Effects of own group success or failure on judgements of task performance by children of different ethnicities

Children in majority groups hold favourable attitudes toward members of their own group, whereas those in minority groups typically hold more favourable attitudes toward majority than own group members. It was expected that when evaluating task outcomes, majority group children would display own group favouritism, and minority children would show other group favouritism or ‘reverse ethnocentrism’. In this study, white and Native Indian elementary school children saw a video of a white and native child listening to sounds and trying to identify them. One-third of subjects saw white models correct more often than Native models, one-third saw Native models more often correct than white models, and the remaining third saw both models correct on an equal number of trials. When white models were successful, children from both groups made more positive evaluations of, optimistic predictions about, and internal attributions for task outcomes. When these models did poorly, negative attributes were deemphasized and task outcomes were attributed to external factors. Success by native models was attributed to external factors and task outcomes had little influence on predictions or evaluations. When native models were unsuccessful subjects accentuated negative attributes of these models and made internal attributions for their failures. Results were discussed in terms of cognitive and motivational theories of social judgements.     

Social Support and the Job Satisfaction of Female Clerical Workers

The beneficial effects on job satisfaction of social support at work and home were established in this study of 85 randomly selected female clerical workers. Partners were found to be effective buffers of adverse work conditions as well.