Identity-based motivation and health

People do not always take action to promote health, engaging instead in unhealthy habits and reporting fatalism about health. One important mechanism underlying these patterns involves identity-based motivation (D. Oyserman, 2007), the process by which content of social identities influences beliefs about in-group goals and strategies. Seven studies show the effect of identity-based motivation on health. Racial-ethnic minority participants view health promotion behaviors as White middle class and unhealthy behaviors as in-group defining (Studies 1 and 2). Priming race-ethnicity (and low socioeconomic status) increases health fatalism and reduces access to health knowledge (Studies 3 and 4). Perceived efficacy of health-promoting activities is undermined when racial-ethnic minority participants who identify unhealthy behavior as in-group defining are asked to consider their similarities to (middle-class) Whites (Studies 5-7).     

Infant preference for female faces occurs for same‐ but not other‐race faces

There has been a recent surge of interest in the question of how infants respond to the social attributes of race and gender information in faces. This work has demonstrated that by 3 months of age, infants will respond preferentially to same‐race faces and faces depicting the gender of the primary caregiver. In the current study, we investigated emergence of the female face preference for same‐ versus other‐race faces to examine whether the determinants of preference for face gender and race are independent or interactive in young infants. In Expt 1, 3‐month‐old Caucasian infants displayed a preference for female over male faces when the faces were Caucasian, but not when the faces were Asian. In Expt 2, new‐born Caucasian infants did not demonstrate a preference for female over male faces for Caucasian faces. The results are discussed in terms of a face prototype that becomes progressively tuned as it is structured by the interaction of the gender and race of faces that are experienced during early development.     

Call usage learning in gray seals (Halichoerus grypus)

Call usage learning can be demonstrated on 4 different levels: signaling on command, signaling and refraining from signaling on command, responding to a trained stimulus with a signal from a specific signal class, and responding to the playback of any untrained stimulus with one from the same signal class. Two young gray seals (Halichoerus grypus) were trained successfully to demonstrate the first 2 levels. They also learned to respond to 9 moan stimuli and 9 growl stimuli with vocalizations of the same class (Level 3). However, novel moan and growl stimuli tended to elicit growls. This casts doubt on the possibility that gray seals can reach the 4th level, but it demonstrates that they are capable of the first 3 levels of usage learning.     

Does “Making a Difference” Still Make a Difference?: A Textbook Author’s Reflections

Drawing on my experiences with teaching Psychology of Women and writing three editions of a textbook across two decades starting in 1990, I reflect on the core feminist call to make the personal political. By tracing the chronology and interplay of my textbook writing with my teaching, research, and editing, I speculate about an apparent disconnection between my experiences and research with students (who embrace the feminist call to make a difference) and the textbook market to veer toward less women-centeredness and activism in the pursuit of gender studies. I make my case that the activist goal of making a difference continues to make a difference in individual women’s lives, in women’s relationships, and in a social justice agenda.     

Work addiction and presenteeism: The buffering role of managerial support

The current study examined the mediating effect of presenteeism and moderating effect of managerial support in the relation between workaholism and work–family conflict. A sample of 1065 white‐collar employees from an Italian company filled in an online survey and hypotheses were tested using a bootstrapping procedure. Results showed that presenteeism mediated the association between workaholism and work–family conflict. Moreover, the mediating effect of presenteeism was moderated by managerial support: for employees reporting lower levels of support workaholism was stronger related to presenteeism than for those experiencing higher support. Presenteeism, in turn, was related to greater levels of work–family conflict. The present study sheds light into the protective role played by managerial support in preventing workaholic employees from forcing themselves to attend work also when feeling sick. Accordingly, early intervention aimed at buffering the negative association between workaholism and work–family conflict should focus on training managers to develop supportive leadership skills.     

Aggregate Theory Versus Set Theory

Maddy's (1990) arguments against Aggregate Theory were undermined by the shift in her position in 1997. The present paper considers Aggregate Theory in the light of this, and the recent search for `New Axioms for Mathematics'. If Set Theory is the part-whole theory of singletons, then identifying singletons with their single members collapses Set Theory into Aggregate Theory. But if singletons are not identical to their single members, then they are not extensional objects and so are not a basis for Science. Either way, the Continuum Hypothesis has no physical interest.     

Empirical Guidance for Time-Window Sequential Analysis of Single Cases

Time-window sequential analyses test whether a target behavior occurs within a temporal window (e.g., within 2 seconds) after an antecedent behavior more than is expected by chance. This type of question is common when we need to know how one person or event may immediately affect another event or person in the natural environment. Theoretically, the significance of sequential associations from time-window analysis can be tested on the single subject level (Bakeman & Quera, 1995). The present Monte Carlo study was conducted to test the Type I error rates and the difference in sequential associations derived from four methods of time-window sequential analysis. The four methods vary according to whether they analyze the duration of antecedent and target behaviors. The results indicate that time-window sequential analysis method is generally valid. The results were most accurate when antecedent duration and target onset was analyzed. Although analyzing duration of the antecedent did affect the results, the effect size for the difference in results due to presence or absence of measuring duration of the antecedent was extremely small. Time-window analysis results appear unaffected by the decision to analyze the duration of the target event.     

Novelty,familiarity, and infant reasoning

Where stimuli are possibly discriminable but do not elicit spontaneous differential looking it is customary to use one or other variation of the habituation–dishabituation method in order to investigate their discriminability, and the literature abounds with such studies. However, there are many variations on habituation–dishabituation procedures, varying both within and between the sensory modalities investigated. Additionally, infant attention is a dynamic process which is likely to change over time, and given the great variations in procedures it can often be difficult to know whether infants are giving a familiarity or a novelty preference at test, which can make interpretation of results a difficult, and often controversial problem. Houston‐Price and Nakai give some clear examples of the changing nature of infant preferences, and relate them particularly to the amount of familiarisation prior to testing. The model they favour (and which receives a good deal of support) is that put forward by (among others) Hunter and Ames (1988) in which preferences change over the course of familiarisation time, from preference for neither familiarity or novelty, to familiarity, to no preference, to a novelty preference. They suggest that ‘If an attentional shift from what is familiar to what is novel is always found as the encoding of a familiar stimulus… is completed… then the pattern of change in preference over time should provide crucial information regarding the identity of the obtained effect’. I will argue that this attentional shift is not always found, and that in many instances we need converging evidence in order to clarify experimental findings. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.