Racial Socialization Experiences and Symptoms of Depression among Black Youth

Ecological barriers like racism and discrimination can weigh heavily on the shifting emotions of adolescents. We investigated the relationship of racial socialization experiences to the depression symptoms of 160 Black adolescents, including lethargy, low self-esteem, cognitive difficulties, social introversion, irritability, guilt, pessimism, sad mood, instrumental helplessness, and overall depression. Cultural pride socialization was inversely related to adolescent reports of lethargy and low self-esteem while alertness to discrimination socialization was positively related to instrumental helplessness and gender differences were found. Multiple regression findings showed that racial socialization experiences add significantly more predictability of depression symptoms over and above gender, neighborhood risk and resources. Recommendations for the family, mental health professionals and for the development of culturally relevant social interventions are provided.     

Differential context effects between sweet tastes and smells

"Sweet" smells and tastes are perceptually similar, and physiological data indicate some commonality of central processing. However, sweet tastes and sweet smells do not provide interchangeable contexts in psychophysical experiments. The same sweet tastes are perceived as less intense when stronger sweet tastes are present, and they are perceived as more intense when weaker sweet tastes are present, as with sweet smells. However, complementary sets of sweet tastes and smells (e.g., weak sweet tastes, strong sweet smells) do not eliminate these differential context effects (DCEs). The present experiments examined, first, whether DCEs between sweet tastes and smells arise because of differences between odors and tastes in the way that sweetness scales with intensity as concentration rises, and, second, whether DCEs may be smaller for sweet tastes and smells, when contrasted with sweet tastes and nonsweet smells. The findings were clear: DCEs were consistently present, suggesting they are independent of perceptual similarity. These results imply that DCEs are probably not psychological in origin or centrally based; rather, they may have a subcortical locus.     

National identity and international giving: Irish adults' accounts of charitable behaviour

Research on helping behaviour has emphasized the importance of the group and particularly the nation in establishing the norms and boundaries of emergency helping. Less attention has been paid to the role of the national group in longer‐term routine helping such as charitable giving. This is particularly important given recent research on intergroup helping which points to the impact of power relations on willingness of national groups to give and receive aid. The present research examines people's accounts of charitable giving in their day‐to‐day lives in Ireland, a country which has recently undergone a transformation in economic development and international relations. Discursive analysis of five focus groups with 14 Irish university students illustrates how participants proactively invoke national identity to account for giving or withholding charity. Our findings demonstrate how Irish national identity can be strategically and flexibly used to manage participants' local moral identity in the light of Ireland's changing international relations and in particular how participants display concerns to be seen to intend ‘autonomous’ rather than ‘dependency’‐oriented helping. The findings suggest that both national identity and international relations provide resources for individuals negotiating the complex demands and concerns surrounding charitable giving. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Explicit Learning of a Dynamic System with a Non-salient Pattern

We examine the hypothesis that a specific goal leads to implicit learning, whereas a nonspecific goal leads to explicit learning, even though the pattern to be learnt is non-salient. Subjects learned a dynamic control task (Berry & Broadbent, 1984). One group of subjects had a specific control goal, the second group had a non-specific pattern-search goal, and the third group had both goals. On measures of learning (control performance, prediction, and general questions), the non-specific group learnt explicitly, outperforming the other two groups on all learning measures. The specific group performed next best on control performance and prediction questions but performed very poorly on general questions. The dual-goal group performed poorly on all measures. Non-specific subjects predicted well on both familiar and unfamiliar situations. Specific-goal subjects predicted well on familiar situations, regardless of whether their previous response had been correct or incorrect. Dual-goal subjects predicted well only on familiar correct situations. We conclude that the non-specific group learned through explicit hypothesis testing, the specific group learned through a mixture of explicit problem solving and implicit instance learning, and the dual-goal group learned instances. Results are discussed in terms of dual-space models of problem solving and hypothesis testing and in terms of implicit instance learning. We consider how the choice of learning goal affects the cognitive processes used during learning and suggest that having subjects learn the same information implicitly or explicitly is potentially useful for drawing clearer distinctions between implicit and explicit modes of learning.     

The Association Between Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior in Childhood and Early Adolescence: Genetic or Environmental Common Influences?

This study analyzed the genetic and environmental influences on internalizing and externalizing behavior problems and the nature of their cooccurrence in a national Norwegian twin sample. The sample comprised 526 identical and 389 fraternal same-sexed twin pairs from five birth cohorts, aged 5-6, 8-9, 12-13, 13-14, and 14-15 years. Behavior problems were assessed by parental ratings on the Child Behavior Checklist. A model of additive genetic, shared, and nonshared environmental influences was fitted to both internalizing and externalizing behavior in four sex and age groups. The considerable covariance,r = .51 to .58, between these traits is accounted for mainly by common environmental components; this effect was most marked in the 5 to 9-year olds. Concordance rates for children scoring above 1 standard deviation from the total sample mean on the internalizing scale only, externalizing scale only, or both indicated stronger genetic influences for internalizing or externalizing problems only than for combined problems.     

How Collective Participation Impacts Social Identity: A Longitudinal Study from India

A key issue for political psychology concerns the processes whereby people come to invest psychologically in socially and politically significant group identities. Since Durkheim, it has been assumed that participation in group‐relevant collective events increases one's investment in such group identities. However, little empirical research explicitly addresses this or the processes involved. We investigated these issues in a longitudinal questionnaire study conducted at one of the world's largest collective events—a month‐long Hindu festival in north India (the Magh Mela). Data gathered from pilgrims and comparable others who did not attend the event show that one month after the event, those who had participated (but not the controls) exhibited heightened social identification as a Hindu and increased frequency of prayer rituals. Data gathered from pilgrims during the festival predicted these outcomes. Specifically, perceptions of sharing a common identity with other pilgrims and of being able to enact one's social identity in this event helped predict changes in participants' identification and behavior. The wider significance of these data for political psychology is discussed.     

‘Something That Unites Us All’: Understandings of St. Patrick's Day Parades as Representing the Irish National Group

The present study investigates how attendees at national celebratory crowd events—specifically St. Patrick's Day parades—understand the role of such events in representing and uniting the national community. We conducted semi‐structured interviews with people who attended St. Patrick's Day parades in either Dublin or Belfast. In year 1, full‐length interviews were conducted before and after the events (N = 17), and in years 1 and 2, shorter interviews were conducted during the events (year 1 N = 170; year 2 N = 142). Interview data were analysed using thematic analysis, allowing the identification of three broad themes. Participants reported that (i) the events extend the boundary of the national group, using participation to define who counts as Irish; (ii) the events strategically represent the nature of the national group, maximising positive images and managing stereotypical representations; and (iii) symbolism serves to unify the group but can also disrupt already fragile unity and so must be managed. Overall, this points to a strategic identity dimension to these crowd events. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research in terms of the role of large‐scale celebratory events in the strategic representation of everyday social identities. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

How can ‘we’ help? Exploring the role of shared social identity in the experiences and benefits of volunteering

Previous research on volunteering has largely focused on the individual characteristics and experiences of volunteers, or on their relationship with a volunteering organisation, neglecting the group dynamics of volunteering. To address this gap, we apply a social identity and “Social Cure” perspective in a thematic analysis of interviews with 40 volunteers from across the South of England. This analysis highlights that group identities are fundamental to volunteers' motivations and experiences of volunteering. Sharing an identity with other volunteers promoted feelings of belonging, which in turn impacted upon the participants' wellbeing. Identity processes also underpinned interactions with the beneficiaries of help and how volunteers managed the challenges of helping. Finally, shared identity facilitated collective support between volunteers, which was necessary to deal with the challenges of the volunteering role, and this could be facilitated or hindered by the volunteering organisation. We discuss the implications for how volunteering organisations can enhance identity‐mediated helping, as well as for understanding the impact of volunteering on health and wellbeing.     

Social Cure Processes Help Lower Intergroup Anxiety Among Neighborhood Residents

Research in the social cure tradition shows that groups can reduce members' stress by providing support to cope with challenges, but it has yet to consider how this applies to the anxiety occasioned by outgroups. Research on intergroup contact has extensively examined how reducing intergroup anxiety improves attitudes towards outgroups, but it has yet to examine the role of intragroup support processes in facilitating this. The present article takes the case of residential contact, in which the impact of diversification upon neighborhood cohesion is hotly debated, but the role of neighborhood identification and social support from neighbors in facilitating residential mixing has been largely ignored. Our surveys of two geographically bounded communities in England (n = 310; n = 94) and one in Northern Ireland (n = 206) show that neighborhood identification predicts both well-being and more positive feelings towards outgroups, with both effects occurring via increased intragroup support. In studies 2 and 3, we show that this positive effect on feelings towards the outgroup occurs independently of that of intergroup contact and is further explained by the effect of neighborhood support in reducing intergroup anxiety. This suggests that social cure processes can improve intergroup attitudes by supporting group members to deal with the stress of intergroup interactions.