A weight‐related growth mindset increases negative attitudes toward obese people

In implicit personality theory, people with entity views or a fixed mindset perceive characteristics (e.g., intelligence) as uncontrollable, whereas people with incremental views or a growth mindset perceive characteristics as controllable. In addition to other benefits, the literature sometimes suggests that having a growth mindset will protect against prejudice, which the current two studies examine in terms of negative attitudes toward obese people. Participants (total N = 501) were randomly assigned to complete a questionnaire assessing attitudes toward an obese or nonobese person and a self‐theory questionnaire also assessed ideas about body weight. People with a growth mindset, and not fixed mindset, were more likely to have negative attitudes toward obese individuals, pointing to a potential downside of growth mindset in the obesity domain.     

Does Religiosity Predict Attitudes Toward Psychotherapy?

Several studies have demonstrated that Jewish people have positive attitudes toward psychotherapy. This study differentiates among Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jewish groups to test whether there are differences in the level of religiosity and practice among these different affiliations to Judaism and whether these differences may influence attitudes toward seeking psychological help. Despite significant differences in religiosity and level of practice, results indicate that positive attitudes are present among all affiliations. However, Orthodox Jews are significantly more likely to use their rabbi as a source for psychological counseling and perhaps as a conduit to professional treatment.     

Five personality factors and sex: preliminary findings

This study assessed the relationships between the Big Five personality domains, attitudes to sex, and three specific sexual behaviours. Respondents were 123 undergraduate students (51 males; 72 females). Men were found to score significantly higher than women on measures of sexual curiosity and sexual excitement, while women were higher on sexual satisfaction. Neuroticism (N) and Extraversion (E) appeared to be the most important predictors of attitudes to sex, although Conscientiousness (C) and Openness to experience (O) were also implicated. N, C, and Agreeableness (A) were implicated in sexual behaviours. Some suggestions for future research are made.     

Aging and prejudice: Diminished regulation of automatic race bias among older adults

A popular view holds that older adults are more prejudiced than younger adults because they grew up in a less tolerant era. An alternative view proposes that aging corresponds with stronger prejudice among older adults because they have reduced capacity to inhibit biased associations that come to mind automatically. To independently assess these possibilities, we modeled the processes underlying implicit racial attitudes in samples of teenagers through people in their nineties. Results indicated that older adults showed greater implicit bias because they were less able to regulate the automatic associations they possessed, not because of holding stronger associations in the first place. These findings suggest that age-related increases in racial biases, even those that are implicit, may be due to self-regulatory failure of older adults, rather than to cohort effects.     

Evidence for the underestimation of implicit in-group favoritism among low-status groups

We question the evidence and the reasoning underlying recent research suggesting that members of low-status groups often fail to show in-group favoritism at the implicit level. Specifically, we argue the predominant measure revealing this pattern of group attitudes (the IAT) is influenced by extrapersonal associations, just the sort of information that would lead low-status groups to appear not to prefer their in-group. In the research reported here, respondents from low-status groups (African-Americans in Study 1 and homosexual males in Study 2) exhibited no in-group favoritism on the standard IAT, replicating previous research. However, reliable in-group favoritism by members of both groups was revealed on a personalized IAT [Olson, M. A., & Fazio, R. H. (2004). Reducing the influence of extrapersonal associations on the Implicit Association Test: Personalizing the IAT. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86, 653-667] that reduces extrapersonal influences. We also rule out the possibility that differential error rates can account for the different patterns observed on the two versions of the IAT.     

Bias and regulation of bias in intergroup interactions: Implicit attitudes toward Muslims and interaction quality

Previous research suggests that automatically activated bias manifests itself in behavior that can jeopardize the quality of intergroup interactions. However, regulation of automatic associations has the potential to attenuate their influence on intergroup interaction. To test this possibility, 46 non-Muslim White participants interacted with a Muslim confederate and completed an implicit measure of attitudes toward Muslims. The Quadruple Process model [Sherman, J. W., Gawronski, B., Gonsalkorale, K., Hugenberg, K., Allen, T. J., & Groom, C. J. (2008). The self-regulation of automatic associations and behavioral impulses. Psychological Review, 115, 314-335] was applied to the implicit measure to estimate participants’ strength of negative associations with Muslims and their ability to overcome those negative associations. The confederate’s ratings of how much he liked the participants were predicted by an interaction between automatic negative associations and the ability to overcome them. Specifically, when the strength of participants’ negative associations with Muslims was low, participants’ level of overcoming bias was unrelated to the confederate’s ratings. In contrast, the ability to regulate automatic negative associations predicted greater liking when those associations were strong.     

Fluid intelligence is independently associated with all-cause mortality over 17 years in an elderly community sample: An investigation of potential mechanisms

The long-term relationship between lower intelligence and mortality risk in later life is well established, even when controlling for a range of health and sociodemographic measures. However, there is some evidence for differential effects in various domains of cognitive performance. Specifically, tests of fluid intelligence may have a stronger association with mortality than do tests of crystallized intelligence. The present study examines the relationship between intelligence and mortality in a sample of 896 Australian community-dwelling males and females, aged 70–97 at recruitment and followed for up to 17 years. There were 687 deaths during the follow-up period. Cox proportional hazard regression models examined whether the relationship between intelligence and mortality might be mediated by socioeconomic status, by health behaviors, by health status, or a combination of these. Higher fluid intelligence — as measured by the Symbol–Letter Modalities Test — was strongly associated with lower mortality rates (Hazard ratio = 0.80; 95% confidence interval = 0.72–0.88), even after accounting for any combination of potential mediators and confounders. A significant association between crystallized intelligence, as measured by the National Adult Reading Test, and mortality (HR = 0.89; 95% CI = 0.80–0.99) was attenuated by the inclusion of socioeconomic, health status measures, and health behavior measures and when deaths from the first four years of the study were excluded. The findings show little support for the hypothesized mechanisms of the intelligence–mortality relationship.     

The combined influence of affective, continuance and normative commitment on employee withdrawal

In a sample of 288 hospital nurses, commitment profiles were compared to turnover intentions, job search behavior, work withdrawal (absenteeism and lateness) and job stress. Five empirically-derived commitment profiles emerged: highly committed, affective-normative dominant, continuance-normative dominant, continuance dominant, and uncommitted. Results indicated that the most positive work outcomes were associated with the affective-normative dominant profile which included lower turnover intentions and lower levels of psychological stress. There were no differences among the commitment groups for lateness, and unexpectedly, the continuance-normative dominant group had the lowest levels of absenteeism. It was suggested that future research focus on the combined influence of commitment on work outcomes.     

Career decision making: The limits of rationality and the abundance of non-conscious processes

The terms of work have changed, with multiple transitions now characterizing the arc of a typical career. This article examines an ongoing shift in the area of vocational decision making, as it moves from a place where “it’s all about the match” to one closer to “it’s all about adapting to change”. We review literatures on judgment and decision making, 2-system models of decisional thought, the neuroanatomy of decision making, and the role of non-conscious processes in decision making. Acknowledging the limits of rationality, and the abundance of non-conscious processes in decision making, obliges us to act in ways that mitigate the inherent difficulties to which those processes make us vulnerable. We conclude that both rational and intuitive processes seem dialectically intertwined in effective decision making, and we offer a trilateral model of career decision making that includes rational and intuitive mechanisms, both of which are funded and kept in check by occupational engagement.