Remember judgments and the constraint of direct experience

The most direct assessment of episodic memory is provided by Remember versus Know judgments of recalled or recognised items. We investigate whether Remember judgments reflect episodic memories as a re-experience of formerly experienced events (mental time travel). If they do, they must obey the direct experience constraint: only directly experienced events can be re-experienced but not when the event is known through indirectly conveyed information. In two Experiments participants saw simple events in Power Point, e.g. a car exploding. In the direct experience condition these events were directly perceived. In three further conditions information about the object (particular car), the kind of event (explosion), or both were verbally conveyed. After controlling for a potential encoding specificity effect in Experiment 1, the frequency of Remember judgments was twice as high in the direct experience condition than in the other three conditions. This suggests that Remember judgments are—at least to some degree—subject to the direct experience constraint.     

Disappointed in you, angry about your offer: Distinct negative emotions induce concessions via different mechanisms

Does it help or hurt to communicate negative emotions in bargaining? In this article, we propose that behavioral effects are dependent on the type of negative emotion that is communicated and whether such emotions are directed at the offer or the person. We show that the two negative emotions anger and disappointment have opposing effects in negotiations: anger pays when it is directed at the offer, but disappointment pays when it is directed at the person. Offer-directed anger elicits higher offers than person-directed anger, because people infer higher limits from opponents who communicate offer-directed anger. Person-directed disappointment elicits higher offers in others than offer-directed disappointment, because it evokes higher feelings of guilt. Our findings thus show that the interpersonal effects of anger and disappointment in negotiation depend critically on the target of the emotion, and that their effects can be explained by different processes.     

German Muslims and the ‘Integration Debate’: Negotiating Identities in the Face of Discrimination

Based on five focus groups (total N?=?56) with German Muslims, we analyze discourses on the experience of discrimination and feelings of national and religious attachment. The focus groups took place in mid to late 2010 in four German cities. Whereas only few participants describe personal discrimination by non-Muslim Germans, almost all participants complain about being collectively discriminated and rejected. This perception triggers processes of confirming their original cultural identity, primarily their Muslim affiliation and of strengthening the boundary towards the wider society. The analysis of the discourse shows the participants to fall back into an essentialized way of thinking that makes their ethnic being incompatible with being German; and they resort to their Muslim roots as a cultural resource for identity construction and self-worth. Others cope with their feeling of rejection by engaging in local politics and sports activities that allows them to attribute themselves a hyphenated identity as Turkish-Germans. The findings are discussed in terms of social identity, psychological essentialism, transnationalized religion, and boundary making.     

Differences and similarities in event recall and suggestibility between children and adults in Germany and the United States

Children (5-6 year olds, 7-8 year olds, 9-10 year olds) and adults from Germany and the United States were shown a brief video of a theft. One week later, participants were asked to give a free narrative of an observed event (free recall), followed either by sets of misleading or unbiased questions, and finally they were given a three-choice recognition question for each queried item. German participants of all ages had higher levels of correct free recall than did American participants. American adults and 9-10 year olds gave more correct responses to the open-ended unbiased questions than did their German counterparts. Germans of all ages made more correct responses to the misleading questions, whereas national differences, favoring the Germans, for incorrect response to misleading questions were restricted to the 5-6 year olds. National differences were interpreted as reflecting possible differences in strategic abilities, exposure to formal instruction, and the degree to which children experience self-directed, autonomous learning opportunities.     

Fear appeals motivate acceptance of action recommendations: evidence for a positive bias in the processing of persuasive messages

Three experiments are reported that tested the hypothesis that the use of fear appeals in health persuasion may lead to positively biased systematic processing of a subsequent action recommendation aimed at reducing the health threat and, consequently, to more persuasion, regardless of the quality of the arguments in the recommendation. The levels of participants' vulnerability to as well as the severity of a health risk were varied independently, followed by a manipulation of the quality of the arguments in the subsequent action recommendation. The dependent variables included measures of persuasion (attitude, intention, and action), negative affect, and cognitive responses. The results show that participants who felt vulnerable to the health threat were more persuaded, experienced more negative emotions, and had more favorable cognitive responses. Both negative emotions concerning one's vulnerability and positive thoughts concerning the recommendation mediated the effects of vulnerability on persuasion.     

Individual and social network predictors of the short‐term stability of bullying victimization in the United Kingdom and Germany

Background. There is still relatively little research on the social context within which bullying develops and remains stable. Aim. This study examined the short‐term stability of bullying victimization among primary school students in the United Kingdom and Germany (mean age, 8.9 years) and the individual and social network factors that contributed to remaining a victim of bullying. Sample. The sample consisted of 454 children (247 males and 207 females). Methods. Participants completed questionnaires on bullying victimization at three assessment points over a 9‐week period. Other measures consisted of self‐reported demographic, peer, and family relationship characteristics. Social network indices of density, reciprocity, and hierarchy were constructed using friendship and peer acceptance nominations. Results. Relative risk analyses indicated a six‐fold increased risk of remaining a victim at consequent follow‐ups, compared to a child not victimized at baseline becoming a victim over the follow‐up period. Individual characteristics explained substantially more variance in the stability of bullying victimization than class‐level factors. Hierarchical logistic regression analyses revealed that being victimized by siblings and being rejected by peers predicted remaining a victim over a 9‐week period. Conclusions. Bullying victimization among primary school students proved moderately stable over a 9‐week period. Individual characteristics were more influential in predicting the stable victim role than class‐level factors. Our findings have implications for the identification of stable victims in primary school and early preventative bullying programs.