Pay Equity Evaluations of Occupations and Their Bases

Recent research indicates that type of occupation is a major basis for evaluating the fairness of earnings. The present paper reports the results of a research investigating which of the characteristics of occupations serve as bases of pay-equity evaluations, and whether there is a measure of consensus in regard to these bases. Major prevalent theoretical perspectives, such as equity theory and status value theory, served as bases for formulating and testing a series of hypotheses. The findings, based on a cross-sectional city sample of 222 employed individuals in Israel, show that pay-equity evaluations of occupations are based on a consensual frame of reference. The major bases of such evaluations were found to be occupational prestige and certain contributive inputs such as the amount of vocational training and the physical demands required of the incumbents' occupations.     

The effects of situational goal orientation and cultural learning values on team performance and adaptation to change

In this paper, we examine the unique effects of situational goal orientation and cultural learning values on team adaptation to change and the moderating role of cultural learning values in the relationship between goal orientation and team performance and adaptation. To do this, we conducted an experiment using a 2 × 2 × 2 repeated-measures factorial design, consisting of high and low levels of learning values, situational goal orientation (i.e., learning goals and performance goals). The experimental task involved two phases: we looked at team performance in Phase 1 and team adaptation to change in Phase 2. Forty 3-person teams were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions and all teams engaged in a complex bridge-planning task. Performance was measured in terms of the quality of the planned bridge. Results showed independent effects of situational goal orientation and cultural learning values on team performance and adaptation to change. Cultural learning values also moderated the relationship between goal orientation and performance and adaptation to change. Finally, the combination of learning goals and high learning values resulted in the highest levels of initial team performance (Phase 1) and adaptation to change and improved performance (Phase 2), as compared to all other examined conditions.     

Retracted: Unconscious arithmetic processing: A direct replication

Across two experiments involving four conditions, Sklar et al. (2012) found that complex subtraction equations can be solved without awareness of the equations. These findings challenge the current position that consciousness is necessary for performing abstract, rule‐following tasks. Given the important implications of their work, we directly replicate Sklar's findings using a larger sample (n = 94) from a different population. Using Continuous Flash Suppression, we investigated if people were able to solve an equation after subliminal (1300 ms) exposure to it. We found evidence for unconscious addition but not subtraction. The effect of unconscious addition was eliminated when participants reported subjective awareness of the primes. Critical review of our results and implications for further research are discussed.     

Conceptual Integration of Arithmetic Operations With Real‐World Knowledge: Evidence From Event‐Related Potentials

Research on language processing has shown that the disruption of conceptual integration gives rise to specific patterns of event‐related brain potentials (ERPs)—N400 and P600 effects. Here, we report similar ERP effects when adults performed cross‐domain conceptual integration of analogous semantic and mathematical relations. In a problem‐solving task, when participants generated labeled answers to semantically aligned and misaligned arithmetic problems (e.g., 6 roses + 2 tulips  = ? vs. 6 roses + 2 vases  = ?), the second object label in misaligned problems yielded an N400 effect for addition (but not division) problems. In a verification task, when participants judged arithmetically correct but semantically misaligned problem sentences to be “unacceptable,” the second object label in misaligned sentences elicited a P600 effect. Thus, depending on task constraints, misaligned problems can show either of two ERP signatures of conceptual disruption. These results show that well‐educated adults can integrate mathematical and semantic relations on the rapid timescale of within‐domain ERP effects by a process akin to analogical mapping.     

Children as Earwitnesses: Memory for Emotional Auditory Events

We examined the influence of age and emotionality of auditory stimuli on long‐term memory for environmental sound events. Sixty children aged 7–11 years were presented with two environmental sound events: an emotional car crash and a neutral event, someone brushing their teeth. The sound events comprised six individual environmental sounds, and the participants passively listened to the sound events through a headset. After a two‐week delay, participants performed a cued recall task and a recognition task. Independent of age, children were notably poor at recalling the sound events. Children recalled and recognized significantly more sounds from the emotional sound event than the neutral sound event. Additionally, the older children performed the recall task better than the younger children. The present findings confirm and expand the previously reported superiority of emotional material in memory.Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Children's perception of gender-role-congruent and -incongruent behavior in peers: Fisher-price meets price waterhouse

This study evaluated whether traditional gender-role stereotypes still pervade children's judgments of peers. One hundred seventy-three predominantly Caucasian, middle class boys and girls (ages 7 to 12) watched either a female or a male dyad discuss fundraising activities on videotape. In each dyad, one actor portrayed either masculine or feminine stereotyped behavior, whereas the other actor was neutral. Results indicated that performance judgments of a girl who behaves in a stereotypically masculine fashion are positive, but that personality ratings are more negative.     

Jewish Origins of Freud's Interpretations of Dreams

For many years, it was assumed that Sigmund Freud was never exposed to Jewish religious education and had no knowledge of the Hebrew language, the Bible or Jewish history. Freud himself considered this a neglected part of his education which he regretted. But the research of people such as Rainey reveals that Freud actually attended Jewish religious schools which offered intense religious education that included Hebrew language, the Bible and the Talmud, and Freud himself was an honor student in these subjects. The implications of this for our understanding of Freud's theory of dreams are explored.