predicted that perceiving prejudice from the host university would be negatively related to psychological well‐being. We expected that group identification with international students would mediate a positive effect of perceived discrimination on self‐esteem, thus suppressing the negative effect of perceiving prejudice on self‐esteem. Consistent with predictions, results supported a model in which identification with international students increased in response to perceiving prejudice and suppressed the costs of perceiving oneself as excluded from the host community. Interestingly, identification with participants' home country was not predicted by perceptions of discrimination. Results are discussed in terms of how minority group members construct group identities in response to the intergroup context. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Review of: Julian Huxley, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Evolution: The Modern Synthesis—The Definitive Edition</Emphasis>, with a New Forward by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd B. Müller. MIT Press, 2010

Julian Huxley’s 1942 book Evolution: The Modern Synthesis is an historically important book which remains well worth reading. In this review I focus on Huxley’s debt to Richard Goldschmidt and Cyril Darlington. I discuss the conceptions of the genome developed by Goldschmidt and Darlington and their continuing relevance.     

Effects of legitimizing discrimination against homosexuals on gay bashing

We used a computer harassment paradigm to test the hypothesis that affirming the legitimacy of discrimination against homosexuals increases the likelihood that heterosexual men will engage in verbal gay bashing. Legitimacy of discrimination was varied among heterosexual males (N = 167) by suggesting that denying homosexuals rights and benefits is either illegitimate or legitimate, and participants interacted online with either a gay or straight bogus discussion partner. Results show that (a) participants sent more offensive comments when the legitimacy of discrimination against homosexuals was affirmed, and (b) legitimacy affected gay bashing through its effect on collective guilt. These findings suggest that challenging the legitimacy of discrimination can be an effective strategy for reducing outgroup derogation. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

One day we might be no more: Collective angst and protective action from potential distinctiveness loss

Potential loss of group distinctiveness can represent a threat to the existence of a group. Across three studies (Ns = 42, 60, 94), a mediated‐moderation model was tested in which the interactive effects of group identification and potential ingroup distinctiveness loss predicts the desire to engage in ingroup protective action to the extent that collective angst (i.e., concern for the ingroup's future vitality) is aroused. It was hypothesized that the threat of potential distinctiveness loss would result in collective angst and subsequent support for protective action among high, but not necessarily low, identified group members. Results provided support for this model within the context of French Canadian distinctiveness from English Canada (Experiment 1, where the outcome measure was the desire for a sovereign Quebec) and Canadian distinctiveness from the United States (Experiments 2 and 3, where the outcome was support for action to protect Canadian sovereignty and rejection of a North American Union respectively). When and why collective angst facilitates ingroup protective action is discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“Patriotism à la Carte”: Perceived Legitimacy of Collective Guilt and Collective Pride as Motivators for Political Behavior

Intergroup emotions motivate behavior, yet little is known about how people perceive these emotional experiences in others. In three experiments (Ns = 109, 179, 246), we show that U.S. citizens believe collective guilt is an illegitimate emotional motivator for ingroup political behavior, while collective pride is legitimate. This differential legitimacy is due to the perception that collective guilt violates the norm of group interest, while collective pride adheres to it; those who believe ingroup interests are more important than outgroups’ exhibited this illegitimacy gap. The perception that the intergroup emotion promoted ingroup entitativity mediated the relationship between emotion (pride vs. guilt) and legitimacy; this relationship was especially strong for those high in the belief in the norm of group interest. Collective guilt can have prosocial consequences, yet the perception that it is illegitimate may hinder such consequences from being realized.     

How young and older adults differ in their responses to perceived age discrimination

The authors examined the consequences of perceived age discrimination for well-being and group identification. The rejection-identification model suggests that perceived discrimination harms psychological well-being in low status groups but that group identification partially alleviates this effect. The authors hypothesized that this process model would be confirmed among older adults because their low status group membership is permanent but not confirmed among young adults whose low status is temporary. Using structural equation modeling, the authors found support for the hypothesized direct negative link between perceived age discrimination and well-being among older adults, with increased age group identification partially attenuating this effect. For young adults, these relationships were absent. Differences in responses to discrimination appear to be based on opportunities for leaving a low status group.