Journal of Genetic Psychology最新文献

Intergroup bias has been a pervasive phenomenon throughout human history, but its psychological underpinnings are still the subject of debate. The present work tests whether intergroup attitudes and behaviors are motivated by ingroup positivity, outgroup negativity, or both, across the first few years of life. In two studies (total N = 128), children were introduced to an ingroup doll and an outgroup doll, and interacted with each one independently in a resource allocation task. Toddlers showed both ingroup positivity and outgroup negativity (Study 1). Preschoolers shifted from this pattern, showing positivity and avoiding negativity toward both ingroup and outgroup members (Study 2). Together, these studies suggest that outgroup negativity plays a stronger role in motivating early intergroup bias than previously thought.

Substance use is a perennial public health concern with associated health risks and economic impacts on society. In this article, we present a selective review of the epidemiological and clinical literatures on alcohol and substance use from a lifespan developmental perspective. We compare and contrast risk factors for the initiation of use and the development of a substance use disorder in adolescence, young adulthood, middle-age and later life. During adolescence, alcohol use experimentation is at its peak. Specific risk factors have been identified including trauma and parenting style that can increase the risk of substance use for teenagers. Emerging adults and college students are likely to experiment with other substances in addition to alcohol such as nicotine, marijuana, cocaine, and prescription medication such as Adderall. Middle-age and older adults with alcohol and substance use in their developmental histories may have an undiagnosed alcohol use disorder. Others will develop a late-onset substance use disorder in older age, possibly due to a dearth of social support, coping with bereavement, and medical complication. Based on Social Cognitive Theory, the roles of expectancies and self-efficacy are hypothesized to impact substance use and the risk of substance use disorder across the lifespan. Implications of the present review for future research on age-specific risk factors in alcohol use in relation to underlying developmental processes are considered.

From an early age, children are taught norms about socially-acceptable behaviors; however, children's ability to recognize these norms often predates their tendency to follow them. This conflict between understanding and action has been predominantly studied in cases when enacting the norm would be costly for the child (i.e. when sharing would result in forgoing resources), but is underexplored in more low-cost scenarios. The current study examined the gap between children's knowledge and behavior in a context with a low personal cost: telling a prosocial, or white, lie. Children (N = 46) evaluated objectively poor drawings in three contexts: in one context, children were asked how a third-party character should act in a story (to assess knowledge) and in the other two contexts, children were asked to provide real-time feedback to another person and to a puppet (to assess behavior). Results indicated that children endorsed prosocial lying norms (i.e. said the story character should give the drawing a good rating) at a significantly higher rate than they demonstrated through their own lie-telling behaviors (i.e. their willingness to give social partners good ratings). These data indicate that the discrepancy between children's knowledge of social norms and their actual behaviors cannot simply be attributed to the personal costs of enacting social norms. Instead, this competence-performance gap may be due to the fact that children are often taught social rules via hypothetical situations but enacting behaviors in real-world situations may require additional skills, such as inhibition and the processing of complex, multimodal social cues.

In five different online studies of community samples, participants (N > 2,200) estimated their IQ and EQ on a single scale and completed three different, short, untimed intelligence tests. In all studies, women estimated their IQ significantly lower than men (effect sizes from 0.22-0.47) and estimated their EQ higher (effect size 0.04-0.32). In only one study were there actual sex differences in IQ test scores. All correlations between the two estimates were significant and positive, and ranged from .37 < r < .47. The robustness of the IQ-EQ hubris-humility effect across measures and populations is discussed. Limitations are acknowledged, particularly in the use of tests.

Research has reported that Japanese people are more likely to focus on and look longer at eyes when reading emotions from facial expressions than their western counterparts. However, how these tendencies develop and whether there is a relationship between the two tendencies (to focus on the eyes and to look longer at the eyes) is unclear. The present study examined emotion recognition and gaze patterns in Japanese preschool children (n = 51) and university students (n = 57), using facial expressions with different eye and mouth cues. The results showed developmental changes in emotion recognition, with adults being more sensitive to negative emotions, whereas gaze patterns showed no developmental changes. Furthermore, there was no relationship between emotion recognition and gaze patterns. This suggests that the implicit and explicit processing of emotion recognition develops at different times, and that there is no direct relationship between the two processes.

This study focused on Saudi children's and adolescents' reasoning about the authority of husband over wife. Fifty-eight children and adolescents were interviewed. They were read two vignettes in which a husband asks his wife to stay home and leave work in two situations: first, a family with newborn baby and, second, a newly married couple. Participants were asked to judge the acceptability of the authority of the husband over the wife and justify their judgment. In general, children were more accepting of a husband who ordered his wife to stay home when the family had a newborn baby than in the case of a newly married couple, and boys were more accepting than girls. In regard to justifications, boys applied conventional social reasoning and girls tended to use moral reasoning. Finally, adolescents invoked moral reasoning in both situations more than children did, and children invoked pragmatic reasons more often than adolescents did.

In response to ethical transgressions, some children respond with ethical guilt (e.g., remorse), while others do not. The affective and cognitive precursors of ethical guilt have been widely studied on their own, however, few studies have looked at the interaction of affective (e.g., sympathy) and cognitive (e.g., attention) precursors on ethical guilt. This study examined the effects of children's sympathy, attentional control, and their interaction on 4 and 6-year-old children's ethical guilt. A sample of 118 children (50% girls, 4-year-olds: M_age = 4.58, SD = .24, n = 57; 6-year-old: M_age = 6.52, SD = .33, n = 61) completed an attentional control task and provided self-reports of dispositional sympathy and ethical guilt in response to hypothetical ethical violations. Sympathy and attentional control were not directly associated with ethical guilt. Attentional control, however, moderated the relation between sympathy and ethical guilt, such that sympathy was more strongly related to ethical guilt at increasing levels of attentional control. This interaction did not differ between 4- and 6-year-olds or boys and girls. These findings illustrate an interaction between emotion and cognitive processes and suggest that promoting children's ethical development may require a focus on both attentional control and sympathy.

Executive functions (EF) play an essential role in many spheres of child development. Therefore, it is crucial to get a better understanding of their etiology. Using a genetic design that involved 934 twins (400 monozygotic), this study examined the etiology of cognitive flexibility, a component of EF, at 5 years of age and its phenotypic and etiological associations with maternal control. Cognitive flexibility was measured in a laboratory setting at 5 years of age using a well-known EF-task, i.e. the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS). Maternal control was measured using a self-report questionnaire. The univariate genetic model demonstrated that environmental factors mainly explained individual differences in preschoolers' performance on the DCCS task. A bivariate genetic model demonstrated that non-shared environmental mechanisms mainly explained the association (r = .-13) between maternal control and children's performance on the DCCS task. This study represents a preliminary step toward a better understanding of the genetic and environmental contributions underlying the relation between parenting behaviors and children's EF.

The present study investigated whether critical consciousness (CC) and feminist identity help explain emerging adult women's participation in actions to reduce gender inequality. CC is an applied tool marginalized and oppressed youth can use to combat inequality. It is conceptualized as three components: Critical reflection, critical efficacy, and critical action. Youth who have reflected on inequality are theorized to act against injustice if they have critical efficacy. However, empirical support for connections among components is mixed and questions remain concerning the contexts in which and people for whom CC serves as a resource. For instance, CC has rarely been examined as a tool to reduce sexism. Furthermore, researchers theorize that social identity is related to CC, yet little empirical evidence exists testing these associations. Finally, CC is typically examined within samples of children and adolescents, although advances in cognitive development and identity suggest emerging adulthood is an ideal time to use CC. To begin to fill these gaps, we investigated whether the components of CC in association with feminist identity could predict when emerging adult women act against sexism. A serial mediation model revealed reflection may lead to action for women who identify as feminist and who report greater internal efficacy. The pathway through external efficacy was not significant. Findings suggest CC together with feminist identity may be tools women can employ to transform unjust social conditions and improve their lives. Applied applications of findings are considered.

Children's gender schematic cognitions guide their attention, affinities, and behaviors, often narrowing their opportunities. The goal of the present study is to examine how children's exposure to animated Disney princesses modeling agentic behaviors (such as being a leader) alters children's gender schematic perceptions of princesses' characteristics, and if this exposure impacts children's perceptions of their own gender-typed qualities. Interviews with 60 children from the northeast region of the United States (M_age = 4.5 years old) at the beginning and end of six weeks indicate that, as hypothesized, children's perceptions of princesses and themselves became less gender schematic after cumulative exposure to animated videos depicting princesses modeling agentic behaviors. Children's perceptions of princesses' agency and their own agency increased throughout the study, asserting that with exposure to nontraditional gender-typed characters, children begin to see themselves as less gender-typed. These findings provide new insights into the role of early children's media exposure in shaping children's gender cognitions.