Locus of Control and Anti‐Immigrant Sentiment in Canada,the United States,and the United Kingdom

Using data collected in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, this article examines the determinants of attitudes toward immigrants. In particular, we draw on the literature in social psychology to explore the role of locus of control in promoting more ethnocentric and restrictive attitudes towards immigration. We conceptualize control at three levels: (1) perceptions of individual locus of control (i.e., feeling that one can control one's own circumstances), (2) perceptions of societal control (i.e., feeling that one's country has control over immigration), and (3) perceptions of an outgroup's locus of control (i.e., feeling that an outgroup's social circumstances are attributable to dispositional rather than external factors). Results show that all three measures of control are important predictors of negative attitudes toward immigrants: Those who feel in control (personally or as a society) are less hostile towards immigrants, while those who attribute negative outcomes to immigrants' predispositions are also more hostile. Results also suggest that measures of control are related to, but distinct from, both partisanship and racial prejudice.     

Support for Self‐Censorship Among Israelis as a Barrier to Resolving the Israeli‐Palestinian Conflict

Self‐censorship, defined as an “act of intentionally and voluntarily withholding information from others in the absence of formal obstacles” often serves as a barrier to resolving intractable conflicts. Specifically, in order to protect the group, and in absence of objective constraints such as institutionalized censorship, individuals practice self‐censorship and support its practice by other society members. This prevents free flow and transparency of information, within a society, regarding the conflict and the adversary. In an attempt to investigate the factors that contribute to the functioning of self‐censorship as a sociopsychological barrier to conflict resolution, a longitudinal study was conducted among a large sample of Jews in Israel. The survey was administered in three waves: a few months before, during, and a few months after Israel's Operation Pillar of Defense in the Gaza Strip. The findings showed that armed confrontation can increase support for self‐censorship. In addition, the findings revealed that personal characteristics (e.g., authoritarianism, ethnocentrism, siege mentality) predicted support for self‐censorship, which, in turn, mediated the effect of personal characteristics on support for negotiations and for providing humanitarian aid. The theoretical as well as the applied implications of the findings are discussed.     

Activation of semantic information at the sublexical level during handwriting production: Evidence from inhibition effects of Chinese semantic radicals in the picture‐word interference paradigm

Using a non‐alphabetic language (e.g., Chinese), the present study tested a novel view that semantic information at the sublexical level should be activated during handwriting production. Over 80% of Chinese characters are phonograms, in which semantic radicals represent category information (e.g., 椅 ‘chair,’ 桃 ‘peach,’ 橙 ‘orange’ are related to plants) while phonetic radicals represent phonetic information (e.g., 狼 ‘wolf,’ 朗 ‘brightness,’ 郎 ‘male,’ are all pronounced /lang/). Under different semantic category conditions at the lexical level (semantically related in Experiment 1; semantically unrelated in Experiment 2), the orthographic relatedness and semantic relatedness of semantic radicals in the picture name and its distractor were manipulated under different SOAs (i.e., stimulus onset asynchrony, the interval between the onset of the picture and the onset of the interference word). Two questions were addressed: (1) Is it possible that semantic information could be activated in the sublexical level conditions? (2) How are semantic and orthographic information dynamically accessed in word production? Results showed that both orthographic and semantic information were activated under the present picture‐word interference paradigm, dynamically under different SOAs, which supported our view that discussions on semantic processes in the writing modality should be extended to the sublexical level. The current findings provide possibility for building new orthography‐phonology‐semantics models in writing.     

Conversation: The challenges of teaching in a “nano department”

A panel at the 2016 American Academy of Religion conference staged, taped, transcribed, and edited this conversation about the challenges and opportunities of teaching in a “nano department” – an undergraduate religion or religious studies department (or combined religion and philosophy department) with only one, two, or three faculty members. Two things quickly become evident: one is the impossibility of coverage of the full religious studies curriculum, and the other is the necessity for collaboration with other departments. Neither of these is unique to nano departments, but there exists an intimacy between students and faculty in small departments, a necessary freedom to rethink the place of the study of religion in the liberal arts curriculum, and a disruptive value in what can be critiqued and contributed from a marginalized position. Arguably, nano departments are the canaries in the academic coal mine, charting the future of the humanities that cannot be discerned from the vantage point of Research‐1 contexts.     

“A definite feel‐it moment”: Embodiment,externalisation and emotion during chair‐work in compassion‐focused therapy

Chair‐work is an experiential method used within compassion‐focused therapy (CFT) to apply compassion to various aspects of the self. This is the first study of CFT chair‐work and is focused on clients' lived experiences of a chair‐work intervention for self‐criticism. Twelve participants with depression were interviewed following the chair‐work intervention and the resulting data were examined using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Three superordinate themes were identified: “embodiment and enactment,” “externalising the self in physical form” and “emotional intensity.” The findings suggest the importance of accessing and expressing various emotions connected with self‐criticism, whilst highlighting the potential for client distress and avoidance during the intervention. The role of embodying, enacting and physically situating aspects of the self in different chairs is also suggested to be an important mechanism of change in CFT chair‐work. The findings are discussed in terms of clinical implications, emphasising how core CFT concepts and practices are facilitated by the chair‐work process.     

Face detection in 2‐ to 6‐month‐old infants is influenced by gaze direction and species

Humans detect faces efficiently from a young age. Face detection is critical for infants to identify and learn from relevant social stimuli in their environments. Faces with eye contact are an especially salient stimulus, and attention to the eyes in infancy is linked to the emergence of later sociality. Despite the importance of both of these early social skills—attending to faces and attending to the eyes—surprisingly little is known about how they interact. We used eye tracking to explore whether eye contact influences infants' face detection. Longitudinally, we examined 2‐, 4‐, and 6‐month‐olds' (N = 65) visual scanning of complex image arrays with human and animal faces varying in eye contact and head orientation. Across all ages, infants displayed superior detection of faces with eye contact; however, this effect varied as a function of species and head orientation. Infants were more attentive to human than animal faces and were more sensitive to eye and head orientation for human faces compared to animal faces. Unexpectedly, human faces with both averted heads and eyes received the most attention. This pattern may reflect the early emergence of gaze following—the ability to look where another individual looks—which begins to develop around this age. Infants may be especially interested in averted gaze faces, providing early scaffolding for joint attention. This study represents the first investigation to document infants' attention patterns to faces systematically varying in their attentional states. Together, these findings suggest that infants develop early, specialized functional conspecific face detection.     

Profiles of Resilience and Psychosocial Outcomes among Young Black Gay and Bisexual Men

Young Black gay/bisexual men (YBGBM) are affected by contextual stressors—namely syndemic conditions and minority stress—that threaten their health and well‐being. Resilience is a process through which YBGBM achieve positive psychosocial outcomes in the face of adverse conditions. Self‐efficacy, hardiness and adaptive coping, and social support may be important resilience factors for YBGBM. This study explores different profiles of these resilience factors in 228 YBGBM in New York City and compares profiles on psychological distress, mental health, and other psychosocial factors. Four profiles of resilience were identified: (a) Low self‐efficacy and hardiness/adaptive coping (23.5%); (b) Low peer and parental support (21.2%); (c) High peer support, low father support (34.5%); and (d) High father and mother support, self‐efficacy, and hardiness/adaptive coping (20.8%). YBGBM in profile 1 scored markedly higher on distress (d = .74) and lower on mental health functioning (d = .93) compared to men in the other profiles. Results suggest that self‐efficacy and hardiness/adaptive coping may play a more important role in protecting YBGBM from risks compared to social support and should be targeted in interventions. The findings show that resilience is a multidimensional construct and support the notion that there are different patterns of resilience among YBGBM.     

Verbalization of Decision Strategies in Multiple‐Cue Probabilistic Inference

In multiple‐cue probabilistic inference, people choose between alternatives based on several cues, each of which is differentially associated with an alternative's overall value. Various strategies have been proposed for probabilistic inference (e.g., weighted additive, tally, and take‐the‐best). These strategies differ in how many cue values they require to enact and in how they weight each cue. Do decision makers actually use any of these strategies? Ways to investigate this question include analyzing people's choices and the cues that they reveal. However, different strategies often predict the same decisions, and search behavior says nothing about whether or how people use the information that they acquire. In this research, we attempt to elucidate which strategies participants use in a multiple‐cue probabilistic inference task by examining verbal protocols, a high‐density source of process data. The promise of verbal data is in their utility for testing detailed information processing models. To that end, we apply protocol analysis in conjunction with computational simulations. We find converging evidence across outcome measures, search measures, and verbal reports that most participants use simplifying heuristics, namely take‐the‐best. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Decision‐Making Model for Addressing Problematic Behaviors in Counseling Students

Gatekeeping is the subject of continued discourse in the counseling profession. With revisions to the ACA Code of Ethics (American Counseling Association, 2014 ), recent litigation (Keeton v. Anderson‐Wiley, 2010 ; Ward v. Wilbanks, 2009 ), and focused attention on value conflicts in counseling (Francis & Dugger, 2014 ), counselor educators' role as gatekeepers is expanding. In addition to this expanding role, counselor educators are responsible for being culturally and developmentally sensitive in interpreting, applying, and enforcing the codes and standards with counseling students. This article proposes a decision‐making model that integrates feminist, multicultural, systems theory, and social‐constructivist ethical decision‐making principles to address problematic behaviors in counseling students.