Evaluation of aggressive interactions in interpersonal and intergroup contexts

The article deals with possible differences in the evaluation of interpersonal and intergroup aggression. Study I investigated whether the typical perspective-specific divergence in judgments about aggressive interactions (with actors evaluating their behavior as more reasonable and less inappropriate than recipients) varied in interpersonal and intergroup contexts. Additionalty, the possible mediating influence of lay epistemic motivation and subjective judgmental confidence was explored. Results indicated that the social context had an important impact on the evaluation of aggressive interactions: there was a lower dissent between actors and recipients in the intergroup than in the interpersonal condition. However, the direction of this pattern of data differed from what could be derived from theories of aggressive and intergroup behavior. Subjective confidence and lay epistemic motivation did not influence the inappropriatencess ratings. Study II tried to shed some further light on the context-specific evaluation of aggressive interaction by presenting episodes of different severity and by obtaining judgments on both actions as well as reactions. Results showed that-irrespective of severity-aggressive reactions were evaluated more negatively in intergroup contexts. It is proposed that this effect stemmed from context-specific differences in the application of the norm of reciprocity.     

Deficits in acquiring language structure: The importance of using prosodic cues

The study investigates and supports the hypothesis that (1) specifically language-impaired (SLI) children have deficits in processing and using the rhythmic-prosodic structure of speech; and that (2) these deficits impede the implicit learning of formal regularities of input language. The ability of SLI children to exploit prosodic cues in rule learning was tested in an experimental design using a miniature language. Twenty-four SLI children (mean age 6;5) learned a small set of sentences generated by a content-free rule system. The sample sentences were presented either with or without prosodic cues to the underlying formal regularities. The experimental groups were matched by various cognitive and language indicators. To assess whether they had acquired some regularities of the miniature language, a grammaticality judgement task was presented. In addition, their ability to reproduce rule-structured and rule-violating strings was tested. The experimental as well as some additional correlational data support the basic theoretical assumptions. The children had deficits in processing and exploiting prosodic cues in rule learning, and these deficits covaried with their rhythmic ability as indicated by a rhythm discrimination task.     

Processing of Prosody and Semantics in Sepedi and L2 English

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - A phoneme-detection task shows that listeners of Sepedi use semantic information in processing but not prosody (Experiment 1). Sepedi is a language with no...     

Cyberbullying status and mental health in Norwegian adolescents

The aim of the present study was to examine how the cyberbullying status (not involved, cyber-victim only, cyberbully only, cyber-victim and bully) is related to the mental health of the adolescents when controlled for traditional bullying experience. We also examined the potential moderator sex on the relationship between cyberbullying status and mental health. Univariate analyses of variance were conducted to predict mental health problems using the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire total difficulties score and its five scales. The model consisted of five predictors in addition to an interaction term between cyberbully status and sex. Of the 2,117 adolescents, 50% were girls. The vast majority did not have any cyberbullying experience (87%), 9% of the adolescents were cyber-victims only, 1% were cyberbullies only and 3% were both cyber-victims and bullies. Overall, girl's mental health seems to be more compromised when exposed to or involved in cyberbullying than boys mental health. In general, adolescents who are not only cyberbullies and cyber-victims, but also cyber-victims only had a worse mental health compared to adolescents without cyberbullying experience. Being exposed to cyberbullying is a unique contributor to mental health problems. Preventing cyberbullying is therefore important. Especially girl's mental health seems to be negatively affected when exposed to cyberbullying.     

An Examination of the Role of Mentees’ Social Skills and Relationship Quality in a School-Based Mentoring Program

Research on youth mentoring highlights the importance of the relationship quality between mentor and mentee; mentoring results in more positive outcomes when the mentee perceives the relationship as satisfying and trustworthy. Research on relationship quality shows that social skills are important for constructing new relationships. However, whereas improved social skills are often one of the main goals of youth mentoring, little is known about the importance of social skills for relationship quality in youth mentoring relations. In this study, we examined whether mentee's pre-intervention social skills were related to mentor–mentee relationship quality as perceived by the mentee, and in turn, if relationship quality was associated with post-intervention social skills. We additionally examined possible gender and age differences in these associations. Data were used from a two-wave study that assessed relationship quality and social skills before and after one semester of mentoring of 390 secondary school students in a school-based mentoring program. Results indicated that relationship quality was positively associated with post-intervention social skills. However, only for young mentees pre-intervention social skills were associated with better relationship quality. Moreover, only for young mentees, relationship quality mediated the association between pre- and post-intervention social skills.     

Pleasant hostility: Disidentified consumers' emotional and behavioral reactions to a brand crisis

This research explores how consumers react in a crisis situation that happens to a brand with which they disidentify. Consumer–brand disidentification (CBD) is a state of self‐categorization regarding the separation from and rejection of a brand. It predestines individuals to move away from and go against the misbehaving company because the failure of the object of disidentification provides a perfect opportunity for them to validate their identity. We argue that disidentification is closely related not only to a person's propensity to behave but also to feel in a specific way. Surveys data were collected in the United States and Germany to answer the research question regarding the role of emotions in the relationship between CBD and consumers' intention to demonstrate brand‐opposition behavior. Volkswagen, which experienced a crisis related to its manipulation of emission tests, served as the brand stimulus. The results show that CBD can stimulate hostile emotions and schadenfreude, which can function as mediators of the influence of disidentification on brand opposition (negative word‐of‐mouth, brand avoidance, punishing the brand). This research contributes to the growing body of research on the “dark side” of consumer‐brand relationships and its perils for brands. It also enhances understanding of the role of emotions in (dis)identification and social identity research and widens the scholarship on emotions in crises. Managerial implications include to thoroughly consider trade‐offs of creating a strong and unique brand that may give rise to disidentification; monitoring negative voices, especially online; and differentiating disidentified consumers from other types of opposing stakeholders.     

Side effects of gender‐fair language: How feminine job titles influence the evaluation of female applicants

In many languages, feminization has been used as a strategy to make language more gender‐fair, because masculine terms, even in a generic function, exhibit a male bias. Up to date, little is known about possible side effects of this language use, for example, in personnel selection. In three studies, conducted in Polish, we analyzed how a female applicant was evaluated in a recruitment process, depending on whether she was introduced with a feminine or masculine job title. To avoid influences from existing occupations and terms, we used fictitious job titles in Studies 1 and 2: diarolo?ka (feminine) and diarolog (masculine). In Study 3, we referred to existing occupations that varied in gender stereotypicality. In all studies, female applicants with a feminine job title were evaluated less favorably than both a male applicant (Study 1) and a female applicant with a masculine job title (Studies 1, 2, and 3). This effect was independent of the gender stereotypicality of the occupation (Study 3). Participants' political attitudes, however, moderated the effect: Conservatives devaluated female applicants with a feminine title more than liberals (Studies 2 and 3). Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.