Meta-insight: Do people really know how others see them?

Although people can accurately guess how others see them, many studies have suggested that this may only be because people generally assume that others see them as they see themselves. These findings raise the question: In their everyday lives, do people understand the distinction between how they see their own personality and how others see their personality? We examined whether people make this distinction, or whether people possess what we call meta-insight. In 3 studies, we assessed meta-insight for a broad range of traits (e.g., Big Five, intelligent, funny) across several naturalistic social contexts (e.g., first impression, friends). Our findings suggest that people can make valid distinctions between how they see themselves and how others see them. Thus, people seem to have some genuine insight into their reputation and do not achieve meta-accuracy only by capitalizing on the fact that others see them similarly to how they see themselves. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Child’s play: Facilitating the originality of creative output by a priming manipulation.

When children play, they often do so in very original ways. However, with the responsibilities of adulthood, this playful curiosity is sometimes lost and conventional responses often result. In the present study, 76 undergraduates were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 conditions before creative performance was assessed in a version of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT; E. P. Torrance, 1974). In a control condition, participants wrote about what they would do if school was cancelled for the day. In an experimental condition, the instructions were identical except that participants were to imagine themselves as 7-year-olds in this situation. Individuals imagining themselves as children subsequently produced more original responses on the TTCT. Further results showed that the manipulation was particularly effective among more introverted individuals, who are typically less spontaneous and more inhibited in their daily lives. The results thus establish that there is a benefit in thinking like a child to subsequent creative originality, particularly among introverted individuals. The discussion links the findings to mindset factors, play and spontaneity, and relevant personality processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-relevant scenarios as mediators of likelihood estimates and compliance: Does imagining make it so?

In 4 experiments, 206 undergraduates and 79 homeowners, through the use of a structured scenario, were led to imagine themselves experiencing certain events and came to believe more strongly that the events would befall them. This promotive effect of the scenario procedure on probability or likelihood estimates occurred for both positive (e.g., winning a contest) and negative events (e.g., being arrested for a crime) and in both laboratory and field contexts. Crucial to its relevance for compliance, the scenario procedure influenced not only probability judgments, but behavior as well. Homeowners who imagined themselves utilizing a cable TV service were more likely to subscribe to such a service when requested to do so weeks later. It was determined that the effect of structured scenarios on compliance was not due to additional information provided by the scenario. An interpretation based on the availability heuristic is suggested. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stresses and satisfactions of chairing in psychology.

174 chairpersons in doctoral-level psychology departments completed questionnaires that requested them to (a) estimate the time breakdown of a typical work week and the sacrifices of becoming chairs (e.g., reduced research/writing); (b) rate satisfactions of chairing (e.g., being an advocate for faculty with administrators); (c) rate stresses of chairing (e.g., faculty misbehaviors); and (d) estimate the mental health problems of their faculty (e.g., alcoholism) and judge their own strengths (e.g., approachability) and failures (e.g., not finding happiness in chairing). In some dimensions in which Ss rated themselves most effective (e.g., advocacy and approachability), they suspected that faculty were most likely to disapprove of their efforts. Despite the stresses, misunderstandings, and limited satisfactions of chairing, 66% of the Ss supposed they would take the job again, knowing what they knew at the time of the questionnaire. Most Ss seemed to have developed healthy mechanisms of coping with job stresses, but many admitted strategies such as avoidance, substance abuse, and anger. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The emergence of action.

People sometimes find themselves doing things that they did not set out to do. The theory of action identification suggests that, under these circumstances, people will then continue to perform this action as newly understood. The present 2 experiments investigated this action emergence phenomenon. Each was designed to test the idea that people would embrace a new understanding of action—an emergent act identity—to the degree that this identity provided a more comprehensive understanding of the action than did a previous act identity. In Exp I, with 61 undergraduates, some Ss were induced to think about the details of the act of going to college (e.g., studying), whereas others were led to focus on more comprehensive meanings (e.g., preparing for a career). Those who concentrated on details were more susceptible to an emergent understanding of the act. They came to agree with an article that suggested that going to college results in improving one's sex life or impairing one's sex life. Exp II, with 40 undergraduates, revealed that emergent identification can be translated into emergent action. Ss who were induced to think about the details of drinking coffee—by drinking their coffee in unwieldy cups—were more susceptible than those who drank from normal cups to a suggested action identification. They came to believe that drinking coffee amounted to making themselves seek or avoid stimulation, and they subsequently followed the suggested action identification by turning up or down the volume of music they were hearing. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Daily stress, coping, and well-being in parents of children with autism: A multilevel modeling approach.

This study used a repeated daily measurement design to examine the direct and moderating effects of coping on daily psychological distress and well-being in parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Twice weekly over a 12-week period, 93 parents provided reports of their daily stress, coping responses, and end-of-day mood. Multilevel modeling analyses identified 5 coping responses (e.g., seeking support, positive reframing) that predicted increased daily positive mood and 4 (e.g., escape, withdrawal) that were associated with decreased positive mood. Similarly, 2 coping responses were associated with decreased daily negative mood and 5 predicted increased negative mood. The moderating effects of gender and the 11 coping responses were also examined. Gender did not moderate the daily coping?mood relationship, however 3 coping responses (emotional regulation, social support, and worrying) were found to moderate the daily stress?mood relationship. Additionally, ASD symptomatology, and time since an ASD diagnosis were not found to predict daily parental mood. This study is perhaps the first to identify coping responses that enhance daily well-being and mitigate daily distress in parents of children with ASD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Productivity loss in performance groups: People who see themselves as average do not engage in social loafing.

The authors predicted that individuals who see themselves as average (e.g., who have a generalized belief in being no better or worse than others) do not engage in social loafing, unlike those who see themselves as generally superior to others. As expected, study participants who felt uniquely superior expended less effort when working collectively than when working coactively on an easy task, but they actually worked harder collectively than coactively on a more challenging task. Such effects did not occur in participants who perceived themselves as average. Taken together, these findings provide further support for S. J. Karau and K. D. Williams's (see record 1994-33384-001) collective effort model. They also suggest that what people come to believe about the relation between the self and others is a crucial factor in collective work contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Primary and secondary control among children undergoing medical procedures: Adjustment as a function of coping style.

The literature suggests that optimal adjustment to relatively uncontrollable stressors may require adjusting oneself to the stressors rather than trying to alter them. This possibility was explored for low-controllability stressors (e.g., painful medical procedures) associated with leukemia. Children's reports of coping strategies and goals were classified as primary control coping (attempts to alter objective conditions), secondary control coping (attempts to adjust oneself to objective conditions), or relinquished control (no attempt to cope). Secondary control coping was positively associated with (1) general behavioral adjustment assessed by the Child Behavior Checklist and (2) illness specific adjustment assessed by children's own distress ratings and by behavioral observations during painful procedures. All significant group differences showed better adjustment among secondary control children than among the primary or relinquished groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children’s understanding of joint commitments.

When adults make a joint commitment to act together, they feel an obligation to their partner. In 2 studies, the authors investigated whether young children also understand joint commitments to act together. In the first study, when an adult orchestrated with the child a joint commitment to play a game together and then broke off from their joint activity, 3-year-olds (n = 24) reacted to the break significantly more often (e.g., by trying to re-engage her or waiting for her to restart playing) than when she simply joined the child’s individual activity unbidden. Two-year-olds (n = 24) did not differentiate between these 2 situations. In the second study, 3- and 4-year-old children (n = 30 at each age) were enticed away from their activity with an adult. Children acknowledged their leaving (e.g., by looking to the adult or handing her the object they had been playing with) significantly more often when they had made a joint commitment to act together than when they had not. By 3 years of age, children thus recognize both when an adult is committed and when they themselves are committed to a joint activity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nepali children's ideas about emotional displays in hypothetical challenges.

Although culture plays an important role in specifying socially prescribed ways to communicate and act in emotional situations, few cultures have been studied. This study describes the ideas of 50 first-grade boys and girls (aged 6–9 years) from 2 different Nepali cultures (Tamang and Chhetri-Brahmin) regarding how they would feel and act in 6 emotionally challenging situations (e.g., peer conflict, family conflict). Significant cultural differences were found. Chhetri-Brahmin children were more likely than Tamang children to endorse negative emotions and to report masking negative emotion. These differences appeared to be related to socialization processes in the respective cultures. Chhetri-Brahmin mothers reported teaching their children about emotion, whereas Tamang mothers reported that children learned by themselves. The children's responses may reflect ideas about emotion regulation that emerge from the differing socioreligious contexts in which they live. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An attributional analysis of the development of excuse giving in aggressive and nonaggressive African American boys.

This study examined the effects of age and aggressive status on children's understanding and use of excuses. Younger (3rd–5th grade) and older (6th–8th grade) aggressive and nonaggressive African American boys were first instructed to imagine that they failed to fulfill a social obligation. The cause of the transgression was presented as controllable (e.g., choosing to do something else), and children indicated whether they would reveal that cause or make up an excuse. Next, 4 causes of the same transgression were manipulated to be either controllable or uncontrollable. Children inferred that they would be held more responsible for controllable causes of social misconduct, that these causes would elicit more anger, and that they would be more likely to withhold these causes (i.e., make up an excuse). The linkages between perceived responsibility, anticipated anger, and excuse giving were stronger among older than younger boys and among nonaggressive than aggressive boys. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When speech conflicts with seeing: young children's understanding of informational priority

In a series of investigations we found that children between 3 and 5 years of age judged that an utterance (such as, "There's milk in the jug") would be ignored by a listener who had previously seen something contradictory (orange juice in the jug). However, children judged that the listener would believe the message "There's milk in the jug" when he had not previously seen inside. In these various conditions, child participants had not seen for themselves what was inside the jug, so it was impossible for their own directly perceived knowledge to contaminate their judgments of what the protagonist believed. Under these conditions, even many false-belief failers did not assume that the listener would believe whatever they themselves thought was true. Moreover, the results of control conditions suggested that children's success could not be attributed to low-level strategies. These results seem to indicate an early understanding of how people prioritize information, with the consequence that they acknowledge that one and the same message would be believed in one context but not in another.     

TV guide: Two-year-old children learn to use video as a source of information.

Learning to use symbols is a challenge for young children even when the symbol in question (e.g., a live video image) is iconic and seems transparent to adults. This research examined the effect of experience on children's use of video-presented information. Two-year-old children saw themselves "live" on their family television for 2 weeks and then participated in an object-retrieval task. The children reliably used a live video presentation of an adult hiding a toy in an adjoining room to find the toy. Most also transferred what they learned to a task involving another symbol (pictures) that typically is very difficult for this age group. The results reveal flexibility in 2-year-olds' symbol use that follows from successful representation of a symbolic relation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personal Reflections.

If we check the social class origins of many of the disabled activists, we will find that large numbers were children of the white middle class. Their parents were not deprived; they were reasonably comfortable. Their parents were themselves products of the dream of the meritocracy, which holds that hard work is rewarded and that education, diligence, and good character produce a good life. These parents obtained what medical, educational, and rehabilitation services were available for their children, often ensuring that they studied and played with nondisabled as well as disabled peers. Imbued with the notion that effort paid and that what looked to others like limitations could be easily mastered, their children tried to do their best--to cultivate winning personalities, pleasing appearances, and good minds; to develop their independence and their physical and mental capacities; to minimize their oddities; to become desirable intellectually, socially, and emotionally; and to stress their similarities with others rather than their differences from others, rather than their differences from others. Sometimes they succeeded--in high school, college, even graduate school. Like others of their education and class, they sought their places in the adult world. But when they hit the adult world, they found that their individual strivings and accomplishments meant very little. Were it not a social problem, disability would require no discussion. In a more just world, disability might not be a social, economic, or political problem. It would not be a topic for meetings and discussions. I write out of conscience, anger, and disappointment--that to live with myself, to better myself and others like me, I have no choice but to speak about what could have and should have been a rather inconsequential part of myself and my life. I write in neither pride nor shame, but simply because I have no other choice. I long for the day when I, other disabled psychologists, and other disabled people will go into any room in any convention, any meeting, or gathering or job in the world and be greeted, evaluated, rejected, or accepted for who we are as total beings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Observational learning of rule-governed behavior by children.

A review of the literature indicates that modeling procedures have been found to be effective in teaching a variety of generalized language rules, abstract concepts or principles, Piagetian conservation responses, problem-solving strategies, and creative responses. Conceptions of observational learning based on simple mimicry or exact copying appear inadequate, underestimating the potential scope of modeling influences. O responding during modeling performances generally interferes with acquisition, except when producing more viable mediation responses (e.g., terser covert coding of the phenomena witnessed). It is suggested that concept attainment and utilization depend not only on the abstract information available, but on the person's judgments about what his social environment wishes him to manifest. (69 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Suffering for science: The effects of implicit social demands on response to experimentally induced pain.

144 undergraduates rated their pain during baseline trials of cold-pressor and finger-pressure pain in 2 experiments. After various instructional treatments, they were posttested with the same stimuli. Results show that coping suggestions significantly reduced reported pain. In Exp I (80 Ss), however, Ss often refrained from using available cognitive coping strategies to reduce pain unless they had been given explicit permission to do so. Exp II (64 Ss) replicated this finding and showed that explicit permission to "do whatever you can to reduce pain" was as effective as a coping suggestion in decreasing reported pain. Findings show that Ss' interpretation of what was appropriate responding in the test situation determined how they chose to cope with the painful stimulation. It is suggested that standard experimental procedures for assessing baseline levels of pain implicitly lead Ss to refrain from coping and thereby tend to underestimate their ability to control pain. It is further suggested that instructional techniques for coping with pain may produce much of their effect by giving Ss permission to use already available coping strategies. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's perceptions of psychology.

Surveyed various aspects of 1,314 5th–22th grade children's perceptions concerning what psychologists do and their attraction to the field of psychology. It was found that children strongly conceive of psychology as a therapeutic enterprise, with a minority of Ss citing the research roles of the psychologist. A factor analysis of attraction ratings also revealed this clinical emphasis. Grade trends were found on a number of informational questions, and sex differences were obtained on responses to more evaluative questions. It is argued that psychologists should critically evaluate how they present themselves to children in clinical and research settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of components of protection-motivation theory on adaptive and maladaptive coping with a health threat.

How do people cope with a threat when they do not plan to adopt an adaptive, protective reponse? We explored this question by examining the effects of information about a health threat and two aspects of coping ability, self-efficacy and response efficacy, on two adaptive and five maladaptive coping strategies (e.g., avoidance, wishful thinking). The results disclosed that the high-threat condition energized all forms of coping; it did not differentially cue specific coping strategies. The critical factor in determining the specific strategies used was the coping information. The high-response-efficacy and high-self-efficacy conditions strengthened adaptive coping and did not foster any maladaptive coping. A supplementary path analysis revealed an intriguing pattern of relations, including the finding that the most maladaptive strategy was avoidant thinking, which simultaneously reduced fear of the threat and weakened intentions to adopt the adaptive response. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic constraints on word learning: proper names and adjectives

4 experiments examined 3- and 4-year-olds' interpretations of novel words applied to familial objects in the sentence frame, "This Y is X," where X is a novel word, and Y is a familiar basic-level count noun (e.g., "dog," "cup"). These novel words are ambiguous and could be interpreted either as proper names (e.g., "Fred") or as adjectives/mass nouns (e.g., "red"/"lead"). The experiments addressed 2 questions. First, do children appreciate that the words can be construed either as proper names referring to individuals or as adjectives/mass nouns referring to salient properties/material kinds? The results showed that children could easily make either interpretation. Second, what factors affect children's tendency to make either a proper name or an adjective/mass noun interpretation? In the experiments, children learned the novel words for a range of animals and artifacts. Most children who learned the words for typical pets (e.g., a bird) made proper name interpretations, as did the majority of those who learned the words for certain non-pet animals (e.g., a caterpillar) described as possessed by someone, but only about half of those who learned the words for such non-pet animals not so described. Very few children who learned the words for either simple (e.g., a shoe) or complex (e.g., a boat) artifacts made proper name interpretations. The results provide clear evidence of the role of semantic information in constraining children's interpretation of a novel word, and they help to refine an understanding of what counts as a nameable individual for preschoolers.