Reduced intergroup differentiation as a result of self-categorization in overlapping categories. A quasi-experiment

A quasi-experiment was conducted to examine the effects of self-categorization in overlapping categories on intergroup differentiation. ‘Old aged women’ was used as the first, ‘sports’ as the additional category. It could be shown that intergroup differentiation was significantly reduced under crossed categorization conditions. Implications for social compensation strategies are discussed.     

Preserved spatial memory in old rats survives 10 months without training

Aged rats with extensive prior training on the radial maze retain the capacity for accurate spatial working memory (WM) for at least 3 months without practice. To investigate the temporal limits of this influence of prior experience we compared the reacquisition of spatial WM by a group of experienced 21.5-month-old rats to the original acquisition by naive 3-month-old rats. The aged rats had received 225 radial maze tests between 3 and 11 months of age. Despite 10 months without practice the old rats rapidly reacquired critical performance. Their reacquisition was markedly superior to original learning by the young rats, even when delays as long as 5 h were imposed between the rats' fourth and fifth choices during the daily tests in the eight-arm maze. Additional tests showed that neither young nor old rats employed a response strategy to maintain accurate spatial WM performance. Experience clearly confers long-lived protection against the otherwise deleterious effects of aging on spatial WM, but the mechanism by which this influence arises is unknown.     

On becoming a leader: Effects of gender and cultural differences on power distance reduction

The present research focused on power processes in a simulated organizational structure consisting of three hierarchical levels occupied by different numbers of mules and females. Subjects were presented with a chart showing the organizational hierarchy of which they were a member placed at the lowest level, and asked to nominate any person for the leader position vacated by the current incumbent. The results of Experiment I (n = 88 Dutch male and female university students) showed that male subjects strongly overnominated themselves, whereas a majority of the female subjects nominated either self or another female. Of the others that were nominated by both males and females, almost all were occupants of positions immediately below the leader position, indicating the normative influence of a bureaucratic rule of leader succession. Experiment 2 was a replicational study carried out in a different culture (n = lOl Polish male and female university students). Polish subjects adhered to the bureaucratic rule more strongly than their Dutch counterparts, and both females and males nominated mostly males. Results are discussed with reference to gender self-stereotypes and cultural differences.     

Late Adolescents' Experiences With and Attitudes Toward Videogames1

A total of 229 late adolescents (a large majority 15 to 19 years of age) completed a questionnaire that assesses a broad range of videogame-relevant experiences, preferences, and attitudes. Videogame playing was found to be a more popular, and a more highly regarded, activity among males than females. Gender differences were also found in participants' ratings of their motivations for playing videogames, their evaluations of particular characteristics of videogames, and their selection of their “most favorite” videogame. The differences between frequent and infrequent videogame players appeared to be limited to differences in the extent to which videogame playing is pursued and evaluated as a positive leisure activity, rather than reflecting broad differences in interest or personality. Some relations were found between participants' self-reported personality characteristics (i.e., self-esteem, empathy, conscientiousness, and introversion) and their attitudes toward videogames.     

Impression management in behavior toward handicapped patients]

A previous study (Tr?ster, 1989) showed that nonhandicapped persons preferred a physically handicapped interaction partner to a nonhandicapped partner in an attributionally unambiguous situation. In order to test whether this "sympathy effect of physical handicap" is based on tendencies of impression management, 48 female subjects had to choose to sit next to either a physically handicapped or nonhandicapped female interaction partner in order to view a film together. Attributional ambiguity was varied by either confounding the choice of an interaction partner with a second, socially acceptable alternative (attributionally ambiguous situation: a choice between two films) or not confounding it (attributionally unambiguous situation: no choice between films). Public responsibility was manipulated by informing the subjects about their freedom to choose where they wished to sit either in public (public responsibility) or in private (no public responsibility). The results supported the impression management hypothesis: The handicapped interaction partner (in a wheelchair) was only preferred when the subjects had to anticipate that observers would deduce a preference of the chosen partner from the subjects' choices because of the attributionally unambiguous situation and the public announcement of their freedom of choice. Results suggest that the nonhandicapped strive to exhibit positive and nondiscriminative behavior toward the handicapped in order to avoid creating a disadvantageous impression in an observer.     

Notes on Contributors

Biography

Notes on Contributors     

The Koala Fear Questionnaire: a standardized self-report scale for assessing fears and fearfulness in pre-school and primary school children

The Koala Fear Questionnaire (KFQ) is a standardized self-report scale for assessing fears and fearfulness in children aged between 4 and 12 years. The current article presents six studies which examined the reliability and validity of the KFQ. Study 1 (N=108) demonstrated that the visual fear scales of Koala bears as employed in the KFQ are highly comparable to the standard 3-point scales that are used in other childhood fear measures. Study 2 (N=163) provided support for the convergent validity of the KFQ in a sample of 8- to 14-year-old children. That is, the scale correlated substantially with alternative measures of childhood fear and anxiety. Study 3 (N=189) showed that the KFQ possesses good internal consistency and test-retest stability in a group of 8- to 11-year-old children. The results of Studies 4 (N=129) and 5 (N=176) indicated that the KFQ is suitable for children aged 4 to 6 years and demonstrated that the psychometric properties of the scale in younger children are highly similar to those obtained in older children. Study 6 (N=926) showed that the factor structure of the KFQ was theoretically meaningful: although the data clearly pointed in the direction of one factor of general fearfulness, spurs of the commonly found five-factor solution of childhood fear were found in the KFQ. Altogether, the KFQ seems to be a valuable addition to the instrumentarium of clinicians and researchers who are working with fearful and anxious children.     

Looking at Body Image: The Organization of Self-Knowledge About Physical Appearance and Its Relation to Disordered Eating

This study examined the organization of self-knowledge, with special attention to beliefs about physical appearance, in three groups of college-aged women: high body dissatisfaction with symptoms of disordered eating; high body dissatisfaction with no symptoms of disorder; and low body dissatisfaction. In the nondisordered, dissatisfied group, negative beliefs about physical appearance were organized in the self-structure in a way that isolated those beliefs and might minimize their impact and importance. This group also displayed adaptive types of self-concept organization (evaluative integration for those with important negative self-beliefs and compartmentalization for those with important positive beliefs) and effective coping strategies. Features of self-structure that characterize the nondisordered,dissatisfied group may provide a useful model for helping individuals with disordered eating cope with their negative physical appearance beliefs.     

Eighteen- and 24-month-old infants correct others in anticipation of action mistakes

Much of human communication and collaboration is predicated on making predictions about others' actions. Humans frequently use predictions about others' action mistakes to correct others and spare them mistakes. Such anticipatory correcting reveals a social motivation for unsolicited helping. Cognitively, it requires forward inferences about others' actions through mental attributions of goal and reality representations. The current study shows that infants spontaneously intervene when an adult is mistaken about the location of an object she is about to retrieve. Infants pointed out a correct location for an adult before she was about to commit a mistake. Infants did not intervene in control conditions when the adult had witnessed the misplacement, or when she did not intend to retrieve the misplaced object. Results suggest that preverbal infants anticipate a person's mistaken action through mental attributions of both her goal and reality representations, and correct her proactively by spontaneously providing unsolicited information.