Urban residents' subtle prejudice towards rural‐to‐urban migrants in China: The role of socioeconomic status and adaptation styles

The household registration system (Hukou) implemented by the Chinese government divides the Chinese society into two groups: urban residents and rural residents. Since the 1980s, millions of rural residents have migrated to cities without official permission. In this paper, we investigate urban residents' subtle prejudice towards rural‐to‐urban migrants. Specifically, the impacts of urban residents' socioeconomic status (SES) and their perception of migrants' adaptation styles are examined. A sample including 457 Chinese urban residents is taken from four cities in China. Educational and occupational levels are used to indicate urban residents' SES. Four adaptation styles (integration, assimilation, separation and marginalization) are manipulated by using vignettes. The results show that SES has a negative impact on urban residents' subtle prejudice. This link is further moderated by urban residents' perceptions of migrants' adaptations: the negative effect of SES on subtle prejudice holds only under a perception of integration or assimilation and disappears under a perception of separation or marginalization. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rebuild or Relocate? Resilience and Postdisaster Decision‐Making After Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy struck the east coast of the United States on October 29, 2012, devastating communities in its path. In the aftermath, New York implemented a home buyout program designed to facilitate the permanent relocation of residents out of areas considered to be at risk for future hazards. While home buyout programs are becoming popular as policy tools for disaster mitigation, little is known about what factors influence homeowners to participate in or reject these programs. This study used mixed methods to assess the relationship between community resilience and the relocation decision in two heavily damaged communities in which the majority of residents made different decisions regarding whether or not to pursue a buyout. The sample was composed of residents from Oakwood Beach and Rockaway Park, both working‐class communities in New York City, who participated via a community survey (N = 133) and/or in‐depth interviews (N = 28). Results suggested that community resilience moderated the relationship between community of residence and the buyout decision, leading to opposite responses on the buyout decision. Contextual community factors, including the history of natural disasters, local cultural norms, and sense of place, were instrumental in explaining these different responses. Implications for disaster policy are discussed.     

THE “GHOSTS” OF IRAS PAST AND THE CHANGING CULTURAL CONTEXT OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE

Beginning with our cosmic ancestors and the 1950s ancestors of Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS, the “Ghosts”), this essay highlights the wider, post‐World War II cultural context, including other science and religion organizations, in which IRAS was formed. It then considers eight challenges from today's context. From the context of science there are (1) the challenge of scale that leads us to question our place in the scheme of things and can lead to a challenge to morale concerning whether we make any difference; (2) the challenge of human variability that leads to the question whether there is a single human moral nature; and (3) the challenge of detailed explanation that leads to the question of what is the task of theology in relation to detailed scientific explanation. From the religion context there are (4) the challenge of objectivity—studying religion without practicing religion; and (5) the challenge of pluralism and the variety of cultural and religious perspectives. From the context of the growing and diverse science‐and‐religion enterprise, considered from the perspective of IRAS developed in the first part of this essay, there are the challenges of (6) apologetics and (7) intellectualization. Finally, from the context of our growing, worldwide consumerist culture that is contributing to the radical alteration of the planetary environment, leading to much suffering, there is (8) the challenge of becoming more motivated to act for the long‐term global good.     

Managing information overload in virtual teams: Effects of a structured online team adaptation on cognition and performance

Information overload (IO) indicates the exchange of too much low-quality information in virtual teams. When being overloaded with information, teams need to adapt and to change communication behaviour. This study introduces and tests a structured online team adaptation (STROTA) procedure that enables virtual teams to reduce IO by improving their team mental model quality. STROTA, built from team adaptation models, is a moderated intervention consisting of three stages: (1) individual situation awareness, (2) team situation awareness, and (3) plan formulation. STROTA was tested in the context of an experimental problem-solving task. Participants (N = 363) worked in virtual teams of three and were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions: no STROTA, incomplete STROTA (step 1, steps 1–2), and complete STROTA (steps 1–2–3). We found teams that followed a complete STROTA procedure experienced lessened IO over time. Teams with complete STROTA showed the largest development of TMM immediately after STROTA. Finally, multilevel mediation analyses showed that TMM are mediators that explain the influence of STROTA on IO.     

Conflict adaptation is reflected by response interference

The conflict monitoring theory suggests that the occurrence of conflict in previous trials leads to a reduction in interference in current trials through conflict adaption. The present study included two experiments that used a colour-based flanker task and a Stroop task in combination with a 2:1 stimulus-to-response mapping manipulation and a crossing of transition types (Previous trial type×Current trial type) with stimuli to investigate conflict adaption in relation to stimulus and response interference. The results demonstrate that response interference, but not stimulus interference, was reduced following both stimuli and response conflicts in previous trials. In contrast to some recent evidence, we conclude that conflict adaptation is limited to response interference.     

Cognitive Control in the Face of Fear: Reduced Cognitive-Emotional Flexibility in Women with a History of Child Abuse

Child abuse can negatively affect neurobiological systems involved in regulating emotions. Adults who were maltreated as children show diminished capacity to flexibly integrate the prefrontal and limbic circuits underlying emotion regulation. Using a facial identification Stroop task with nonemotional and emotional stimuli, we found that women who reported more childhood abuse (N = 44) were no different from women reporting less childhood abuse (N = 45) on nonemotional conflict adaptation, but were significantly less able to adapt to emotional conflict. Women who reported more abuse were especially impaired in adapting to emotional conflict when incongruent stimuli involved a fearful face. These results help characterize the relation between cognitive control and emotion regulation and highlight the far-reaching effects of childhood abuse on cognitive-emotional flexibility.     

Effects of Cortical Lesions upon the Onset of Hoarding in Rats

Psychologists agree that play is an essential ingredient in a child's development. The present investigation evaluated the effects of an intensive period of dramatic play upon the cognitive structures of young children (N = 12 boys and girls, ages 3 to 5 years) using repertory grids to extract their systems of personal constructs. The period of dramatic play produced substantial and sustained improvements in the numbers of constructs, which confirms the importance of play in cognitive growth. The findings are also taken to support the value of drama therapy in bringing about cognitive change in the mentally ill.     

Development of Force Adaptation During Childhood

Humans learn to make reaching movements in novel dynamic environments by acquiring an internal motor model of their limb dynamics. Here, the authors investigated how 4- to 11-year-old children (N = 39) and adults (N = 7) adapted to changes in arm dynamics, and they examined whether those data support the view that the human brain acquires inverse dynamics models (IDM) during development. While external damping forces were applied, the children learned to perform goal-directed forearm flexion movements. After changes in damping, all children showed kinematic aftereffects indicative of a neural controller that still attempted to compensate the no longer existing damping force. With increasing age, the number of trials toward complete adaptation decreased. When damping was present, forearm paths were most perturbed and most variable in the youngest children but were improved in the older children. The findings indicate that the neural representations of limb dynamics are less precise in children and less stable in time than those of adults. Such controller instability might be a primary cause of the high kinematic variability observed in many motor tasks during childhood. Finally, the young children were not able to update those models at the same rate as the older children, who, in turn, adapted more slowly than adults. In conclusion, the ability to adapt to unknown forces is a developmental achievement. The present results are consistent with the view that the acquisition and modification of internal models of the limb dynamics form the basis of that adaptive process.     

The Effects of Initial Habit Strength Differences Upon Performance in a Coaction Situation

The present investigation examined the effects of initial habit strength differences upon performance in a coaction situation. During a training session, a habit-strength hierarchy was developed in each of three groups through the establishment of a differential response expectancy for each of four alternative responses. In a subsequent test session, both performance and consistency of performance were affected by the pretraining on the correct habit. However, there was no statistical support for the hypothesis that coaction would interact with the habit-strength condition resulting in an improvement in the coaction/habit-correct group and a decrement in the coaction/habit-incorrect group. Similarly, no differences were found between the coaction and alone conditions.