幼儿在联合行动中共同表征能力的发展

为探究幼儿联合行动共同表征能力的发展,实验1通过比较186名3~5岁幼儿在相同任务和不同任务的表现,发现4岁和5岁幼儿在不同任务中的表现比相同任务差;实验2进一步验证幼儿在不同任务中较差的表现源于对自我和同伴的共同表征。结论：3岁幼儿无法在联合任务中同时表征自我和同伴,没有表现出明显的共同表征能力,4岁以上幼儿开始具备稳定的共同表征能力,能够在联合任务中同时表征自己和同伴,由此对自己的行为表现造成干扰。     

Internalized equality and protest against injustice: The role of disadvantaged group members’ self-respect in collective action tendencies

Recent research shows that self-respect (defined as seeing yourself as a person with equal rights) predicts assertive but not aggressive responses to injustice in interpersonal contexts. The present research focuses on the antecedents of self-respect and its consequences for collective action tendencies among members of disadvantaged groups. Across three studies (N = 227, N = 454, N = 131) using different contexts and samples (discrimination of Muslims in Germany; women regarding gender inequality), experiences with equality-based respect (defined as being treated as someone of equal worth) predicted self-respect. Moreover, across all three studies, self-respect predicted intentions for cooperative or normative but not support for hostile or non-normative protest. The results demonstrate the potential of self-respect for facilitating collective action in the face of injustice while still enabling positive intergroup relations.     

Standing up for whom? Targets’ different goals in the confrontation of discrimination

We challenge the common interpretation of targets’ immediate confrontation in reaction to discrimination as self-serving behavior and propose different underlying motivations for this phenomenon. In five online scenario studies (N_overall = 1,447), we demonstrate across different samples and contexts that targets indicate a distinct pursuit of the following self-reported confrontation goals: individual-benefit (e.g., perpetrator apologizes); group-benefit (e.g., prejudice reduction); and distancing (e.g., demonstrating that one is different from typical group members). Furthermore, meaningful associations of the pursuits of individual-benefitting goals and group-benefitting goals with group identification, disidentification, and further collective action intentions indicate that they represent different confrontation motivations: Individual-benefitting confrontation serves to cope with the individual mistreatment of discrimination, whereas group-benefitting confrontation represents a form of collective action. Distancing goals were associated with disidentification and—unexpectedly—group identification. Our results show that the phenomenon of confrontation in reaction to discrimination can be the result of different underlying psychological processes.     

Zero-sum beliefs shape advantaged allies’ support for collective action

Three studies (N₁ = 1,019; N₂ = 312; N₃ = 494) tested whether seeing intergroup relations as inherently antagonistic shaped advantaged social groups’ allyship intentions. More specifically, we tested whether endorsing zero-sum beliefs related to their willingness to support system-challenging and system-supporting collective action. Zero-sum beliefs were negatively correlated with system-challenging and positively correlated with system-supporting collective action intentions. Zero-sum beliefs were more common among advantaged than disadvantaged groups and translated into lower allyship intentions. Advantaged group members with higher levels of zero-sum beliefs were also more likely to experience anger and fear when considering the demographic racial shift in the United States. Increased fear was associated with greater support for system-supporting and lower support for system-challenging collective action. We find consistent evidence that advantaged group members see intergroup relations as a zero-sum game and that these beliefs are negatively related to their intentions to become allies.     

Making Americans Feel Great Again? Personal Significance Predicts Political Intentions of Losers and Winners of the 2016 U.S. Election

Reactions of losers and winners of political elections have important consequences for the political system during times of power transition. In four studies conducted immediately before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, we investigated how personal significance induced by success or failure of one's candidate is related to hostile versus benevolent intentions toward political adversaries. We found that the less significant supporters of Hillary Clinton and supporters of Donald Trump felt after an imagined (Study 1A) or actual (Study 2) electoral failure the more they were willing to engage in peaceful actions against the elected president and the less they were willing to accept the results of the elections. However, while significance gain due to an imagined or actual electoral success was related to more benevolent intentions among Clinton supporters (Study 1B), it was related to more hostile intentions among Trump supporters (Studies 1B, 2, and 3).     

Right-Wing Ideology as a Predictor of Collective Action: A Test Across Four Political Issue Domains

Despite a vast literature documenting motivations for collective action, the role of sociopolitical ideologies, including right-wing ideologies, in predicting collective action is underresearched. Literature on right-wing ideological beliefs suggests that those higher in right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) or social dominance orientation (SDO) hold specific attitudes or endorse specific policies, in part, because of factors such as perceived fear-based threat or empathy. In the present research, structural equation modeling (SEM) was run on pooled data from a diverse Canadian university sample and two American adult samples (total N = 1,469). Participants completed measures of RWA, SDO, fear-based threat, empathy, and domain-specific collective action. Results showed that RWA and SDO both related positively to collective action targeting societal moral breakdown but negatively to collective action aimed at equalizing race relations or fighting climate change. Whereas the indirect effects of right-wing ideologies via fear-based threat or empathy were significant in all four domains for SDO, the indirect effect of RWA was only significant in the climate change domain. Implications are discussed.     

Relative effects of breastfeeding intention and practice on maternal responsiveness

Our objective was to examine the differential effects of antenatal breastfeeding intention (BI) and breastfeeding practice (BP) on maternal postnatal responsiveness. We conducted a secondary analysis of longitudinal data from a subsample of 962 mother–infant dyads from a U.K.-based birth cohort study the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Exposures were BI and BPs measured at 32 weeks of gestation and 18 months’ postpartum. The outcome was maternal responsiveness assessed at 12 months’ postpartum. We used logistic regression analyses unadjusted and adjusted for confounders. Intention to breastfeed was associated with increased odds of postnatal maternal responsiveness independent of BP, adjusted odds ratio (OR) = 2.34, 95% CI [1.42, 3.86]. There was no evidence that BP was an independent predictor of maternal responsiveness, OR = 0.93, 95% CI [0.55, 1.57]. Life-course epidemiology analyses demonstrated that maternal responsiveness is most positive when both BI and BP are present. This is the first population-based study to provide evidence that BI during pregnancy is more strongly associated with maternal postnatal responsiveness than is BP. Further research is needed to understand the determinants of BI in pregnancy and its relationships with maternal responsiveness.     

Promoting parent–infant responsiveness in families experiencing homelessness

My Baby's First Teacher is an intervention designed specifically for parents with infants staying in emergency homeless shelters. Infants are overrepresented in shelter populations and face considerable risk to their development, including mental health. We utilized a randomized controlled design across three family shelters to evaluate the program's effectiveness with 24 dyads assigned to the intervention compared to 21 dyads in care-as-usual. Dyads were randomized by round at each site to account for shelter effects. We used path analysis to illustrate change over time and in relation to intervention assignment.     

Fidgeting as self-evidencing: A predictive processing account of non-goal-directed action

Non-goal-directed actions have been relatively neglected in cognitive science, but are ubiquitous and related to important cognitive functions. Fidgeting is seemingly one subtype of non-goal-directed action which is ripe for a functional account. What's the point of fidgeting? The predictive processing framework is a parsimonious account of brain function which says the brain aims to minimise the difference between expected and actual states of the world and itself, that is, minimise prediction error. This framework situates action selection in terms of active inference for expected states. However, seemingly aimless, idle actions, such as fidgeting, are a challenge to such theories. When our actions are not obviously goal-achieving, how can a predictive processing framework explain why we regularly do them anyway? Here, we argue that in a predictive processing framework, evidence for the agent's own existence is consolidated by self-stimulation or fidgeting. Endogenous, repetitive actions reduce uncertainty about the system's own states, and thus help continuously maintain expected rates of prediction error minimisation. We extend this explanation to clinically distinctive self-stimulation, such as in Autism Spectrum Conditions, in which effective strategies for self-evidencing may be different to the neurotypical case.     

Memory distortions: When suggestions cannot be easily ignored

In the present study, the persistence of personal false memories (FMs) after social feedback that denies their truth was assessed. Participants imitated actions performed by the experimenter (Session 1) and watched a doctored video with performed and critical “fake” actions (Session 2), followed by a memory rating and a recognition task. A few days later (Session 3), participants were clearly told that some memories were false and received daily reminders of the correct list of objects/actions before testing their memory again in Session 4. Results of both memory ratings and recognition indicated effective FM implantation. Interestingly, response times for correct rejections were longer for fake than true objects, suggesting participants struggled to ignore false suggestions. Crucial for our aim, Session 4 showed that FM persisted also after the debriefing and repeated presentations of correct list of objects/actions, suggesting that FMs for actions are rather difficult to discard.