Vignette-based Interviews Research Articles

Suppressed Attention to Rejection, Ridicule, and Failure Cues: A Unique Correlate of Reactive but Not Proactive Aggression in Youth

Tested the hypothesis that reactive aggression (RA) but not proactive aggression (PA) should be associated with heightened attention to rejection, ridicule, and failure cues. In addition to a reaction time measure of selective attention, participants also completed a vignette-based interview regarding their interpretation of ambiguous social situations, and children, parents, and teachers completed questionnaire measures of child aggression and related variables. Consistent with predictions, RA but not PA was related to biased attention for rejection, ridicule, and failure cues. However, contrary to expectation, heightened RA scores were associated with suppressed rather than enhanced attention to such cues. Despite the unexpected direction of this attentional bias, as predicted it was significantly related to the well-established tendency of aggressive children to interpret ambiguous social situations as threatening, which was also uniquely related to RA. Further, the correlation between suppressed attention and RA was fully mediated by interpretation bias.

Suppressed Attention to Rejection, Ridicule, and Failure Cues: A Unique Correlate of Reactive but Not Proactive Aggression in Youth

Tested the hypothesis that reactive aggression (RA) but not proactive aggression (PA) should be associated with heightened attention to rejection, ridicule, and failure cues. In addition to a reaction time measure of selective attention, participants also completed a vignette-based interview regarding their interpretation of ambiguous social situations, and children, parents, and teachers completed questionnaire measures of child aggression and related variables. Consistent with predictions, RA but not PA was related to biased attention for rejection, ridicule, and failure cues. However, contrary to expectation, heightened RA scores were associated with suppressed rather than enhanced attention to such cues. Despite the unexpected direction of this attentional bias, as predicted it was significantly related to the well-established tendency of aggressive children to interpret ambiguous social situations as threatening, which was also uniquely related to RA. Further, the correlation between suppressed attention and RA was fully mediated by interpretation bias.

A preliminary empirical test of a culturally-relevant theoretical framework for the study of successful aging.

This article aims to shed preliminary empirical light on the assumptions underpinning a culturally relevant theoretical framework for the study of successful aging. On the basis of the Kluckhohnian theory of cultural variation, this framework suggests that congruence exists between value orientations concerned with man-nature, time, activity, and relationships, and the manner in which the construct of successful aging is understood. Methodologically speaking, the research project upon which this article is based started out by adapting and further developing the vignette-based instrument that Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck designed to test the theory of cultural variation. Vignette-based interviews were then conducted with 30 Iranian immigrants to Sweden as a preliminary test of the hypothesis of congruence. The results presented in this article suggest that, as posed in the framework in question, there is a relationship between the value orientations that people prefer and the various understandings of successful aging that they uphold. The results suggest also that there is a variety of ways in which the construct of successful aging can be understood, and that variety encompasses other ways of thinking about successful aging besides the master nature, future, productivity, and individuality-oriented views that characterize the gerontological debate. Although further research is necessary, these preliminary results do infer that this framework might offer a theoretically interesting approach to the study of individual, generational, and cross-cultural understandings of successful aging.