Reciprocating (More) Specifically to You: The Role of Benefactor's Identifiability on Direct and Upstream Reciprocity

Research suggests that benefiting from someone's voluntary, intentional, costly effort encourages reciprocal prosocial behavior, as well as promoting upstream reciprocity, that is, increases reciprocal actions by the recipient for the benefit of an unrelated third party. The current study examines the role of the identifiability of the benefactor in determining the extent to which people engage in direct and upstream reciprocity. Results of three studies reveal that while an identified benefactor tends to engender greater direct reciprocal reactions than an unidentified one, this strong reaction toward the identified benefactor does not hold to the same extent when upstream reciprocity is considered (regardless of identification of the third party). On the other hand, when the benefactor is unidentified, levels of direct and upstream reciprocity remain similar. Moderated‐mediation analysis suggests that ethical commitment associated with the universal norm of reciprocity explains the decrease in prosociality between reactions toward the benefactor himself or herself and toward a third party under the identified condition. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cross-Cultural Patterns of Student Victimization in Israel and Chile

School violence is a global concern that calls for international research using cross context methods. Although there are several international surveys that compare school violence across countries, they do not clearly address issues of similarities and differences in relative prevalence of different types of victimization and their relations with age, sex, and cultural group. We explored these questions among Israeli-Arab (n?=?13,606), Israeli-Jewish (n?=?10,637), and Chilean students in poor schools in a large Chilean city (n?=?4557), using the same self-report questionnaire that measures verbal-social victimization, victimization by threats, physical victimization, and sexual harassment. As hypothesized, we found similarities in the patterns of relative prevalence of victimization types, as well as study group, sex, and age main effects and interactions. These effects were evident even when the lowest third SES group in Israel was compared with the Chilean students. These findings suggest group differences in prevalence of student victimization, and at the same time cultural invariance in relative prevalence of victimization types and their relations with sex and age. We discuss the need for more international comparative research in this field that takes into account cultural values and the structure and organizations of schools within the different educational systems.     

The role of perspective taking and emotions in punishing identified and unidentified wrongdoers

We present two studies examining the effect of identifiability on willingness to punish, emphasising that identifiability of the wrongdoer may increase or decrease willingness to punish depending on the punisher's perspective. When taking the wrongdoer's perspective, identifiability increases pity and decreases anger towards the wrongdoer, leading to a lighter punishment. On the other hand, when adopting the injured perspective, identifiability decreases pity and increases anger, resulting in a severe punishment. We show that while deliberation and rational factors affect the decision regardless of identification, the role of emotions in the decision is greater in the identified condition. Possible implications for public and educational policy are discussed.     

Someone to blame: When identifying a victim decreases helping

People's willingness to contribute (WTC) more resources to save the lives of identified victims than to save anonymous or statistical victims is known as the identifiable victim effect. Previous research suggested that the emotional arousal (empathy and distress) toward a single identified victim is a major source of the effect. However, identification of a single target may also strengthen negative perceptions (like blame) in situations where the target is perceived as responsible for his/her plight. In five studies (collecting real contributions and hypothetical WTC) we show that identifying a person in need may increase or decrease helping depending on the perceived responsibility of the victim for his/her own plight. Our results suggest that in cases when it is possible to blame the victim, identification of a single target enhances negative perceptions of the victim and decreases helping, especially when the perceiver holds strong beliefs in a just world for others.     

The “identified victim” effect: an identified group,or just a single individual?

People's greater willingness to help identified victims, relative to non‐identified ones, was examined by varying the singularity of the victim (single vs. a group of eight individuals), and the availability of individually identifying information (the main difference being the inclusion of a picture in the “identified” versions). Results support the proposal that the “identified victim” effect is largely restricted to situations with a single victim: the identified single victim elicited considerably more contributions than the non‐identified single victim, while the identification of the individual group members had essentially no effect on willingness to contribute. Participants also report experiencing distress when the victim is single and identified more than in any other condition. Hence, the emotional reaction to the victims appears to be a major source of the effect. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Three approaches to the connection between modernisation and traditionalism: a case study of the acquisition of academic education among ultra-Orthodox and Bedouin women

The current study investigates the way conservative societies confront the modernity process in the pursuit of higher education for women. Women in conservative societies serve as unique signifiers during processes of familial and societal change within their communities. The central thesis of this paper is an alternative approach to the evaluation of modernity changes occurring in religious and traditional societies, in light of developments in the Jewish ultra-Orthodox communities throughout Israel and the Bedouin community in the Negev. This new perspective could have a decisive influence on relations between minority conservative groups and the majority group in which they live, in the face of societal shifts.     

Individual differences in white matter microstructure predict semantic control

In everyday conversation, we make many rapid choices between competing concepts and words in order to convey our intent. This process is termed semantic control, and it is thought to rely on information transmission between a distributed semantic store in the temporal lobes and a more discrete region, optimized for retrieval and selection, in the left inferior frontal gyrus. Here, we used diffusion tensor imaging in a group of neurologically normal young adults to investigate the relationship between semantic control and white matter tracts that have been implicated in semantic memory retrieval. Participants completed a verb generation task that taps semantic control (Snyder & Munakata, 2008; Snyder et al., 2010) and underwent a diffusion imaging scan. Deterministic tractography was performed to compute indices representing the microstructural properties of the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), the uncinate fasciculus (UF), and the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF). Microstructural measures of the UF failed to predict semantic control performance. However, there was a significant relationship between microstructure of the left IFOF and ILF and individual differences in semantic control. Our findings support the view put forth by Duffau (2013) that the IFOF is a key structural pathway in semantic retrieval.     

Gender role masculinity and angry aggression in women

The extent to which gender role masculinity is related to degree of women's angry retaliation was investigated. The study also examined whether the relationship between gender role masculinity and anger is mediated by gender role differences in reactivity to provocation, or to differences in the labeling of anger. It was expected that the influence of gender role masculinity on affect and aggression would be greatest when the nature of the affective arousal is ambiguous. Sixty undergraduate women (predominantly upper middle class and white) were given a placebo pill. They were either given ambiguous information about the pill's effects, or were told it was a vitamin or a stimulant. They then were either provoked or not provoked, and finally received an opportunity to retaliate. The participants had been divided by median split into high- and low-masculinity groups based on their scores on Spence and Helmreich's (1978) Personal Attributes Questionnaire. As expected, when provoked, high-masculinity subjects were more aggressive than low-masculinity subjects but only in the ambiguous drug information condition. Although they reported more arousal-related sensations, they did not rate themselves higher in anger. The results are discussed in terms of gender role influences on the experience of anger and the expression of aggression.     

Public decisions or private decisions? When the specific case guides public decisions

Educators' differential decisions towards identified single students as compared with unidentified students, or a group of identified students, were examined by presenting educators with educational scenarios describing actual dilemmas from the three different perspectives. The first two studies indicate that willingness to change the existing policy and to [bend the rule] is greater when a dilemma is presented from the specific identified student's perspective than when presented as a general dilemma. The results of the third study suggest that in their decisions regarding an identified individual student, educators allow more changes in school regulations and give less weight to the school needs as compared with their decisions regarding an unidentified student or a group of students. Implications for policy making are discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Choosing what I want or keeping what I should: The effect of decision strategy on choice consistency

We examine decision-makers’ consistency vis-à-vis their own priorities in a multi-choice task, using either an inclusion or exclusion strategy to reduce a set of alternatives. Four studies demonstrate that people’s decisions are more consistent with their priorities when using an exclusion vs. an inclusion strategy to screen alternatives. Moreover, this effect was stronger for less knowledgeable than for more knowledgeable decision-makers. We examined two possible mechanisms behind this phenomenon. First, we suggest that the process of thinking about the positive aspects of the alternatives (associated with inclusion) encourages the decision-maker to more favorably evaluate options initially given low marks, resulting in less consistency with preferences. We also show that under exclusion, people tend to select the alternatives that they think they should choose, while under inclusion they tend to choose options that are more in line with what they would like to have but which may be perceived as luxuries.