Accuracy of National Stereotypes in Central Europe: Outgroups Are Not Better than Ingroup in Considering Personality Traits of Real People

In a study on national stereotypes in central Europe—composed of Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and Slovakia—2241 participants rated their autostereotype (a typical representative of their own country) and heterostereotypes (typical representatives of the other countries) by using National Character Survey (NCS). Existing data from 17377 participants including self‐reports or observer ratings on Revised NEO Personality Inventory and NCS were compared with the national autostereotypes and heterostereotypes. Although national autostereotypes converged with personality traits of real people in Poland and an adult subsample in the Czech Republic, national heterostereotypes did not correspond to personality traits of real people in any of the studied countries. National stereotypes were shared within as well as across countries. In heterostereotypes, raters from similar cultural backgrounds speaking similar languages agreed better as compared with raters from more distant cultures. Target country played a role in agreement of raters from different countries, showed in the highest convergence between autostereotypes and heterostereotypes of a typical German. Sharing of national stereotypes is influenced by political and economic significance of the target country. Although national autostereotypes clearly differentiated between typical representatives of central European countries, the comparison of personality profiles of their inhabitants showed remarkable resemblance. Copyright © 2013 European Association of Personality Psychology.     

Feeling the ease: How the use of oral motor fluency changes in amnesia

The present study examined the evolution observed in amnesic patients’ use of motor fluency when making recognition memory decisions. In this experiment, 9 patients with amnesia and 18 matched controls were presented with two recognition memory tasks composed of 3 types of items: (1) natural words, (2) nonwords difficult to pronounce, and (3) nonwords easy to pronounce, the latter having been shown to be processed in a surprisingly fluent manner as long as participants can articulate them at a subvocal level (i.e., oral motor fluency). Our results provide evidence that the motor-movement manipulation was successful to induce a fluency effect. More specifically, data revealed that both amnesic patients and control participants showed a pattern of response consistent with the use of fluency as a cue to memory for studied items. However, only control participants relied on fluency to increase their rate of “yes” responses for unstudied items. These results suggest that patients with amnesia set a more conservative response criterion before relying on oral motor fluency, showing a pattern consistent with the idea that fluency is only used as a cue to memory when it exceeds a certain threshold. These findings are discussed in terms of adaptative metacognition strategies implemented by amnesic patients to reduce fluency-based memory errors as well as in terms of the variations that seem to occur in these strategies depending on the type of fluency that is experienced.     

Experience Sampling Methodology reveals similarities in the experience of passage of time in young and elderly adults

Many people accept the idea that time seems to pass more quickly as they get older, as if this is a psychological reality. However, systematic investigations of differences in judgments of passage of time between young and elderly people are very rare and contradictory. The present study examined the experience of passage of time in daily life in young and elderly people using Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM), with 8 alerts per day for 5 days being delivered by smartphones. At each alert, a short questionnaire was filled in, asking questions about passage of present time, affective state, arousal level, and attention to current activities, among others. Our ESM study found no difference between the young and the old participants in the judgment of passage of present time. Irrespective of the participants' age, the experience of passage of time in every-day life was significantly related to affective states and current activities when they captured attention.     

The effects of a ‘pretend play-based training’ designed to promote the development of emotion comprehension,emotion regulation,and prosocial behaviour in 5- to 6-year-old Swiss children

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of a pretend play-based training designed to promote the development of socio-emotional competences. 79 children aged 5 to 6 years were evaluated before and after a pretend play-based training. The experimental group (39 children) received this programme on emotion comprehension, negative emotion regulation, and prosocial behaviour one hour a week for eleven weeks during class hours, while the control group (40 children) received no specific intervention. The programme was implemented by 5 teachers. The results show improvements in the ability to understand emotions in children who benefited from the training. These findings are discussed in the broader context of using this form of play as a privileged pedagogical tool to allow children to develop these competences.     

On the atomic structure of an asymmetrical near Σ = 27 grain boundary in copper

The atomic structure of an asymmetrical near Σ = 27 {525} tilt grain boundary (GB) in copper is determined by coupling high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and molecular dynamics simulation. The average GB plane is parallel to {414} in crystal (1) and {343} in crystal (2). The detailed GB structure shows that it is composed of facets always parallel to {101} and {111} in crystals (1) and (2), respectively. The atomic structure of one facet is described using the structural units model. Each facet is displaced with respect to its neighbours by a pure step, giving rise to the asymmetry of the GB plane orientation. The energy of this asymmetrical GB is significantly lower than that of both the {525} symmetrical and the {11,1,11}/{111} asymmetrical Σ = 27 GBs. One GB region displays another atomic structure with a dislocation that accounts for the misfit between interatomic distances in the {414} and {343} GB planes.     

Negative Relations Between Pacifier Use and Emotional Competence

Research in psychology and neuroscience suggests that facial mimicry plays a causal role in understanding facial expression of emotion. Accurate understanding of facial emotion, in turn, grounds emotional development. Are pacifiers, which disrupt facial mimicry in the user, associated with compromised emotional development? We examined facial mimicry in children and found that duration of pacifier use was associated with reduced facial mimicry in boys. In two questionnaire studies of young adults, pacifier use also predicted lower perspective taking and emotional intelligence in males. Pacifier use did not predict these emotion processing skills in girls. Future confirmatory studies are proposed.     

"Time flies in the presence of angry faces"… depending on the temporal task used!

A number of studies have reported that the perception of an arousing emotional stimulus, such as an angry face, results in temporal overestimations which are probably due to the speeding up of a clock-like system. The aim of the present study was to examine whether this emotional effect can be generalized to all temporal tasks irrespective of the underlying cognitive processes involved in each task. Five different temporal tasks involving the presentation of neutral and angry faces were therefore tested: bisection, generalization, verbal estimation, production and reproduction. Our results showed an overestimation of time for the angry compared to the neutral faces in the temporal bisection, verbal estimation and production tasks but not in the temporal generalization and reproduction tasks. Moreover, the results obtained in the temporal verbal estimation and production tasks suggest that this temporal overestimation of the angry faces was associated with relatively more accurate estimates. The involvement of both arousal and attention mechanisms in the effect of emotional facial expressions on time perception is discussed in the light of the differences in the impact of the same emotional stimulus as a function of the temporal task considered.     

The effect of expectancy of a threatening event on time perception in human adults

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of a threatening stimulus in human adults in a temporal bisection task. In Experiment 1, for two anchor duration conditions (400/800 vs. 800/1600 ms), the participants completed trials in which the probe duration was followed by an aversive stimulus or a nonaversive stimulus. The results showed that the duration was judged longer when the participants expected an aversive rather than a nonaversive stimulus. In Experiment 2, the effect of the temporal localization of the aversive stimulus was also tested, with the aversive stimulus being presented at the beginning or at the end of the probe duration. The results revealed a temporal overestimation in each condition compared to the trials in which no aversive stimulus was presented. Furthermore, the temporal overestimation was greater when the expectation for the forthcoming threatening stimulus was longer. This temporal overestimation is explained in terms of a speeding-up of the neural timing system in response to the increase in the arousal level produced by the expectation of a threatening stimulus.