The dynamics of daily events and well-being across cultures: when less is more

The authors examined cultural and individual differences in the relation between daily events and daily satisfaction. In a preliminary study, they established cross-cultural equivalence of 50 daily events. In the main study, participants in the United States, Korea, and Japan completed daily surveys on the 50 events and daily satisfaction for 21 days. The multilevel random coefficient model analyses showed that (a) the within-person association between positive events and daily satisfaction was significantly stronger among Asian American, Korean, and Japanese participants than among European American participants and (b) the within-person association between positive events and daily satisfaction was significantly weaker among individuals high in global life satisfaction than among those low in global life satisfaction. The findings demonstrate a weaker effect of positive events on daily well-being among individuals and cultures high in global well-being.     

Implicit theories about groups and stereotyping: the role of group entitativity

The consequences of holding an entity (i.e., the belief that a group's characteristics are fixed) or incremental (i.e., the belief that a group's characteristics are malleable) implicit theory about groups was examined for stereotyping and perceptions of group entitativity. Two studies showed that implicit theories about groups affect stereotyping by changing perceptions of group entitativity. Study 1 found that entity theorists were more likely to stereotype than incremental theorists and that perception of group entitativity significantly accounted for this relation. In Study 2, implicit theories of groups were manipulated via instruction set and entity theorists stereotyped more and perceived groups as more entitative than incremental theorists. Again, the effect of implicit theory was significantly, although partially, mediated by perceptions of group entitativity. The roles of implicit theories about groups and perceptions of group entitativity are discussed regarding stereotyping.     

Abductive reasoning in neural-symbolic systems

Abduction is or subsumes a process of inference. It entertains possible hypotheses and it chooses hypotheses for further scrutiny. There is a large literature on various aspects of non-symbolic, subconscious abduction. There is also a very active research community working on the symbolic (logical) characterisation of abduction, which typically treats it as a form of hypothetico-deductive reasoning. In this paper we start to bridge the gap between the symbolic and sub-symbolic approaches to abduction. We are interested in benefiting from developments made by each community. In particular, we are interested in the ability of non-symbolic systems (neural networks) to learn from experience using efficient algorithms and to perform massively parallel computations of alternative abductive explanations. At the same time, we would like to benefit from the rigour and semantic clarity of symbolic logic. We present two approaches to dealing with abduction in neural networks. One of them uses Connectionist Modal Logic and a translation of Horn clauses into modal clauses to come up with a neural network ensemble that computes abductive explanations in a top-down fashion. The other combines neural-symbolic systems and abductive logic programming and proposes a neural architecture which performs a more systematic, bottom-up computation of alternative abductive explanations. Both approaches employ standard neural network architectures which are already known to be highly effective in practical learning applications. Differently from previous work in the area, our aim is to promote the integration of reasoning and learning in a way that the neural network provides the machinery for cognitive computation, inductive learning and hypothetical reasoning, while logic provides the rigour and explanation capability to the systems, facilitating the interaction with the outside world. Although it is left as future work to determine whether the structure of one of the proposed approaches is more amenable to learning than the other, we hope to have contributed to the development of the area by approaching it from the perspective of symbolic and sub-symbolic integration.

Racial differences in sensitivity to behavioral integrity: attitudinal consequences, in-group effects, and "trickle down" among Black and non-Black employees

Recent research has suggested that employees are highly affected by perceptions of their managers' pattern of word-action consistency, which T. Simons (2002) called behavioral integrity (BI). The authors of the present study suggest that some employee racial groups may be more attentive to BI than others. They tested this notion using data from 1,944 employees working at 107 different hotels and found that Black employees rated their managers as demonstrating lower BI than did non-Black employees. Mediation analyses were consistent with the notion that these differences in perceived BI in turn account for cross-race differences in trust in management, interpersonal justice, commitment, satisfaction, and intent to stay. Results of hierarchical linear modeling were consistent with the idea that middle managers' perceptions of their senior managers' BI "trickle down" to affect line employee perceptions of the middle managers and that this trickle-down effect is stronger for Black employees. The authors interpret these results as indicative of heightened sensitivity to managers' BI on the part of Black employees. They also found a reverse in-group effect, in that Black employees were substantially more critical of Black managers than were non-Black employees.     

Does Wechsler Intelligence Scale administration and scoring proficiency improve during assessment training?

Studies have found that Wechsler scale administration and scoring proficiency is not easily attained during graduate training. These findings may be related to methodological issues. Using a single-group repeated measures design, this study documents statistically significant, though modest, error reduction on the WAIS-III and WISC-III during a graduate course in assessment. The study design does not permit the isolation of training factors related to error reduction, or assessment of whether error reduction is a function of mere practice. However, the results do indicate that previous study findings of no or inconsistent improvement in scoring proficiency may have been the result of methodological factors. Implications for teaching individual intelligence testing and further research are discussed.     

Hippocampal long-term potentiation, memory, and longevity in mice that overexpress mitochondrial superoxide dismutase

Superoxide has been shown to be critically involved in several pathological manifestations of aging animals. In contrast, superoxide also can act as a signaling molecule to modulate signal transduction cascades required for hippocampal synaptic plasticity. Mitochondrial superoxide dismutase (SOD-2 or Mn-SOD) is a key antioxidant enzyme that scavenges superoxide. Thus, SOD-2 may not only prevent aging-related oxidative stress, but may also regulate redox signaling in young animals. We used transgenic mice overexpressing SOD-2 to study the role of mitochondrial superoxide in aging, synaptic plasticity, and memory-associated behavior. We found that overexpression of SOD-2 had no obvious effect on synaptic plasticity and memory formation in young mice, and could not rescue the age-related impairments in either synaptic plasticity or memory in old mice. However, SOD-2 overexpression did decrease mitochondrial superoxide in hippocampal neurons, and extended the lifespan of the mice. These findings increase our knowledge of the role of mitochondrial superoxide in physiological and pathological processes in the brain.     

Does Time Constraint on Users Negate the Efficacy of Decision Support Systems?

Time constraint can impair decision performance: time-constrained decision makers process information faster, process less information, and use less rigorous decision strategies. On the other hand, properly designed decision support systems (DSSs) can induce decision makers to process more information and use more rigorous decision strategies, which can result in enhanced performance. In this study, we investigate, drawing on bounded rationality and cost-benefit theories of DSS use, whether these salutary effects of DSSs still hold in time-constrained environments. Our experimental results replicate past research regarding the effects of time constraint and DSSs taken separately and also show that the positive effects of DSSs are maintained when decision makers are under time constraint. That is, consistent with hypotheses, time-constrained participants processed information in a more compensatorylike manner when aided by DSSs than when not. Some of the results suggest that the negative effects of time constraint can be mitigated or even eliminated by the use of DSSs, but some participants did not take full advantage of the DSS to combat time constraint.     

Sex Talk: Discourses About Female Bodies in Hong Kong Media

Sex and Chinese culture appear to be at odds with one another. Sex talk, however, has been on constant supply in Hong Kong media in the past decade. Considering that Chinese culture prefers to conceal, rather than reveal, sexual matters, this study probes into the phenomenon which sees the proliferation of sex-related debates and controversies in news media in this predominantly Chinese society. Two cases about photobooks of female models were used to illuminate the dominant discourses regarding female bodies in Hong Kong media. Since 2009, photobooks featuring teenage models in sexy poses have become standard provisions in the annual Hong Kong Book Fair. In 2015, a 6-year old girl participated in the production of a photobook. It soon caught the attention of critics who questioned the sexual connotations of a few pictures. Despite the decision to recall all copies, the incident provoked debates on child pornography and a rare discussion about sexual agency. This study has identified various discourses in mainstream news media and social media. It was found that morality and money are two keywords that best summarize how Hong Kong responds to sex matters, while changing media technologies are opening up space for alternative views.     

Explicit Sexual Movie Viewing in the United States According to Selected Marriage and Lifestyle,Work and Financial,Religion and Political Factors

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate explicit sexual movie use among men and women in the United States according to relationship, lifestyle, work, financial, religious, and political factors. Analyses involved 11,372 adults who responded to questions about demographics and explicitly sexual movie use in the General Social Survey (GSS) from 2000 to 2014. Viewing of an explicit sexual movie in the previous year was significantly greater in men than women (35 vs. 16%); Blacks than Whites (33 vs. 22%); and never married (41 vs. 18% married, 31% separated, and 24% divorced). It also decreased with older age, higher education, and more children in the household. After model adjustment for these variables, viewing an explicit sexual movie was associated with a number of relationship, lifestyle, financial, religious, political, and other variables. For example, viewing such movies was related to less happiness in marriage, multiple sex partners in past year, less satisfaction with one’s financial situation, no religious preference, and a more liberal political orientation. The effect of some variables on pornography viewing differed between men and women. For example, out of men and women who consider themselves to be “not spiritual”, men were more likely to view pornography than women. Explicit sexual movie viewing is associated with factors from diverse domains, including poorer relationship quality, more liberal sexual views and practices, poorer economic conditions, lower religious orientation or commitment, and more liberal political views.     

A threat in the computer: the race implicit association test as a stereotype threat experience

Three experiments test whether the threat of appearing racist leads White participants to perform worse on the race Implicit Association Test (IAT) and whether self-affirmation can protect from this threat. Experiments 1 and 2 suggest that White participants show a stereotype threat effect when completing the race IAT, leading to stronger pro-White scores when the test is believed to be diagnostic of racism. This effect increases for domain-identified (highly motivated to control prejudice) participants (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, self-affirmation inoculates participants against stereotype threat while taking the race IAT. These findings have methodological implications for use of the race IAT and theoretical implications concerning the malleability of automatic prejudice and the potential interpersonal effects of the fear of appearing racist.