Modest candidates viewed as more likable but less competent

A new study in Psychology of Women Quarterly finds that women who present themselves as confident and ambitious in job interviews are viewed as highly competent but also lacking social skills. Women who present themselves as modest and cooperative, while well liked, are perceived as low on competence. By contrast, confident and ambitious male candidates are viewed as both competent and likable and therefore are more likely to be hired as a manager than either confident or modest women.

Julie E. Phelan, Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, and Laurie A. Rudman of Rutgers University taped both male and female applicants interviewing to be a computer lab manager. All applicants presented themselves as competent, but also as either confident and ambitious or modest and cooperative. Participants then evaluated the applicants' competence, social skills, and hirability.

Results show how disparate hiring criteria further discriminates against ambitious, competent women. When judging the ambitious women's hirability, a perceived lack of social skills formed the basis of the hiring decision, and the womens' high competence was relatively neglected. For ambitious men, however, perceived competence and interpersonal skills were weighed equally in the hiring decision. Women were doubly disadvantaged because even when female applicants adhered to stereotypic expectations by presenting themselves as modest, they were unlikely to be hired because evaluators emphasized their relatively low competence and discounted their (high) social skills.

According to this research, women who seek managerial roles face a double bind. In order to be viewed as sufficiently qualified for leadership, they must present themselves as confident and ambitious. But if they do so, they risk prejudice for acting "unfeminine," which can result in hiring discrimination. Thus, in performance settings where confidence and ambition are required to get ahead, men have a clear advantage.

Paul Boxer’s large-scale study shows conclusive link between media violence and real violence in adolescents.

You are what you watch, when it comes to violence in the media and its influence on violent behavior in young people, and a new paper, lead-authored by Rutgers University, Newark, researcher Paul Boxer, provides new evidence that violent media does indeed impact adolescent behavior.

The research, to be published in February/2009 in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, shows that even when other factors are considered, such as academic skills, encounters with community violence, or emotional problems, “childhood and adolescent violent media preferences contributed significantly to the prediction of violence and general aggression” in the study subjects.  The study is available online at http://www.springerlink.com/content/4788773215243487/fulltext.html.

Boxer, an assistant professor of psychology at Rutgers University in Newark, has been involved since 2004 in research funded by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) into media violence and its relation to serious youth violence and criminal behavior.  Although a relationship between media violence and violent behavior has been acknowledged for some 40 years, much of the research was usually done in a laboratory setting rather than in the field, with very little emphasis on documenting links between media violence and actual engagement in serious violent and antisocial behavior, explains Boxer.

What’s more, many studies did not sufficiently address other influences on the children’s behaviors, such as exposure to violent or aggressive behavior at school or in the community, academic difficulties, and psychopathic tendencies or other emotional problems, according to Boxer.

Because violence is a “multiply determined behavior,” Boxer and the research team collected data on several risk factors for aggression, to examine whether violent media exposure has an impact on behavior even when those other influences are present. “Even in conjunction with other factors, our research shows that media violence does enhance violent behavior,” Boxer states.  “On average, adolescents who were not exposed to violent media are not as prone to violent behavior.”

Boxer was the lead author on the paper, the first paper produced through the CDC project. It reports the results of the research team’s extensive interviews of 820 adolescents from the state of Michigan – 430 high school students from rural, suburban and urban communities, and 390 juvenile delinquents held in county and state facilities.  The adolescents were about evenly split between male and female, minority and non-minority. Parents or guardians of 720 of the youths also were interviewed, as were teachers/staff of 717 of them.  Each subject was asked about favorites TV shows, movies and video/computer games, both as a child and as a teen, and questioned to determine if they had engaged in specific antisocial behaviors, such as throwing rocks or using a weapon.

Interviewers also investigated the youths’ exposures to aggression or violence, as well as other risk factors for aggressive behavior, such as emotional disorders or being victimized.  The parents, guardians, teachers and staff also were interviewed about the behaviors they had observed in their children or students.

After collecting the data, researchers analyzed findings by integrating “violent media exposure scores” into cumulative risk totals.  Their findings: high violent risk scores “added significantly to the prediction of both violence and general aggression.”  What’s more, “even for those lowest in other risk factors, a preference for violent media was predictive of violent behavior and general aggression,” according to the findings.

Boxer believes the study results can be used to assess, intervene and treat young people displaying aggressive behavior.  He also knows more detailed research is needed, such as analyzing the impact on behavior when violent interactive video games are banned.

Boxer is co-investigator on the CDC grant;  Principal Investigator is Dr. Rowell Huesmann, University of Michigan; the other co-investigator is Dr. Brad Bushman, University of Michigan.

Boxer and his team also are in the process of analyzing data collected through interviews with pre-school children and their parents to determine how violent media consumption impacts very young children. “Young children react to what they see and they mimic behavior,” but are unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy, or right and wrong, says Boxer.  By investigating the mechanisms that influence their development, researchers can try to learn how to intervene in potentially aggressive or anti-social behaviors, and effect change at a very young age, he notes.

Boxer’s research into media violence and its impact is only one aspect of his overall work, which “focuses on the impact of violence in all aspects of the social environment on child and adolescent development.” Boxer is currently working on research that emphasizes the role of family violence and community violence in children's aggressive behaviors. Boxer also is involved in federally funded research investigating the role of political violence in childhood adjustment, as part of a team directing research with children growing up in Israel and the Palestinian Territory.

When a group is without a leader, you can often count on a narcissist to take charge, a new study suggests. Researchers found that people who score high in narcissism tend to take control of leaderless groups. Narcissism is a trait in which people are self-centered, exaggerate their talents and abilities, and lack empathy for others. "Not only did narcissists rate themselves as leaders, which you would expect, but other group members also saw them as the people who really run the group," said Amy Brunell, lead author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University at Newark.

Narcissists, by definition, are self-centered and overconfident in their own abilities.

The researchers found similar results in two separate studies involving college students, and one involving business managers in an MBA program. And while narcissists are more likely to become leaders, results of one of the studies suggests that, once in power, narcissists don't perform any better than others in that leadership role. "It's not surprising that narcissists become leaders," Brunell said. "They like power, they are egotistical, and they are usually charming and extraverted. But the problem is, they don't necessarily make better leaders."

The study will appear in an upcoming print issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. It is currently available to subscribers online.

The first study involved 432 undergraduate students. They all completed assessments which measured various personality traits, including narcissism. They were then put in groups of four, and told to assume they were a committee of senior officers of the student union, and their task was to elect next year's director. Each person in a group was given a profile of a different candidate for the position, and each was to argue for their particular candidate. Following the discussion, they voted on the director, and then completed a questionnaire evaluating the leadership of themselves and the other group members.

Results showed that students who scored higher on one dimension of narcissism – the desire for power - were more likely to say they wanted to lead the group, were more likely to say they did lead the group discussion, and were more likely to be viewed as leaders by the other group members.

The other dimension of narcissism – the desire for attention – was not as strongly related to leadership roles in the groups. "It's not surprising, but the desire for power is what really drives narcissists to seek leadership positions," she said.

In a second study, 408 students were placed in groups of four and given a scenario in which they imagined they were shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and had to choose which 15 salvageable items that the group should take ashore which will best help them survive. After a group discussion, those who scored highest on the power dimension of narcissism again showed the most desire to lead the group discussion, rated themselves as leaders, and were viewed by other group members as the leaders.

This study went further, though, by seeing how well the narcissists performed as leaders. Researchers looked at the lists, prepared by each individual and group, of the 15 items that they thought would help them survive. They compared their lists to one prepared by an expert who has taught survival skills to the U.S military.

Results showed that narcissists did no better than others on selecting the items that would best help them survive. In addition, groups that overall scored highest on narcissism did no better than other groups on the task.

A third study involved 153 business managers enrolled in an executive MBA program at a large southeastern university. The managers were also put in groups of four and told to assume the role of a school board deciding how to allocate a large financial contribution from a fictional company.
Two trained observers – professors or doctoral students in industrial/organizational psychology – observed the groups and rated how much of a leadership role each participant assumed in their groups.

Results showed that the MBA students rated highest in narcissism were most likely to be identified as emerging leaders by the expert observers. "Even trained observers saw narcissistic people as the natural leaders," Brunell said. "In addition, this study showed that narcissism plays a role in leadership among real-world managers."

Brunell said the studies took into account other factors – such as gender and personality traits like high self-esteem and extraversion – that may relate to leadership development. But even when these factors were taken into account, narcissism still played a key role. It is important not to confuse narcissism with high self-esteem, she said. "A person with high self-esteem is confident and charming, but they also have a caring component and they want to develop intimacy with others," Brunell explained. "Narcissists have an inflated view of their talents and abilities and are all about themselves. They don't care as much about others."

Brunell said she believes the results apply to many parts of life, from the politics of the presidential race to Wall Street. "Many people have observed that it takes a narcissistic person to run for president of the United States," she said. "I would be surprised if any of the candidates who have run weren't higher than average in narcissism." The same is true for the leaders of Wall Street firms that have made and lost millions of dollars in the past few years. "There have been a lot of studies that have found narcissistic leaders tend to have volatile and risky decision-making performance and can be ineffective and potentially destructive leaders," she said. However, that doesn't mean all the troubles in Washington or Wall Street can be blamed on narcissistic leaders. "I'm sure some of these leaders had to be overconfident and too sure of their abilities. But there's a lot more behind the troubles of government and business than the personalities of their leaders."

Skin color, more than race, is important cause of racism, according to new book Racism in the 21st Century

The color of a person's skin, more than a person's race, is becoming a key cause of racism, according to a new book Racism in the 21st Century co-written and edited by Ronald Hall, associate professor of social work at Michigan State University.

In an era when Barack Obama, the first African-American U.S. presidential candidate nominated by a major political party, is running for president, many people still struggle against prejudice and racism. Lighter-skinned blacks, Hispanics, Asians and other minorities often receive preferential treatment over their darker-skinned counterparts in education, housing, employment, and other areas, Hall and his fellow authors argue.

Immigrant workers with lighter skin color make more money on average than those with darker complexions, according to the research of contributor and Vanderbilt University professor Joni Hersch. In addition, the number of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaints on skin-color based discrimination are increasing, the book notes. In 2002, the EEOC successfully sued the owners of a Mexican restaurant in San Antonio, Texas, after the restaurant directed the white manager to hire only light-skinned staff to work in the dining room.

Colorism, discrimination based on skin color, is a centuries-old legacy of Western colonialism, according to Hall. "Racism is no longer an issue of black and white," said Hall who has researched skin color discrimination for 25 years. "As we move further into the 21st century, with increased levels of interracial marriage, we won't be able to make racial differentiations. You're going to have people, for example, with Asian facial features, African hair texture, and Caucasian skin tones – and that's unprecedented. But the way we'll continue to assess one another, unfortunately, is going to be based on the manifestations of skin color.

Society holds that when it comes to aggression, boys hit and punch, while girls spread rumors, gossip, and intentionally exclude others, a type of aggression that's called indirect, relational, or social. Now a new analysis of almost 150 studies of aggression in children and adolescents has found that while it's true that boys are more likely to engage in physical aggression, girls and boys alike take part in social aggression.

"These conclusions challenge the popular misconception that indirect aggression is a female form of aggression," according to Noel A. Card, assistant professor of family studies and human development at the University of Arizona and the study's lead author.

The analysis of 148 studies, which comprised almost 74,000 children and adolescents and were carried out largely in schools, looked at both direct aggression, which is usually defined as physical, and indirect aggression, which includes covert behavior designed to damage another individual's social standing in his or her peer group. Conducted by Card and researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Kansas, the analysis appears in the September/October 2008 issue of the journal Child Development.

The researchers suggest that the myth that girls are more likely to be indirectly or socially aggressive than boys has persisted among teachers, parents, and even other researchers because of social expectations that develop early in life and recent movies and books that portray girls as mean and socially aggressive toward one another.

Based on the analysis, the researchers suggest that children who carry out one form of aggression may be inclined to carry out the other form; this is seen more in boys than in girls. They also found ties between both forms of aggression and adjustment problems. Specifically, direct aggression is related to problems like delinquency and ADHD-type symptoms, poor relationships with peers, and low prosocial behavior such as helping and sharing. In contrast, indirect aggression is related to problems like depression and low self-esteem, as well as higher prosocial behavior—perhaps because a child must use prosocial skills to encourage peers to exclude or gossip about others.

A shove, a taunt or name-calling on the playground or in the hall, away from the eyesight, earshot and authority of the teacher – childhood bullying can involve physical contact, spreading rumors and other negative behaviors committed over and over again to intimidate, humiliate and isolate the receiver of the behavior. A review of national and international research on the issue is finding a family connection to the origins of young bullies. Elizabeth Sweeney, a University of Cincinnati master's degree student in sociology, presented her findings Aug. 3 at the 103rd annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

Sweeney reviewed research out of England, Germany, Norway, Japan, South Africa and the United States, which she reports lagged behind the European countries in examining the phenomenon of bullying prior to this decade. The majority of the research that she examined involved children between the ages of nine and 16. Sweeney says her review of the literature found that children raised by authoritarian parents – parents who are demanding, directive and unresponsive – are the most prone to act out bullying behavior. On the other hand, there were parallels showing that children raised by nurturing, warm, responsive parents were less likely to bully.

"Children who experience hostility, abuse, physical discipline and other aggressive behaviors by their parents are more likely to model that behavior in their peer relationships," she writes. "Children learn from their parents how to behave and interact with others," Sweeney says. "So if they're learning about aggression and angry words at home, they will tend to use these behaviors as coping mechanisms when they interact with their peers." Her review also found that children from middle-income families were less likely to bully than children from the high and low ends of the family income scale.

She says that while some studies suggest boys are more prone to bullying than girls, others state that it runs equally among the genders, although boys are more likely to act out bullying physically, while girls are more verbal. Sweeney adds that it is the tolerance of bullying that "has served as one of the primary contributors to its persistence and severity." She is advocating research that would delve more deeply into the issues of bullying, including in-depth interviews with children, families and school officials.

Study questions the effectiveness of the current movie-rating system

In a paper published in the August issue of the journal Pediatrics, Dartmouth researchers document the alarming numbers of young adolescents age 10-14 who are exposed to graphic violence in movies rated R for violence. They found that these extremely violent movies were seen by an average of 12.5 percent of an estimated 22 million children age 10-14. One R-rated movie, Scary Movie, was seen by an estimated 10 million children, or about 48 percent of 10-14 year olds.

"Our data reveal a disturbingly high rate of exposure among 10-14 year olds nationally to extremely violent movies," says Keilah Worth, the lead author on the study and a post-doctoral fellow at Dartmouth Medical School and at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center's Norris Cotton Cancer Center. "In Britain, no adolescent would be admitted to these movies unless they were 18. The R rating in this country is clearly not preventing our young people from seeing them."

Many scientific studies have established the connection between exposure to media violence and aggression and violence in children. For example, playing video games can lead to changes in attitudes and behavior as well as desensitization to actual violence. "We know so much about the harmful effects of exposure to violent media content, but how much exposure children actually get has been largely ignored. Now, we're learning more about the large numbers of kids seeing this material and who they are," says Worth.

For this assessment of exposure to violence in movies, the researchers used data from national telephone surveys of more than 6,500 adolescents age 10-14 in 2003. Out of 532 recent releases, the researchers chose to look at exposure to 40 of the most violent movies. The study also revealed some independent risk factors for exposure: boys, minorities, those with lower socioeconomic status, and those with lower academic performance were all more likely to see extremely violent movies. Black male adolescents were at particularly high risk of seeing these movies. For example, Blade, Training Day, and Scary Movie were seen by 37 percent, 27 percent, and 48 percent respectively of all the adolescents surveyed, compared to 82 percent, 81 percent, and 81 percent of black males.

"No expert in child development would advocate for subjecting children as young as 10 to this level of violence, yet the study shows that such exposure is commonplace in this country," says James Sargent, the senior scientist on this study and a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School. "We should re-think the current movie rating system, which has been in place for 40 years, and was designed when kids could only see movies in theaters. Ratings need to be more prominent on all movies, whether they are seen in theaters or purchased in the store, and we need clearer messages to parents. Pediatricians and child advocates should instruct parents to strictly abide by the movie-age guidelines and to closely monitor movie viewing."

ABSTRACT: Disgust is a basic emotion characterized by revulsion and rejection, yet it is relatively unexamined in the literature on prejudice. In the present investigation, interpersonal-disgust sensitivity (e.g., not wanting to wear clean used clothes or to sit on a warm seat vacated by a stranger) in particular predicted negative attitudes toward immigrants, foreigners, and socially deviant groups, even after controlling for concerns with contracting disease. The mechanisms underlying the link between interpersonal disgust and attitudes toward immigrants were explored using a path model. As predicted, the effect of interpersonal-disgust sensitivity on group attitudes was indirect, mediated by ideological orientations (social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism) and dehumanizing perceptions of the out-group. The effects of social dominance orientation on group attitudes were both direct and indirect, via dehumanization. These results establish a link between disgust sensitivity and prejudice that is not accounted for by fear of infection, but rather is mediated by ideological orientations and dehumanizing group representations. Implications for understanding and reducing prejudice are discussed.

Hodson, G. & Costello, K. (2007). Interpersonal disgust, ideological orientations, and dehumanisation as predictors of intergroup attitudes. Psychological Science, 18, 691-698.

There’s a troubling psychological phenomenon that just about everyone has experienced but few will admit to; having difficulty distinguishing between people of different racial groups. This isn’t merely a nod to the denigrating expression “they all look the same.” Indeed, the “cross-race effect” is one of the most well replicated findings in psychological research and can lead to embarrassment, social castigation, or the disturbingly common occurrence of eye-witness misidentifications.

Although a potentially charged experience, the causes of the cross-race effect are unclear. In one camp, psychologists argue that in a society where de facto segregation is the norm, people often don’t have much practice with individuals of other racial groups and are thus less capable of recognizing distinguishing features. But researchers from Miami University have a different idea of why the cross-race effect occurs. They argue this effect arises from our tendency to categorize people into in-groups and out-groups based on social categories like social class, hobbies, and of course, race.

In a series of experiments, Miami University undergraduates were led to believe that they would view the faces of fellow Miami students (the in-group) and students from Marshall University (a perennial football rival, making them the ultimate out-group) on a computer screen. In reality, none of the faces, all of whom were white, were students at either university. By merely labeling them, however, the participants better recognized faces that they believed were fellow Miami students.

The study, conducted by psychologist Kurt Hugenberg and graduate students Michael Bernstein and Steven Young, will be published in the August issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Hugenberg and his colleagues believe the study suggests that recognition deficits can occur without the need for race or different physical characteristics, arguing instead that there is more than just unfamiliarity with other races at play in the cross-race effect. According to the researchers, “people frequently split the world up into us and them, in other words into social groups, be they racial, national, occupational, or even along the lines of university affiliation. Our work suggests that the cross-race effect is due, at least in part, to this ubiquitous tendency to see the world in terms of these in-groups and out-groups.”

AMES, Iowa – New research by Iowa State University psychologists provides more concrete evidence of the adverse effects of violent video game exposure on the behavior of children and adolescents.

ISU Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Anderson, Assistant Professor of Psychology Douglas Gentile, and doctoral student Katherine Buckley share the results of three new studies in their book, "Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents" (Oxford University Press, 2007). It is the first book to unite empirical research and public policy related to violent video games.

Anderson and Gentile presented their findings last week at the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting in Boston.

The book's first study found that even exposure to cartoonish children's violent video games had the same short-term effects on increasing aggressive behavior as the more graphic teen (T-rated) violent games. The study tested 161 9- to 12-year-olds, and 354 college students. Each participant was randomly assigned to play either a violent or non-violent video game. "Violent" games were defined as those in which intentional harm is done to a character motivated to avoid that harm. The definition was not an indication of the graphic or gory nature of any violence depicted in a game.

The researchers selected one children's non-violent game ("Oh No! More Lemmings!"), two children's violent video games with happy music and cartoonish game characters ("Captain Bumper" and "Otto Matic"), and two violent T-rated video games ("Future Cop" and "Street Fighter"). For ethical reasons, the T-rated games were played only by the college-aged participants.

The participants subsequently played another computer game designed to measure aggressive behavior in which they set punishment levels in the form of noise blasts to be delivered to another person participating in the study. Additional information was also gathered on each participant's history of violent behavior and previous violent media viewing habits.

The researchers found that participants who played the violent video games -- even if they were children's games -- punished their opponents with significantly more high-noise blasts than those who played the non-violent games. They also found that habitual exposure to violent media was associated with higher levels of recent violent behavior -- with the newer interactive form of media violence found in video games more strongly related to violent behavior than exposure to non-interactive media violence found in television and movies.

"Even the children's violent video games -- which are more cartoonish and often show no blood -- had the same size effect on children and college students as the much more graphic games have on college students," said Gentile. "What seems to matter is whether the players are practicing intentional harm to another character in the game. That's what increases immediate aggression -- more than how graphic or gory the game is."

Another study detailed in the book surveyed 189 high school students. The authors found that respondents who had more exposure to violent video games held more pro-violent attitudes, had more hostile personalities, were less forgiving, believed violence to be more typical, and behaved more aggressively in their everyday lives. The survey measured students' violent TV, movie and video game exposure; attitudes toward violence; personality trait hostility; personality trait forgiveness; beliefs about the normality of violence; and the frequency of various verbally and physically aggressive behaviors.

The researchers were surprised that the relation to violent video games was so strong.

"We were surprised to find that exposure to violent video games was a better predictor of the students' own violent behavior than their gender or their beliefs about violence," said Anderson. "Although gender aggressive personality and beliefs about violence all predict aggressive and violent behavior, violent video game play still made an additional difference.

"We were also somewhat surprised that there was no apparent difference in the video game violence effect between boys and girls or adolescents with already aggressive attitudes," he said.

The study found that one variable -- trait forgiveness -- appeared to make that person less affected by exposure to violent video games in terms of subsequent violent behavior, but this protective effect did not occur for less extreme forms of physical aggression.

A third new study in the book assessed 430 third-, fourth- and fifth-graders, their peers, and their teachers twice during a five-month period in the school year. It found that children who played more violent video games early in the school year changed to see the world in a more aggressive way, and became more verbally and physically aggressive later in the school year -- even after controlling for how aggressive they were at the beginning of the study. Higher aggression and lower pro-social behavior were in turn related to those children being more rejected by their peers.

"I was startled to find those changes in such a short amount of time," said Gentile. "Children's aggression in school did increase with greater exposure to violent video games, and this effect was big enough to be noticed by their teachers and peers within five months."

The study additionally found an apparent lack of "immunity" to the effects of media violence exposure. TV and video game screen time was also found to be a significant negative predictor of grades.

The book's final chapter offers "Helpful Advice for Parents and Other Caregivers on Choosing and Using Video Games." The authors say that providing clear, science-based information to parents and caregivers about the harmful effects of exposure to violent video games is the first step in helping educate the people who are best able to use the information. The advice includes links to Web sites about entertainment media and parenting issues, including Anderson's and Gentile's Web pages at http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/ and http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/dgentile/.

What is the very best way to learn a complex task? Is it practice, practice, practice, or is watching and thinking enough to let you imitate a physical activity, such as skiing or ballet? A new study from Brandeis University published this week in the Journal of Vision unravels some of the mysteries surrounding how we learn to do things like tie our shoes, feed ourselves, or perform dazzling dance steps.

"What makes one person clumsy and the next person a prima ballerina is a combination of talent and practice," explains study co-author Robert Sekuler a neuroscientist at Brandeis" Volen Center for Complex Systems. "We are trying to determine what strategies will optimize imitation learning, which is crucial for acquiring many of the skills used in daily life. A lot of what we do we learn by watching and imitating others."

The study provides a first detailed look into explicit learning of sequential, non-verbal material. While many studies have evaluated serial recall of words, researchers have paid little attention to imitation learning, even though such learning is crucial to just about everything we do, from sports to regaining mobility after a stroke or accident.

"This study demonstrates that we can learn much better just by watching than previously thought, but it also suggests that there is more than meets the eye," says Yigal Agam, a neuroscience graduate student and study co-author. "Next we need to really understand how to optimize non-verbal imitative learning—to make that learning as fast, easy and painless as possible."

The study evaluated participants" ability to view, remember and then reproduce a complex sequence of motions generated by the random, unpredictable movements of a disc. Even a single repetition of a motion sequence substantially reduced errors in reproduction. To test how important it was to actually reproduce the motion, Sekuler and his colleagues compared the participants" performance when they reproduced the motion after each viewing to when they did so only once, after the final viewing, and otherwise just carefully observed and thought about the motion. Interestingly, performance was the same. Seeing the motion, without actually imitating it, was enough to learn it.

But leveraging a learner"s attention to the task at hand is also critically important. "It"s not simply a question of information falling on the retina—this kind of learning is a skill of acquiring information, transforming it into output, which is the imitation," says Agam.

Several strategies may help leverage a learner"s attention and motivate imitative learning. Organizing the motor skill practice is key. For example, Sekuler, an expert on the neural and cognitive terrain of visual memory, says that breaking down a behavioral sequence into chunks can aid imitation learning, just as chunking can help us memorize a string of seemingly unrelated digits or other material. Agam and Sekuler have their sights set on identifying strategies that teachers and coaches could use to make complex actions more "chunkable," and therefore easier to imitate.

For example, to promote chunking (and learning), a complex behavior can be paused at just the right time, which will help the novice viewer more easily appreciate and imitate the separate components of that behavior. The researchers" long-term goal is to devise simple methods that will allow teachers and coaches to take any arbitrary complex action that they want to teach—like that series of dance steps or that perfect golf swing, and then re-package that action into components that make for optimal learning.

Humans acquire fears using similar neural processes whether they’ve personally experienced an aversive event or only witnessed it, according to a study by researchers at New York University’s Departments of Psychology. This is the first study examining the brain basis of fears acquired indirectly, through the observation of others. The study shows that the amygdala, which is known to be critical to the acquisition and expression of fears from personal experience, is also involved during the acquisition and expression of fears obtained indirectly through social observation. The findings appear in the most recent issue of the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN).

The research team, from the laboratory of NYU Professor Elizabeth Phelps, also includes Andreas Olsson, now a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University’s Department of Psychology, and Katherine Nearing from NYU’s School of Medicine.

Previous research has shown how people develop fears after first-hand experience of an aversive event—getting stung by a bee or being burned by a hot pan. In acquiring these fears, a process known as fear conditioning, the brain’s amygdala plays a critical role. However, it’s unclear if fear conditioning can occur indirectly—that is, through social observation with no personal experience. It is also uncertain what neural processes take place in the acquisition of fears stemming from events or circumstances not experienced first-hand.

In this study, subjects witnessed a short video of another individual participating in a fear-conditioning experiment. In the video, subjects saw another person responding with distress when receiving mild electric shocks paired with a colored square. The subjects watching the video were then told they would take part in an experiment similar to the one they just viewed. Unlike the experiment in the video, these subjects never received shocks.

The results showed that the participants had a robust fear response when they were presented with the colored square that predicted electric shocks in the video, indicating that such a response resulted from merely observing—rather than directly experiencing—an aversive event. In addition, using brain imaging techniques, the researchers found that the amydgala response was equivalent with both when watching others receive a shock and when presented with the colored square that was previously paired with shock in the video. This finding demonstrates that similar neural systems are engaged when fears are learned through first-hand experience or by merely observing others.

"In our daily lives, we are frequently exposed to vivid images of others in emotional situations through personal social interactions as well as the media," explained Phelps. "The knowledge of somebody else’s emotional state may evoke empathic responses. However, as our results reveal, when others’ emotions are accompanied with vivid expressions and perceived as potentially relevant to our own future well being, we may engage additional learning mechanisms."

Olsson added: "In a way, learning by observing others’ emotional responses is like exploiting their expertise without being directly exposed to the potential risks associated with the direct learning. This seems a very adaptive thing to do for most social animals, which could explain why it is commonly seen across species. However, it remains to be explored in what way uniquely human social abilities contribute to learning fears through social observation."

A new study has found that adolescents who play violent video games may exhibit lingering effects on brain function, including increased activity in the region of the brain that governs emotional arousal and decreased activity in the brain’s executive function, which is associated with control, focus and concentration. The findings were presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

"Our study suggests that playing a certain type of violent video game may have different short-term effects on brain function than playing a nonviolent—but exciting—game," said Vincent P. Mathews, M.D., professor of radiology at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.

Video games are big business with nearly $10 billion in sales in the United States last year. But along with growing sales come growing concerns about what effects these games may be having on the young people who play them.

Dr. Mathews and colleagues randomly assigned 44 adolescents to play either a violent video game or a nonviolent video game for 30 minutes. The researchers then used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study brain function during a series of tasks measuring inhibition and concentration. One test used emotional stimuli and one did not.

fMRI measures the tiny metabolic changes that occur when a part of the brain is active. These changes will appear as a brightly colored area on the MR image, indicating the part of the brain that is being used to process the task. The two groups did not differ in accuracy or reaction time for the tasks, but analysis of the fMRI data showed differences in brain activation.

Compared with the group that played the nonviolent game, the group that played the violent video game demonstrated less activation in the prefrontal portions of the brain, which are involved in inhibition, concentration and self-control, and more activation in the amygdala, which is involved in emotional arousal.

"During tasks requiring concentration and processing of emotional stimuli, the adolescents who had played the violent video game showed distinct differences in brain activation than the adolescents who played an equally exciting and fun—but nonviolent—game," Dr. Mathews said. "Because of random assignment, the most likely factor accounting for these differences would be the group to which the volunteers were assigned."

The researchers hope to conduct additional research on long-term effects of violent video game exposure and the impact of these brain functioning differences.

"Additional investigation of the reasons for and effects of this difference in brain functioning will be important targets for future study, but the current study showed that a difference between the groups does exist," Dr. Mathews said.

New book reveals the psychology of rumors

A flurry of rumor and gossip followed recent reports of a small plane hitting a high-rise apartment building on New York's Upper East Side. Was it a helicopter or a plane? Was it an accident or a terrorist attack? The pilot's celebrity identity added another strange twist as the rumor unraveled to substantiated fact.

The process of that unraveling, of people sorting out bits of fact and fiction, fascinates Nicholas DiFonzo, professor of social and organization psychology at Rochester Institute of Technology and one of the leading experts on rumor and gossip research. He is currently researching how rumors proliferate, spread and die over time as part of a National Science Foundation-funded study.

In their recent book Rumor Psychology: Social and Organizational Approaches published by APA Books, DiFonzo and co-author Prashant Borida, associate professor of management at the University of South Australia, present new research and ideas about rumors, which they differentiate from gossip and urban legend.

"A rumor is what you do when you try to figure out the truth with other people," DiFonzo says. "It's collective sense making. The classic example is 'I heard that…'"

Gossip, on the other hand, is sharing information with an agenda, he says. It could be for entertainment or to bond with another person or to reinforce a social norm. Gossip, which may be true, tends to have an edge.

"Gossip is more to do with social networks," DiFonzo says. "A strong motivation we have as humans is to connect with a group."

The urban legend is a misnomer, he says. "'Modern legends' or 'contemporary legends' would be more accurate."

"How do people know what's true is true?" is the question that most interests DiFonzo.

His research on rumor accuracy and the role of trust in rumor transmission seeks to determine how successful people are at figuring out the truth.

One of the studies included in Rumor Psychology surveyed public relations professionals from Fortune 500 companies about the veracity of organizational or workplace rumors from their own experience. The authors found that most workplace rumors are 95 percent accurate.

Rumor Psychology also includes new studies about rumor propagation and why people believe them. The authors also recommend methods for managing organizational rumors and present a research agenda for future rumor research.

A new study explores how boys view their fathers as the boys move from childhood into adulthood. The study, “Witnessing Marital Violence as Children: Men’s Perceptions of Their Fathers,” is by Gary Dick, assistant professor of Social Work at the University of Cincinnati, and is published in the current issue of the Journal of Social Service Research, Volume 32, issue two.

Dick says previous research suggests boys who witness a father’s violence against their mother are at risk of becoming abusers themselves, in addition to developing an ambivalent relationship with their fathers and even ending contact with them in adulthood. “Much is known about the internal and external effects that witnessing violence has on children, but we know little about the type of relationship men had with their fathers after witnessing parental aggression,” Dick writes in the study. “Understanding abusive men’s relationships with their children and how they carry out their paternal roles is an important issue in preventing violence against women.”

In a study of 104 men ranging in age from 19 to 61, Dick compared a group of men who had witnessed marital violence as children to a group of men who did not witness marital violence as children, to see if there were differences in how the men perceived their relationships with their fathers. Forty-three percent of the men studied had parents who divorced during their childhood – the mean age of the children at the time of divorce was about eight-and-a-half years old.

In examining men’s perceptions of father involvement, Dick found that men who had witnessed marital violence felt their fathers were less accessible and less responsible with daily child care tasks (school activities, taking a child to the doctor) than men who did not grow up in a violent home. The men who witnessed marital violence were also more likely to report being emotionally and physically abused by their fathers. The survey found that men who had not witnessed their father abusing their mother were more likely to report that their father verbally expressed love, affection and praise toward them and in return, these men reported warm feelings toward their fathers.

The study also asked the men to examine the moral role of their fathers, such as teaching them right from wrong or attending church with them. The men who witnessed family violence rated their fathers lower. Growing into adulthood, Dick says there were significant differences between the two groups in becoming violent toward their own intimate partners. The men who witnessed marital violence as children were more likely to use abusive tactics on their own partners.

Dick says findings from the study have implications for social workers and counselors who treat men who batter women, as social workers not only work to prevent the abuse but help men take an active, positive role in parenting their children. The study recommends future research on how men who grew up in violent households view themselves as fathers.

13 October 2006
University of Cincinnati News

Remember that bully on the playground in elementary school?

A Rowan University study has found that it’s not uncommon for elementary school bullies to continue bullying throughout their high school and college years.

And the same apparently goes for people who have been targets of bullies, according to Rowan developmental psychologist Mark Chapell, lead author of the study, which has been accepted for publication by the journal Adolescence.

According to Chapell, the majority of people who have been bullied in college also report having been bullied in high school and elementary school.

“There is a lot of continuity,” says Chapell. “People appear to be targeted for being bullied and for being a bully as well.”

Chapell, who conducted the first-ever study on college bullying in 2004 with a sample of 1,025 undergraduates, surveyed 119 college undergrads this time and found that of 25 who were bullied in college, 72 percent had been bullied in high school and elementary school. Conversely, of 26 bullies in college, 53.8 percent had been bullies in high school and elementary school.

In yet another category, of 12 people who were both bullies and victims of bullies (bully-victims) in college, 41.6 percent had been bully-victims in both high school and elementary school, according to the study.

In the study, Chapell and his research team compared types of bullying and found that, overall, bullies used more verbal bullying than social bullying in college, high school and elementary school. Physical bullying was least common.

Chapell’s 2004 study found that bullying of college students by teachers or coaches does occur. His most recent study found that verbal bullying of students was the most common type of bullying used by both college teachers and coaches. Social bullying was the next most common.

In examining gender, Chapell found that there were no significant sex differences related to being a bully or a bully-victim. But males were bullied significantly more than female students in elementary school and high school, according to the study. Males were not bullied more than female students in college.

The study notes that there is a reduction of bullying over time—bullying decreases from elementary school to high school to college—but also supports the idea that bullying continues past the school years and into college and even the workplace, according to Chapell.

He notes that while European countries have studied bullying for 35 years, American researchers didn’t begin focusing on the issue until about 1999, after the Columbine High School shootings.

“There is a temperament and a certain aggressiveness to bullying,” said Chapell. “There are all kinds of elements that go into it. And we see a lot of bullying in the adult workplace.”

In coming years, Chapell is looking to expand the study of bullying in college in a number of universities in several states. He also wants to examine the role of ethnicity in bullying.

News & Happenings
Rowan University
25 August 2006

Since 2000, Americans have been getting poorer, and national rates of severe poverty have climbed sharply, according to a study published in the October issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The researchers reported that the growth in the poverty rate is due largely to a rise in severe poverty and that "moderate" poverty has grown little.

The percentage of Americans living in severe poverty--earning less than half of the poverty threshold--grew by 20% between 2000 and 2004, and the proportion in higher income tiers fell. The researchers reported that the number of Americans living in severe poverty increased by 3.6 million between 2000 and 2004.

"These trends have disturbing implications for society and public health," said Steven H. Woolf, MD, MPH, Professor of Family Medicine, Epidemiology and Community Health, Virginia Commonwealth University, and lead author of the study. The researchers found that the only category of Americans to increase in size were those whose earnings were at least $8,000 below the poverty threshold, who grew by approximately 50% between 2000 and 2004. All other income tiers decreased during these years. The poverty threshold in 2004 for a family of four was $19,307.

"The rise in severe poverty is striking children the hardest," said Woolf. His study found that children under age 5 are twice as likely to be living in severe poverty as the rest of the population. "In 2004, one of three Americans with incomes less than 50% of the poverty threshold--5.6 million people--was a child." Severe poverty is also dramatically worse among African Americans and Hispanics, and minority children therefore face the greatest risk. The researchers reported that children account for 45% of Hispanic and African Americans living in severe poverty.

The authors discuss the broad societal implications of the increase in poverty. Likely health consequences include a higher prevalence of chronic illnesses, more frequent and severe disease complications, and increased demands and costs for healthcare services. Adverse effects on children carry long-term implications.

"This is not just a problem for the poor," Woolf added. "Except for a small class of highly affluent Americans, income for the entire U.S. population has fallen since 2000." The researchers describe a "sinkhole effect," in which "families and individuals in the middle and upper classes appear to be migrating to lower income tiers that bring them closer to the poverty threshold." U.S. household income, adjusted for inflation, fell by 3.6% between 2000 and 2004. Woolf says that the sinkhole effect and the upsurge in poverty could deeply affect society and calls for the reexamination of policies enacted in recent years to foster economic progress.


The article is "The Rising Prevalence of Severe Poverty in America: A Growing Threat to Public Health" by Steven H. Woolf, MD, MPH, Robert E. Johnson, PhD, and H. Jack Geiger, MD, M Sci Hyg. The article appears in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Volume 31, Issue 4 (October 2006) published by Elsevier.

The U.S. Census Bureau is expected to release income and poverty statistics from the 2005 American Community Survey on August 29, 2006.

So your high school senior says she wants to be a doctor. Great news, right? It is if she's got the talent and the grades to back up her ambition.

Unfortunately, the goals of too many teens now outpace what they are likely to achieve, a problem that can lead to wasted time and resources, not to mention anxiety and distress, according to a new Florida State University study.

Sociology Professor John Reynolds tracked changes in high school seniors' educational and occupational plans between 1976 and 2000 and found the gap in goals and actual achievements has grown over the 25-year period. The study, co-authored by FSU graduate students Michael Stewart, Ryan MacDonald and Lacey Sischo, was published in the journal Social Problems.

"Today's teens are both highly ambitious and increasingly unrealistic," Reynolds said. "While some youth clearly benefit from heightened ambition, it can lead to disappointment and discouragement rather than optimism and success."

The study, which was supported by a $47,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, is the first to show with comparable, national data how dramatically high school seniors' plans have changed since the 1970s, how these expectations are increasingly out of sync with the achievements of their peers and that there is a corresponding decline in the payoffs of student ambition for future accomplishments in school.

The researchers analyzed data from several national surveys, including the annual Monitoring the Future Survey, the National Longitudinal Study, the Digest of Education Statistics and the Current Population Survey.

They found that high school seniors in 2000 were much more ambitious than their 1976 counterparts, with 50 percent of seniors planning to continue their education after college to get an advanced degree and 63 percent planning to work in a professional job, such as doctor, lawyer, college professor, accountant or engineer, by age 30. In 1976, only 26 percent said they planned to get an advanced degree and 41 percent planned to work as a professional. Other categories were laborer, farmer or homemaker; service, sales or clerical; operative or crafts; military or protective services; entrepreneur; and administrator or manager.

Interestingly, the percentage of high school graduates between age 25 and 30 who actually earned advanced degrees has remained pretty steady, meaning only the expectations have changed, and dramatically at that. The gap between expectations of earning an advanced degree and what is realistic grew from 22 percentage points in 1976 to 41 percentage points in 2000.

The researchers attribute the high school seniors' unrealistic expectations to the declining influence of grades and high school curricula and the increase of students who plan to use community college as an educational stepping-stone to a bachelor's degree and beyond. While community college may be valuable, statistics show that these students are much less likely to earn a bachelor's degree, let alone an advanced degree, than their peers who began their college careers at four-year institutions.

So what's wrong with reaching for the stars?

"Unrealistic plans may lead to a misuse of human potential and economic resources," Reynolds said. "For example, planning to become a medical doctor while making poor grades in high school means that preparation for other more probable vocations is likely to be postponed."

Like many cultural shifts in today's society, money may be at the root of the "college-for-all" attitude. Parents, high school counselors and others are giving students the message that a college degree is the only way to get a good job when, in fact, a skilled electrician or plumber can earn as much as say, a college professor, Reynolds said.

"Also, other researchers have found that although we are making more money than in the past, what counts for happiness is making more than your peers," he said. "This might also fuel irrational plans to work in top occupations."

FSU News
28 August 2006

ABSTRACT — Writing about emotional experiences is associated with a host of positive outcomes. This study extended the expressive-writing paradigm to the realm of romantic relationships to examine the social effects of writing. For 3 consecutive days, one person from each of 86 dating couples either wrote about his or her deepest thoughts and feelings about the relationship or wrote about his or her daily activities. In the days before and after writing, instant messages were collected from the couples. Participants who wrote about their relationship were significantly more likely to still be dating their romantic partners 3 months later. Linguistic analyses of the instant messages revealed that participants and their partners used significantly more positive and negative emotion words in the days following the expressive-writing manipulation if the participants had written about their relationship than if they had written about their daily activities. Increases in positive emotion words partially mediated the relation between expressive writing and relationship stability.

Slatcher, Richard B. & Pennebaker, James W. (2006)
How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Words: The Social Effects of Expressive Writing.
Psychological Science 17 (8), 660-664.

Research led by a pair of Iowa State University psychologists has proven for the first time that exposure to violent video games can desensitize individuals to real-life violence.

Nicholas Carnagey, an Iowa State psychology instructor and research assistant, and ISU Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Anderson collaborated on the study with Brad Bushman, a former Iowa State psychology professor now at the University of Michigan, and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.

They authored a paper titled "The Effects of Video Game Violence on Physiological Desensitization to Real-Life Violence," which was published in the current issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. In this paper, the authors define desensitization to violence as "a reduction in emotion-related physiological reactivity to real violence."

Their paper reports that past research -- including their own studies -- documents that exposure to violent video games increases aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiological arousal and aggressive behaviors, and decreases helpful behaviors. Previous studies also found that more than 85 percent of video games contain some violence, and approximately half of video games include serious violent actions.

The methodology: Their latest study tested 257 college students (124 men and 133 women) individually. After taking baseline physiological measurements on heart rate and galvanic skin response -- and asking questions to control for their preference for violent video games and general aggression -- participants played one of eight randomly assigned violent or non-violent video games for 20 minutes. The four violent video games were Carmageddon, Duke Nukem, Mortal Kombat or Future Cop; the non-violent games were Glider Pro, 3D Pinball, 3D Munch Man and Tetra Madness.

After playing a video game, a second set of five-minute heart rate and skin response measurements were taken. Participants were then asked to watch a 10-minute videotape of actual violent episodes taken from TV programs and commercially-released films in the following four contexts: courtroom outbursts, police confrontations, shootings and prison fights. Heart rate and skin response were monitored throughout the viewing.

The physical differences: When viewing real violence, participants who had played a violent video game experienced skin response measurements significantly lower than those who had played a non-violent video game. The participants in the violent video game group also had lower heart rates while viewing the real-life violence compared to the nonviolent video game group.

"The results demonstrate that playing violent video games, even for just 20 minutes, can cause people to become less physiologically aroused by real violence," said Carnagey. "Participants randomly assigned to play a violent video game had relatively lower heart rates and galvanic skin responses while watching footage of people being beaten, stabbed and shot than did those randomly assigned to play nonviolent video games.

"It appears that individuals who play violent video games habituate or 'get used to' all the violence and eventually become physiologically numb to it."

Participants in the violent versus non-violent games conditions did not differ in heart rate or skin response at the beginning of the study, or immediately after playing their assigned game. However, their physiological reactions to the scenes of real violence did differ significantly, a result of having just played a violent or a non-violent game. The researchers also controlled for trait aggression and preference for violent video games.

The researchers' conclusion: They conclude that the existing video game rating system, the content of much entertainment media, and the marketing of those media combine to produce "a powerful desensitization intervention on a global level."

"It (marketing of video game media) initially is packaged in ways that are not too threatening, with cute cartoon-like characters, a total absence of blood and gore, and other features that make the overall experience a pleasant one," said Anderson. "That arouses positive emotional reactions that are incongruent with normal negative reactions to violence. Older children consume increasingly threatening and realistic violence, but the increases are gradual and always in a way that is fun.

"In short, the modern entertainment media landscape could accurately be described as an effective systematic violence desensitization tool," he said. "Whether modern societies want this to continue is largely a public policy question, not an exclusively scientific one."

The researchers hope to conduct future research investigating how differences between types of entertainment -- violent video games, violent TV programs and films -- influence desensitization to real violence. They also hope to investigate who is most likely to become desensitized as a result of exposure to violent video games.

"Several features of violent video games suggest that they may have even more pronounced effects on users than violent TV programs and films," said Carnagey.

A copy of the paper is available at http://www.public.iastate.edu/~vasser/pubs/06CAB.pdf.

The older we get, the more we regret not having more fun, says new study in the September issue of the Journal of Consumer Research. Researchers from Columbia University show that choosing work over play leads to regrets about having missed out on the pleasures of life. Over time, these regrets intensify, while guilt about indulging tends to fade.

"While yielding to temptation can certainly be harmful, this article argues that overcontrol and excessive farsightedness ('hyperopia') can also have negative long-term consequences," say Ran Kivetz and Anat Keinan.

As with many mid-life (and quarter-life) crises, we tend to experience especially strong regret if pleasure is constantly delayed. According to the study – one of the first to compare indulgence regret to self-control regret – the greater temporal perspective gleaned with age helps us let go of guilt for, say, transgressions at a long-ago spring break. Instead, we begin to experience wistful feelings for delayed pleasures – for not taking that around-the-world trip sooner or for constantly dieting and not eating dessert.

"In the short run, vice is regretted more than virtue, but in the long run virtue is regretted more," conclude the authors. "Consumers sometimes suffer from excessive farsightedness and future-biased preferences, consistently delaying pleasure and overweighing necessity and virtue in local decisions."

EurekAlert!
26 June 2006

New Haven, Conn. — People who see their relationships as either all good or all bad tend to have low self-esteem, according to a series of seven studies by Yale researchers published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

In two of the studies participants were asked to indicate as quickly as possible whether each of 10 adjectives applied to their relationship partner, adjectives such as caring and warm or greedy and dishonest. Partners in this study included college roommates and mothers.

Individuals low in self-esteem were considerably slower to respond when negative and positive adjectives were alternated than when similar adjectives appeared in blocks. Those high in self-esteem were equally quick to respond to the adjectives no matter how they were presented.

“This suggests it was hard for them to think of their partners as a mix of positive and negative characteristics at a given point in time,” said Margaret Clark, a professor in the Department of Psychology and senior faculty author of the study. “We do not think these results are limited to any one type of relationship. We think they apply to any close relationship.”

Clark said the effects were obtained only when people judged relationship partners. There was no delayed response when judging an object, in this case, their computer.

The researchers first measured self-esteem by asking participants to fill out the Rosenberg self-esteem inventory, a self-report measure of self-esteem. The reaction time task was administered weeks later by an experimenter who did not know their evaluation results.

 “Those low in self-esteem are chronically concerned about whether or not their close relationship partners will or will not accept them,” Clark said. “In good times, those low in self-esteem tend to idealize partners, rendering those partners safe for approach and likely to reflect positively upon them. At the first sign of a partner not being perfect, however, they switch to focusing on all possible negatives about the partner so as to justify withdrawing from that partner and not risking vulnerability.”

Based on their research, Clark and Steven Graham, first author of the study, developed a way to measure the extent to which people segregate thoughts about partners into “all good” and “all bad” qualities. Their new scale is called the I-TAPS (Integration of Thoughts About Partners Scale).

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Graham received a dissertation prize for his part in the research from the International Association of Relationship Researchers. The prize is for the best Ph.D. dissertation of the year dealing with relationships.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90: 652-665 (May 2006)

Yale University News Release
7 June 2006

Bad judgments about people can affect memories of them, Cornell study finds
By Susan S. Lang

Viewing a person as dishonest or immoral can distort memory, a Cornell study suggests. So much so, that when we attempt to recall that person's behavior, it seems to be worse than it really was.

"In other words, our study shows that morally blaming a person can distort memory for the severity of his or her crime or misbehavior," said David Pizarro, assistant professor of psychology at Cornell.

Pizarro and three colleagues gave 283 college students a story about a man who walked out on a restaurant bill, including what the man ate and drank and the amount of his bill. Half the participants read that the man walked out on the bill because he "was a jerk who liked to steal," and half read that the man left without paying because he received an emergency phone call.

"One week later the people who were told he was a jerk remembered a higher bill -- from 10 to 25 percent more than the bill actually was. Those who were told he had an emergency phone call remembered a slightly lower-than-actual bill," said Pizarro, the first author of a study to be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Memory and Cognition. His co-authors include University of California (UC)-Irvine's Elizabeth Loftus, whose groundbreaking work put memory distortion on the map in the late 1980s when she showed that subjects viewing a film clip of a car accident estimated the speed of the cars differently depending on whether such words as hit, collided or mashed were used in the question.

Previous studies have found that leading questions can influence memory of an incident, and that thinking that someone is good (or bad) in one area tends to influence judgments about them in other areas.

"But this is the first study that we know of that looked at how blame might affect memory regarding objective facts, which you usually think of as less susceptible to distortion," Pizarro said. "It suggests that negative evaluations are capable of exerting a distorting effect on memory as well."

The findings have particular implications for eyewitness testimonies, Pizarro noted. "Spontaneous evaluations made by an eyewitness about a defendant may influence their memories about the event in question -- memories that often serve as the very data that judges and juries use as input into their judgments of guilt."

In addition, eyewitnesses who hear information about the moral character of a defendant, "even long after the events have occurred," may misremember the events in question, such as the severity of the crime, putting perpetrators at greater risk.

Cornell Chronicle Online
13 March 2006

When someone in our social group makes friends with someone from another background, the chances are that our own prejudices will break down, according to new ESRC-funded research.

A study led by Dr. Adam Rutland, of the University of Kent, backs claims that the more we learn about others, the better we are likely to get on with them.

It found that what is termed the 'extended contact' approach, could effectively change children's attitudes and intended behaviour towards refugees, across the entire age range from six to 11.

Extended contact works on the idea that when a member of one group has a close relationship or contact with someone from another, this can lead to more positive attitudes all round.

Best results of all came when children were encouraged to see their own and other groups as sharing a common identity – their school – in addition to retaining their separate one as, say, English or a refugee. In other words, having a 'dual' identity.

To test this theory, researchers presented English children with one of their group who had made friends with a refugee youngster. Exercises over several weeks also included getting children to read adventure stories in which both English and refugee youngsters were shown in a positive light, and as friends.

Dr Rutland said: "Our findings testify to the value of extended contact as an approach to reducing prejudice. In particular, we found that including characters from other backgrounds in the stories read at school was very effective." The project examined various theories about childhood prejudice, and the effectiveness of various processes, or interventions, used by those trying to encourage friendship and co-operation.

The area studied was East Kent, which includes Dover and Folkestone, and contains a high proportion of immigrants or refugees as the main port of entry into the UK. Tension has arisen between the majority community and immigrants. One intervention technique examined - multiple classification skills training - is based on the belief that children are prejudiced because they cannot cope with more than one concept – for instance, that someone is Afro-Caribbean British and friendly. Nor, it is thought, can they take into account other people's points of view.

However, researchers found that though this sort of training improved children's ability to handle multiple concepts, it had no effect on attitudes towards others. Alternative approaches, all found effective, derive from theories that, under a given set of conditions, contact between members of different groups reduces existing prejudices.

Dr Rutland said: "It seems that extended contact leads children to 'include the other in the self' and this in turn leads to more positive attitudes."

EurekAlert
10 November 2005

In a study designed to isolate the root causes of violent behavior, Harvard Medical School (HMS) researchers found that young teens who witnessed gun violence were more than twice as likely as non-witnesses to commit violent crime themselves in the following years. The study will appear in the May 27 issue of Science.

"Based on this study's results, showing the importance of personal contact with violence, the best model for violence may be that of a socially infectious disease," says Felton Earls, MD, HMS professor of social medicine and principal investigator of the study and of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods.

"Preventing one violent crime may prevent a downstream cascade of infections. And the lessons learned in Chicago should be broadly applicable. Generalizing this to any large city should be valid," Earls said.

The study, a five-year project that included interviews of over 1,500 children and teenagers from 78 Chicago neighborhoods, used statistical advances and extremely detailed information about the study subjects to go beyond the correlations and associations typically used by social scientists to determine violent behavior.

"We have a broad range of factors, and a long course of study, so we can tease out the causal mechanisms," said first author Jeffrey Bingenheimer, currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan who will be joining the Harvard School of Public Health in September as Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar.

Previous work has shown that a large network of factors pushes or pulls young people away from or into violent crime. Researchers suspected that exposure to violence in the community played a role, but many argued that a common factor, perhaps in family structure or personality, might be the common cause of both exposure to violence and later acts of violence. Demonstrating cause and effect with a controlled experiment, deliberately exposing some children to mayhem, would be ethically impossible.

But by grouping together and comparing teens with similar likelihood of exposure, some of whom were and some of whom were not actually witnesses to violence, the researchers were able to isolate the independent contribution made by seeing gun violence. And it turned out to be large, swamping other single factors like poverty, drug use, or being raised by a single parent.

The researchers studied the subject teens at three points in their adolescence. Initially they and their caregivers were intensively interviewed and data was collected about their families, personalities, neighborhoods, school performance, and many other factors; this allowed the researchers to group the teens by their propensity to witness gun violence. Two years later, the subjects were interviewed to see which of them had actually seen someone being shot, or shot at. Finally, almost three years further on, they were interviewed again to determine who had participated in gang violence or other violent actions.

After finding that witnessing violence more than doubled the risk that teens would violently offend, the team looked at their statistics to check whether an unknown factor could be hiding from them. They found that something significant would have to be at work to change the findings substantially, and it would have to be uncorrelated with the factors they did examine. "And honestly, it's very difficult to think what we might have left out," Earls said, pointing to the 153 variables that were embraced in the study.

There is no shortage of medical ways to view urban violence, but the challenge for social medicine researchers is to choose the best one - is violence a product of families, akin to a hereditary disorder? Or is violence like an environmental contaminant, lurking in some communities and leaving others unscathed? Based this study's results, showing the importance of personal contact with violence, Earls feels the best model may be an socially contagious disease.

This study was part of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, a major interdisciplinary study aimed at deepening society's understanding of the causes and pathways of juvenile delinquency, adult crime, substance abuse, and violence. The firearm violence study was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, and the National Institute of Mental Health.

Harvard Medical School News Release
26 May 2005

What difference does it make if a prosecutor describes a defendant as a “murderer” or as “someone who commits murder?” In some cases, those few words could mean the difference between life and death.
   
New research by Vanderbilt University psychologist Jessica Giles reveals that beliefs about people who have committed violent acts are strongly influenced by the words used to describe those people.

“Noun labels have a powerful influence on our thoughts and beliefs about others. In the criminal justice system, potential jurors who repeatedly hear a defendant being called a ‘strangler’ in the press might be more likely to support a death sentence for that defendant,” Giles, assistant professor of psychology in the Vanderbilt Peabody College of Education and Human Development, said. “That these labels might also be used to manipulate, inflame or prejudice the general public is of substantial interest in light of recent political rhetoric concerning ‘terrorists’ and ‘evildoers.’”

Giles’ recent research found that both children and adults are more likely to have a negative, fixed view of people described with a noun, such as “evildoer” or “murderer,” than a person described as “someone who does evil things” or “someone who commits murder.” Giles presented the research at the meeting of the Cognitive Development Society in San Diego Oct. 21.
 
 “We use nouns generally to describe things whose essential nature does not change: brick, house, dog,” Giles said. “We learn at a very early age that nouns are used to describe something’s fundamental character. As a result, when we hear a person being described with a noun—murderer, sex offender, criminal—we tend to automatically infer that that person cannot and will not change.”

Giles has conducted multiple studies examining the impact on adults and children of using nouns to describe violence and aggression. In a recent study, 90 adults were given surveys about what they believe causes violence, their perceptions of the effectiveness of criminal rehabilitation and their attitudes toward legal sanctions. In one version, the survey questions used the word “murderer”; questions in the other version used “people who commit murder.” She found that participants whose surveys used the term  “murderer” were more likely to respond that the person described is inherently violent and will not change, more likely to endorse punitive legal sanctions and less likely to view rehabilitation as effective.

Giles then looked at the impact of noun labels on participants’ attitudes toward Megan’s Law, which mandates that people convicted of certain classes of sex crimes register their whereabouts when released from prison. She found that participants were significantly more likely to endorse the law when questions were posed using the noun label “sex offender” than when using the phrase “commits sex offenses.”

Giles found that the effect of noun labels is also strong in children. In one study, preschoolers who heard a character described as an “evildoer” were more likely to infer stability over time and resistance to intervention than were children who heard a character described as someone who “who does evil things whenever he can.” The same held true in additional work using the label “bully.”

The research strongly suggests that children use nouns as powerful cues for making sense of people and their behavior.

“In addition to demonstrating that noun labels can influence adults’ beliefs and attitudes, this study also indicates that the way we talk to our children about violence and aggression has an early and lasting impact,” Giles said. “We know that the use of labels like “bully” to describe children who have misbehaved can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We need to focus on changing the behavior and building the child’s strengths as opposed to pigeonholing him or her based on a label.”

Vanderbilt News Service
21 October 2005