Ironic effects of explicit gender prejudice on women’s test performance

As prejudice becomes more subtle in its manifestations, members of stigmatized groups must often contend with the ambiguity of not knowing whether others are biased against them. In this study, we tested whether explicitly communicated gender prejudice would facilitate women’s performance on a difficult task compared to contexts where such discrimination might be possible but is not explicitly communicated. The findings revealed that the task performance of women who are chronically concerned about gender discrimination suffered when a male interviewer’s gender attitudes were ambiguous, relative to when his attitudes were either explicitly chauvinistic or explicitly egalitarian. As expected, the performance of women low in discrimination concerns was not affected by the experimental manipulation. The findings are discussed in light of growing evidence for the ironic effects of prejudice for the targets of stigma.     

A theoretical overview and empirical study of mediated learning experience: Prediction of preschool performance from mother-infant interaction patterns

This research is based on a 4-year longitudinal study of 51 normal, low SES infants and their mothers. It was conducted at the Clinical Infant Development Program sponsored by the Clinical Infant-Child Development Research Center (NIMH-HRSA). Infants' free-play sessions with their mothers were analyzed at 4, 8, 12, 24, and 36 months of age by use of an observation method based on Feuerstein's theory of Mediated Learning Experience (MLE). The participating children were tested with the Bayley Scales (to age 2 years) and the McCarthy Scales (at 36 and 48 months). Ten-minute observations of motherchild interactions, which used molar criteria of observation based on MLE theory, predicted cognitive performance at 2, 3, and 4 years of age. The observation made at 12 months was most predictive of long-term cognitive performance. Mother-infant interaction patterns were less predictive of cognitive performance in infancy than they were of performance at 2, 3, and 4 years of age. Each of the observed MLE criteria increased with age, although the frequency of some of the criteria remained low throughout the study. Stability of all MLE criteria was significant across most comparisons over time.     

Do Attitudes Affect Memory? Tests of the Congeniality Hypothesis

Social psychologists have usually hypothesized that attitudinal selectivity biases people's memory in favor of information that is congenial to their attitudes, because they are motivated to defend their attitudes against uncongenial information. However, our meta-analysis found that such effects have been only inconsistently obtained. One reason for these inconsistencies is that the defense of attitudes against attacks does not necessarily entail avoiding the uncongenial information. As shown by our experiments, people often expose themselves to attitudinally uncongenial information, attend to it, scrutinize it carefully, encode it accurately, and remember it fairly well, even though they dislike the information and are not persuaded by it. Given sufficient motivation and capacity, people mount an active defense that enhances memory for the information.     

Intrapsychic and interpersonal guilt: a critical review of the recent literature

Various authors hold that some emotions (i.e., moral emotions) have the function of orienting people toward ethical actions. In addition to embarrassment, shame and pride, the moral emotion of guilt is believed to affect humans’ behavior when they carry out transgressions that violate social and cultural standards. Over the past century, many studies (including controversial ones) have been conducted on guilt. In this study, we analyzed and summarized mainly the most recent literature on this emotion. On one side, the destructiveness of guilt is emphasized. It inflicts punishment and pain on individuals for their errors and can lead to psychopathology (e.g., depression). On the other side, it is described as a “friendly” emotion that motivates behavior adapted to social and cultural rules. How can this asymmetry be explained? Different existing views on guilt are presented and discussed, together with recent proposals, supported by research data. Finally, we discussed some systematic models that try to incorporate these different views in a single framework that could facilitate future researches.     

Socialization tactics: Antecedents for goal interdependence and newcomer adjustment and retention

This study argues that Deutsch's theory of goal interdependence is useful to examine the dynamics of serial and investiture tactics on newcomer adjustment and retention in work team contexts. Structural equation results of interviews of specific incidents collected from one hundred and two newcomers support the hypothesized model that serial and investiture tactics used by teams promote cooperative goal interdependence and weaken competitive goal interdependence and independent goal relationship between newcomers and their teams. Cooperative goals were also found to promote positive attitudes and strong co-worker relationships whereas competitive and independent goals resulted in intentions to quit and low levels of organizational commitment and job satisfaction.