Decision-makers use social information to update their preferences but choose for others as they do for themselves

People's risky decisions are susceptible to the social context in which they take place. Across three experiments using different paradigms, we investigated the influence of three social factors upon participants' decisions: the recipient of the decision-making outcome (self, other, or joint), the nature of the relationship with the other agent (friend, stranger, or teammate), and the type of information that participants received about others' preferences: none at all, general information about how previous participants had decided, or information about a specific partner's preference. We found that participants' decisions about risk did not differ according to whether the outcome at stake was their own, another agent's, or a joint outcome, nor according to the type of information available. Participants did, however, adjust their preferences for risky options in light of social information.     

La déférence : une norme sociale complémentaire de l’internalité en contexte de promotion professionnelle ?

Regarding evaluation, numerous researches highlighted the social valuation of the internality. From the end of 1990s, the diversification of the studied situations came to put in perspective the impact of this norm, while revealing the existence of others social norms. The present research was designed to investigate the phenomenon of social valuation of the deference in situation of annual performance review. The social valuation of the power of others was examined by two studies: one led from paradigm of autopresentation with employees and other one, conducted under legislator paradigm with Human Resources specialists (students in their final year of Institutes Business Administration). If the results indicate, in a classic way, important normative effects of the internality, the valuation of the deferential explanations is globally so obvious. These results question about the contextual expression of a norm of deference: employees and RH experts give weight to the power of others. The results show a convergent use of the internality and the power of others.     

Empathy development from 8 to 16 months: early signs of concern for others

The study examined the responses of typically developing infants to the distress of another, prior to and following the transition to the second year. Infants’ responses to maternal simulations of distress and to a peer distress videotape were observed from 8 to 16 months, using an accelerated longitudinal design (overall n = 37). Modest levels of affective and cognitive empathy for another in distress were already evident before the second year, and increased gradually (and not always significantly) across the transition to the second year. Prosocial behavior was rare in the first year and increased substantially during the second year. Self-distress reactions were rare overall. Individual differences in cognitive and affective empathy assessed in the first year, particularly at 10-months, predicted the levels of prosocial behavior observed in the second year. No gender differences were found. Theoretical implications and future research directions are discussed.     

You were always on my mind: The importance of “significant others” in the attenuation of retrieval‐induced forgetting in Japan

Research on memory has demonstrated that remembering material can cause forgetting of related information, which is known as retrieval‐induced forgetting (RIF). Macrae and Roseveare identified “self” as one of the boundary conditions of this effect in the Western cultural context, showing that RIF was eliminated when material was encoded to be related to the self (known as self‐referential effect), but not to significant others. In this study, we predicted and found that significant others could be another boundary condition in Japanese cultural contexts in which self and agency are more interdependent or conjoint; RIF was observed neither under best‐friend‐related encoding nor under family‐related encoding in Japan. The effect of significant others is found uniquely in Japanese cultural contexts, suggesting that the cultural model of self has significant power in the spontaneous system of memory.     

羞怯与受欺负:社交回避与被他人容纳的多重中介效应

采用大学生羞怯量表、被他人容纳量表、大学生社交回避及苦恼量表和欺负问卷测量了369名大学生,探讨社交回避和被他人容纳在羞怯与受欺负之间的作用。结果表明:(1)羞怯、社交回避和受欺负三个变量彼此之间均呈显著正相关,这三个变量与被他人容纳均呈显著负相关;(2)羞怯不仅直接影响受欺负,也通过社交回避-被他人容纳的链式中介作用间接影响受欺负。     

Religious involvement and happiness: Assessing the mediating role of compassion and helping others

Research reveals that a number of different aspects of religious involvement are associated with happiness. However, researchers have yet to provide an overarching theoretical explanation for how multiple dimensions of religion might be associated with happiness. The purpose of this study is to develop and test a conceptual model that includes the following core hypotheses: (1) people who attend worship services more often tend to be more committed to their faith; (2) people who are more committed to their faith are more likely to be compassionate; (3) compassionate individuals are more likely to provide emotional support to significant others; and (4) people who provide support to others tend to be happier. Data from a recent nationwide survey in the United States (N = 3,010) provides support for each hypothesis. The theoretical implications of these finding are discussed.     

Are Decisions Made by Group Representatives More Risk Averse? The Effect of Sense of Responsibility

We tested the hypothesis that a sense of responsibility drives group representatives' decisions to be more risk averse compared with decisions made by individuals. The hypothesis was supported when the monetary considerations (i.e., payoff inequality and the magnitude effect) were controlled for in the potential gain domain as well as in the potential loss domain. Evidence showed that this is because the group representatives were concerned about how they would view themselves (e.g., guilt and self‐blame) and also how they would be viewed by others (i.e., to avoid being blamed and looked down upon by others). This study provided new insights into understanding group representatives' decision making under risk. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transference occurs across group boundaries

Transference occurs when a perceiver's representation of a significant other is activated and applied to a new target person (Andersen & Chen, 2002). Extending past research, it was hypothesized that transference occurs even when a target person possesses a core feature—namely, group membership status—that is inapplicable to the relevant significant-other representation. Supporting this, transference led perceivers to make representation-consistent memory and evaluation judgments about a target—regardless of whether the target's political (experiment 1) or ethnic (experiment 2) group membership was the same or different from that of the relevant significant other. Moreover, in experiment 2, perceivers undergoing transference involving a positively evaluated significant other behaved more positively toward the target even when the target was from an ethnic out-group. The results represent initial evidence of transference processes occurring across group boundaries. Implications for transference and the reduction of out-group bias are discussed.     

Play-Based Activities in Family Counseling

Traditional family therapists often work with family members of similar cognitive levels and exclude small children from the therapeutic process. Recent research indicates that children and families benefit when all family members can be involved in counseling (e.g., Thompson, Bender, Cordoso, & Flynn, 2011). Using an integrative intervention model, this article will focus on specific play-based activities which can be used to effectively include children in family therapy. A developmental, step-by step protocol is introduced and specific play-based activities are discussed.     

The structure of “communities” and communications in the new millennium

The three lineages of information,—the genetic, the cultural and artifactual—will increasingly merge their constituent information contents through advances in biotechnology and information technology. This will redefine what constitutes “social” and what constitutes “community.” A community's members communicate with their “significant others” and change their internal information states (and their internal and external behaviors). Under conditions of merging, information exchanges occur across all the three lineages. In this sense, the concept of significant other,—that is, a communicating entity—, is now spread from human communities to encompass also the biological and the artifactual. A seamless merging between the three realms now occurs affecting their respective internal information stores. The resulting image of interactions that now arises is of multiple oceans of communities, operating at different levels, the genetic, the cultural and the artifactual. There are exchanges across the different levels, up and down and sideways, as information is translated from one realm to the other. These dynamics result in changes in the evolutionary characteristics of each lineage and sub‐lineage, including the internal perceptions from within a lineage, namely in the language of evolutionary epistemology, its “meanings” and “hypotheses” on the world. A future sociology must necessarily take into account these factors and incorporate the dynamics of all three realms.