When group members admit to being conformist: The role of relative intragroup status in conformity self-reports

Five studies examined the hypothesis that people will strategically portray the self as being more g-roup influenced the more junior they feel within the group. Among social psychologists (Study 1), ratings of self-conformity by g-roup members were greater when the status of the participant was low than when it was high. These effects were replicated in Studies 2, 3, and 4 in which relative intragroup status was manipulated. In Study 3, the authors found junior group members described themselves as more conformist than senior members when they were addressing an ingroup audience, but when they were addressing an outgroup audience the effect disappeared. Furthermore, junior members (but not senior members) rated themselves as more conformist when they were led to believe their responses were public than when responses were private (Study 5). The discussion focuses on the strategic processes underlying low-status group members' self-reports of group influence and the functional role of conformity in groups.

Who will see me? The impact of type of audience on willingness to display group-mediated attitude-intention consistency

The present study examined the role that group norms, group identification, and imagined audience (in-group vs. out-group) play in attitude-behavior processes. University students (N = 187) participated in a study concerned with the prediction of consumer behavior. Attitudes toward drinking their preferred beer, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, group norm, and group identification were assessed. Intentions and perceived audience reactions to consumption were assessed. As expected, group norms, identification, and imagined audience interacted to influence likelihood of drinking one's preferred beer and perceived audience reactions. High identifiers were more responsive to group norms in the presence of an in-group audience than an out-group audience. The present results indicate that audience concerns impact upon the relationship between attitude., and behavior.

Why do people engage in collective action? Revisiting the role of perceived effectiveness

Research has shown limited support for the notion that perceived effectiveness of collective action is a predictor of intentions to engage in collective action. One reason may be that effectiveness has been in terms of whether the action will influence key decision makers. We argue that the effectiveness of collective action might be judged by other criteria, such as whether it influences third parties, builds an oppositional movement, and expresses values. Two hundred and thirty one attendees at a rally rated the effectiveness of the rally and their intentions to engage in future collective action. For those participants who were not members of an organization, intentions were linked to the perceived effectiveness of the rally in expressing values and influencing the public. For those who were members of an organization, intentions were linked only to the effectiveness of the rally in building an oppositional movement.

With friends like these... The role of prejudice and situational norms on discriminatory helping behavior

An experiment was conducted to examine the impact of homophobic attitudes and situational norms for helping on discriminatory behavior against a gay male. In a partial replication of Frey and Gaertner (1986), participants were asked to provide help to a confederate portrayed to be either gay or heterosexual who either requested help for himself (ambiguous situational norm) or for whom a third party requested help (unambiguous situational norm). Participants' levels of homophobia were assessed either before or after the main helping task. The results indicated that when norms for helping were ambiguous those participants higher in homophobia discriminated against the gay male, but only on subtle indicators of discrimination. In the unambiguous norm condition, participants higher in homophobia discriminated against the heterosexual male. Those lower in homophobia did not discriminate under either norm condition. The results show that it may be sufficient for those with prejudiced attitudes just to believe that it is not the wrong thing to do for their attitudes to be translated into some form of discriminatory behavior.

Workplace familism and psychological contract breach in the Philippines

The present study addresses the call for theory-based investigations on workplace familism. It contributes to the literature by proposing and testing the moderating role of workplace familism between psychological contract breach and civic virtue behaviour. We surveyed 267 full-time employees and found main effects of both types of workplace familism (i.e. workplace organisational and workplace supervisor familism) and breach of relational obligations on civic virtue behaviour. Workplace supervisor familism also moderated the relationship between breach and civic virtue behaviour, with the negative relationship between breach and civic virtue behaviour stronger when workplace supervisor familism was high. This suggests that employees with a high level of workplace supervisor familism may feel a sense of betrayal and, therefore, respond more negatively to contract breach. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.

Get the picture? The effects of iconicity on toddlers' reenactment from picture books

What do toddlers learn from everyday picture-book reading interactions? To date, there has been scant research exploring this question. In this study, the authors adapted a standard imitation procedure to examine 18- to 30-month-olds' ability to learn how to reenact a novel action sequence from a picture book. The results provide evidence that toddlers can imitate specific target actions on novel real-world objects on the basis of a picture-book interaction. Children's imitative performance after the reading interaction varied both as a function of age and the level of iconicity of the pictures in the book. These findings are discussed in terms of children's emerging symbolic capacity and the flexibility of the cognitive representation.

Differentiation between and within groups: The influence of individualist and collectivist group norms

The power of individualist and collectivist group norms to influence intergroup and inter-individual differentiation was examined in three studies. Study I revealed that intergroup differentiation was lower when group norms prescribed individualism than when they prescribed collectivism. However inter-individual differentiation was higher when group norms endorsed individualism than when they promoted collectivism. In Studies 2 and 3 we found evidence for the moderating effect of group salience on the relationship between norms and differentiation. Specifically, the effect that individualist group norms reduced intergroup differentiation but enhanced inter-individual differentiation was more pronounced when group salience was high rather than low. This finding demonstrates that conformity to a group norm prescribing individualism influences the manner in which positive differentiation is expressed. The discussion focuses on the caveats of introducing individualist group norms when attempting to reduce intergroup differentiation. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mental playmates: Siblings, executive functioning and theory of mind

This study assessed the theory of mind (ToM) and executive functioning (EF) abilities of 124 typically developing preschool children aged 3 to 5 years in relation to whether or not they had a child-aged sibling (i.e. a child aged 1 to 12 years) at home with whom to play and converse. On a ToM battery that included tests of false belief, appearance-reality (AR) and pretend representation, children who had at least 1 child-aged sibling scored significantly higher than both only children and those whose only siblings were infants or adults. The numbers of child-aged siblings in preschoolers' families positively predicted their scores on both a ToM battery (4 tasks) and an EF battery (2 tasks), and these associations remained significant with language ability partialled out. Results of a hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that independent contributions to individual differences in ToM were made by language ability, EF skill and having a child-aged sibling. However, even though some conditions for mediation were met, there was no statistically reliable evidence that EF skills mediated the advantage of presence of child-aged siblings for ToM performance. While consistent with the theory that distinctively childish interaction among siblings accelerates the growth of both TOM and EF capacities, alternative evidence and alternative theoretical interpretations for the findings were also considered.

Reaction time facilitation by acoustic task-irrelevant stimuli is not related to startle

Previous research has been interpreted to suggest that the startle reflex mediates the RT facilitation observed if intense, accessory acoustic stimuli are presented coinciding with the onset of a visual imperative stimulus in a forewarned simple RT task. The present research replicated this finding as well as the facilitation of startle observed during the imperative stimulus. It failed, however, to find any relationship between the size of the blink startle reflex elicited by the accessory acoustic stimuli, which differed in intensity and rise time, and RT or RT facilitation observed on trials with accessory acoustic stimuli. This finding suggests that the RT facilitation is not mediated by the startle reflex elicited by the accessory acoustic stimuli. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Reflexive optokinetic nystagmus in younger and older observers under photopic and mesopic viewing conditions

PURPOSE. To investigate the effect of age on optokinetic nystagmus (OKN) in response to stimuli designed to preferentially stimulate the M-pathway. METHOD. OKN was recorded in 10 younger (32.3 +/- 5.98 years) and 10 older (65.6 +/- 6.53) subjects with normal vision. Vertical gratings of 0.43 or 1.08 cpd drifting at 5 degrees/s or 20 degrees/s and presented at either 8% or 80% contrast were displayed on a large screen as full-field stimulation, central stimulation within a central Gaussian-blurred window of 15 diameter, or peripheral stimulation outside this window. All conditions apart from the high-contrast condition were presented in a random order at two light levels, mesopic (1.8 cdm(-2)) and photopic (71.5 cdm(-2)). RESULTS. Partial-field data indicated that central stimulation, mesopic light levels, and lower temporal frequency each significantly increased slow-phase velocity (SPV). Although there was no overall difference between groups for partial-field stimulation, full-field stimulation, or low-contrast stimulation, a change in illumination revealed a significant interaction with age: there was a larger decrease in SPV going from photopic to mesopic conditions for the older group than the younger group, especially for higher temporal frequency stimulation. CONCLUSIONS. OKN becomes reflexive in conditions conducive to M-pathway stimulation, and this rOKN response is significantly diminished in older healthy adults than in younger healthy adults, indicative of decreased M-pathway sensitivity.

The new reinforcement sensitivity theory: Implications for personality measurement

In this article, we review recent modifications to Jeffrey Gray's (1973, 1991) reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST), and attempt to draw implications for psychometric measurement of personality traits. First, we consider Gray and McNaughton's (2000) functional revisions to the biobehavioral systems of RST Second, we evaluate recent clarifications relating to interdependent effects that these systems may have on behavior, in addition to or in place of separable effects (e.g., Corr 2001; Pickering, 1997). Finally, we consider ambiguities regarding the exact trait dimension to which Gray's It reward system corresponds. From this review, we suggest that future work is needed to distinguish psychometric measures of (a) fear from anxiety and (b) reward-reactivity-from trait impulsivity. We also suggest, on the basis of interdependent system views of RST and associated exploration using formal models, that traits that are based upon RST are likely to have substantial intercorrelations. Finally, we advise that more substantive work is required to define relevant constructs and behaviors in RST before we can be confident in our psychometric measures of them.

Searching for the trace: The influence of age, lexical activation and working memory on sentence processing

To investigate the stability of trace reactivation in healthy older adults, 22 older volunteers with no significant neurological history participated in a cross-modal priming task. Whilst both object relative center embedded (ORC) and object relative right branching (ORR) sentences is-ere employed, working memory load was reduced by limiting the number of wordy separating the antecedent front the gap for both sentence types. Analysis of the results did not reveal any significant trace reactivation for the ORC or ORR sentences. The results did reveal, however, a positive correlation between age and semantic printing at the pre-gap position and a negative correlation between age and semantic printing at the gap position for ORC sentences. In contrast, there was no correlation between age and priming effects for the ORR sentences. These results indicated that trace reactivation may be sensitive to a variety of age related factors, including lexical activation and working memory. The implications of these results for sentence processing in the older population arc discussed.

Hyperlocomotion associated with transient prenatal vitamin D deficiency is ameliorated by acute restraint

Transient prenatal vitamin D deficiency produces hyperlocomotion in the adult rat. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of acute restraint on the behaviour of DVD and control rats in the open field. Rats were conceived and born to developmentally vitamin D (DVD) deficient or replete (control) dams and, at 8 weeks of age, were monitored for 30 min in an open field using automated video tracking software. Half of the rats were restrained within a towel for 5 min immediately before the open field test. The remainder received minimal handling prior to the open field test. Repeating previous findings, DVD deficient animals had enhanced locomotion during the first 10 min of the open field test compared to control rats. By contrast, there were no differences in locomotor activity after acute restraint stress. The time rats spent in the corners and side of the open field was affected by prenatal diet. DVD rats spent less time in the corners and more time in the side than control rats across the whole 30 min test. This difference was not seen in rats with acute restraint stress. The time spent in the centre was not altered by prenatal diet or acute restraint. Thus, transient prenatal vitamin D deficiency induces a transient spontaneous hyperlocomotion in adulthood that is modulated by acute restraint stress. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Spatially localized distortions of event time

A fundamental question about the perception of time is whether the neural mechanisms underlying temporal judgements are universal and centralized in the brain or modality specific and distributed []. Time perception has traditionally been thought to be entirely dissociated from spatial vision. Here we show that the apparent duration of a dynamic stimulus can be manipulated in a local region of visual space by adapting to oscillatory motion or flicker. This implicates spatially localized temporal mechanisms in duration perception. We do not see concomitant changes in the time of onset or offset of the test patterns, demonstrating a direct local effect on duration perception rather than an indirect effect on the time course of neural processing. The effects of adaptation on duration perception can also be dissociated from motion or flicker perception per se. Although 20 Hz adaptation reduces both the apparent temporal frequency and duration of a 10 Hz test stimulus, 5 Hz adaptation increases apparent temporal frequency but has little effect on duration perception. We conclude that there is a peripheral, spatially localized, essentially visual component involved in sensing the duration of visual events.