Origins of a stereotype: categorization of facial attractiveness by 6-month-old infants

Like adults, young infants prefer attractive to unattractive faces (e.g. Langlois, Roggman, Casey, Ritter, Rieser‐Danner & Jenkins, 1987 ; Slater, von der Schulenburg, Brown, Badenoch, Butterworth, Parsons & Samuels, 1998 ). Older children and adults stereotype based on facial attractiveness ( Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani & Longo, 1991 ; Langlois, Kalakanis, Rubenstein, Larson, Hallam & Smooth, 2000 ). How do preferences for attractive faces develop into stereotypes? Several theories of stereotyping posit that categorization of groups is necessary before positive and negative traits can become linked to the groups (e.g. Tajfel, Billig, Bundy & Flament, 1971 ; Zebrowitz‐McArthur, 1982 ). We investigated whether or not 6‐month‐old infants can categorize faces as attractive or unattractive. In Experiment 1, we familiarized infants to unattractive female faces; in Experiment 2, we familiarized infants to attractive female faces and tested both groups of infants on novel faces from the familiar or novel attractiveness category. Results showed that 6‐month‐olds categorized attractive and unattractive female faces into two different groups of faces. Experiments 3 and 4 confirmed that infants could discriminate among the faces used in Experiments 1 and 2, and therefore categorized the faces based on their similarities in attractiveness rather than because they could not differentiate among the faces. These findings suggest that categorization of facial attractiveness may underlie the development of the ‘beauty is good’ stereotype.     

Fifth grade school adjustment and later arrest rate: A longitudinal study of middle school antisocial boys

This study investigated the efficacy of three different regression models in predicting arrest rate over the fifth to seventh grade range for a sample of antisocial and at risk control middle school boys (N=76). These boys were selected from a larger sample of approximately 200 boys and their families for inclusion in a long term longitudinal study beginning in the fourth grade. Subjects in the present study were identified when they were in the fifth grade and school measures of adjustment were recorded annually for them on two occasions (fall, spring) through the ninth grade. Predictors were derived from the following variables: (a) teacher ratings of social skills; (b) direct observations of academic engagement in classroom settings; (c) direct observations of the playground social behavior of target subjects and peers; and (d) discipline contacts with the principal's office as extracted from archival school records. These predictor variables appeared to assess respectively teacher related and peer related forms of school adjustment. The regression models investigated yielded R-Squares of approximately 30 between arrest rate and two to three predictor variables in each analysis. However, following the deletion of two subject cases that represented extreme instances of underprediction (i.e., subjects who were arrested [i.e., seven arrests each] but whose fifth grade behavioral profiles suggested they would not be), the obtained R-Squares increased to approximately .55. Implications of the findings for the early screening and identification of at risk students are discussed.     

Caregiver Demand and Parent Distress in Juvenile Rheumatic Disease: The Mediating Effect of Parent Attitude Toward Illness

Parents of youth with juvenile rheumatic diseases (JRD) often take on illness management responsibilities that can become burdensome, potentially resulting in poor parent adjustment outcomes. However, not all caregivers will experience increased distress as a result of variability in stress appraisals. The current study examined the role of parent illness attitudes in the relation between perceived caregiver demand and parental distress. Youth (N = 70) ages 7–18 years diagnosed with a JRD and their parents were recruited from a pediatric rheumatology clinic. Parents completed measures of caregiver demand, parental distress, and illness attitudes. Hierarchical regression revealed a relationship between caregiver demand and parental distress. A significant relationship was also found between caregiver demand and parent illness attitudes, as well as parent illness attitudes and parental distress. Thus, parent illness attitudes mediated the relationship between caregiver demand and parental distress. Techniques aimed at altering negative illness attitudes may help parents cope with their caregiving responsibilities.     

Effects of the "beauty is good" stereotype on children's information processing

The authors tested schematic information processing as a function of attractiveness stereotyping in two studies. An adult experimenter read children (ages 3 to 7 years) eight different stories in which a child narrator encountered two characters who varied in level of attractiveness and displayed positive or negative traits that were either consistent or inconsistent with the "beauty is good" stereotype. Following the story, the experimenter showed each child a photograph of the two characters' faces and asked the child to point to the character who displayed the positive trait. In Experiment 1, children made more errors in identifying female characters with stereotype inconsistent traits but did just the opposite with male characters. Experiment 2 replicated the findings with female characters but found no difference in errors with male characters. The findings have implications for how attractiveness and gender stereotypes affect children's information processing, how attractiveness schemata may be organized, and why physical attractiveness stereotypes are maintained.     

Argumentum Ex Divinatione: Divination and Civic Argument in the Ancient World

This argument explores transcultural commonalities among civic arguments from divination in global antiquity. In the ancient world, proponents engaged in kisceral arguments deriving from divinatory signs: arguments ex divinatione regarding prospective civic action. Under ideal circumstances, their aim was to help insure that the collective action of human political organizations was aligned with the natural synchrony of the cosmos. Thus, civic arguments from divination were employed to anticipate the future’s course based on the signs the system produced holistically. In ancient Mesopotamia, China, and Rome, divination was employed as a tool for aligning the order of human society to that of a conception of metaphysical or cosmic order. By comparing these argumentative examples and rationales, we see a broader context for the way in which humans made arguments toward political futurity outside more conventional syllogistic formulations concerning causation. Rather, the argumentative strategies of many ancient cultures embraced an understanding of the future as the logical outcome of a holistic dynamism in kairotic time.

     

Causal Inference from Noise

Correlation is not causation is one of the mantras of the sciences—a cautionary warning especially to fields like epidemiology and pharmacology where the seduction of compelling correlations naturally leads to causal hypotheses. The standard view from the epistemology of causation is that to tell whether one correlated variable is causing the other, one needs to intervene on the system—the best sort of intervention being a trial that is both randomized and controlled. In this paper, we argue that some purely correlational data contains information that allows us to draw causal inferences: statistical noise. Methods for extracting causal knowledge from noise provide us with an alternative to randomized controlled trials that allows us to reach causal conclusions from purely correlational data.