Activation of bipolar prototypes in attribute inferences

The present study examined how prototypes, as organizational principles of knowledge about persons, affect attribute inference judgments. A distinction is drawn between bipolar and unipolar categories. Two questions are addressed: First, whether only one or both prototypes of bipolar categories like extraversion-introversion are activated in making inference judgments, and second, whether information about the applicability of a stimulus item to a target is processed differently than information about the inapplicability of the stimulus item. The results support the hypothesis that only one prototype is activated and that this is the affirmative one, irrespective of whether the stimulus information is applicable or inapplicable to the target person. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Situated Social Cognition

ABSTRACT— Social cognition refers to the mental representations and processes that underlie social judgments and behavior—for example, the application of stereotypes to members of social groups. Theories of social cognition have generally assumed that mental representations are abstract and stable and that they are activated and applied by relatively automatic, context-independent processes. Recent evidence is inconsistent with these expectations, however. Social-cognitive processes have been shown to be adaptive to the perceiver's current social goals, communicative contexts, and bodily states. Although these findings can often be given ad hoc explanations within current conceptual frameworks, they invite a fuller integration with the broad intellectual movement emphasizing situated cognition. Such an approach has already been influential in many areas within psychology and beyond, and theories in the field of social cognition would benefit by taking advantage of its insights.     

Children's communication of the Linguistic Intergroup Bias and its impact upon cognitive inferences

The hypotheses that children use language strategically (e.g. as in the Linguistic Intergroup Bias) and with increasing strength with age were supported in an experiment with participants ranging in age from 8 to 19 years. In a second experiment, the impact of biased language use on participants' inferences was examined in a sample ranging in age from 5 to 11 years. It was shown for all age groups that participants' inferences were systematically influenced by the abstractness or concreteness of a message. The implications of these findings for the communication and transmission of stereotypes at an early age are discussed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The relational self: Closeness to ingroups depends on who they are, culture, and the type of closeness

Cultural differences in individualism and collectivism (I-C) describe important variations in how the self relates to others, but existing scales may be too broad-band to precisely measure this aspect of I-C. They also do not distinguish among particular ingroups and types of interdependence with them. The Circles of Closeness scale addresses these limitations. Initial results from Euro-American, Asian-American, Dutch, Turkish, and Japanese samples of college students are presented. The scales have high alpha reliability. Different results were obtained for three ingroups – immediate family, relatives, and friends – and six closeness types – emotional, supportive, identity, reputational, similarity, and harmony. These factors significantly interacted with each other, arguing for a more differentiated view of I-C.     

How Mothers' Parenting Styles Affect Their Children's Sexual Efficacy and Experience

The relations among mothers' parenting styles and adolescents' sexual self-efficacy and sexual experience were examined in a sample of 253 British adolescent-mother pairs. Also explored was whether adolescents' self-efficacy would be positively or negatively related to their sexual experience. Mothers' parenting styles were expected to influence children's locus of control, based on the theory that mothers who are involved with their children and mothers who stress independence contribute to the development of an internal locus of control in their children, increasing the children's feelings of sexual self-efficacy. Structural equation modeling was used to test a longitudinal model. The results support the assumption that maternal involvement leads to higher levels of self-efficacy, whereas maternal control was associated with lower levels of self-efficacy. Sexual self-efficacy was associated with higher levels of sexual experience. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed.     

The sound of time: cross-modal convergence in the spatial structuring of time

In a new integration, we show that the visual-spatial structuring of time converges with auditory-spatial left-right judgments for time-related words. In Experiment 1, participants placed past and future-related words respectively to the left and right of the midpoint on a horizontal line, reproducing earlier findings. In Experiment 2, neutral and time-related words were presented over headphones. Participants were asked to indicate whether words were louder on the left or right channel. On critical experimental trials, words were presented equally loud binaurally. As predicted, participants judged future words to be louder on the right channel more often than past-related words. Furthermore, there was a significant cross-modal overlap between the visual-spatial ordering (Experiment 1) and the auditory judgments (Experiment 2), which were continuously related. These findings provide support for the assumption that space and time have certain invariant properties that share a common structure across modalities.     

But for the bad, there would not be good: Grounding valence in brightness through shared relational structures

Light and dark are used pervasively to represent positive and negative concepts. Recent studies suggest that black and white stimuli are automatically associated with negativity and positivity. However, structural factors in experimental designs, such as the shared opposition in the valence (good vs. bad) and brightness (light vs. dark) dimensions might play an important role in the valence-brightness association. In 6 experiments, we show that while black ideographs are consistently judged to represent negative words, white ideographs represent positivity only when the negativity of black is coactivated. The positivity of white emerged only when brightness and valence were manipulated within participants (but not between participants) or when the negativity of black was perceptually activated by presenting positive and white stimuli against a black (vs. gray) background. These findings add to an emerging literature on how structural overlap between dimensions creates associations and highlight the inherently contextualized construction of meaning structures.