Personal Values and Intended Self‐Presentation during Job Interviews: A Cross‐Cultural Comparison

This study examined the impact of personal values on intended self‐presentation during job interviews among German, Ghanaian, Norwegian, and Turkish students (total N= 1,474). We also sought to explain cultural differences in self‐presentation among these groups. The Cultural Impression Management Scale for applicants (CIM‐A) and the Portrait Values Questionnaire were administered. A multigroup MIMIC model with invariant measurement and structural weights was supported, in which achievement, security, and benevolence values predicted a latent impression management factor. Intended impression management scores were significantly higher in the Ghanaian and Turkish samples than in the Norwegian and German samples. Values (achievement and security) accounted for 19.6 per cent of the cross‐cultural differences in self‐presentation. Adding acquiescence as an additional predictor (interpreted here as a measure of communication style) decreased the cross‐cultural differences by 52.8 per cent. It is concluded that values are similarly related to intended self‐presentation across these four groups, even though the cross‐cultural differences in mean scores in both sets of variables were considerable.     

The effect of varying danger controllability on attention to threat messages

The objective of this study is to determine whether attention toward fear messages is affected by variation in the controllability of the associated danger. There is no consensus regarding the effectiveness of fear appeals in driving adaptive behaviour, and it may be the case that threat messages fail to capture attention if the associated danger is not explicitly controllable. One hundred and sixty undergraduate university students completed a computer task that involved exposure to threat cues signalling a danger (money loss). In high control blocks, attending to threat cues provided a high chance of avoiding the danger, whereas in low control blocks, attending to threat cues provided little chance of avoiding the danger. Attentional capture by threat was measured. A mixed-design analysis of variance showed there was greater attentional capture by threat cues in high control blocks compared with low control blocks. This effect was observed with a short stimulus exposure duration and was magnified with a long exposure duration. Fear appeals could capture attention to a greater degree if the danger related to the threat message was communicated as being controllable. This has significant practical implications for the implementation of fear appeals.     

Support for Anti‐Muslim Policies: The Role of Political Traits and Threat Perception

We explored how political beliefs and attitudes predict support for anti‐Muslim policies and extremist behavior in the United States following the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks. A large sample completed measures of authoritarianism, social dominance orientation (SDO), generalized prejudice, identification with all humanity (IWAH), perceptions of Muslim threat, and support for anti‐Muslim policies and behaviors. These measures accounted for 73% of the variance in moderate anti‐Muslim policies and 55% of the variance in extreme anti‐Muslim policies. Authoritarianism and SDO directly and indirectly predicted support for anti‐Muslim policies, with their effects partially mediated by generalized prejudice, IWAH, and perceptions of Muslims as threatening. Threat both mediated and moderated the relationship between authoritarianism and anti‐Muslim policies. A negative interaction between authoritarianism and perceptions of Muslims as threatening predicted moderate anti‐Muslim policies, but a positive interaction predicted extreme anti‐Muslim policies. A tentative explanation is offered. Perceptions of Muslim threat was consistently a powerful predictor of anti‐Muslim policies and willingness to engage in extremist behaviors targeting Muslims. Programs to combat anti‐Muslim prejudice should consider the role of threat‐related stereotypes in expressions of anti‐Muslim prejudice.     

Acceptable Contradictions: Pragmatics or Semantics? A Reply to Cobreros et al.

Naive speakers find some logical contradictions acceptable, specifically borderline contradictions involving vague predicates such as Joe is and isn’t tall. In a recent paper, Cobreros et al. (J Philos Logic, 2012) suggest a pragmatic account of the acceptability of borderline contradictions. We show, however, that the pragmatic account predicts the wrong truth conditions for some examples with disjunction. As a remedy, we propose a semantic analysis instead. The analysis is close to a variant of fuzzy logic, but conjunction and disjunction are interpreted as intensional operators.     

Applying cognitive training to target executive functions during early development

Developmental psychopathology is increasingly recognizing the importance of distinguishing causal processes (i.e., the mechanisms that cause a disease) from developmental outcomes (i.e., the symptoms of the disorder as it is eventually diagnosed). Targeting causal processes early in disordered development may be more effective than waiting until outcomes are established and then trying to reverse the pathogenic process. In this review, I evaluate evidence suggesting that neural and behavioral plasticity may be greatest at very early stages of development. I also describe correlational evidence suggesting that, across a number of conditions, early emerging individual differences in attentional control and working memory may play a role in mediating later-developing differences in academic and other forms of learning. I review the currently small number of studies that applied direct and indirect cognitive training targeted at young individuals and discuss methodological challenges associated with targeting this age group. I also discuss a number of ways in which early, targeted cognitive training may be used to help us understand the developmental mechanisms subserving typical and atypical cognitive development.     

Biotechnology and the New Right: Neoconservatism's Red Menace

Although the neoconservative movement has come to dominate American conservatism, this movement has its origins in the old Marxist Left. Communists in their younger days, as the founders of neoconservatism, inverted Marxist doctrine by arguing that moral values and not economic forces were the primary movers of history. Yet the neoconservative critique of biotechnology still borrows heavily from Karl Marx and owes more to the German philosopher Martin Heidegger than to the Scottish philosopher and political economist Adam Smith. Loath to identify these sources—or perhaps unaware of them—neoconservatives do not acknowledge these intellectual underpinnings or their implications. Thus, in the final analysis, their critique is incoherent and even internally inconsistent. By not acknowledging and embracing their intellectual roots, neoconservatives are left with a deeply ambivalent and often confused view of biotechnology and the society that gives rise to it.     

Explaining the face-inversion effect: the face–scheme incompatibility (FSI) model

The face-inversion effect (FIE) can be viewed as being based on two kinds of findings. According to the face(UI) effect, perception and recognition are better for faces presented upright (U) than for faces presented inverted (I). According to the face/object(UI) effect, inversion impairs the processing of faces more than the processing of nonfacial objects (e.g., buildings or cars). Part I of this article focuses on the face(UI) effect and the configural-processing hypothesis, which is considered the most popular explanatory hypothesis of the FIE. In this hypothesis, it is proposed that inversion impairs the processing of configural information (the spatial relations between features) but hardly (if at all) impairs the processing of featural information (e.g., eyes, nose, and mouth). Part II of the article starts from the conclusion reached in part I, that the configural-processing hypothesis has not succeeded in explaining a substantial number of the findings and in resolving certain theoretical problems. The part then goes on to outline a new alternative model, the face–scheme incompatibility (FSI) model, which contends with these theoretical problems, accounts for the configural-processing hypothesis, succeeds in explaining a considerable portion of the empirical findings related to the face(UI) effect, and proposes a relatively new research program on the concept of the face scheme. The basic assumption of the FSI model is that schemes and prototypes are involved in processing a visual stimulus of a face and in transforming it to a “meaning-bearing” face, and that different schemes are involved if the face is presented upright or inverted.