Social Psychological Studies Research Articles

Replication Initiative: Dangerous Logic

The comments voiced by some scientists in response to Brian Nosek's project to systematically replicate studies in social psychology (“Psychology's bold initiative,” S. Carpenter, News Focus, 30 March, p. [1558][1]) are deeply worrisome. Reluctance to replicate data in a given field of science because it might harm the field's public image among other disciplines is symptomatic of a very dangerous logic. If such concerns are deemed valid, it seems natural to assume that scientists should also be worried about replicating their own labs' findings because of their standing among other laboratories, or that postdocs should not try to repeat experiments because it will make them look bad among their lab colleagues. The fact that this logic has spread among scientists is probably a large part of the reason why systematic replication studies have become so urgent in the first place. When the public image of a given field of science (or of science as a whole) becomes more important than establishing the truth of its findings in its value scale, one must conclude that something has gone awry along the way. [1]: pending:yes

Teacher well-being and innovation with information and communication technologies; proposal for a structural model

The fundamental objective of the study presented in this article is to formulate a theoretical model with an empirical base that identifies the factors associated with the well-being of teachers, when they tackle processes of educational innovation mediated by the use of the information and communication technologies (ICT). Subjective well-being is an area of study of social psychology linked to the studies into “happiness” or “satisfaction with life” and constitutes an increasingly broad theoretical body. A questionnaire was produced, based on the scientific foundations that support the proposed model, and its validity and reliability have been established. The population and sample is made up of 322 teachers from non university centres that carry out innovative experiences with ICT in four Regions of Spain. The results obtained confirm five latent variables that explain the teacher well-being associated with innovation practices in ICT: (1) values/projects, (2) motivation, (3) competences, (4) satisfaction and (5) emotions. An explanatory structural model of teacher well-being is empirically validated. These findings could be of interest in identifying and promoting the relevant keys that help to improve the emotional states of working teachers.

An institutional‐cognitive perspective on headquarters‐subsidiary conflicts

PurposeThis paper aims to provide an institutional‐cognitive explanation for headquarters‐subsidiary conflicts based on institutionalism and social psychological studies on rationality.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on an empirical qualitative study of German SMEs with subsidiaries in China and on the analysis of the German press on China.FindingsThe study shows that headquarters take decisions on internationalization under legitimation pressure, which pushes companies to reorganize in accordance with what is considered successful, appropriate, and common practice in the field. However, apparently very profitable and hence strongly legitimated options can lead to the creation of expectations based more on wishful thinking than on the reality that subsidiary managers have to address. This can foster conflicts between headquarters and a subsidiary.Research limitations/implicationsBeing based on a qualitative empirical study, the paper cannot provide a precise measure of the relationship between legitimation and cognition in headquarter‐subsidiary conflicts but instead identifies theoretical relationships between the two dimensions that can be investigated further in future research.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study highlight the necessity for research to devote more critical attention to decision‐making processes about internationalization and for companies to reflect on the driving forces for their decision making as well as the consequences in terms of potential conflicts.Originality/valueBy investigating the relationship between cognitive mechanisms and social processes of legitimation, the paper goes beyond a purely macro or micro explanation of conflict which characterizes both mainstream and critical approaches.

Current Issues in the Social Psychological Study of ‘Language Attitudes’: Constructionism, Context, and the Attitude–Behavior Link

AbstractQuantitative social psychological studies of ‘language attitudes’ (particularly speaker evaluation experiments using the ‘matched‐guise technique’) are a popular area of research. But they have also been the subject of much criticism, especially from the perspective of social constructionism. This article focuses on two central points of debate: the issue of whether or not (language) attitudes should be regarded as stable mental entities, and the issue of the attitude–behavior link. Contrary to what has been suggested, adopting a constructionist perspective on these issues does not entail abandoning all quantitative methodology in favor of qualitative (discourse) analysis. Rather, it means conceptualizing speaker evaluation experiments as contextually situated ‘communicative events’. Under such a recast, experiments can be usefully harnessed for the explication of sociolinguistic behavior such as strategic style‐shifting. More generally, quantitative ‘language attitude’ research needs to take constructionist considerations into account in order to retain its scientific relevance today.

Evolution and the psychology of intergroup conflict: the male warrior hypothesis.

The social science literature contains numerous examples of human tribalism and parochialism-the tendency to categorize individuals on the basis of their group membership, and treat ingroup members benevolently and outgroup members malevolently. We hypothesize that this tribal inclination is an adaptive response to the threat of coalitional aggression and intergroup conflict perpetrated by 'warrior males' in both ancestral and modern human environments. Here, we describe how male coalitional aggression could have affected the social psychologies of men and women differently and present preliminary evidence from experimental social psychological studies testing various predictions from the 'male warrior' hypothesis. Finally, we discuss the theoretical implications of our research for studying intergroup relations both in humans and non-humans and discuss some practical implications.

The Truth About Triplett (1898), But Nobody Seems to Care

Since Gordon Allport (1954) identified Triplett’s (1898) study as the first social psychological experiment in his handbook chapter on the history of social psychology, most social psychology textbooks have been repeating this claim. They typically add that it was also the first study demonstrating social facilitation. According to their descriptions, Triplett (1898) had children reel in fishing lines and he found that their performance improved when this task was performed in the presence of another child rather than alone. None of this is correct. Triplett’s study was not the first social psychology study (it was not even the first study on social facilitation), the experimental task was described wrongly, and the evidence for social facilitation was overstated. Because correct information about the historical status of the Triplett study has been available for many decades, this type of misinformation raises questions about whether psychologists attach sufficient importance to the history of their discipline.

対人関係と関係性に関連した社会心理学の研究動向

対人関係と関係性に関連した社会心理学の研究動向

Revisiting the Effects of Economic Incentives on Motivation

This paper presents a formal framework for modeling the effects of economic incentives on motivation. While economic models represent the utilities from monetary incentives and private benefits in an additive form, studies in psychology show that extrinsic and intrinsic motivation are non-additive and that there exists a continuum between the two. To accommodate for possible interaction effects, a non-additive probability model and evidence theory have been used in the principal-agent set-up. The model produces results consistent with prior evidence presented in social psychology studies.

Three Patterns of Motion Which Change the Perception of Emotional Faces

The aim of the study was to focus on the relationship between motion and emotion. Relying on studies in Behavioral Neurology and Social Psychology, it is believed motion is one of the core components of Emotion. The study uses basic emotional faces (i.e., Happy, Surprised, Fearful, Sad, Disgusted and Angry) which are presented displaying patterns of motion (i.e., a Parabolic motion, a Translational motion and a Wave-like motion). Hypotheses are that the wave-like motion will increase perceived intensities and arou- sal related to positive emotional faces (i.e., Happy and Surprised), and simplify their recognition. Otherwise, the parabolic motion is hypothesized to increase perceived intensities and arousal related to negative emotional faces (i.e., Angry, Disgusted, Fearful and Sad), while enhancing their recognition. Results sho- wed that “Happy” is the most recognized face and “Fearful” is the least recognized one. Concerning Perceived Intensity, an Emotional Face main effect and an Interaction Motion Pattern × Emotional Face were obtained. Finally, the Arousal dimension yielded two main effects, one for the Emotional Face and one for the Motion Pattern. On one hand, results we found are very promising in understanding the part played by motion in Arousal. On the other hand, further research still has to be done so as to question the exact effects of the Translational, Parabolic and Wave-like motion patterns, especially in more dynamic contexts.

Book Review: Understanding Children as Consumers

Kathy Hamilton reviews Understanding children as consumers which takes as its starting point the active role that children play within consumer culture, focusing primarily on children between 8 and 12 years old. David Marshall has edited a collection derived from a mixed set of disciplines including marketing, consumer research, developmental, applied and social psychology, modern history and organisation studies. It is split into four sections covering children as consumers, encountering marketing, kids' stuff and looking forward. Hamilton concludes that there is a range of interesting and relevant material presented. However, given the overall aim of the book, there would have been potential for more of the chapters to emphasise children's experiences in the marketplace from their perspective, to gain a greater understanding of children's agency within the consumption arena.

Toward the realization of a better aged society: Messages from gerontology and geriatrics

Toward the realization of a better aged society: Messages from gerontology and geriatrics

‘I am a Believer but not a Conformist’: Negotiating Claims to being Religious among Syrian Christians and Muslims

ABSTRACTPsychologists' attempts to define and measure religion reveal substantial variability, a lack of consensus, cultural variation and differences between religions. A discursive psychology approach can address variability in meanings and the inferential issues that may inform claims to be religious. This paper identifies strategies used by Syrian Muslims and Christians to affirm, reformulate or deny religiousness. The analysis is based on a corpus of data generated through semi‐structured interviews with 158 men and women. It shows how some speakers affirm that they are religious and treat this as a non‐accountable matter. When asked to describe the basis of being religious, they produced descriptions of their own practices or a set of general criteria. Other speakers denied or modified ‘being religious’, using an ‘x but not y’ formulation to reject one meaning (for example, conformist) in favour of another (for example, believer). Some speakers' self‐ascriptions were reinforced by characterizing their own views of religion as morals and good behaviour. Thus speakers deploy multiple meanings of religion for different purposes. Moreover their accounts address inferential and interpersonal problems that arise when claiming to be religious: specifically that others may infer extremism or conformity, or prejudice against members of other religions. The implications of these observations for social psychological studies of religion are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Evaluating the self and the other: Imagined intercultural contact within a ‘native-speaker’ dependent foreign language context

Recent research has shown that imagined intercultural contact, being based upon the adoption of principles of mental imagery and imagination, is able to elicit similar emotional, attitudinal and motivational responses as actual lived contact experiences. Furthermore, it has been noted that possessing the multiple competencies required to successfully negotiate an intercultural contact encounter with a target language speaker represents one of the most prominent sources of motivation for many foreign language learners. Therefore, situated within the context of a Japanese foreign language university which exhibits a dependency on ‘native-speaker’ English teachers from inner-circle ( Kachru, 1985) countries, this paper showcases a social psychological study undertaken with 120 Japanese English language learners which sought to explore various dimensions of imagined intercultural contact via evaluations of the self and three intercultural others of different racial and ethnic appearance across two specific contact situations (positive and neutral). The outcomes are discussed in relation to underlying theories, as well as to the practical implications created for the improvement of foreign language teaching and learning practices which specifically seek to incorporate an explicit intercultural dimension.

AGENT-BASED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: FROM NEUROCOGNITIVE PROCESSES TO SOCIAL DATA

Moral Foundation Theory states that groups of different observers may rely on partially dissimilar sets of moral foundations, thereby reaching different moral valuations. The use of functional imaging techniques has revealed a spectrum of cognitive styles with respect to the differential handling of novel or corroborating information that is correlated to political affiliation. Here we characterize the collective behavior of an agent-based model whose inter individual interactions due to information exchange in the form of opinions are in qualitative agreement with experimental neuroscience data. The main conclusion derived connects the existence of diversity in the cognitive strategies and statistics of the sets of moral foundations and suggests that this connection arises from interactions between agents. Thus a simple interacting agent model, whose interactions are in accord with empirical data on conformity and learning processes, presents statistical signatures consistent with moral judgment patterns of conservatives and liberals as obtained by survey studies of social psychology.

Online social network acceptance: a social perspective

PurposeBuilding upon studies of social psychology and information system literature, this study aims to propose and empirically test a research model that incorporates interpersonal motives (sociability and status) and hedonic motive (perceived enjoyment), and the three processes of social influence: compliance, identification and internalisation, to explain one's intention to use social network (SN) web sites.Design/methodology/approachThe data were obtained from an online survey of 274 SN web site users. Structural equation modelling analysis was used to validate the proposed model.FindingsThe results indicate that social influence affects intention directly through the compliance process. Social influence, when exerted through the identification and internalization processes, affects intention indirectly via the two interpersonal motives (sociability and status) and perceived enjoyment. The two interpersonal motives affect intention indirectly via perceived enjoyment.Research limitations/implicationsThis study advances theory by examining how the social influence processes affect one's behavioural intention via the interpersonal and hedonic motives.Practical implicationsThese findings help online SNs to devise strategies to attract and retain users.Originality/valueThis study provides evidence that social influence processes are also operative in one's adoption of information technology in non‐work settings. It also shows that people have two interpersonal motives in mind when they develop an online relationship with others.

Making Sense of Everyday Life

This accessible, introductory text explains the importance of studying `everyday life' in the social sciences. Susie Scott examines such varied topics as leisure, eating and drinking, the idea of home, and time and schedules in order to show how societies are created and reproduced by the apparently mundane `micro' level practices of everyday life. Each chapter is organized around three main themes: `rituals and routines', `social order', and `challenging the taken-for-granted', with intriguing examples and illustrations. Theoretical approaches from ethnomethodology, Symbolic Interactionism and social psychology are introduced and applied to real-life situations, and there is clear emphasis on empirical research findings throughout. Social order depends on individuals following norms and rules which are so familiar as to appear natural; yet, as Scott encourages the reader to discover, these are always open to question and investigation. This user-friendly book will appeal to undergraduate students across the social sciences, including the sociology of everyday life, the sociology of emotions, social psychology and cultural studies, and will reveal the fascinating significance our everyday habits hold.

The psychological consequence of experiencing shame: Self-sufficiency and mood-repair

Studies in social psychology and clinical psychology have demonstrated that shame is associated with social disengagement. We incorporated self-sufficiency with the mood-repair hypothesis from the feelings-as-information perspective to provide viable explanations for the psychological consequence of shame, suggesting that the mood-repair goal primed by shame is an inclination to behave self-sufficiently. In Study 1a and 1b, shamed participants preferred to work and play alone compared with control participants. Specifically, participants who were induced to feel ashamed were less likely to perform a task with a co-worker than were no-shame-prime participants. Furthermore, participants experiencing shame chose more individually focused leisure activities than did participants in a neutral mood. In Study 2, participants experiencing shame worked longer on an unsolvable task than control participants did before requesting help, suggesting that shame increased the tendency to be independent. Based on these results, we concluded that experiencing shame was associated with an increased tendency to behave self-sufficiently and to exhibit an inclination toward passive avoidance and active independence in social relationships as a means of amending a threatened social self.

Integrating immigrant minorities: Developing a scale to measure majority members’ attitudes toward their own proactive efforts

The present study is based on the premise that the integration of ethnic minorities may involve more than the majority's expression of tolerance. In order to promote inclusion, the majority may have to play a more active role in the integration process. We describe the development and validation of a new psychometric scale which assesses majority members' attitudes toward their own proactive contribution to the integration of immigrants within three domains: cultural and structural efforts, and openness to diversity. The scale is investigated by analyses of internal structure and exploration of construct validity in relation to relevant social psychological and personality constructs in a sample of 486 Norwegian university students (28% male, mean age = 26.5, SD = 6.08). Factor analyses supported a unidimensional structure and the estimated reliability of an additive scale was satisfactory (Cronbach's α = 0.91). The scale correlated negatively with measures of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation, and positively with global identity. It was weakly related to the personality traits agreeableness, intellect, extraversion, and conscientiousness. The potential utility of the scale in both applied and experimental social psychological studies are discussed.

Electromyographic Activity of Hand Muscles in a Motor Coordination Game: Effect of Incentive Scheme and Its Relation with Social Capital

BackgroundA vast body of social and cognitive psychology studies in humans reports evidence that external rewards, typically monetary ones, undermine intrinsic motivation. These findings challenge the standard selfish-rationality assumption at the core of economic reasoning. In the present work we aimed at investigating whether the different modulation of a given monetary reward automatically and unconsciously affects effort and performance of participants involved in a game devoid of visual and verbal interaction and without any perspective-taking activity.Methodology/Principal FindingsTwelve pairs of participants were submitted to a simple motor coordination game while recording the electromyographic activity of First Dorsal Interosseus (FDI), the muscle mainly involved in the task. EMG data show a clear effect of alternative rewards strategies on subjects' motor behavior. Moreover, participants' stock of relevant past social experiences, measured by a specifically designed questionnaire, was significantly correlated with EMG activity, showing that only low social capital subjects responded to monetary incentives consistently with a standard rationality prediction.Conclusions/SignificanceOur findings show that the effect of extrinsic motivations on performance may arise outside social contexts involving complex cognitive processes due to conscious perspective-taking activity. More importantly, the peculiar performance of low social capital individuals, in agreement with standard economic reasoning, adds to the knowledge of the circumstances that makes the crowding out/in of intrinsic motivation likely to occur. This may help in improving the prediction and accuracy of economic models and reconcile this puzzling effect of external incentives with economic theory.

A Comparison of Mexican and US American Students’ Perceptions of High-Low Context Business Communication Style

Abstract Cross-cultural studies (Hofstede, 1984, 1991, 2001; Hall, 1959, 1976) posit that Mexico is a more collectivistic and high context culture than the United States of America and therefore it could be claimed that Mexicans will communicate and perceive professional communication in a different way than US Americans. In contrast, professional communication and social (psychology) studies argue that in order to communicate in a truly intercultural way it is necessary to go beyond the frame of cultural dimensions, since shared professional and educational frameworks could override the impact of cultural differences in professional settings. While empirical evidence so far has shown mixed results, the results of this article provide additional evidence to support the view that the two cited cultural dimensions have been overridden, since the Mexican (N=280) and US American (N=300) student samples showed a rather similar perception of professional dialogues in a monocultural as well as in an intercultural communication setting. A shared framework of knowledge and skills, the impact of the new media and technologies, the virtual and real intercultural encounters between Mexicans and US Americans, their shared educational level, and the fact that nearly all of the Mexican participants reported to speak English as a foreign language and that a majority of the US American participants reported to speak Spanish as a foreign language, could explain, at least for the studied samples, the observed convergence.