Essentialistic thinking about food

Essentalistic thinking about foo

Archival study of titles of psychology articles

This project involves the extraction and coding of titles of articles which mention race/ethnicity/nationality/culture published in psychology journals. An Excel file is included which contains the titles of over 5,000 articles published across 49 psychology-related journals over a period of 14 years that mention race/ethnicity/nationality/culture. Each title has been assigned a single code based on how these terms were used in the title, with the goal of identifying the frequencies in which the backgrounds/origins of study samples from different regions of the world are being specified in the titles. A manuscript is also included ("How USA-centric is psychology? An archival study of implicit assumptions of generalizability of findings to human nature based on origins of study samples"), which provides further detail on the procedures and criteria for selecting, extracting and coding the article titles

Brief exposure to infants activates social and intergroup vigilance

Among humans, simply looking at infants can activate affiliative and nurturant behaviors. However, it remains unknown whether mere exposure to infants also activates other aspects of the caregiving motivational system, such as generalized defensiveness in the absence of immediate threats. Here, we demonstrate that simply viewing faces of infants (especially from the ingroup) may heighten vigilance against social threats and support for institutions that purportedly maintain security. Across two studies, participants viewed and rated one among several image types (between-subjects design): Infants, adult males, adult females, and puppies in Study 1, and infants of varying racial/ethnic groups (including one's ingroup) and puppies in Study 2. Following exposure to one of these image types, participants completed measures of intergroup bias from a range of outgroups that differed in perceived threat, belief in a dangerous world, right-wing authoritarianism and social-political conservatism (relative to liberalism). In Study 1 (United States), stronger affiliative reactions to images of infants (but not adults or puppies) predicted stronger perceptions of a dangerous world, endorsement of right-wing authoritarianism, and support for social-political conservatism (relative to liberalism). Study 2 (Italy) revealed that exposure to images of ingroup infants (compared to outgroup infants) increased intergroup bias against outgroups that are characterized as threatening (immigrants and Arabs) and increased conservatism. These findings suggest a predisposed preparedness for social vigilance in the mere suggested presence of infants (e.g., viewing images) even in the absence of salient external threats.Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)Ministry of Education (MOE)Nanyang Technological UniversityPublished versionThis research was supported by Nanyang Technological University SSS-Startup Grants, Singaporean Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund (RG149/16) and A*STAR under its IAF-PP Food Structure Engineering for Nutrition and Health Programme (GRANT ID No: H17/01/a0/A11 & H18/01/a0/B11). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of A*STAR