The burden of social proof: shared thresholds and social influence

Social influence rises with the number of influence sources, but the proposed relationship varies across theories, situations, and research paradigms. To clarify this relationship, I argue that people share some sense of where the "burden of social proof" lies in situations where opinions or choices are in conflict. This suggests a family of models sharing 2 key parameters, one corresponding to the location of the influence threshold, and the other reflecting its clarity--a factor that explains why discrete "tipping points" are not observed more frequently. The plausibility and implications of this account are examined using Monte Carlo and cellular automata simulations and the relative fit of competing models across classic data sets in the conformity, group deliberation, and social diffusion literatures.     

Youth Group Cliques: How Religious Goals Can Disguise Discriminatory Group Dynamics

This paper provides an in-depth, qualitative analysis of two Christian youth groups. Researchers conducted personal interviews with participating youth and their youth ministers and collected extensive field notes on participant observations of youth group events. Findings indicate the presence of youth group cliques with clear delineations about which participants are youth group insiders and which are outsiders. Results show that insider participants are typically socioeconomically-advantaged youth, while outsiders are typically youth from disadvantaged backgrounds. Despite the existence of these exclusionary practices within both groups, leaders in the two cases demonstrate differing levels of awareness of and response to these dynamics. This paper explores the specifics of both cases, illuminating who is targeted for exclusion within these groups and how this targeting varies across the two congregational contexts. Implications of these findings are that religious youth groups may perpetuate broader socioeconomic divisions. Specifically, the analysis reveals that rather than forming benign cliques, youth group members may be discriminating against others based on their relative socioeconomic advantage.     

Exploratory Bi-factor Analysis: The Oblique Case

Bi-factor analysis is a form of confirmatory factor analysis originally introduced by Holzinger and Swineford (Psychometrika 47:41?C54, 1937). The bi-factor model has a general factor, a number of group factors, and an explicit bi-factor structure. Jennrich and Bentler (Psychometrika 76:537?C549, 2011) introduced an exploratory form of bi-factor analysis that does not require one to provide an explicit bi-factor structure a priori. They use exploratory factor analysis and a bifactor rotation criterion designed to produce a rotated loading matrix that has an approximate bi-factor structure. Among other things this can be used as an aid in finding an explicit bi-factor structure for use in a confirmatory bi-factor analysis. They considered only orthogonal rotation. The purpose of this paper is to consider oblique rotation and to compare it to orthogonal rotation. Because there are many more oblique rotations of an initial loading matrix than orthogonal rotations, one expects the oblique results to approximate a bi-factor structure better than orthogonal rotations and this is indeed the case. A surprising result arises when oblique bi-factor rotation methods are applied to ideal data.     

Negotiating boundaries in the definition of life: Wittgensteinian and Darwinian insights on resolving conceptual border conflicts

What is the definition of life? Artificial life environments provide an interesting test case for this classical question. Understanding what such systems can tell us about biological life requires negotiating the tricky conceptual boundary between virtual and real life forms. Drawing from Wittgenstein’s analysis of the concept of a game and a Darwinian insight about classification, I argue that classifying life involves both causal and pragmatic elements. Rather than searching for a single, sharp definition, these considerations suggest that life is a cluster concept with fuzzy boundaries and that there are multiple legitimate ways to make the notion precise for different scientific purposes. This pluralist, realist account avoids unnecessary border disputes by emphasizing how science negotiates such questions in relation to theory and evidence. I also discuss several objections to this approach, including a “moral hesitation” some have to allowing broader application of the concept of life to include artificial life.     

Education for Computers

The computer engineers who refer to the education of computers do not have a definite idea of education and do not bother to justify the fuzzy ones to which they allude. Hence, they logically cannot specify the features a computer must have in order to be educable. This paper puts forth a non-standard, but not arbitrary, concept of education that determines such traits. The proposed concept is derived from the idea of education embedded in modern standard-English discourse. Because the standard concept entails that an educable entity must be capable of consciousness and voluntary action, it cannot apply to computers. If, therefore, one is to have an idea of educable computers, one must drop the feature of consciousness and omit or modify that of voluntariness. The advanced concept leaves out consciousness, alters the ordinary notion of voluntariness, but keeps in tact the other criteria of the standard idea. Thereby, it provides continuity between those who talk about education in modern ordinary English and those who talk about it in the world of artificial intelligence.     

Reducing stereotype threat in order to facilitate learning

Recent stereotype threat research has demonstrated that negative stereotypes about women's math ability can impair their mathematical learning. This experiment extends this research by examining whether presenting “gender fair” information can reduce learning decrements (on a focal and transfer task) and if the timing of this information matters. Women (N = 140) and men (N = 60) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: control, stereotype threat only, stereotype threat removed before learning, and stereotype threat removed after learning. Compared with women in the control condition and women who had stereotype threat removed before learning, learning and transfer were poorer for women in the stereotype threat only condition and women who had stereotype threat removed after learning but before learning assessment. Men's learning and transfer were unaffected by condition. These findings suggest that a manipulation that can reduce performance deficits can also reduce learning decrements if it is presented before learning occurs. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is the Continuity of Externalizing Psychopathology the Same in Adolescents and Middle–Aged Adults? A Test of the Externalizing Spectrum’s Developmental Coherence

Externalizing psychopathology (EXT) is a framework for understanding diagnostic comorbidity and etiology of antisocial and substance-use behaviors. EXT indicates continuity in adulthood but the structure of adolescent EXT is less clear. This report examines whether adolescent EXT is trait-like, as has been found with adults, or categorical. We use tests of measurement invariance to determine how diagnostic indicators of EXT differ in adolescents compared to adults. The EXT measures employed were DSM-IIIR diagnoses of adult antisocial behavior, conduct disorder, and alcohol, marijuana, and drug dependence. Latent trait, latent class, and hybrid models were fit to two separate data sets: 2,769 seventeen-year-old adolescents and 2,619 adults from the Minnesota Twin Family Study. The best model in both samples was a single-trait LT model. Parameters from the adolescent and adult models were equivalent for all disorders except alcohol dependence. It appears that EXT in adolescence can be accurately represented by a single-trait model, and the measurement properties of EXT are similar during these time periods with the exception of alcohol dependence.     

Predictors and Outcomes Associated with Trajectories of Revenge Goals from Fourth Grade through Seventh Grade

The present study identified longitudinal trajectories of revenge goals in a sample of at-risk youth (N = 240; 63.3% male) followed from fourth grade through seventh grade. Three revenge goal trajectory groups were identified: a low-stable group, an increasing group, and a decreasing group. The increasing and decreasing groups were initially more behaviorally and affectively dysregulated and believed that aggression would gain them more rewards relative to the low-stable group. The increasing group was also more fearfully reactive compared to the decreasing group. Revenge goal trajectory groups also predicted trajectories of reactive and proactive aggression from 4th through 7th grade. The increasing group was more reactively aggressive and depressed and had poorer social skills in 8th grade compared to the other groups. Together, results highlight the importance of considering revenge motivations as an indicator of risk and a potential focus for intervention.