The Formation of Negative Attitudes Toward Novel Groups.

People perceive out-groups, minorities, and novel groups more negatively than in-groups, majorities, and familiar groups. Previous research has argued that such intergroup biases may be caused by the order in which people typically encounter social groups. Groups that are relatively novel to perceivers (e.g., out-groups, minorities) are primarily associated with distinct attributes that differentiate them from familiar groups. Because distinct attributes are typically negative, attitudes toward novel groups are negatively biased. Five experiments (N = 2,615 adults) confirmed the generalizability of the novel groups' disadvantage to different aspects of attitude formation (i.e., evaluations, memory, stereotyping), to cases with more than two groups, and to cases in which groups were majority/minority or in-groups/out-groups. Our findings revealed a remarkably robust influence of learning order in the formation of group attitudes, and they imply that people often perceive novel groups more negatively than they actually are.

Attitude Formation in More- and Less-Complex Social Environments.

We investigate how the complexity of the social environment (more vs. less groups) influences attitude formation. We hypothesize that facing a larger number of groups renders learning processes about these groups noisier and more regressive, which has two important implications. First, more-complex social environments should lead perceivers to underestimate actual group differences. Second, because most people usually behave positively, more-complex social environments produce negatively biased attitudes and cause perceivers to overestimate the frequency of "negative" individuals among groups. We tested these predictions in five attitude formation experiments (N=2,414). Participants' attitudes and learned base rates of positive and negative group members proved more regressive in complex social environments, that is, with multiple groups, compared with less-complex environments, that is, with fewer groups. In a predominantly positive social environment, this regression caused participants to form more negative group attitudes and more strongly overestimate negative individuals' prevalence among groups.

Who shows the Unlikelihood Effect - and why?

Recent work shows that people judge an outcome as less likely when they learn the probabilities of all single pathways that lead to that outcome, a phenomenon termed the Unlikelihood Effect. The initial explanation for this effect is that the low pathway probabilities trigger thoughts that deem the outcome unlikely. We tested the alternative explanation that the effect results from people's erroneous interpretation and processing of the probability information provided in the paradigm. By reanalyzing the original experiments, we discovered that the Unlikelihood Effect had been substantially driven by a small subset of people who give extremely low likelihood judgments. We conducted six preregistered experiments, showing that these people are unaware of the total outcome probability and do formally incorrect calculations with the given probabilities. Controlling for these factors statistically and experimentally reduced the proportion of people giving extremely low likelihood judgments, reducing and sometimes eliminating the Unlikelihood Effect. Our results confirm that the Unlikelihood Effect is overall a robust empirical phenomenon, but suggest that the effect results at least to some degree from a few people's difficulties with encoding, understanding, and integrating probabilities. Our findings align with current research on other psychological effects, showing that empirical effects can be caused by participants engaging in qualitatively different mental processes.

Differentiation in social perception: Why later-encountered individuals are described more negatively.

According to the cognitive-ecological model of social perception, biases toward individuals can arise as by-products of cognitive principles that interact with the information ecology. The present work tested whether negatively biased person descriptions occur as by-products of cognitive differentiation. Later-encountered persons are described by their distinct attributes that differentiate them from earlier-encountered persons. Because distinct attributes tend to be negative, serial person descriptions should become increasingly negative. We found our predictions confirmed in six studies. In Study 1, descriptions of representatively sampled persons became increasingly distinct and negative with increasing serial positions of the target person. Study 2 eliminated this pattern of results by instructing perceivers to assimilate rather than differentiate a series of targets. Study 3 generalized the pattern from one-word descriptions of still photos of targets to multisentence descriptions of videos of targets. In line with the cognitive-ecological model, Studies 4-5b found that the relation between serial position and negativity was amplified among targets with similar positive attributes, zero among targets with distinct positive or negative attributes, and reversed among similar negative targets. Study 6 returned to representatively sampled targets and generalized the serial position-negativity effect from descriptions of the targets to overall evaluations of them. In sum, the present research provides strong evidence for the explanatory power of the cognitive-ecological model of social perception. We discuss theoretical and practical implications. It may pay off to appear early in an evaluation sequence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Utilização de jogos adaptados para avaliação de habilidades matemáticas e monetárias / Utilización de juegos adaptados para evaluación de habilidades matemáticas y monetarias / The use of adapted games for assessment of mathematics and monetary skills

Este estudo teve por objetivo avaliar os efeitos de jogos adaptados sobre a avaliação do desempenho de pré-escolares no aprendizado de habilidades matemáticas e monetárias. Participaram oito crianças da Educação Infantil, distribuídas em dois Grupos Experimentais. Para ambos os grupos, por meio de dominós adaptados, foram ensinadas e testadas relações entre numerais impressos (A), conjuntos de pontos (B), operações de adição (C), valores impressos (D) e figuras de cédulas e moedas (E). Inicialmente foram ensinadas as relações AB/BA e AC/CA e testadas as relações BC/CB. Posteriormente foram ensinadas as relações DC/CD, testadas as relações AD/DA e DB/BD. Finalmente ensinou-se a relação DE/ED, testando-se em seguida as relações EB/BE, EC/CE e AE/EA. Avaliações de nomeação dos estímulos e de resolução de operações de adição foram realizadas em Pré-teste, Sondas e em Pós-teste. Para o Grupo 1 as avaliações de nomeação de estímulos foram conduzidas por meio da apresentação de cartões e para o Grupo 2 foram utilizados jogos adaptados. Observou-se, para ambos os grupos, melhores resultados na resolução de operações de adição. Os resultados das avaliações sugerem que o uso de jogos adaptados pode contribuir para menor variabilidade nas avaliações de nomeação de estímulos.

Este estudio tuvo como objetivo investigar los efectos del uso de juegos de dominó adaptados sobre la evaluación del desempeño de preescolares en el aprendizaje de habilidades matemáticas y monetarias. Participaron ocho niños de la Educación Infantil, distribuidos en dos Grupos Experimentales. Para ambos los grupos, por medio de dominó adaptados, fueron enseñadas y testadas relaciones entre numeral impreso (A), conjunto de puntos (B), operación de suma (C), valor impreso (D) y imágenes de billetes y monedas. Inicialmente fueran enseñadas las relaciones AB/BA y AC/CA, testándose las relaciones BC/CB. Posteriormente fueran enseñadas las relaciones DC/CD, testándose las relaciones AD/DA y DB/BD. Finalmente fueran enseñadas las relaciones DE/ED, testándose las relaciones EB/BE, EC/CE y AE/EA. Evaluaciones de nombramiento de estímulos y de resolución de operaciones de suma fueron realizadas en prueba previa, sondeos y en post-prueba. Para el Grupo 1 las evaluaciones de nombramiento de estímulos fueron conducidas por medio de la presentación de tarjetas y para el Grupo 2 fueron utilizados juegos adaptados. Se observó, para ambos los grupos, mejores resultados en la resolución de operación de suma. Los resultados de las evaluaciones sugieren que el uso de juegos adaptados puede contribuir para resultados con menor variabilidad en las evaluaciones de nombramiento.

This study aims to evaluate the effects of adapted games over preschool child performance in arithmetic and monetary abilities. The subjects were eight children of Childhood Education, distributed in two Experimental Groups. For both groups, using adapted dominos, the following relations were taught and tested: printed numerals (A), dot sets (B), addition operations (C), printed values (D), pictures of banknotes/coins (E). First, relations AB/BA and AC/CA were taught, testing BC/CB relation. Later, relation DC/CD was taught and relations AD/DA and DB/BD were tested. Finally, relation DE/ED was taught and relations EB/BE, EC/CE and AE/EA were tested. Evaluations of stimulus naming were conducted in Pretest, Probe and Posttest stages. For Group one, the evaluations of stimuli naming were conducted via card display, and for Group two were used adapted games. Evaluation results suggest that the use of adapted games may contribute to lower tests variability in stimuli naming.