Use of social knowledge in tacit coordination: Social focal points

Social focal point theory predicts that, in matching, people search for a shared characteristic that makes one decision option salient whereas, in mismatching, they search for complementary characteristics that make different options salient for each of the coordinating parties. In two studies, participants learned about a partner’s activity preferences and then tried to either match or mismatch choices on a series of pictures that were remotely associated with one of these preferences. Being the same on a relevant preference facilitated matching whereas being different facilitated mismatching. In the second study, participants also used overall perceived similarity to supplement specific trait information. Coordination performance also affected interpersonal impressions: successful matching increased interpersonal attraction whereas successful mismatching did not. These downstream effects were obtained even when participants had considerable prior social information about their partners. Tacit coordination is compared with mimicry and synchrony, and the implications for coordinated team performance are discussed.     

“Neighborhood Matters”: Assessment of Neighborhood Social Processes

Neighborhoods are important contexts for understanding development and behavior, but cost and difficulty have challenged attempts to develop measures of neighborhood social processes at the neighborhood level. This article reports the development, reliability, and validity of Neighborhood Matters, a collection of instruments assessing three aspects of neighborhood social processes, namely, norms (five subscales), informal social control (six subscales and total scale), social connection (two subscales), as well as individual scales for assessing neighborhood change, neighborhood resources, and neighborhood problems. Six hundred six residents of Chicago, chosen at random from 30 neighborhoods (defined by US Census tracts), completed the measures. Neighborhoods were selected randomly from pools that balanced poverty and predominant (African‐American vs. Latino Hispanic) ethnicity. Within each neighborhood 20 individuals were selected at random, balanced by age (18–24 vs. 30+) and gender. Scaling and item analysis permitted reduction of the number of items in each scale. All subscales had individual‐level internal consistency in excess of .7. Generalizability theory analysis using random effects regression models found significant shared variance at the neighborhood level for three norms subscales, four informal social control subscales, both social connection subscales, and the neighborhood change, resources and problems scales. Validity analyses found significant associations between neighborhood‐level scores on multiple Neighborhood Matters scales and neighborhood levels of violent, property, and drug‐related crime. Discussion focuses on potential applications of the Neighborhood Matters scales in community research.     

The Role of Social Toxicity in Responses to a Slowly-Evolving Environmental Disaster: The Case of Amphibole Asbestos Exposure in Libby,Montana, USA

Experiencing a disaster has significant negative effects on psychological adjustment. Case study accounts point to two consistent trends in slowly-evolving environmental disasters: (a) patterns of negative social dynamics, and (b) relatively worse psychological outcomes than in natural disasters. Researchers have begun to explicitly postulate that the social consequences of slowly-evolving environmental disasters (e.g., community conflict) have their own effects on victims’ psychological outcomes. This study tested a model of the relationship between those social consequences and psychological adjustment of victims of a slowly-evolving environmental disaster, specifically those whose health has been compromised by the amphibole asbestos disaster in Libby, MT. Results indicate that experiencing greater community conflict about the disaster was associated with greater family conflict about the disaster which, in turn, was associated with greater social constraints on talking with others about their disease, both directly and indirectly through experiencing stigmatization. Experiencing greater social constraints was associated with worse psychological adjustment, both directly and indirectly through failed social support. Findings have implications for understanding pathways by which social responses create negative effects on mental health in slowly-evolving environmental disasters. These pathways suggest points for prevention and response (e.g., social support, stigmatization of victims) for communities experiencing slowly-evolving environmental disasters.     

Well-Being and Social Justice Among Moroccan Migrants in Southern Spain

The decision to migrate is normally based on expectations of improving one’s actual living conditions and therefore, one’s well-being. However, these expectations are not usually met in receiving contexts that relegate newcomers to lower power positions. From a liberating community psychology approach, this study aims to develop a predictive model of the well-being of Moroccan migrants living in southern Spain. Data were collected from a survey sample of 633 migrants (the average age was 31.9 years and 51.8 % were women) from 20 territorial units of Andalusia. Through a process of multilevel regression analysis, this study reveals that the well-being of the Moroccan community is closely determined by the following: (a) the level of social justice in the receiving context (openness to diversity of receiving communities, cultural sensitivity of community services, and residential integration); and (b) the individual strengths of the population (use of active coping strategies, satisfaction with the receiving context, and temporal stability in the new environment). These results empirically support the impact that different ecological levels of analysis have on well-being. Major theoretical contributions of the model and useful suggestions for improving migrant well-being are discussed.     

Ethnography in Community Psychology: Promises and Tensions

Community psychology recognizes the need for research methods that illuminate context, culture, diversity, and process. One such method, ethnography, has crossed into multiple disciplines from anthropology, and indeed, community psychologists are becoming community ethnographers. Ethnographic work stands at the intersection of bridging universal questions with the particularities of people and groups bounded in time, geographic location, and social location. Ethnography is thus historical and deeply contextual, enabling a rich, in-depth understanding of communities that is aligned with the values and goals of community psychology. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the potential of ethnography for community psychology and to encourage its use within the field as a method to capture culture and context, to document process, and to reveal how social change and action occur within and through communities. We discuss the method of ethnography, draw connections to community psychology values and goals, and identify tensions from our experiences doing ethnography. Overall, we assert that ethnography is a method that resonates with community psychology and present this paper as a resource for those interested in using this method in their research or community activism.     

The fight against prejudice in older adults: perspective taking effectiveness

Inhibition of prejudice appears to be more problematic for older adults, hence the need to develop programs to reduce intergroup bias at later stages in life. Perspective taking was analyzed in this study, as one of various cognitive strategies that have been shown to reduce such bias. Data on a sample of 63 Spanish participants with a mean age of 64.1 years was gathered after an intervention based on mental imagery, aimed at reducing explicit prejudice. A wide array of variables was measured (personality traits, values, empathy, and attribution) which may moderate effectiveness in perspective taking. Despite no main effect was found, effects due to interaction of perspective taking found in OLS regression analysis revealed that perspective taking based intervention was effective for some older adults, particularly those who had low scores on agreeableness, empathy, and universalism, and high scores on conformity. The conclusions suggest that perspective taking might be successfully applied to some profiles of older people albeit it is not as strong and transferable strategy as it used to be thought.     

Beside the point: Mothers’ head nodding and shaking gestures during parent–child play

Understanding the context for children's social learning and language acquisition requires consideration of caregivers’ multi-modal (speech, gesture) messages. Though young children can interpret both manual and head gestures, little research has examined the communicative input that children receive via parents’ head gestures. We longitudinally examined the frequency and communicative functions of mothers’ head nodding and head shaking gestures during laboratory play sessions for 32 mother–child dyads, when the children were 14, 20, and 30 months of age. The majority of mothers produced head nods more frequently than head shakes. Both gestures contributed to mothers’ verbal attempts at behavior regulation and dialog. Mothers’ head nods primarily conveyed agreement with, and attentiveness to, children's utterances, and accompanied affirmative statements and yes/no questions. Mothers’ head shakes primarily conveyed prohibitions and statements with negations. Changes over time appeared to reflect corresponding developmental changes in social and communicative dimensions of caregiver–child interaction. Directions for future research are discussed regarding the role of head gesture input in socialization and in supporting language development.     

Who Belongs to Me? Social Relationship and Personality Characteristics in the Transition to Young Adulthood

Not much is known about how social network characteristics change in the transition out of school and what role Big Five personality plays in this context. The aim of this paper was twofold. First, we explored changes in social network and relationship characteristics across the transition out of secondary school. Second, we examined within‐person and between‐person effects of personality on these social network changes. Results based on a series of multilevel models to a longitudinal sample of 2287 young adults revealed four main findings. First, social networks increased in size, and this increase was mainly due to a larger number of nonkin. Stable social networks during the transition consisted mainly of family ties but were generally characterized by high closeness. Second, extraversion and openness consistently predicted network size, whereas agreeableness predicted network overlap. Third, increases in emotional closeness were found only for kin; closeness was generally lower for unstable relationships. Fourth, changes in emotional closeness were related to personality, particularly neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness for stable relationships; for unstable relationships, however, closeness was related to extraversion and openness. The article concludes by discussing the role of personality for social relationship development and the active moulding of social networks in young adulthood. Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Media representations of environmental issues: From scientific to political discourse

IntroductionThe media is considered to be a social agent that intervenes in the elaboration of social representations of environmental issues.ObjectiveThis research analyses media representations of environmental issues and how they have been constructed and transformed from the Rio Summit in 1992 to 2006. The authors adopted a constructionist approach based on the theory of social representations (Moscovici, 1961/1976) to describe the generation of information by the mass media.MethodA sample of 1039 news articles from two Spanish newspapers (La Vanguardia and El País) was analysed. The period of study ranged from the Rio Earth Summit to several years after the Johannesburg Summit (1992–2006), and the study analyses both the content and form of the environmental news.ResultsThis longitudinal study shows not only an increase in environmental news during the period of analysis but also an increased variety of themes addressed and represented. The results evidence significant urban problems in recent years. The environment has shifted from being associated with nature to being predominately associated with the urban environment.ConclusionThe results suggest that there has been a movement from scientific to political discourse and a change towards greater reflection and social recognition of the relevance of environmental issues.