Stereotype threat and executive resource depletion: examining the influence of emotion regulation

Research shows that stereotype threat reduces performance by diminishing executive resources, but less is known about the psychological processes responsible for these impairments. The authors tested the idea that targets of stereotype threat try to regulate their emotions and that this regulation depletes executive resources, resulting in underperformance. Across 4 experiments, they provide converging evidence that targets of stereotype threat spontaneously attempt to control their expression of anxiety and that such emotion regulation depletes executive resources needed to perform well on tests of cognitive ability. They also demonstrate that providing threatened individuals with a means to effectively cope with negative emotions--by reappraising the situation or the meaning of their anxiety--can restore executive resources and improve test performance. They discuss these results within the framework of an integrated process model of stereotype threat, in which affective and cognitive processes interact to undermine performance.     

Postgraduate research students: People in context?

This article seeks to explore learning, development and academic success, using postgraduate research students' experiences and relating them to submission and completion rates. The perceptions and circumstances of a sample of postgraduate research students from one cohort in a large civic university were examined via questionnaire and interviews. Significant associations between data gained via questionnaire and outcome of research study are presented, together with qualitative illustrations from comments and interviews with participating individuals. A developmental, sociocultural understanding of the learner is discussed. This supports a brief review of a package of practical measures designed to assist universities to support research students, especially those who may have difficulty negotiating the experience of research study, and their supervisors, and ultimately improve retention and submission rates.     

On For Someone’s Sake Attitudes

Personal value, i.e., what is valuable for us (rather than value simpliciter), has recently been analysed in terms of so-called for-someone’s-sake attitudes. This paper is an attempt to add flesh to the bone of these attitudes that have not yet been properly analysed in the philosophical literature. By employing a distinction between justifiers and identifiers, which corresponds to two roles a property may play in the intentional content of an attitude, two different kinds of for-someone’s-sake attitudes can be identified. Moreover, it is argued that one of these kinds is particularly difficult to include in an analysis of value simpliciter but not in an analysis of value for.     

Responsibility and the Brain Sciences

Some theorists think that the more we get to know about the neural underpinnings of our behaviors, the less likely we will be to hold people responsible for their actions. This intuition has driven some to suspect that as neuroscience gains insight into the neurological causes of our actions, people will cease to view others as morally responsible for their actions, thus creating a troubling quandary for our legal system. This paper provides empirical evidence against such intuitions. Particularly, our studies of folk intuitions suggest that (1) when the causes of an action are described in neurological terms, they are not found to be any more exculpatory than when described in psychological terms, and (2) agents are not held fully responsible even for actions that are fully neurologically caused.     

Gender differences in perceptions of leadership

A study was conducted to examine gender differences in perceptions of leadership. Subjects (N=320) were assigned to same-sex groups of four to six members. The groups participated in a leaderless group discussion and then assessed characteristics of their own and their peers' leadership. The subjects also completed a self-esteem inventory. Correlational analyses revealed that when evaluating their peers, both men and women associated being a leader and having leadership skills with an authoritarian leadership style. In self-perceptions, however, women associated having positive leadership skills with an authoritarian style, but men associated their own leadership skills with a democratic style. The self-esteem of both genders was differentially related to their perceptions of leadership style. These results suggest that men and women hold a leadership stereotype which equates the leadership skills of their peers with an authoritarian style of leadership. However, women but not men base their assessments of their own leadership skills on this leadership stereotype.     

On the role of word frequency in the detection of component letters

The experiments reported in this study were conducted to explore the issue of race models versus holistic models of word processing. In both types of model, it is assumed that an available word-level encoding for a display will conceal letter information, and thereby inhibit component-letter detection. However, whereas in holistic models it is assumed that encoding always should occur at the word or pattern level first, in the race models it is assumed that encoding occurs at all levels (e.g., feature, letter, and word) simultaneously, with the final level of encoding being at whatever level has been completed first. If the rate of word-level encoding is facilitated by increasing word frequency, the holistic models predict a generally declining latency for letter detection, because the initial step in letter detection (i.e., word-level encoding) will be occurring more rapidly. The race models, on the other hand, predict that with increasing word frequency there will be an increasing chance that the word-level encoding will win the encoding race, resulting in an increase in the latency for letter detection (i.e., the word code will conceal the letter codes). Two experiments are reported, and the obtained pattern of latency data appears to be most consistent with the race models.     

Recipient Design in Communicative Pointing

A long‐standing debate in the study of human communication centers on the degree to which communicators tune their communicative signals (e.g., speech, gestures) for specific addressees, as opposed to taking a neutral or egocentric perspective. This tuning, called recipient design, is known to occur under special conditions (e.g., when errors in communication need to be corrected), but several researchers have argued that it is not an intrinsic feature of human communication, because that would be computationally too demanding. In this study, we contribute to this debate by studying a simple communicative behavior, communicative pointing, under conditions of successful (error‐free) communication. Using an information‐theoretic measure, called legibility, we present evidence of recipient design in communicative pointing. The legibility effect is present early in the movement, suggesting that it is an intrinsic part of the communicative plan. Moreover, it is reliable only from the viewpoint of the addressee, suggesting that the motor plan is tuned to the addressee. These findings suggest that recipient design is an intrinsic feature of human communication.