Community psychology: Accomplishments and challenges: Comment on the special section.

The papers in this special section review contributions of Canadian community psychologists and they also look forward, suggesting ways in which the field might evolve in this country. This discussion paper comments on the papers and puts them in the broader context of psychology and public policy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Brain, environment and social psychology.

Reviews the book, Brain, Environment and Social Psychology by J. K. Chadwick-Jones, I.I. Lenzer, J. A. Darley and K. A. Hill (1979). The best chapter in this book is James Darley's on ethology and animal behaviour. This chapter provides a clear exposition of basic ethological concepts, and some excellent examples of how ethology differs from comparative psychology, and some excellent examples of the interaction of hereditary and environmental factors in the control of animal behaviour. Other relatively strong chapters include Irmingard Lenzer's chapter on human neuropsychology and Kenneth Hill's chapters on social perception and communication in children. The weakest chapters in the book are those by Chadwick-Jones on methods in social psychology (Chapter 5), and language and social behaviour (Chapter 6). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Occupational risk perception, safety training, and injury prevention: Testing a model in the Italian printing industry.

This study examined occupational risk perception in relation to safety training and injuries. In a printing industry, 350 workers from 6 departments completed a survey. Data analysis showed significant differences in risk perceptions among departments. Differences in risk perception reflected the type of work and the injury incidents in the departments. A structural equation analysis confirmed a model of risk perception on the basis of employees' evaluation of the prevalence and lethalness of hazards as well as the control over hazards they gain from training. The number of injuries sustained was positively related to the perception of risk exposure and negatively related to evaluations about the safety training. The results highlight the importance of training interventions in increasing workers' adoption of safety procedures and prevention of injuries. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The fit and implementation of sexual harassment law to workplace evaluations.

Three studies used videotaped harassment complaints to examine the impact of legal standards on the evaluation of social-sexual conduct at work. Study 1 demonstrated that without legal instructions, college students' judgment strategies were highly variable. Study 2 compared 2 current legal standards, the "severity or pervasiveness test" and a proposed utilitarian alternative (i.e., the rational woman approach). Undergraduate participants taking the perspective of the complainant were more sensitive to offensive conduct than were those adopting an objective perspective. Although the utilitarian alternative further increased sensitivity on some measures, it failed to produce a principled judgment strategy. Finally, Study 3 examined the kinds of errors that full-time workers make when applying the "severity or pervasiveness" test to examine more closely the sensitivity of the subjective approach. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: Implications for the origins of sex differences.

This article evaluates theories of the origins of sex differences in human behavior. It reviews the cross-cultural evidence on the behavior of women and men in nonindustrial societies, especially the activities that contribute to the sex-typed division of labor and patriarchy. To explain the cross-cultural findings, the authors consider social constructionism, evolutionary psychology, and their own biosocial theory. Supporting the biosocial analysis, sex differences derive from the interaction between the physical specialization of the sexes, especially female reproductive capacity, and the economic and social structural aspects of societies. This biosocial approach treats the psychological attributes of women and men as emergent given the evolved characteristics of the sexes, their developmental experiences, and their situated activity in society. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The single practitioner and community engagement: Bridging the gap between practice and social action.

Urban communities, with their myriad systemic problems of poverty, social dysfunction, and diminishing public and private resources compounded by endemic health and economic disparities, provide the single psychologist practitioner with a rewarding opportunity to become involved in urban community activities and to make a positive impact. Finding common ground for discourse and action with community members can benefit both the community and the psychologist by helping them to identify, understand, and engage the community in developing solutions for community-based problems faced by residents on a daily basis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The cognitive consequences of envy: Attention, memory, and self-regulatory depletion.

In a series of 4 experiments, we provide evidence that—in addition to having an affective component—envy may also have important consequences for cognitive processing. Our first experiment (N = 69) demonstrated that individuals primed with envy better attended to and more accurately recalled information about fictitious peers than did a control group. Studies 2 (N = 187) and 3 (N = 65) conceptually replicated these results, demonstrating that envy elicited by targets predicts attention and later memory for information about them. We demonstrate that these effects cannot be accounted for by admiration or changes in negative affect or arousal elicited by the targets. Study 4 (N = 152) provides evidence that greater memory for envied—but not neutral—targets leads to diminished perseverance on a difficult anagram task. Findings demonstrate that envy may play an important role in attention and memory systems and deplete limited self-regulatory resources available for acts of volition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prejudice at the nexus of race and gender: An outgroup male target hypothesis.

Adopting an evolutionary approach to the psychology of race bias, we posit that intergroup conflict perpetrated by male aggressors throughout human evolutionary history has shaped the psychology of modern forms of intergroup bias and that this psychology reflects the unique adaptive problems that differ between men and women in coping with male aggressors from groups other than one's own. Here we report results across 4 studies consistent with this perspective, showing that race bias is moderated by gender differences in traits relevant to threat responses that differ in their adaptive utility between the sexes—namely, aggression and dominance motives for men and fear of sexual coercion for women. These results are consistent with the notion that the psychology of intergroup bias is generated by different psychological systems for men and women, and the results underscore the importance of considering the gender of the outgroup target as well as the gender of the agent in psychological studies on prejudice and discrimination. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Judging approachability on the face of it: The influence of face and body expressions on the perception of approachability.

The aim of the current study was to examine how emotional expressions displayed by the face and body influence the decision to approach or avoid another individual. In Experiment 1, we examined approachability judgments provided to faces and bodies presented in isolation that were displaying angry, happy, and neutral expressions. Results revealed that angry expressions were associated with the most negative approachability ratings, for both faces and bodies. The effect of happy expressions was shown to differ for faces and bodies, with happy faces judged more approachable than neutral faces, whereas neutral bodies were considered more approachable than happy bodies. In Experiment 2, we sought to examine how we integrate emotional expressions depicted in the face and body when judging the approachability of face-body composite images. Our results revealed that approachability judgments given to face-body composites were driven largely by the facial expression. In Experiment 3, we then aimed to determine how the categorization of body expression is affected by facial expressions. This experiment revealed that body expressions were less accurately recognized when the accompanying facial expression was incongruent than when neutral. These findings suggest that the meaning extracted from a body expression is critically dependent on the valence of the associated facial expression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychoanalytic theory in the context of contemporary psychology: The Helen Block Lewis memorial address.

This article represents a tribute to the late Helen Block Lewis's commitment to integrating psychology and psychoanalysis. The current status of the formal structure of psychoanalytic theory was reviewed in relation to recent developments in general psychology. Specific attention was paid to the psychodynamic or motivational perspective, the structural perspective, and the genetic or developmental perspective as proposed by Rapaport. Following an examination of current trends in psychoanalysis and of the shift from a drive-, hydraulic energy model toward a relational model, specific proposals were made about the role of emotions as motives, and the implications of the tension between attachment or affiliation versus autonomous or self-esteem needs. In the structural perspective it was proposed that, as in social psychology, emphasis has shifted from the id, ego, superego model to a more specific focus on self schemas and belief systems. The recent emphasis in cognitive and social psychology on out-of-awareness processes suggests a new interest in the so-called topographical model of conscious and unconscious processes. At the developmental level the dominance of the object relations model meshes well with recent child research... (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eriksonian lifespan theory and life history theory: An integration using the example of identity formation.

Furthering the cause of consilience in the social sciences a model is proposed in which Eriksonian life span theory and life history theory are integrated. The model explains individual differences in the Eriksonian developmental stages as a function of the individual differences in developmental trajectories of life history theory as conceptualized by Belsky, Steinberg, and Draper (1991). Erikson's fifth stage of identity formation is used to examine the model, with the results of three studies presented to illustrate the viability of the model. Future research should examine other aspects of the model and the relationship between the developmental trajectories in life history theory and the Eriksonian stages in greater detail. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

That "vision thing": The state of theory in social and personality psychology at the edge of the new millennium.

Social psychology's status as a theoretical discipline is assessed. Whereas it has excelled as an experimental science, the field has generally eschewed broad theorizing and tended to limit its conceptualizations to relatively narrow, mid-range notions closely linked to the operational level of analysis. Such theory shyness may have spawned several negative consequences, including the tendency to invent new names for old concepts, fragmentation of the field, and isolation from the general cultural dialogue. Recently, steps have been taken to encourage greater theoretical activity by social psychologists, and there are now several major outlets for theoretical contributions. Further initiatives are needed, however, to instigate theoretical creativity, including ways of overcoming disciplinary risk aversion and the training of young social psychologists in ways and means of theory construction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Second Law of Thermodynamics Is the First Law of Psychology: Evolutionary Developmental Psychology and the Theory Of Tandem, Coordinated Inheritances: Comment on Lickliter and Honeycutt (2003).

Organisms inherit a set of environmental regularities as well as genes, and these two inheritances repeatedly encounter each other across generations. This repetition drives natural selection to coordinate the interplay of stably replicated genes with stably persisting environmental regularities, so that this web of interactions produces the reliable development of a functionally organized design. Selection is the only known counterweight to the tendency of physical systems to lose rather than grow functional organization. This means that the individually unique and unpredictable factors in the web of developmental interactions are a disordering threat to normal development. Selection built anti-entropic mechanisms into organisms to orchestrate transactions with environments so that they have some chance of being organization-building and reproduction-enhancing rather than disordering. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Life on the line: Job demands, perceived co-worker support for safety, and hazardous work events.

The present study of 334 United Kingdom trackside workers tested an interaction hypothesis. We hypothesized, drawing on the job demands-resources framework, that perceived support for safety (from senior managers, supervisors, and coworkers) as job resources would weaken the relationship between higher job demands and more frequent hazardous work events. Consistent with social impact theory, we predicted that perceived coworker support for safety would be particularly influential when trackside workers faced higher job demands. Moderated multiple regression showed that, of all three sources of perceived support for safety, perceived coworker support for safety was most important for keeping employees safe in the face of high job demands. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The bicycle illusion: Sidewalk science informs the integration of motion and shape perception.

The authors describe a new visual illusion first discovered in a natural setting. A cyclist riding beside a pair of sagging chains that connect fence posts appears to move up and down with the chains. In this illusion, a static shape (the chains) affects the perception of a moving shape (the bicycle), and this influence involves assimilation (averaging) rather than opposition (differentiation). These features distinguish the illusion from illusions of motion capture and induced motion. The authors take this bicycle illusion into the laboratory and report 4 findings: Na?ve viewers experience the illusion when discriminating horizontal from sinusoidal motion of a disc in the context of stationary curved lines; the illusion shifts from motion assimilation to motion opposition as the visual size of the display is increased; the assimilation and opposition illusions are dissociated by variations in luminance contrast of the stationary lines and the moving disc; and the illusion does not occur when simply comparing two stationary objects at different locations along the curved lines. The bicycle illusion provides a unique opportunity for studying the interactions between shape and motion perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Thick as thieves: The effects of ethical orientation and psychological safety on unethical team behavior.

The purpose of this study was to uncover compositional and emergent influences on unethical behavior by teams. Results from 126 teams indicated that the presence of a formalistic orientation within the team was negatively related to collective unethical decisions. Conversely, the presence of a utilitarian orientation within the team was positively related to both unethical decisions and behaviors. Results also indicated that the relationship between utilitarianism and unethical outcomes was moderated by the level of psychological safety within the team, such that teams with high levels of safety were more likely to engage in unethical behaviors. Implications are discussed, as well as potential directions for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infants' understanding of the link between visual perception and emotion: If she can't see me doing it, she won't get angry.

Two experiments investigated 18-month-olds' understanding of the link between visual perception and emotion. Infants watched an adult perform actions on objects. An emoter then expressed neutral affect or anger toward the adult in response to the adult's actions. Subsequently, infants were given 20 s to interact with each object. In Experiment 1, the emoter faced infants with a neutral expression during each 20-s response period but looked at either a magazine or the infant. In Experiment 2, the emoter faced infants with a neutral expression, and her eyes were either open or closed. When the emoter visually monitored infants' actions, the infants regulated their object-directed behavior on the basis of their memory of the emoter's affect. However, if the previously angry emoter read a magazine (Experiment 1) or closed her eyes (Experiment 2), infants were not governed by her prior emotion. Infants behaved as if they expected the emoter to get angry only if she could see them performing the actions. These findings suggest that infants appreciate how people's visual experiences influence their emotions and use this information to regulate their own behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disentangling the Underlying Dimensions of Psychopathy and Conduct Problems in Childhood: A Community Study.

The psychometric and predictive validity of callous-unemotional (CU) traits as an early precursor of conduct disorder and antisocial behavior were assessed. A community sample of children (4-9 years of age) were tested 12 months apart with the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD; P. J. Frick & R. D. Hare, 2002), a measure of early signs of psychopathy in children. Factor analysis supported the structure of the APSD. Given controversy surrounding construct overlap between psychopathy and conduct problems, a factor analysis was conducted on pooled items from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and APSD. A 5-factor solution resulted: antisocial, hyperactivity, CU traits, anxiety, and peer problems. CU traits added small but significant improvements in the 12-month prediction of antisocial behavior for boys and older girls, after controlling for Time 1 measures. These results indicate that although the dimensions of the APSD overlap with dimensions of the disruptive behavior disorders, CU traits have unique predictive validity in childhood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond the pleistocene: Using phylogeny and constraint to inform the evolutionary psychology of human mating.

Evolutionary psychologists explore the adaptive function of traits and behaviors that characterize modern Homo sapiens. However, evolutionary psychologists have yet to incorporate the phylogenetic relationship between modern Homo sapiens and humans’ hominid and pongid relatives (both living and extinct) into their theorizing. By considering the specific timing of evolutionary events and the role of evolutionary constraint, researchers using the phylogenetic approach can generate new predictions regarding mating phenomena and derive new explanations for existing evolutionary psychological findings. Especially useful is the concept of the adaptive workaround—an adaptation that manages the maladaptive elements of a pre-existing evolutionary constraint. The current review organizes 7 features of human mating into their phylogenetic context and presents evidence that 2 adaptive workarounds played a critical role as Homo sapiens’s mating psychology evolved. These adaptive workarounds function in part to mute or refocus the effects of older, previously evolved adaptations and highlight the layered nature of humans’ mating psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)