Birds of a feather and birds flocking together: physical versus behavioral cues may lead to trait- versus goal-based group perception

Entitativity perception refers to the perception of a collection of individuals as a group. The authors propose 2 perceptual-inferential bases of entitativity perception. First, perceivers would expect a collection of individuals with similar physical traits to possess common psychological traits. Second, perceivers watching a group of individuals engage in concerted behavior would infer that these individuals have common goals. Thus, both similarity in physical traits (e.g., same skin color) and concerted collective behavior (e.g., same movement) would evoke perception of group entitativity. Results from 5 experiments show that same group movement invariably leads to common goal inferences, increased perceived cohesiveness, and increased perceived entitativity. Moreover, same skin color evokes inferences of group traits and increases perceived homogeneity and perceived entitativity but only when skin color is diagnostic of group membership.     

“Not me” consumer justifications for not reporting suspected price-fixing activities: Neutralization techniques & counterstrategies

Price-fixing, an anti-competitive activity by firms, raises consumer prices, limits consumer choices, and violates the law. Drawing on the neutralization theory, this study aims to investigate consumer participation in anti-price-fixing efforts. This is important as the government's strategy of combating price-fixing often relies on tip-offs from the public. Accordingly, this study examines consumer willingness to come forward to file a complaint of suspected price-fixing cases to authorities and the justifications provided by participants for their reluctance. Focus group interviews were conducted with twenty-three participants. The findings revealed that although the participants agreed that price-fixing is unethical and unjust, they were reluctant to file a complaint to report suspected price-fixing activities to authorities. This study makes theoretical contributions to uncover five neutralization techniques used by the participants to reconcile their negative feelings. Three new counterstrategies have not been explored or discussed in previous studies. This contributes to a new line of inquiry about consumer responses to price-fixing.     

Cognitive,Behavioral, and Personality Correlates of HIV-Positive Persons' Unsafe Sexual Behavior1

This study examined sexually risky behaviors of HIV-positive men and women within the framework of social cognitive theory. Condom use was found to be associated with high self-efficacy, positive influeces from social models, and specific condom use expectancies. As risky sexual behavior may be the manifestation of a more general pattern of risk taking that emerges from personality dispositions such as impulsiveness or psychoticism, this possibility was explored with discriminant analyses. Self-reported impulsivity, substance abuse, promiscuity, and deception served as markers of the presumed disposition. While these variables did not reliably distinguish between consistent and inconsistent condom users, they did enhance significantly the classification of individuals who, during the past 6 months, had been sexually abstinent, monogamous, or nonmonogamous. Those who reported more sex partners scored higher on impulsivity, disclosed more involvement with illegal drugs, and showed greater willingness to mislead potential partners about their sexual history than monogamous or sexually abstinent persons with HIV.     

False Consensus and False Uniqueness in Estimating the Prevalence of Health-Protective Behaviors

The degree to which people perceive that their health-relevant behaviors are also performed by their peers may influence whether they continue these practices or are susceptible to change. The present paper examined estimates of social consensus for health-relevant behaviors. It was hypothesized that respondents would perceive their own behaviors to be relatively more common than do people not performing them, the so-called False Consensus Effect. However, in terms of the accuracy of consensus estimates, people who behave in undesirable ways will tend to overestimate the actual number of others who behave similarly. In contrast, people who behave in desirable ways will underestimate the actual number of people who behave like themselves (false uniqueness). A group of college-aged males were asked to report about their performance of a series of health-relevant behaviors and to estimate the frequency of each behavior among their peers. The findings strongly supported the first two hypotheses and provided some support for the third. One practical implication of the results is that persons with unhealthy practices may resist public health campaigns and other interventions by overestimating consensus for their own behaviors. Also, individuals who think their undesirable health behaviors are relatively common may believe that they involve few health risks for them. The research suggests the need for further research on social cognitions about health, illness, and health-protective behaviors.     

Do multicultural experiences facilitate global processing style?

The current research explores whether multicultural experiences facilitate global processing style. We conducted two experiments in which participants were exposed to either a multicultural experience or a monocultural experience. They were required to either perform the Navon letter task (Experiment 1) or search for similarities or differences between two videos (Experiment 2). The experimental results showed that, compared to the participants exposed to a monocultural experience, those exposed to a multicultural experience had faster reaction times to global letters (Experiment 1) and tended to search for similarities (Experiment 2). This indicates that individuals with multicultural experiences facilitate a global processing style. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd, Asian Association of Social Psychology and Beijing Normal University     

加压素对记忆巩固过程作用的研究 Ⅰ.精氨酸加压素(AVP)对大鼠记忆巩固过程的易化作用及脑内游离氨基酸含量的变化

本文研究了精氨酸加压素易化记忆巩固过程的作用,测定了这一作用过程中脑内15种游离氨基酸含量的变化。 1.第三天建立实验前1小时皮下注射AVP(2μg/只)显著地延缓了大鼠主动逃避条件反应的消退过程。 2.给予AVP的动物在建立期皮层视区和海马两脑区的GABA(γ-氨基丁酸)含量及海马的异亮氨酸含量下降。在保持期两脑区的苏氨酸含量下降,赖氨酸含量上升,海马的谷氨酸含量下降,但两脑区的GABA含量都没有显著变化。 3.电击应激反应的实验结果表明,给予AVP的动物海马的GABA含量及皮层视区苯丙氨酸含量下降。单独注射AVP后1小时,两脑区的天冬氨酸含量下降。AVP注射后48小时,脑内各种氨基酸含量都没有明显变化。     

五岁至七岁独生和非独生子女某些个性特征的比较及性别差异的研究

本研究是在北京城区六个日托幼儿园所作的关于5至7岁独生和非独生子女某些个性特征差异的比较研究。被试有138名独生子女和127名非独生子女,其中男孩120名、女孩145名。观察了五类行为:独立性、助人行为、依赖性、攻击行为和友好行为,这五类行为共有16个观察项目。在所有三个年龄组,非独生子女在依赖性,助人行为和攻击行为等方面的平均得分总的来说略高于独生子女,但是没有统计学上显著差异。只有五岁组在独立性方面独生和非独生子女之间的差异达到显著性水平(P<0.005)。对被试家长问卷的分析也表明,独生子女与非独生子女之间在大多数项目和年龄组都没有显著差别。只有独立性这一方面在五岁组差异是显著的。我们还比较了性别差异,在所观察的五类行为中除了助人行为之外,在依赖性、独立性、攻击性行为和友好行为等方面都存在显著的性别差异。在友好行为方面女孩比男孩表现好,而男孩比女孩更富有攻击性。     

Incorporating family therapy into asthma group intervention: a randomized waitlist-controlled trial

Asthma psychoeducational programs have been found to be effective in terms of symptom-related outcome. They are mostly illness-focused, and pay minimal attention to systemic/familial factors. This study evaluated a novel asthma psychoeducation program that adopted a parallel group design and incorporated family therapy. A randomized waitlist-controlled crossover clinical trial design was adopted. Children with stable asthma and their parents were recruited from a pediatric chest clinic. Outcome measures included, for the patients: exhaled nitric oxide (eNO), spirometry, and adjustment to asthma; and for the parents: perceived efficacy in asthma management, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale anxiety subscale, Body Mind Spirit Well-being Inventory emotion subscale, and Short Form 12 health-related quality of life scale. Forty-six patients participated in the study. Attrition rates were 13.0% and 26.0% for the active and control groups, respectively. Repeated-measures ANOVA revealed a significant decrease in airway inflammation, as indicated by eNO levels, and an increase in patient's adjustment to asthma and parents' perceived efficacy in asthma management. Serial trend analysis revealed that most psychosocial measures continued to progress steadily after intervention. Significant improvements in both symptom-related measures and mental health and relationship measures were observed. The findings supported the value of incorporating family therapy into asthma psychoeducation programs.     

Intertrial inhibition of focused attention in pop-out search

When a visual search for a color oddball is performed, responses to target-present trials are affected by the color of items in immediately preceding target-absent trials, a phenomenon known as the distractor-previewing effect (DPE). Specifically, the color of the items in the target-absent trial suppresses responses to a target of that color in the subsequent trial, even though participants report a target feature uncorrelated with color. We believe that this suppression reflects a transient inhibitory effect on focused attention that biases attention away from items that are of the same color as the items in the target-absent trial. Experiments 1-3 show that the DPE is present only in tasks that require focused attention. Experiments 4A and 4B show that the DPE persists even when target-absent displays are masked. Last, Experiment 5 shows that the DPE emerges as early as within the first 100 msec of a target-present trial and is fully in place by the 250-msec mark.