In the Eye of the Interviewer

Though unemployment was low across the United States at 3.3% in 2019, it was almost double that for Black people at 5.4% in 2019 (https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpsee_e16.htm). Because the interviewer’s attention to the eyes of a job candidate produces a better understanding of the candidate, it is possible that identifying racial bias in eye contact during the interview process could reduce racial disparities in unemployment. We will investigate how attention to the candidate’s eyes moderates race and gender disparities in hiring decisions. Participants will look at either a White man, Black man, White woman, or Black woman who is ostensibly a job candidate while listening to a supposed recording of that candidate during a job interview. Notably, participants will listen to the same male voice recording regardless of the race of the man and will listen to the same female voice recording regardless of the race of the woman. While participants listen to the recording, we will track where their eyes focus. We predict for the White male candidate high attention to the candidate’s eyes during the interview will lead to high interview scores, whereas low attention to the eyes will lead to low scores. For the White female candidate, we predict less attention to the eyes than the White male candidate, as well as lower interview scores. For the Black male and female candidates, we expect low interview scores, but no difference based on attention to the eyes. Future research should examine what causes racial disparities in attention to the eyes

Social perception and anxiety in Nigerian and British students

The thesis reports a cross cultural study investigating some aspects of anxiety and social perception in British and Nigerian students. Five main questions were considered: 1. The level of social perception in both groups. 2. The level of anxiety in both groups. 3. The relationship between anxiety and social perception.4. The level of social perception and anxiety in the Nigerians as compared with a 'more favoured' foreign student group, viz. the Australians. 5. The levels of social perception and anxiety within the Nigerian group. Method Social perception is generally defined as every manner of social awareness of the Other. The area of 'awareness' under study in the present research involved specific opinions previously established as characteristics of the two groups.In measuring social perception, a more inclusive score was derived in place of the usual 'accuracy' score. This new score considered the 'inaccuracies' as well as the accuracies in a formula that gave credit to a willingness to suspend judgement in predicting the response of the Other. The Anxiety level was measured by the Cattell IPAT Anxiety Scale. This test measures Cattell's factorially independentanxiety response pattern,by combining five personality components that were found to be significantly related to the pattern. Findings The findings are as follows: The Nigerians score significantly lower on social perception and significantly higher on anxiety than the Australians and the British. Nigerians who have been in Britain for more than three years score significantly higher on social perception and significantly lower on anxiety than Nigerians who have been in Britain for three years and less.The relationship between social perception and anxiety is discussed in terms of Rokeach's view on the relationship of 'openess' and 'threat' to cognitive efficiency. It is argued that if the higher anxiety scores of the Nigerians indicate a greater sense of threat, then they are more 'closed' in their approach to cognitive problems, and this results in significantly lower social perception scores.The comparative results on the Nigerians and the Australians are in the predicted direction. The analysis of the cross sectional anxiety scores of the Nigerians reveals some differences from the usual pattern found in 'foreign' students, and some possible reasons for these differences are discussed.<p

AN ARCHIVAL INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP OF SEVERITY OF PROBLEMS AND AMOUNT OF EXPOSURE PRACTICE, TO POSITIVE CHANGES AND OUTCOME STATUS AMONG AGORAPHOBIC PARTICIPANTS IN A BEHAVIOURAL TREATMENT PROGRAM.

The present archival study focused upon the relationship between amount of exposure practice, severity of problems, outcome status and positive change in a behavioural treatment program for agoraphobia. This program primarily involved in-vivo exposure (systematic desensitization) to feared situations. Subjects recorded the duration and frequency of their exposure practice on behavioural diaries. These diaries, along with other self-report data, were treated as an archival source which was subjected to the scrutiny of control hypotheses as suggested by Kerlinger (1964). Since the program to be utilized here was behavioural in its approach, these hypotheses were deduced from findings of the behavioural theorists. Lines of evidence for each of the hypotheses were then pursued in the data. The 30 subjects who participated in this program were assessed at pre and posttreatment, thereby allowing an investigation of treatment outcome, prior to a consideration of practice variables. The results of repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) supported the predicted posttreatment reductions in generalized anxiety, phobic anxiety as well as depression. Additionally, as predicted, there were no changes in locus of control at posttreatment. In terms of exposure practice, the expected relationship between amount of practice and treatment outcome, was consistently and remarkably unsupported. However, the anxiety experienced during practice was found to be predictive of outcome. Other significant relationships did not occur as consistently as the latter two.Dept. of Psychology. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1986 .F735. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-10, Section: B, page: 3109. Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1986

Synchronized somatic embryo development in embryogenic suspensions of grapevine Muscadinia rotundifolia (Michx.) Small

High-frequency, synchronous embryogenic systems in liquid culture facilitate plant regeneration and can be used as an essential model for performing functional genomics studies and understanding molecular aspect of the ontogenesis of higher plants. In the present study, synchronous somatic embryogenic cultures were developed for Muscadinia rotundifolia cv. Darlene and Vitis vinifera cv. Velika. High cell density and presence of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) proved to be essential for the establishment of the suspension cultures. Low cell density and continuous availability of auxin (2,4-D) was crucial for maintenance of suspension cultures. High cell density and withdrawal of 2,4-D is sufficient to advance somatic embryo development toward embryo differentiation and plantlets regeneration. Cells and cell clusters fractionation by density gradient centrifugation in Ficoll solution demonstrated to be a suitable method for separation of subpopulations with various potential for embryo development. The high frequency of synchronous development and differentiation of somatic embryos was attained essentially for the heaviest (at 16-18 % and &gt;18 % Ficoll layer) cell population

How Warmth and Competence Stereotypes Predict Political Party Support

People use stereotypes and party affiliation when making voting decisions (Leeper, 1991). Voters are also known to support the political party they view positively (Graham, Nosek, & Haidt, 2012). How do stereotypes influence political party support? Since warmth and competence are used to evaluate social groups (Cuddy et al. 2008), we examined how the warmth and competence stereotypes associated with political parties were related to voter support. We surveyed participants using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (n = 361). Participant’s ages ranged from twenty to seventy-three years old. These participants rated Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and Libertarians on competence, warmth, and support (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). We expect to find that competence and warmth for a political party (and their interaction) aids in predicting support for that party. To support our initial hypothesis we would need to find in our regressions that the more extensively a party was rated as warm or competent, the more participants support the party. Future research could take more political parties into account, such as the Green Party, or apply these predictive models to individual candidates. Research could also be expanded to examine using communion and agency towards parties as a predictive measure of elections

Intersecting race and gender stereotypes:Implications for group-level attitudes

Two studies examined the relationship between explicit stereotyping and prejudice by investigating how stereotyping of minority men and women may be differentially related to prejudice. Based on research and theory related to the intersectional invisibility hypothesis (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008), we hypothesized that stereotyping of minority men would be more strongly related to prejudice than stereotyping of minority women. Supporting our hypothesis, in both the United Kingdom (Study 1) and the United States (Study 2), when stereotyping of Black men and women were entered into the same regression model, only stereotyping of Black men predicted prejudice. Results were inconsistent in regard to South Asians and East Asians. Results are discussed in terms of the intersectional invisibility hypothesis (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008) and the gendered nature of the relationship between stereotyping and attitudes