Great Expectations: The Negative Consequences of Falling Short1

The present study shows conditions under which a positive stereotypic belief–Asians are good in mathematics–can have negative consequences. Participants graded a poorly performed mathematical assignment that they believed was the work of an Asian or a White target person. Under no accuracy instructions, participants who spent less time grading (unmotivated participants) assigned fewer points to the Asian than the White target. There was no difference in assignment of points to the Asian or the White target when participants were given accuracy instructions or spent more time grading (motivated participants). The findings suggest that group members may experience negative consequences when they fall short of “great expectations” stemming from a positive stereotypic belief about their group.     

Eliminating the IQ-RT correlation by eliminating an experimental confound

Three experiments investigated the relation between visual scanning demands, reaction time (RT), and psychometrically defined intelligence (IQ). Prior studies have shown reliable correlations between RT and IQ in the range of −.20 to −.80. However, these studies have confounded the number of possible stimuli (stimulus uncertainty) with the size of the area in which the stimuli may appear (visual angle). Experiment 1 replicated these studies retaining this confound. As the number of stimuli increased from one to eight, the visual angle was permitted to increase as well (from 0° to 30°). The results showed that RT varied in accord with Hick's (1952) law, and a median correlation between IQ and six RT parameters (subjects' mean RTs and standard deviations at three levels of stimulus uncertainty) of −.47 was observed. Experiment 2 removed the confound, varying only stimulus uncertainty, and the median IQ-RT correlation declined to −.02. Experiment 3 held stimulus uncertainty constant at 1 bit (two stimuli) and varied visual angle; a median correlation of −.19 was observed. It was concluded that many of the previously reported correlations may not have hinged on speed of information processing alone, but at least in part on subjects' abilities to scan the display across which the stimuli appeared.     

Cognitive strategies in coping with expedition stress

Expeditions provide a valuable opportunity for studying processes of coping with a stressful situation. An expedition to India organized by the British Schools Exploring Society has already been reported as being accompanied by positive changes on self-report personality scales. This paper is concerned with detailed cognitive coping measures completed throughout the 6 weeks of the expedition. It needs to be noted that the results relate to young adults and to those who provided detailed coping information; the generalizability of the result is a matter for future research. The expedition presented a mixture of physical and social stresses. Men enjoyed the physical experience more than women, but women enjoyed the social experience more than men. There was generally greater reliance on personal resources than on social support in coping with stress. This was particularly true for men in coping with physical stress and women in coping with social stress. In general, the physical stresses had been better anticipated than the social ones. Positive reformulations were much more widely used as coping strategies than avoidance/resignation strategies, especially so for physical stresses. However, use of avoidance/resignation strategies was the better predictor of outcome, with those who used them being least likely to show positive personality change as a result of the expedition. The results are related to current research on stress and coping.     

Adapting Strauss and Corbin's grounded theory in clinical case study research in the field of counselling

Case study can be adopted when aiming to understand an individual's lived experience. Such experience produces rich and complex qualitative data for analysis, conducive to counselling and psychotherapy research. Furthermore, grounded theory (GT) can be adopted to produce a theory from qualitative data, fitting well with case study research that explores complex experiences regarding social, psychological and phenomenological processes. This paper aims to guide the counselling researcher to incorporate Strauss and Corbin's model into the main arena of qualitative counselling research. In addition, this paper draws on a multiple case study that adopted Strauss and Corbin's method and identified various phases in the GT process. The aim is to inform the reader how to put the iterative process and pragmatic theoretical sampling into practice to produce a robust theory from clinical case study data.     

Loss, Healing, and the Power of Place

Human beings have a tendency to transform geographical spaces into dwelling places which assume significance in terms of their social, cultural and personal identities. The authors describe the ways in which this occurs, how it is disrupted by a natural disaster - an Australian bushfire - and how the reciprocal relationship between place and person can contribute to personal and communal healing. The discussion draws on a doctoral thesis conducted by the principal author, and is illuminated by excerpts from narratives provided by those who experienced the bushfire. The discussion is informed by insights from phenomenological geography and ecological philosophy.     

English soccer teams' aggressive behavior when playing away from home

Speculation about key factors affecting home advantage still exists. The present study investigated aggressive behavior amongst English Football Premiership (soccer) players and its relation to home advantage. The frequency of aggressive behaviour, identified by the award of a penalty or disciplinary card (yellow for caution or red for dismissal) was analysed over 2000-2003. Chi-square analyses assessed whether a greater frequency of aggressive behavior was performed by teams away from home. In decided matches, teams playing away received significantly more cautions (yellow cards) than home teams. A further analysis of tied matches indicated that away teams received significantly more cautions (yellow cards) than home teams. No significant differences between home and away teams were found for dismissals and penalties awarded. Reasons for these findings are considered.     

Contrasting five different theories of letter position coding: evidence from orthographic similarity effects

Five theories of how letter position is coded are contrasted: position-specific slot-coding, Wickelcoding, open-bigram coding (discrete and continuous), and spatial coding. These theories make different predictions regarding the relative similarity of three different types of pairs of letter strings: substitution neighbors, neighbors-once-removed, and double-substitution neighbors. In Experiment 1, we used an illusory word paradigm and found that neighbor-once-removed similarity contexts resulted in fewer illusory word reports than substitution neighbors but more illusory words than double-substitution neighbors. In Experiments 2 and 3, we used a masked form priming technique with a lexical-decision task. The pattern of facilitation was as predicted by spatial coding but was incompatible with slot-coding, Wickelcoding, and both versions of open-bigram coding. These results provide further support for the SOLAR (self-organizing lexical aquisition and recognition) model of visual word identification.