Cultural differences in process and person focus: Congratulations on your hard work versus celebrating your exceptional brain

Cultural differences in process-focused versus person-focused themes were examined using both cultural artifacts (Study 1) and self-reports (Study 2). In Study 1, the contents of Chinese and American graduation and encouragement cards were analyzed for their relative emphasis on person- versus process-focused themes. Person-focused themes center on recipients' stable traits and abilities, and their emotional well-being. In contrast, process-focused themes dwell on the recipients' hard work and effort, and emphasize the importance of continued self-improvement and growth. Messages on Chinese cards were significantly more process than person focused. The reverse was true of American cards. Chinese cards also contained more process-focused (e.g., winding roads) than person-focused images (e.g., student standing on a pedestal). American cards contained more person-focused than process-focused images, although this difference was significant only among encouragement cards. In Study 2, we presented Chinese and American participants with graduation card messages differing in focus. Chinese parents indicated that they would be more likely to select and Chinese students indicated that they would be more likely to receive process- than person-themed graduation card messages. American parents and students showed no effects of message focus. The findings illustrate how cultural beliefs are reflected in cultural artifacts and personal preferences.     

Revisiting the Obama Effect: Exposure to Obama reduces implicit prejudice

The present research experimentally evaluated whether exposure to Barack Obama, a positive counter-stereotypic exemplar, can result in a decrease in implicit anti-Black prejudice among non-Black participants. In order to undo any existing influence of exposure to Obama, we first exposed some participants to negative Black exemplars. Participants were assigned to one of three conditions where they were exposed subtly to negative Black exemplars, to negative Black exemplars and then Obama, or to neutral X's (i.e., control). Participants who were only primed with negative Black exemplars showed more implicit negativity toward Black people compared to the control group. Participants exposed to the same negative Black exemplars and then Obama showed a decrease in implicit racial bias levels compared to those in the negative exemplar only condition, providing experimental evidence that exposure to Obama can decrease implicit racial bias levels. These findings indicate that even subtle exposure to a positive, counter-stereotypic exemplar can reduce implicit prejudice.     

Implicit theories moderate the relation of positive future fantasies to academic outcomes

We hypothesized and observed that the degree to which students endorsed entity theories - the view that intelligence is fixed rather than malleable - attenuated the affective benefits and exacerbated the achievement drawbacks of positive fantasies in the academic domain. Positive fantasies only predicted low anger and anxiety for schoolchildren who did not strongly endorse entity theories (Study 1), and positive fantasies only predicted poor final school grades for vocational students who did strongly endorse entity theories (Study 2). An experiment indicated that for university students with stronger entity theories, positive fantasies demanded relatively little attention (Study 3), suggesting that positive fantasies obscure the opportunity for the preemptive self-regulation which promotes successful performance.     

Predicting Self‐Confident Behaviour with Implicit and Explicit Self‐Esteem Measures

The present research compared the validity of popular direct and indirect measures of self‐esteem in predicting self‐confident behaviour in different social situations. In line with behavioural dual‐process models, both implicit and explicit self‐esteem were hypothesized to be related to appearing self‐confident to unacquainted others. A total of 127 participants responded to the Rosenberg Self‐Esteem Scale, the Multidimensional Self‐Esteem Scale, and an adjective scale for measuring explicit self‐esteem (ESE). Participants' implicit self‐esteem (ISE) was assessed with four indirect measures: the Implicit Association Test (IAT), the name‐letter task (NLT), and two variants of an affective priming task, the reaction‐time affective priming task (RT‐APT) and the error‐based affective priming task (EB‐APT). Self‐confident behaviour was observed in four different social situations: (i) self‐introduction to a group; (ii) an ostracism experience; (iii) an interview about the ostracism experience; and (iv) an interview about one's personal life. In general, appearing self‐confident to unknown others was independently predicted by ESE and ISE. The indirect measures of self‐esteem were, as expected, not correlated, and only the self‐esteem APTs—but not the self‐esteem IAT or the NLT—predicted self‐confident behaviours. It is important to note that in particular the predictive power of the self‐esteem EB‐APT pertained to all four criteria and was incremental to the ESE measures. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Graph coloring, minimum-diameter partitioning, and the analysis of confusion matrices

It is well known that minimum-diameter partitioning of symmetric dissimilarity matrices can be framed within the context of coloring the vertices of a graph. Although confusion data are typically represented in the form of asymmetric similarity matrices, they are also amenable to a graph-coloring perspective. In this paper, we propose the integration of the minimum-diameter partitioning method with a neighborhood-based coloring approach for analyzing digraphs corresponding to confusion data. This procedure is capable of producing minimum-diameter partitions with the added desirable property that vertices with the same color have similar in-neighborhoods (i.e., directed edges entering the vertex) and out-neighborhoods (i.e., directed edges exiting the vertex) for the digraph corresponding to the minimum partition diameter.     

Praxis and Agency in Foucault’s Historiography

This paper examines the consequences for agency that Foucaults historiographical approach constructs. The analysis begins by explaining the difference between legislative history and exemplary history, drawing parallels to similar theoretical distinctions offered in the works of Max Weber, J.L. Austin, and Zygmunt Bauman. The analysis continues by reading Habermass critique of Foucault through the tropological lenses suggested by White [Metahistory. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973]; it argues that Habermass critique misrecognizes the tropes of Foucaultian genealogy. The paper draws implications for education by articulating possibilities for praxis and agency in terms of pedagogy specifically related to the distinction between didactics and modeling. The paper concludes by suggesting that genealogy does not play by Hegels rules, but rather exemplifies agency in ways that are not recognizable from a modernist perspective.     

Stereotypes and implicit social comparison: Shifts in comparison-group focus

Stereotypes affect how people understand implicit comparisons. In two studies, people judged the comparison implied by a statement (e.g., “Math is easy for me,” “I’m really aggressive”) made by an African-American, White, or Asian-American male. Counter-stereotypic comments, such as the African-American saying he was “bad” at basketball, caused participants to think the target was comparing himself to his narrow ingroup; stereotypic statements caused people to infer that the comparison group was broader. When compared to a fixed standard (all people in USA), evidence that people used stereotypes consistently emerged. Whether motivated or not, by narrowing the comparison standard when presented with a counter-stereotypic case, participants constructed an understanding of the target that protected the stereotype from challenge.     

Des personnes et des situations aux préférences et contraintes

The paper will basically be an attempt to state what the author take to be: a) the main message of Walter Mischel's 1968 and 1973 critique of personality trait psychology; b) the connection between Walter Mischel's work and the work of Roy D'Andrade and Richard Shweder on the "systematic distortion hypothesis; and c) the good reasons for moving from a conception of the "person" as a vessel for response dispositions (whether globally or narrowly defined) [the "person-situation" model] to a conception of the person as a purposeful agent whose behavior can be explained by reference to means and ends (the "preference-constraint" model).     

Alcohol-related motivational tendencies in hazardous drinkers: assessing implicit response tendencies using the modified-IAT

This study examined the utility of an implicit measure of cognitive associations, the Implicit Association Test (IAT; ), to assess alcohol-related approach dispositions. Forty-seven hazardous drinkers completed a modified IAT procedure that assessed the relation between alcohol and behavioral categories (i.e., approach and avoid). Participants completed a series of individual difference measures before an alcohol cue exposure task in which they anticipated alcohol consumption. Results indicate that the modified IAT is associated with binge drinking episodes, perceived difficulty controlling alcohol use, and appetitive responses to alcohol cues. Findings are discussed in terms of the potential value of this measure to assess alcohol-related memory associations among those whose alcohol use puts them at risk for harm.