Emotional and self‐esteem consequences of perceiving discrimination against a new identity group

With a sample of Asian international students, the consequences of perceiving pervasive discrimination against one's in‐group were examined by experimentally manipulating perceived discrimination (pervasive vs rare) and group identification (low vs high). We report evidence that supports and integrates aspects of two contrasted models; namely, the discounting model and the rejection–identification model. Consistent with both models, the effects of perceiving discrimination on one's psychological well‐being depended on the level of group identification. Nevertheless, after reading about pervasive discrimination, low (vs high) identifiers reported less depressed affect, consistent with the discounting model. However, they also reported lower self‐esteem, consistent with the rejection–identification model.     

Culture and Terror Management: What is “Culture” in Cultural Psychology and Terror Management Theory?

Cultural psychology underscores the importance of culture in understanding human psychology. More recently, Terror Management Theory (TMT) also advanced the importance of culture from a perspective that regards culture as a tool for coping with existential concerns. This paper compares these two perspectives with respect to the focus of their theoretical inquiries and the conceptualizations of culture. A brief review of relevant TMT research is provided to familiarize readers to this literature. Theoretical implications and directions for future research are presented.     

Language, meaning, and social cognition.

Social cognition is meant to examine the process of meaningful social interaction. Despite the central involvement of language in this process, language has not received the focal attention that it deserves. Conceptualizing meaningful social interaction as the process of construction and exchange of meaning, the authors argue that language can be productively construed as a semiotic tool, a tool for meaning making and exchange, and that language use can produce unintended consequences in its users. First, the article shows a particular instance of language use to be a collaborative process that influences the representation of meaning in the speaker, the listener, and the collective that includes both the speaker and listener. It then argues that language use and social cognition may have reciprocal effects in the long run and may have significant implications for generating and maintaining cultural differences in social cognition.     

Superior fluid intelligence in children with Asperger's disorder

Asperger's disorder is one of autistic spectrum disorders; sharing clinical features with autism, but without developmental delay in language acquisition. There have been some studies of intellectual functioning in autism so far, but very few in Asperger's disorder. In the present study, we investigated abstract reasoning ability, whose form of intelligence has been labeled fluid intelligence in the theory of Cattell [Cattell, R. B. (1963). Theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence: A critical experiment. Journal of Educational Psychology, 54, 1-22.], in children with Asperger's disorder. A test of fluid intelligence, the Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices Test, was administered to 17 children with Asperger's disorder and 17 age-, gender-, and FIQ-matched normal children. The results showed that children with Asperger's disorder outperformed on the test of fluid reasoning than typically developing children. We suggest that individuals with Asperger's disorder have higher fluid reasoning ability than normal individuals, highlighting superior fluid intelligence.