More than words: Judgments of politicians and the role of different communication channels

We collected short video clips of speakers and created five types of stimuli: (1) the original videos, (2) the audio tracks only, (3) single pictures only, (4) speech content, and (5) stick-figure animations displaying body motion. Participants rated these stimuli on a brief Big Five personality inventory. We then used ratings of the incomplete information conditions to predict ratings of the original video condition. Impressions in the audio track condition were strong predictors throughout all trait ratings. However, other cues were also non-negligible contributors to an overall impression. People even make sense of parsimonious cues, e.g., an animated stick-figure. Thus, presenters on a public stage are not only judged by what they say but also by how they move.     

Instructed Hand Movements Affect Students’ Learning of an Abstract Concept From Video

Producing content-related gestures has been found to impact students’ learning, whether such gestures are spontaneously generated by the learner in the course of problem-solving, or participants are instructed to pose based on experimenter instructions during problem-solving and word learning. Few studies, however, have investigated the effect of (a) performing instructed gestures while learning concepts or (b) producing gestures without there being an implied connection between the gestures and the concepts being learned. The two studies reported here investigate the impact of instructed hand movements on students’ subsequent understanding of a concept. Students were asked to watch an instructional video—focused on the concept of statistical model—three times. Two experimental groups were given a secondary task to perform while watching the video, which involved moving their hands to mimic the placement and orientation of red rectangular bars overlaid on the video. Students were told that the focus of the study was multitasking, and that the instructed hand movements were unrelated to the material being learned. In the content-match group the placement of the hands reinforced the concept being explained, and in the content-mismatch group it did not. A control group was not asked to perform a secondary task. In both studies, findings indicate that students in the content-match group performed better on the posttest, and showed less variation in performance, than did students in the content-mismatch group, with control students falling in between. Instructed hand movement—even when presented as an unrelated, secondary task—can affect students’ learning of a complex concept.     

An attribution-emotion-action interpretation of the “evil eye” in everyday conflict situations

An attribution-emotion-action model was used to examine individuals’ willingness to seek for another person's face in conflict situations. To induce interpersonal conflict and frustration, participants were engaged in the ultimatum bargaining game (UBG) where they received predetermined offers. A simple UBG consists of two players, a Proposer and a Responder, who must decide how to divide a resource. Our findings confirm our predictions in that during the interpersonal conflict (i.e., betraying the norm of equality in the UBG), participants made more controllable based attributions, felt more frustrated (less sympathetic), and more likely requested to view the Proposer's photograph than when there is no conflict. Stated differently, in conflict situations, the likelihood of seeking another person's face increases when controllable attributions are made and when frustration is felt.     

Aging in cognitive control of social processing: evidence from the attention network test

ABSTRACT

Aging seems to be associated with impairment of attentional network functioning. It is not known whether social information can modulate this age-related decline. We used three variants of Attention Network test to examine the age-related decline of attentional effects in response to stimuli with and without social-cognitive content. Three groups of younger, middle-aged, and older participants performed the ANT, using fish, drawings, or photographs of faces looking to the left or right as target and flanker stimuli. The results showed that both executive attention and alerting were more resistant to the age-related decline with social stimuli and that orienting attention scores showed a progressive increase with age in the presence of this kind of stimuli. These findings underline the importance of social information in modulating and contrasting the age-related decline and support the status of human faces as a special class of visual stimuli for the human attentional systems.     

单字词和复合词预视加工的差异性研究：词边界信息无影响

本实验采用眼动轨迹记录法并结合边界范式（Rayner, 1975），操纵单字词和双字复合词的首字为一致预视或假字预视，考察单字词和复合词预视加工的差异性。另外，通过在中文句子中加入词边界信息——词间阴影，以考察词间阴影对单字词和复合词预视加工的影响。实验结果表明，复合词的预视效应大于单字词，并且词间阴影对单字词和复合词的预视加工均没有显著影响。因此，与印欧语系相比，中文阅读中更大更强的预视效应需从更深层次的语言和认知因素进行探讨。该结果更倾向于支持词切分和词汇识别模型。     

Test-dependent expression of behavioral syndromes: A study of aggressiveness,activity, and stress of chub

Aggressiveness has been one of the behavioral traits most examined with various standard testing methods. We used two distinct methods (the mirror and the real opponent tests) to evaluate individual aggression and relate it to the activity and individual stress of chub (Squalius cephalus L.). Three hypotheses were formulated and tested: (a) there is a significant positive relationship between the aggressiveness of individuals measured with the mirror and the real opponent tests, indicating their convergent validity; (b) the irregularities in response to the aggressiveness and activity tests lead to the context-specific expression of the behavioral syndromes; and (c) there is a significant positive relationship between the stress induced in individuals by both tests of aggressiveness, demonstrating individually consistent stress-coping strategies. The first and the second hypothesis were confirmed, while the third hypothesis was rejected. Our results suggest that particular tests of aggressiveness could act as a situation with high strength, leaving little variation between individual responses. Thus, we propose that for the proper interpretation of various studies using different tests to study identical behavioral traits, it is important to consider the convergent validity of not only the tested behavioral traits but also the individual stress responses. The chub also showed stress relieve through aggressiveness, suggesting the species as a prospective animal model to the study interaction between the stress and the aggressiveness. A detailed aggression ethogram of chub was provided to facilitate the use of this specie in future studies.     

Undone Science and Counter-Expertise: Fighting for Justice in an Argentine Community Contaminated by Pesticides

ABSTRACT

STS and social movement scholars have shown the importance of ‘getting undone science done’ to advance the goals of social movements fighting environmental health injustice. The production and mobilization of counter-expertise, meaning the reliance on expertise, broadly construed, to contest regulatory decisions based on scientific knowledge, must be further analyzed by differentiating among types of expertise and strategies to mobilize them. In social mobilization against the unrestricted use of pesticides in Argentina, the affected community in Ituzaingó Anexo developed three types of expertise. The community first drew upon its own local knowledge of cases of illness and, as lay people, produced the first epidemiological map of this area. Then, they enrolled scientists and NGOs as allies to jointly learn about pesticide contamination as an explanation for illness. The enlisted scientists produced new knowledge by conducting environmental and epidemiological studies. Finally, sympathetic public health authorities, legal experts, and a district attorney designed a successful legal strategy to stop fumigations in that area and enforce local regulations. The case confirms the importance of producing undone science, and shows that its effectiveness can be explained by intertwined strategies deployed by a triad of lay/local, scientific, and legal experts to overcome the expertise barrier.     

An integrative framework on the impact of allies: How identity-based needs influence intergroup solidarity and social movements

What impact do advantaged group allies have within social movements? Although solidarity between advantaged and disadvantaged group members is often encouraged to achieve long-term social change, allies run the risk of being ineffective or counterproductive, therefore making it important to shift our focus towards understanding the impact of allies. We propose an integrative theoretical framework describing the positive and negative impact of allies based on their distinct identity-based needs: advantaged group members’ need for moral acceptance and disadvantaged group members’ need for empowerment and respect. By consolidating extant literature and identifying gaps in prior research, we propose a set of hypotheses concerning (a) tensions that arise within intergroup solidarity efforts for social change between advantaged group allies and disadvantaged group members, and (b) the role of allies in influencing broader public opinion to advance the psychology of social change.