Matching choices to avoid offending stigmatized group members

People (selectors) sometimes make choices both for themselves and for others (recipients). We propose that selectors worry about offending recipients with their choices when recipients are stigmatized group members and options in a choice set differ along a stigma-relevant dimension. Accordingly, selectors are more likely to make the same choices for themselves and stigmatized group member recipients than non-stigmatized group member recipients. We conducted eight studies to study this hypothesis in different choice contexts (food, music, games, books) and with recipients from different stigmatized groups (the obese, Black-Americans, the elderly, students at lower-status schools). We use three different approaches to show that this effect is driven by people’s desire to avoid offending stigmatized group members with their choices. Thus, although prior research shows that people often want to avoid being associated with dissociative groups, such as stigmatized groups, we demonstrate that people make the same choices for self and stigmatized other to minimize offense.     

Getting closer: Synchronous interpersonal multisensory stimulation increases closeness and attraction toward an opposite-sex other in female participants

Experiencing tactile facial stimulation while seeing synchronous stimulations delivered to another’s face induces enfacement, i.e. the subjective experience of ownership over the other's face. The synchronous Interpersonal Multisensory Stimulation (IMS) procedure leading to enfacement induces changes beyond the bodily sense of self, such as increased feeling of closeness between self and other. However, evidence for such an influence of IMS on higher-level self-other representations remains limited. Moreover, research has been restricted to settings involving a same-sex other. The current study tested, in female participants, whether IMS could promote social closeness and attraction toward an opposite-sex other. Across two experiments, enfacement with an opposite-sex face was successfully obtained. Synchronous (vs. asynchronous) IMS yielded greater closeness with the other and induced greater Liking and Attraction scores. These novel findings add further evidence to the existence of a link between body representation and social cognition. Implications for interpersonal attraction are discussed.     

The role of group identification in the well-being of Spaniards with gypsy ethnicity

ABSTRACT

Objective: To describe the role of sex, age, educational level and psychosocial group-identification factors in well-being and satisfaction with life. Method: 229 Spanish Gypsies completed a survey of demographic data, psychological well-being, life satisfaction, ethnic identity and the individual’s inclusion of self within the ingroup. Results: (a) only level of studies is related to satisfaction with life; (b) participants with higher scores in ethnic identity reported more well-being and more life satisfaction; and (c) assessment of ethnic belonging affects more areas of well-being than does perception of closeness to the ingroup. Conclusion: objective conditions of deprivation are not related to well-being as reported by the participants; it is important to study how Spanish Gypsies value and perceive their ethnicity in order to predict their well-being and satisfaction with life.     

汉字部件与英文字母相容性的数学模型──一种群体模板相容性的数学表达

该文运用相容性研究中的维度重叠模型以及Ｆｏｒｋ－Ｊｏｉｎ网络模型，得出群体模板的相容性定义与Ｓ－Ｒ相容性的元素匹配之间的关系式，详细讨论了汉字编码输入法研究中的学习遍数、反应时与汉字部件－英文字母相容性的关系，理论模拟与实验结果所显示的趋势符合。     

Why are moderators of self-other agreement difficult to establish?

Agreement between the self and other rated personality profiles was studied in two samples involving 11,096 speakers of two languages, Dutch and Estonian, who completed two different personality questionnaires, the NEO-PI-3 and HEXACO-PI-R. An outstanding agreement was achieved in the most occasions: in only 4–6% of dyadic pairs was the correlation between two randomly paired profiles higher than the actually observed correlation between true pairs. As in previous studies, we found that age and sex of participants and length of acquaintance had no significant effect on the level of self-other agreement. However, intimate knowledge helped married and unmarried couples in both samples be more accurate in their personality judgments; family members, in turn, had knowledge that made them more accurate than two people who were just acquaintances or friends. We believe that these outcomes can be explained by the contention that the judgment of another’s personality is a relatively simple task, which is accomplishable for most people most of the time. In other words, because judging another person’s personality is an easy task, we are not able to determine “good targets,” “good judges,” or “good traits.” Perhaps it is only “good information” which determines the closeness of the target-judge relationship, and which has a small but reliable impact on the level of self-other agreement. This explains why it is so difficult to find individual differences in the ability to judge another person’s personality.