SPQ

The present research examines the stereotypes held about North Africans in French society today. Extending past works, we included gender and separately studied the stereotypes of North African men and women. Using three techniques, namely, spontaneous generation, attribute rating, and pathfinder analysis, our results revealed distinct stereotypes of North African men and women in French society. North African men are ascribed more antisocial traits. Traits associated with North African women are related to submissiveness and domestic chores. This suggests that stereotypes revealed in past studies concerned mainly the men of the group. The results underscore the need to consider gender when studying stereotypes of ethnic and minority groups

Power of the desired self: Influence of induced perceptions of the self on reasoning

International audienceThis research shows that the motivation to posses a desired characteristic (or to avoid an undesired one) results in self-perceptions that guide people’s use of base rate in the Lawyer–Engineer problem (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973). In four studies, participants induced to believe (or recall, Exp. 2) that a rational cognitive style is success-conducive (or an intuitive cognitive style failure-conducive) subsequently viewed themselves as more rational and relied more on base rate in their probability estimates than those induced to believe that a rational cognitive style is failure-conducive (or an intuitive cognitive style success-conducive). These findings show that the desired self had an influence on reasoning in the self-unrelated lawyer–engineer task, since the use of base rates was mediated by changes in participants’ perceptions of their own rationality. These findings therefore show that the desired self, through the working self-concept that it entails, constitutes another factor influencing people’s use of distinct modes of reasoning

Exploring national identity and collective memory across cultures: comparison of Indonesia and France

The present exploratory research compared how Indonesian and French participants defined national identity and the collective memories associated with their respective countries. This was examined in two studies using a mixed methods approach. Results show that Indonesian and French participants considered being born in the country as an important element in defining someone as French or Indonesian, respectively. Indonesian participants also mentioned being descendants of Indonesians as part of being Indonesian, in contrast to French participants who instead mentioned adherence to French ideology and values to be considered as French. Indonesian participants also recalled more positive past events related to their country (i.e., they have more positive collective memories) and showed more positive emotional attachment to their country, such as pride, than did the French. The French recalled memories that date further in the past compared to Indonesian participants. Discussion centers on the cultural dimensions (i.e., collectivist vs. individualistic) that have been shown to influence the importance of the ingroups, including nations as studied here, in individuals' self-perception, as proposed by Social Identity Theory

Influence of general and specific autobiographical recall on subsequent behavior: the case of cognitive performance

International audienceTwo studies tested the impact of autobiographical recall of general versus specific academic success or failure on actual task performance. As expected, it was found that general memories of failure and specific memories of success resulted in worse performance than general memories of success and specific memories of failure. In Study 1, this performance pattern was obtained on a standard math test. In Study 2, it was replicated on a test of intellectual ability, and a mediation by fear of failure was documented. The present findings offer direct evidence that autobiographical memories of success and failure impact actual performance and also reveal the role of memory specificity in this influence. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Sick? Or slow? On the origins of intelligence as a psychological object

This paper examines the first moments of the emergence of “psychometrics” as a discipline, using a history of the Binet–Simon test (precursor to the Stanford–Binet) to engage the question of how intelligence became a “psychological object.” To begin to answer this, we used a previously-unexamined set of French texts to highlight the negotiations and collaborations that led Alfred Binet (1857–1911) to identify “mental testing” as a research area worth pursuing. This included a long-standing rivalry with Désiré-Magloire Bourneville (1840–1909), who argued for decades that psychiatrists ought to be the professional arbiters of which children would be removed from the standard curriculum and referred to special education classes in asylums. In contrast, Binet sought to keep children in schools and conceived of a way for psychologists to do this. Supported by the Société libre de l'étude psychologique de l'enfant [Free society for the psychological study of the child], and by a number of collaborators and friends, he thus undertook to create a “metric” scale of intelligence—and the associated testing apparatus—to legitimize the role of psychologists in a to-that-point psychiatric domain: identifying and treating “the abnormal”. The result was a change in the earlier law requiring all healthy French children to attend school, between the ages of 6 and 13, to recognize instead that otherwise normal children sometimes need special help: they are “slow” (arriéré), but not “sick.” This conceptualization of intelligence was then carried forward, through the test's influence on Lewis Terman (1877–1956) and Lightner Witmer (1867–1956), to shape virtually all subsequent thinking about intelligence testing and its role in society

Tell me what you remember and I will know who you are: The link between collective memory and social categorization

International audienc

Tell me what you remember and I will know who you are: The link between collective memory and social categorization

International audienc