Color charts, esthetics, and subjective randomness

Color charts, or grids of evenly spaced multicolored dots or squares, appear in the work of modern artists and designers. Often the artist/designer distributes the many colors in a way that could be described as "random," that is, without an obvious pattern. We conduct a statistical analysis of 125 "random-looking" art and design color charts and show that they differ significantly from truly random color charts in the average distance between adjacent colors. We argue that this attribute generalizes results in subjective randomness in a black/white setting and gives further evidence supporting a connection between subjective randomness and what is esthetically pleasing.     

Liking and identifying emotionally expressive music: age and gender differences

Adults and children 5, 8, and 11 years of age listened to short excerpts of unfamiliar music that sounded happy, scary, peaceful, or sad. Listeners initially rated how much they liked each excerpt. They subsequently made a forced-choice judgment about the emotion that each excerpt conveyed. Identification accuracy was higher for young girls than for young boys, but both genders reached adult-like levels by age 11. High-arousal emotions (happiness and fear) were better identified than low-arousal emotions (peacefulness and sadness), and this advantage was exaggerated among younger children. Whereas children of all ages preferred excerpts depicting high-arousal emotions, adults favored excerpts depicting positive emotions (happiness and peacefulness). A preference for positive emotions over negative emotions was also evident among females of all ages. As identification accuracy improved, liking for positively valenced music increased among 5- and 8-year-olds but decreased among 11-year-olds.     

Happy to See Me,Aren’t You,Sally? Signal Detection Analysis of Emotion Detection in Briefly Presented Male and Female Faces

Using signal detection methods, possible effects of emotion type (happy, angry), gender of the stimulus face, and gender of the participant on the detection and response bias of emotion in briefly presented faces were investigated. Fifty-seven participants (28 men, 29 women) viewed 90 briefly presented faces (30 happy, 30 angry, and 30 neutral, each with 15 male and 15 female faces) answering yes if the face was perceived as emotional and no if it was not perceived as emotional. Sensitivity [d', z(hit rate) minus z(false alarm rate)] and response bias (β, likelihood ratio of "signal plus noise" vs. "noise") were measured for each face combination for each presentation time (6.25, 12.50, 18.75, 25.00, 31.25 ms). The d' values were higher for happy than for angry faces and higher for angry-male than for angry-female faces, and there were no effects of gender-of-participant. Results also suggest a greater tendency for participants to judge happy-female faces as emotional, as shown by lower β values for these faces as compared to the other emotion-gender combinations. This happy-female response bias suggests, at least, a partial explanation to happy-superiority effects in studies where performance is only measured as percent correct responses, and, in general, that women are expected to be happy.     

Time perception in response to ashamed faces in children and adults

The present study investigated the effect of the perception of faces expressing shame on time perception in children aged 5 and 8 years, as well as in adults, as a function of their ability to recognize this emotional expression. The participants' ability to recognize the expression of shame among faces expressing different emotions was tested. They were then asked to perform a temporal bisection task involving both neutral and ashamed faces. The results showed that, from the age of 8 years, the participants who recognized the facial expressions of shame underestimated their presentation time compared to that of neutral faces. In contrast, no time distortion was observed in the children who did not recognize the ashamed faces or in those younger children who did recognize them. The results are discussed in terms of self-conscious emotions which develop to involve an attentional mechanism.     

Validation of the Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ-R) in a sample of persons recovering from myocardial infarction--the Swedish version

When people's health is threatened, they generally develop illness perceptions to make sense of their illness. The Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ-R), developed by Moss-Morris et al (2002), has been widely used in many countries to measure such representations. However, since studies in this crucial research area are lacking in Sweden a Swedish version of IPQ-R was validated with a focus on the seven subscales: timeline acute/chronic, timeline cyclical, consequences, personal control, treatment control, illness coherence and emotional representations. Using confirmatory factor analysis, the aim of the present study was to validate the internal structure of the Swedish version in a sample of 202 persons (144 men and 58 women) who had been diagnosed with myocardial infarction four months earlier. Additionally, inter-correlations among the seven subscales and external concurrent validity were also investigated. The results of confirmatory factor analysis revealed that, in line with the English version of the IPQ-R, the specified seven-factor model had a satisfactory fit. One item was however not considered reliable and was therefore excluded from the instrument. The internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha coefficients) and the inter-factor correlations were relatively similar to those reported in the validation study of the original English IPQ-R. In tests of concurrent validity, the seven IPQ-R subscales were, as hypothesized, mainly associated with external variables. To conclude, the Swedish version of the IPQ-R's seven dimensions, with one item removed, (total 37 items) was found to be a reliable and valid measure of illness perception.     

Multiple group membership influences face-recognition: Recall and neurological evidence

The limited face-recognition research involving targets categorizable on multiple dimensions has provided contradictory evidence as to how partial-ingroup members are processed and recognized. This research demonstrates that partial-ingroup members are recognized in a manner distinct from double-ingroup and double-outgroup targets. Specifically, when race and university-affiliation are crossed, university-affiliation does not influence recognition for own-race targets, but does for other-race targets, in that other-race/own-university targets are recalled more accurately than other-race/other-university targets. The neurological mechanisms involved in the effect are explored through the inclusion of electroencephalography.     

I know you're me, but who am I? Perspective taking and seeing the other in the self

Research examining the consequences of perspective-taking on cognition suggests that through perceiver–target overlap, perspective-taking can lead to greater valuing of targets, greater helping of targets, and a reduction in stereotyping of targets and the groups to which they belong. Research has also begun to focus more closely on the ways perceivers come to think and act like targets. This research, however evocative, is not conclusive. The current studies set out to provide firmer support. Reported here, two studies found that perspective-taking influences perceiver–target overlap, which mediates changes in self-concept (ratings of the self on researcher-related attributes and beliefs after taking the perspective of a researcher in Study 1 and attitudes toward African Americans after taking the perspective of a racist in Study 2). In the same studies, overlap simultaneously mediated valuing of the targets (target ratings on positive attributes in Study 1 and liking for the target in Study 2).     

When two become one: Temporally dynamic integration of the face and voice

In everyday interactions with others, people have to deal with the sight of a face and sound of a voice at the same time. How the perceptual system brings this information together over hundreds of milliseconds to perceive others remains unclear. In 2 studies, we investigated how facial and vocal cues are integrated during real-time social categorization by recording participants' hand movements (via the streaming x, y coordinates of the computer mouse) en route to “male” and “female” responses on the screen. Participants were presented with male and female faces that were accompanied by a same-sex voice morphed to be either sex-typical (e.g., masculinized male voice) or sex-atypical (i.e., feminized male voice). Before settling into ultimate sex categorizations of the face, the simultaneous processing of a sex-atypical voice led the hand to be continuously attracted to the opposite sex-category response across construal. This is evidence that ongoing results from voice perception continuously influence face perception across processing. Thus, social categorization involves dynamic updates of gradual integration of the face and voice.     

Recognizing creative leadership: Can creative idea expression negatively relate to perceptions of leadership potential?

Drawing on and extending prototype theories of creativity and leadership, we theorize that the expression of creative ideas may diminish judgments of leadership potential unless the charismatic leadership prototype is activated in the minds of social perceivers. Study 1 shows that creative idea expression is negatively related to perceptions of leadership potential in a sample of employees working in jobs that required creative problem solving. Study 2 shows that participants randomly instructed to express creative solutions during an interaction are viewed as having lower leadership potential. A third scenario study replicated this finding showing that participants attributed less leadership potential to targets expressing creative ideas, except when the “charismatic” leader prototype was activated. In sum, we show that the negative association between expressing creative ideas and leadership potential is robust and underscores an important but previously unidentified bias against selecting effective leaders.