Invariance of the weight parameter in information integration

The relative effect of each informational dimension in an information integration task is a joint function of its weight and the range of values over which it is varied. A method is developed for separating these two factors. Weights obtained by this method were compared across variations of stimulus range. Subjects rated the performance of students on the basis of midterm exam scores and final exam scores. For some subjects, the range of scores on the final exam was twice that on the midterm and the reverse was true for other subjects. An averaging model was shown to describe the results, and weights did not differ for different stimulus ranges. This was true for each of two instructional conditions: one in which a particular weighting strategy was prescribed and one in which there was no prescribed weighting. Students who were instructed to use a 2∶1 weighting were found to assign more than twice as much weight to the final as to the midterm.     

Parent involvement in school: English speaking versus Spanish speaking families

The purpose of the present study was to explore the relationships between three predictor variables (attitude toward school, parent-child communication, and school commitment action) and the criterion variable (parent involvement) in a representative sample and to examine if these relationships were consistent across three groups (English speaking Caucasian family, English speaking Latino family, and Spanish speaking Latino families). Using a national database (N = 9.841), multi-group SEM analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship between three predictor variables and the criterion variable in three family groups. While all three predictor variables significantly predicted parent involvement in English speaking Caucasian and Latino families, only two variables (parent-child communication and school commitment actions), significantly predicted parent involvement in Spanish speaking Latino families. The results of this study suggest that when administrators, teachers and counselors in school strive to share specific school-related information with Latino families, Spanish speaking families are more likely to become involved with schools.     

Relationships Between Social Support,Internal Assets,and Life Satisfaction in Korean Adolescents

In previous literature, social support has been reported to have a significant, positive relationship with life satisfaction. However, few studies have examined this relationship among Korean youths and how their psychological functioning is associated with both social support and life satisfaction. This study investigated the associations between different sources of social support (i.e., family, peer, and teacher), psychological factors (i.e., self-efficacy and emotional regulation), and life satisfaction, in a sample of 1133 Korean adolescents. The possibility of sex differences in these relationships was also investigated. Results indicated that only family support had a direct relationship with life satisfaction for male adolescents; however, all three types of social support were found to have a significant, indirect relationship with life satisfaction for male adolescents through both psychological factors. In contrast, all three types of social support had a direct relationship with life satisfaction of female adolescents. Additionally, self-efficacy had a mediating effect on the relationship between the social support from family and teachers and life satisfaction of female adolescents. The results and implications of the study are discussed.     

Workplace ostracism And workplace behaviors: A moderated mediation model of perceived stress and psychological empowerment

Background and objectives: Workplace ostracism research has examined numerous underlying mechanisms to understand the link between workplace ostracism and behavioral outcomes. Ostracism has been suggested to be an interpersonal stressor; however, research has not investigated workplace ostracism from a stress perspective. Therefore, the study investigated the mediating effect of perceived stress for the relationships between workplace ostracism and helping behavior, voicing behavior, and task performance. The study also investigated the moderating effect of psychological empowerment for the relationships between perceived stress and behavioral outcomes.

Design: The study design was a three-wave self-reported questionnaire.

Method: The study sampled 225 full-time employees in South Korea and regression analyses with bootstrapping were conducted to test the moderated mediation models.

Results: The bootstrapped 95% CI around the indirect effects did not contain zero; therefore, perceived stress mediated the relationship between workplace ostracism and helping behavior (–.06), voicing behavior (–.07), and task performance (–.07). Further, the moderated mediation analyses found perceived stress mediated the relationships between workplace ostracism and behavioral outcomes only when individuals perceived low levels of psychological empowerment.

Conclusion: The findings suggest that workplace ostracism is a stressor and psychological empowerment can mitigate the negative effects of ostracism on behavioral outcomes.     

The effect of cognitive reappraisal on long‐term emotional experience and emotional memory

One's ability to properly regulate emotion is critical to psychological and physical well‐being. Among various strategies to regulate emotion, cognitive reappraisal has been shown to modulate both emotional experience and emotional memory. However, most studies of reappraisal have focused on reappraisal of negative situations, with reappraisal of positive emotion receiving considerably less attention. In addition, the effects of reappraisal on emotional reactions to stimuli are typically only assessed either immediately or after a short delay, and it remains unclear whether reappraisal effects persist over longer time periods. We investigated the effect of cognitive reappraisal on emotional reactions and long‐term episodic memory for positive and negative stimuli. Men and women viewed emotionally negative, positive, and neutral pictures while they were instructed to either increase, decrease, or maintain the initial emotional reactions elicited by the pictures. Subjective ratings of emotional valence and arousal were assessed during the regulation task and again after 1 week. Memory for the pictures was assessed with free recall. Results indicated that pictures accompanied by instructions to increase emotion were better recalled than pictures reappraised to decrease emotion. Modulation of emotional arousal elicited by stimuli persisted over a week, but this effect was observed only for men. These findings suggest that cognitive reappraisal can have long‐lasting effects on emotional reactions to stimuli. However, the sex differences observed for the effects of reappraisal on emotional reactions highlight the importance of considering individual differences in the effects of regulation.     

Paternal Family Expressiveness as a Mediator Between Father's Dispositional Optimism and Child's Dispositional Optimism

Although dispositional optimism serves as a resource for psychological and physical well-being, very little research has explored how to promote child dispositional optimism within the family context. The authors evaluated paternal emotional expressiveness within the family as a mediator of the association between father's and child's dispositional optimism. Participants were 422 father (M age = 44.97 years, SD = 4.21 years)–child (M age = 11.75 years, SD = 0.77 years) dyads in South Korea. Results showed that fathers’ dispositional optimism was positively linked to their expressiveness, which in turn was positively linked to their children's dispositional optimism. No significant gender or socioeconomic status differences were found. The findings have important implications for future research and for preventive interventions.     

A cross-cultural study of hindsight bias and conditional probabilistic reasoning

Hindsight bias is a mistaken belief that one could have predicted a given outcome once the outcome is known. Choi and Nisbett (2000 Choi, I. and Nisbett, R. E. 2000. Cultural psychology of surprise: Holistic theories and recognition of contradiction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79: 890–905. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) reported that Koreans showed stronger hindsight bias than Americans, and explained the results using the distinction between analytic cognition (Westerners) and holistic cognition (Easterners). The purpose of the present study was to see whether hindsight bias is stronger among Easterners than among Westerners using a probability judgement task, and to test an “explicit–implicit” hypothesis and a “rule-dialectics” hypothesis. We predicted that the implicit process is more active among Easterners to generate hindsight bias, and that Easterners are more dialectical thinkers, whereas Westerners are more rule-based thinkers. French, British, Japanese, and Korean participants were asked to make probabilistic judgements in a Good Samaritan scenario (Experiment 1) and in a scenario including conditional probabilistic judgement (Experiment 2). In both Experiments, we presume that the implicit revision of causal models is made just by being given unexpected outcome information, and that explicit revision is made by being asked to point out possible factors for an unexpected outcome. In the results Easterners showed greater hindsight bias generally and it was greater in the Good Samaritan scenario. We conclude that the reason why hindsight bias was lower among Westerners is primarily that they tried to follow a rule to suppress the bias.