Evaluation of aggressive interactions in interpersonal and intergroup contexts

The article deals with possible differences in the evaluation of interpersonal and intergroup aggression. Study I investigated whether the typical perspective-specific divergence in judgments about aggressive interactions (with actors evaluating their behavior as more reasonable and less inappropriate than recipients) varied in interpersonal and intergroup contexts. Additionalty, the possible mediating influence of lay epistemic motivation and subjective judgmental confidence was explored. Results indicated that the social context had an important impact on the evaluation of aggressive interactions: there was a lower dissent between actors and recipients in the intergroup than in the interpersonal condition. However, the direction of this pattern of data differed from what could be derived from theories of aggressive and intergroup behavior. Subjective confidence and lay epistemic motivation did not influence the inappropriatencess ratings. Study II tried to shed some further light on the context-specific evaluation of aggressive interaction by presenting episodes of different severity and by obtaining judgments on both actions as well as reactions. Results showed that-irrespective of severity-aggressive reactions were evaluated more negatively in intergroup contexts. It is proposed that this effect stemmed from context-specific differences in the application of the norm of reciprocity.     

The necessary impossibility: Dynamics of identity among young people of different backgrounds in Vienna

Identity, the key term during the last two decades in social sciences, is employed for different, even opposite purposes. On the one hand, there are liberal aims claiming social recognition, which usually are summarized under the term politics of identity. On the other hand, there are social movements and conceptions, the objectives of which are diametrically opposed to emancipatory ideas, and which encompass nationalisms, ethnopluralism, cultural fundamentalism, differential racism, and xenophobia. In this field of tensions this contribution is focusing on narratives and strategies of identity among young people in group discussions. Encounters among youth from different cultural, ethnic, and social contexts and with different expectations produce diasporic public spheres, which are neither predominantly emancipatory nor fully controlled, but rather emerging and therefore contested. In our theoretical reflections we challenge common dichotomies and main models of identity; in our empirical approaches we examine the topography and the dynamics of identity as well as “situated hierarchies” of different sources of identity.     

The spontaneity of media interviews

The aimof this study is to show that, for effective communication in interviews, media professionals sometimes speak spontaneously instead of reading their questions. The research question arises from the incompatibility of ideal delivery, on the one hand, and the concept of spontaneity as hesitant and therefore defective, on the other. In a 2×2(speakersxtasks) within-subject design, readings and interviews of prominent American TV network anchormen (W. Cronkite and D. Rather) are compared in terms of temporal and hesitation variables. The results indicate differences between the two types of speaking in pause duration, variance of articulation rate per phrase-length unit, occurrence of pauses at various syntactic positions, the relationship between pause duration and pause position, and occurrence of vocal hesitations (filled pauses, repeats, and false starts). The findings are interpreted in terms of a neglected but basic concept required for any theory of language use—communicative intent.     

Comparisons of native and foreign language poetry readings: Fluency,expressiveness, and their evaluation

Summary American college and German Gymnasium students read an English and German poem in their respective native (L1) and foreign (L2) languages. In L2, articulation rate (syl/s) was slower and phrase length (syl/pause) shorter than in L1. Only the German women read expressively: Mean pause duration was higher than all other groups in L1 and lower in L2. Evaluations of fluency and expressiveness by American teachers of German and German teachers of English paralleled these results. Two cut-off points (0.27 and 0.13 sec) for measurements of minimum pause duration were examined, and cautions regarding use of a high cut-off point given.     

Deficits in acquiring language structure: The importance of using prosodic cues

The study investigates and supports the hypothesis that (1) specifically language-impaired (SLI) children have deficits in processing and using the rhythmic-prosodic structure of speech; and that (2) these deficits impede the implicit learning of formal regularities of input language. The ability of SLI children to exploit prosodic cues in rule learning was tested in an experimental design using a miniature language. Twenty-four SLI children (mean age 6;5) learned a small set of sentences generated by a content-free rule system. The sample sentences were presented either with or without prosodic cues to the underlying formal regularities. The experimental groups were matched by various cognitive and language indicators. To assess whether they had acquired some regularities of the miniature language, a grammaticality judgement task was presented. In addition, their ability to reproduce rule-structured and rule-violating strings was tested. The experimental as well as some additional correlational data support the basic theoretical assumptions. The children had deficits in processing and exploiting prosodic cues in rule learning, and these deficits covaried with their rhythmic ability as indicated by a rhythm discrimination task.     

Bidirectional Effects between Parenting and Aggressive Child Behavior in the Context of a Preventive Intervention

Over time, developmental theories and empirical studies have gradually started to adopt a bidirectional viewpoint. The area of intervention research is, however, lagging behind in this respect. This longitudinal study examined whether bidirectional associations between (changes in) parenting and (changes in) aggressive child behavior over time differed in three conditions: a child intervention condition, a child + parent intervention condition and a control condition. Participants were 267 children (74 % boys, 26 % girls) with elevated levels of aggression, their mothers and their teachers. Reactive aggression, proactive aggression and perceived parenting were measured at four measurement times from pretest to one-year after intervention termination. Results showed that associations between aggressive child behavior and perceived parenting are different in an intervention context, compared to a general developmental context. Aggressive behavior and perceived parenting were unrelated over time for children who did not receive an intervention. In an intervention context, however, decreases in aggressive child behavior were related to increases in perceived positive parenting and decreases in perceived overreactivity. These findings underscore the importance of addressing child-driven processes in interventions aimed at children, but also in interventions aimed at both children and their parents.     

Understanding the Development of Team Identification: A Qualitative Study in UN Peacebuilding Teams

Purpose

The goal of our study was to scrutinize the psychological processes that occur in individuals when developing identification with a highly diverse team.

Design/Methodology/Approach

A qualitative, theory-generating approach following the principles of grounded theory was chosen as research design. Data were obtained from 63 personal interviews with members of seven UN peacebuilding teams in Liberia and Haiti. These teams were particularly well suited for analyzing the dynamics of identification processes as they constitute extreme cases with respect to team members’ identity diversity.

Findings

Our analysis reveals four different processes that occur as individuals develop team identification (TI): enacting a salient identity, sensemaking about team experience, evaluating collective team outcomes, and converging identity.

Implications

We can show that team members engage in both individual- and collective-directed sensemaking processes during TI development, thereby using internal (i.e., other team members) and external points of reference (i.e., team-external actors) for ingroup/outgroup comparisons. Moreover, our study reveals different modes of identity convergence (i.e., active, reactive, and withdrawal) which are associated with different types of TI (i.e., deep-structured TI, situated TI, and disidentification).

Originality/Value

Although team members’ identification with their workgroup has long been considered important for effective team functioning, knowledge about its development has remained limited and largely without empirical footing from a real-world team context. Our study represents the first empirical attempt to inductively identify the processes that occur in individuals as they develop TI.