How Do U.S. Christians and Atheists Stereotype One Another’s Moral Values?

Moral conflict between Christians and atheists is becoming increasingly heated amidst the U.S. “culture wars,” yet research has been mostly silent regarding how these groups stereotype one another’s moral values and beliefs. We used moral foundations theory to better understand the nature of such stereotypes. In Study 1, U.S. Christian and atheist participants completed measures of moral values from their own perspective as well as the perspectives of typical atheists and typical Christians. Whereas atheists believed their ingroup endorsed fairness/justice values more than Christians, Christians believed their ingroup endorsed all moral values more than atheists. Moreover, both groups held (often extremely) inaccurate stereotypes about the outgroup’s values. In Study 2, participants wrote explicitly about outgroup morality. Atheists typically described Christians more negatively than Christians described atheists, regardless of the moral foundation of concern. Also, Christians’ negative impressions drew primarily from the Authority foundation, and both groups drew heavily from the Care foundation in both their positive and negative depictions. Implications for addressing the growing conflict between Christians and atheists in the United States are discussed.     

Evolutionary Relevance and Experience Contribute to Face Discrimination in Infant Macaques (Macaca mulatta)

In human children and adults, familiar face types—typically own-age and own-species faces—are discriminated better than other face types; however, human infants do not appear to exhibit an own-age bias but instead better discriminate adult faces, which they see more often. There are two possible explanations for this pattern: Perceptual attunement predicts advantages in discrimination for the most experienced face types. Additionally or alternatively, there may be an experience-independent bias for infants to discriminate own-species faces, an adaptation for evolutionarily relevant faces. These possibilities have not been disentangled in studies thus far, and these studies did not control infants’ early experiences with faces. In the present study, we tested these predictions in infant macaques (Macaca mulatta) reared under controlled environments, not exposed to adult conspecifics. We measured newborns’ (15–25 days; n = 27) and 6- to 7-month-olds’ (n = 35) discrimination of human and macaque faces at 3 ages—young infants, old infants, and adults—in a visual paired comparison task. We found that 6- to 7-month-olds were the best at discriminating adult macaque faces; however, in the first few seconds of looking, tthey additionally discriminated familiar face types—same-aged peer and adult human faces—thereby highlighting the importance of experience with certain face categories. The present data suggest that macaque infants possess both experience-independent and experientially tuned face biases. In human infants, early face skills may likewise be driven by both experience and evolutionary relevance; future studies should consider both of these factors.     

Early Childhood Anxious Solitude and Subsequent Peer Relationships: Maternal and Cognitive Moderators

It was hypothesized that the relation between early anxious solitude and subsequent peer relations would be moderated by early relational (maternal sensitivity) and individual factors (child school readiness). Participants were 1364 children from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Anxious solitude was assessed by child care providers from 2 to 4.5 years, maternal sensitivity was observed during mother–child interactions from 2 to 4.5 years, school readiness was tested at 3 years, children's interactions with a friend were observed at 4.5 years, and friendship quantity and peer rejection were assessed by first grade teachers. Results indicate that anxious solitary children who had experienced high versus low early maternal sensitivity contributed significantly more actively to positive interaction and less actively to negative interaction with a friend at 4.5 years (these results were contingent on school readiness), and had more friends and were less rejected by peers in first grade. Although high school readiness predicted interactive competency and positive peer relationships in children low in anxious solitude, these benefits were suppressed in anxious solitary children.     

Trustworthiness and Moral Character

Why are people trustworthy? I argue for two theses. First, we cannot explain many socially important forms of trustworthiness solely in terms of the instrumentally rational seeking of one’s interests, in response to external sanctions or rewards. A richer psychology is required. So, second, possession of moral character is a plausible explanation of some socially important instances when people are trustworthy. I defend this conclusion against the influential account of trust as ‘encapsulated interest’, given by Russell Hardin, on which most trustworthiness is explained by the interest of continuing relationship.     

Relationship of negative self-schemas and attachment styles with appearance schemas

The purpose was to test, among women, the relationship between negative self-schemas and styles of attachment with men and women and two types of appearance investment (Self-evaluative and Motivational Salience). Predominantly Caucasian undergraduate women (N = 194) completed a modified version of the Relationship Questionnaire, the Young Schema Questionnaire-Short Form, and the Appearance Schemas Inventory-Revised. Linear multiple regression analyses were conducted with Motivational Salience and Self-evaluative Salience of appearance serving as dependent variables and relevant demographic variables, negative self-schemas, and styles of attachment to men serving as independent variables. Styles of attachment to women were not entered into these regression models because Pearson correlations indicated they were not related to either dependent variable. Self-evaluative Salience of appearance was related to impaired autonomy and performance negative self-schema and the preoccupation style of attachment with men, while Motivational Salience of appearance was related only to the preoccupation style of attachment with men.     

First‐time mothers in home visitation services utilizing child development specialists

Professionals in the field of child development were employed to provide home visitation services to 156 mothers and infants prenatally through the infants' first birthdays. Compared to a control group of mothers (n = 107), the intervention mothers utilized more community resources, had safer homes, had more appropriate developmental expectations, had better understanding of noncorporal punishment, and had behaviors that were more accepting and respectful to their infants. The home visitors were well educated, with experience in home visitation, and supervised. Program implementation procedures were documented and supervised. Program fidelity and the efficacy of using child development specialists as home visitors are discussed in regards to the positive findings. ©2004 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Bedding down new words: Sleep promotes the emergence of lexical competition in visual word recognition

Lexical competition processes are widely viewed as the hallmark of visual word recognition, but little is known about the factors that promote their emergence. This study examined for the first time whether sleep may play a role in inducing these effects. A group of 27 participants learned novel written words, such as banara, at 8 am and were tested on their learning at 8 pm the same day (AM group), while 29 participants learned the words at 8 pm and were tested at 8 am the following day (PM group). Both groups were retested after 24 hours. Using a semantic categorization task, we showed that lexical competition effects, as indexed by slowed responses to existing neighbor words such as banana, emerged 12 h later in the PM group who had slept after learning but not in the AM group. After 24 h the competition effects were evident in both groups. These findings have important implications for theories of orthographic learning and broader neurobiological models of memory consolidation.     

Face detection in 2‐ to 6‐month‐old infants is influenced by gaze direction and species

Humans detect faces efficiently from a young age. Face detection is critical for infants to identify and learn from relevant social stimuli in their environments. Faces with eye contact are an especially salient stimulus, and attention to the eyes in infancy is linked to the emergence of later sociality. Despite the importance of both of these early social skills—attending to faces and attending to the eyes—surprisingly little is known about how they interact. We used eye tracking to explore whether eye contact influences infants' face detection. Longitudinally, we examined 2‐, 4‐, and 6‐month‐olds' (N = 65) visual scanning of complex image arrays with human and animal faces varying in eye contact and head orientation. Across all ages, infants displayed superior detection of faces with eye contact; however, this effect varied as a function of species and head orientation. Infants were more attentive to human than animal faces and were more sensitive to eye and head orientation for human faces compared to animal faces. Unexpectedly, human faces with both averted heads and eyes received the most attention. This pattern may reflect the early emergence of gaze following—the ability to look where another individual looks—which begins to develop around this age. Infants may be especially interested in averted gaze faces, providing early scaffolding for joint attention. This study represents the first investigation to document infants' attention patterns to faces systematically varying in their attentional states. Together, these findings suggest that infants develop early, specialized functional conspecific face detection.     

Different relational models underlie prototypical left and right positions on social issues

Social issues are important dividing lines in the “culture wars” between the political left and right. Despite much research into social issue stance and ideology, little research has explored these with Relational Models Theory (RMT). RMT proposes four distinct models that people use to construe social relations, each entailing distinct moral considerations. In two studies, participants read summaries of the models, rated how relevant each was to their positions on several social issues (e.g., capital punishment), and expressed issue positions. In Study 1, Communal Sharing and Equality Matching construals predicted prototypical liberal positions across a range of issues; Authority Ranking and Market Pricing construals predicted prototypical conservative positions. By using multilevel modelling in Study 2, individual differences in average Communal Sharing and Authority Ranking construals predicted prototypical liberal and conservative positions, respectively, independent of several factors known to predict social issue stance. In issue‐specific analyses (e.g., focusing on euthanasia), all models showed effects independent of self‐reported ideology, while for certain issues (same‐sex marriage, animal testing, gun control, and flag burning), issue construal using different models predicted opposing positions, implicating relational models in moral disagreement. This paper provides novel tests of Relationship Regulation Theory and suggests that RMT is relevant in understanding political ideology, social issue stance, and moral judgement. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.