Complementarity in daily marijuana and alcohol among emerging adults

Objective: The relationship between marijuana and alcohol use among late adolescents was examined as whether marijuana use was related to quantity of alcohol consumed that day, and whether changes in marijuana and alcohol use frequency over 3 years were related. Method: College students (n = 375) reported marijuana and alcohol use for 28 days over 3 years. Results: Within-day analyses showed that more alcohol was consumed on days on which marijuana was used. Co-use varied by alcohol use problems, day of week, and year in study; the relation between marijuana and alcohol use was stronger among those who reported less problematic alcohol use, on weekdays, and as time increased. Daily level co-use relations also differed marginally by gender. At the annual level, there was a marginal relation between changes in use such that increasing use of one substance over time was weakly associated with increased use of the other substance over the same time period. Conclusions: Results add to the emerging conclusion of complementary marijuana and alcohol co-use within a single day, showing it occurs for both women and men, across a full range of marijuana use, and increases with time while being affected by alcohol use problems and day of week. The overall strong co-use relationship highlights risky behavior among late adolescents and supports an emphasis on common underlying substance use causes. However, the different pattern when assessed yearly demonstrates the importance of tailoring the timescale of analysis to the specific substance use question. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Anxiety increases sensitivity to errors and negative feedback over time

Anxiety is characterized by sensitivity to negative external and internal information, apparent both in symptoms (e.g., hypervigilance and worry) and neural performance monitoring measures (i.e., feedback- and error-related negativity (FRN and ERN)). Here we examine whether anxiety is associated with persistent neural sensitivity to negative performance markers reflected in both the FRN and ERN (n = 273). Higher anxiety was associated with larger responses to both negative feedback and errors as the task progressed compared to those with lower anxiety particularly in women, suggesting that anxiety makes reactions to negative cues more persistent. Similar hypotheses were investigated for depression, which is associated with similar negative cognitive biases and deficits in reward-related processing, but results were mixed. Together, the findings identify variation over time-in-task as an overlooked dimension by which FRN and ERN may serve as a biomarker of anxiety but suggest that depression is not consistently related to performance monitoring.

Social neuroscience is more than the study of the human brain: The legacy of John Cacioppo

John Cacioppo passed away in 2018, leaving a legacy of profound methodological, theoretical, and inferential contributions to social neuroscience. This paper serves as an introduction to the nine articles that comprise this special issue in honor of John Cacioppo's work in social neuroscience. Although he made many contributions to psychology, here we briefly review four milestones in Cacioppo's career that had important implications specifically for the development of social neuroscience today: (1) an early research focus on cardiovascular and facial EMG measurement, (2) the training of others, (3) the importance of sound inference, and (4) the definition of social neuroscience. In sum, we argue that John Cacioppo envisioned social neuroscience as having multiple levels of explanation and requiring multiple kinds of physiological evidence. It is not all just the brain!

The Role of Social and Ability Belonging in Men's and Women's pSTEM Persistence

The benefits of belonging for academic performance and persistence have been examined primarily in terms of subjective perceptions of social belonging, but feeling ability belonging, or fit with one's peers intellectually, is likely also important for academic success. This may particularly be the case in male-dominated fields, where inherent genius and natural talent are viewed as prerequisites for success. We tested the hypothesis that social and ability belonging each explain intentions to persist in physical science, technology, engineering, and math (pSTEM). We further explore whether women experience lower social and ability belonging than men on average in pSTEM and whether belonging more strongly relates to intentions to persist for women. At three time points throughout a semester, we assessed undergraduate pSTEM majors enrolled in a foundational calculus or physics course. Women reported lower pSTEM ability belonging and self-efficacy than men but higher identification with pSTEM. End-of-semester social belonging, ability belonging, and identification predicted intentions to persist in pSTEM, with a stronger relationship between social belonging and intentions to persist in pSTEM for women than men. These findings held after controlling for prior and current academic performance, as well as two conventional psychological predictors of academic success.

Bioelectrical echoes from a career at the cutting edge: John Cacioppo's legacy and the use of ERPs in social psychology

In his many writings, John Cacioppo stressed how neural and physiological events could reveal psychological phenomena. Far from merely "physiologizing" psychology, John advocated social neuroscience in service of theory development and causal inference. These themes can be seen in his ERP work, which he began in the early 1990s to answer basic questions about attitudes. Fortuitously, his foray into ERP research overlapped with the dominance of the social cognition perspective in social psychology, which argues that complex thoughts and behaviors can be understood by breaking them into their underlying elements. ERPs are a natural methodological complement to this perspective, assuming that complex thoughts and behaviors are composed to separable information processing stages that manifest on the scalp as ERPs. Social cognitive theories, with their roots in mental chronometry, are thus fertile ground for researchers possessing a way to quantify underlying mental operations. This review illustrates John's influence by tracing its impact on our own research.

Factors Influencing High School Students' Interest in pSTEM

The transition from high school to college is an important choice point for the pursuit of physical science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (pSTEM) career paths, with students in the United States switching from course selection that is proscribed by state graduation requirements in high school to choosing classes and paths of study more freely in college. Here two studies examine whether social factors identified to inhibit interest in pSTEM within college students similarly affect high school students, and in particular whether these factors could contribute to gender differences in interest in pursuing pSTEM. We find a lower sense of social and ability belonging and lower self-efficacy among female than male high school students pursuing pSTEM classes. In addition, for females but not males, social belonging significantly predicts intentions to continue to pursue pSTEM, highlighting the importance of considering whether low social belonging inhibits intentions to pursue pSTEM for female but not male students. We also find that perceptions of pSTEM fields as requiring innate brilliance more than hard work selectively discourage female students from intending to further pursue pSTEM. Together the studies highlight the potential impact of both subjective self-perceptions and perceptions about pSTEM fields on students' interest in pSTEM and further identify processes that may selectively dissuade high school females from pursuing pSTEM career paths relative to males.

The Role of Prototype Matching in Science Pursuits: Perceptions of Scientists That Are Inaccurate and Diverge From Self-Perceptions Predict Reduced Interest in a Science Career

Self-to-prototype matching is a strategy of mental comparisons between the self-concept and the typical or "representative" member of a group to make some judgment. Such a process might contribute to interest in pursuing a science career and, relatedly, women's underrepresentation in physical science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (pSTEM) fields. Across four studies, we measured self-scientist discrepancies on communal, agentic, and scientific dimensions, and assessed participants' interest in a science career. The most consistent predictor of science interest was the discrepancy between self and scientist on the scientific dimension (e.g., intelligent, meticulous). Study 4 established that students with larger self-scientist discrepancies also had less accurate perceptions of students pursuing science, and that inaccuracy was related to lower science interest. Thus, students with lower science interest do not just perceive scientists differently from themselves but also erroneously. Discrepancy and inaccuracy together explained a significant portion of the gender gap in pSTEM interest.

Using trial-level data and multilevel modeling to investigate within-task change in event-related potentials

EEG data, and specifically the ERP, provide psychologists with the power to examine quickly occurring cognitive processes at the native temporal resolution at which they occur. Despite the advantages conferred by ERPs to examine processes at different points in time, ERP researchers commonly ignore the trial-to-trial temporal dimension by collapsing across trials of similar types (i.e., the signal averaging approach) because of constraints imposed by repeated measures ANOVA. Here, we present the advantages of using multilevel modeling (MLM) to examine trial-level data to investigate change in neurocognitive processes across the course of an experiment. Two examples are presented to illustrate the usefulness of this technique. The first demonstrates decreasing differentiation in N170 amplitude to faces of different races across the course of a race categorization task. The second demonstrates attenuation of the ERN as participants commit more errors within a task designed to measure implicit racial bias. Although the examples presented here are within the realm of social psychology, the use of MLM to analyze trial-level EEG data has the potential to contribute to a number of different theoretical domains within psychology.

University-Affiliated Alcohol Marketing Enhances the Incentive Salience of Alcohol Cues

We tested whether affiliating beer brands with universities enhances the incentive salience of those brands for underage drinkers. In Study 1, 128 undergraduates viewed beer cues while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Results showed that beer cues paired with in-group backgrounds (logos for students' universities) evoked an enhanced P3 ERP component, a neural index of incentive salience. This effect varied according to students' levels of identification with their university, and the amplitude of the P3 response prospectively predicted alcohol use over 1 month. In Study 2 ( N = 104), we used a naturalistic advertisement exposure to experimentally create in-group brand associations and found that this manipulation caused an increase in the incentive salience of the beer brand. These data provide the first evidence that marketing beer via affiliating it with students' universities enhances the incentive salience of the brand for underage students and that this effect has implications for their alcohol involvement.

Fitting in to Move Forward

Social science researchers have increasingly focused on understanding the precursors to gender disparities favoring men in the physical sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (pSTEM). In the current work, we hypothesized that the core social need to belong explains persistence in pSTEM for women more so than for men. We conducted three field studies with data from close to 3,000 participants bridging a wide span of higher education levels and differing pSTEM fields. In each study, we found gender disparities on sense of belonging in pSTEM favoring men. Moreover, sense of belonging explained persistence intentions for both women and men in one study and explained persistence intentions and actual persistence in pSTEM coursework for women, more so than for men, in the other two studies, even after controlling for two conventional predictors of academic achievement (self-efficacy and exam performance). These results highlight the role of belonging in gender differences in pSTEM persistence and indicate STEM educators should strive to create inclusive learning environments for all students. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ’ s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0361684317720186 . Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/pwq/suppl/index

Seeing is not stereotyping: the functional independence of categorization and stereotype activation

Social categorization has been viewed as necessarily resulting in stereotyping, yet extant research suggests the two processes are differentially sensitive to task manipulations. Here, we simultaneously test the degree to which race perception and stereotyping are conditionally automatic. Participants performed a sequential priming task while either explicitly attending to the race of face primes or directing attention away from their semantic nature. We find a dissociation between the perceptual encoding of race and subsequent activation of associated stereotypes, with race perception occurring in both task conditions, but implicit stereotyping occurring only when attention is directed to the race of the face primes. These results support a clear conceptual distinction between categorization and stereotyping and show that the encoding of racial category need not result in stereotype activation.

Tracking the Timecourse of Social Perception: The Effects of Racial Cues on Event-Related Brain Potentials

Event-related potentials were used to track social perception processes associated with viewing faces of racial ingroup and outgroup members. Activity associated with three distinct processes was detected. First, peaking at approximately 170 ms, faces were distinguished from nonface stimuli. Second, peaking at approximately 250 ms, ingroup members were differentiated from outgroup members, with a larger component suggesting greater attention to ingroup members. This effect may reflect the spontaneous application of a deeper level of processing to ingroup members. Third, peaking at approximately 520 ms, evaluative differentiation of ingroup and outgroup members occurred, with greater ingroup bias displayed by those with higher levels of prejudice on an explicit measure. Together, the results demonstrate the promise of using neural processes to track the presence, timing, and degree of activation of components relevant to social perception, prejudice, and stereotyping.

Eliciting Affect Using the International Affective Picture System: Trajectories through Evaluative Space

Most bipolar models of affective processing in social psychology assume that positive and negative valent processes are represented along a single continuum that rangesfrom very positive to very negative. Recent research has raised the possibility, however, that the motivational systems for positive/approach and negative/defensive valent processing (positivity and negativity, respectively) are separable. In this article, the authors use unipolar positivity, negativity, and ambivalence ratings and bipolar valence, dominance, and arousal ratings of 472 slides from the International Affective Picture System to examine several aspects of the bivariate model of evaluative space. Analysis confirmed a positivity offset and negativity bias in the activation functions of the valent systems as wel as multiple modes of evaluative activation (e.g., reciprocal, uncoupled positivity, uncoupled negativity). Together, these data suggest that the bipolar structure of affective processes should be tested rather than assumed.

Can marijuana make it better? Prospective effects of marijuana and temperament on risk for anxiety and depression

Increases in marijuana use in recent years highlight the importance of understanding how marijuana affects mental health. Of particular relevance is the effect of marijuana use on anxiety and depression given that marijuana use is highest among late adolescents/early adults, the same age range in which risk for anxiety and depression is the highest. Here we examine how marijuana use moderates the effects of temperament on level of anxiety and depression in a prospective design in which baseline marijuana use and temperament predict anxiety and depression 1 year later. We found that harm avoidance (HA) is associated with higher anxiety and depression a year later, but only among those low in marijuana use. Those higher in marijuana use show no relation between HA and symptoms of anxiety and depression. Marijuana use also moderated the effect of novelty seeking (NS), with symptoms of anxiety and depression increasing with NS only among those with high marijuana use. NS was unrelated to symptoms of anxiety and depression among those low in marijuana use. The temperament dimension of reward dependence was unrelated to anxiety and depression symptoms. Our results suggest that marijuana use does not have an invariant relationship with anxiety and depression, and that the effects of relatively stable temperament dimensions can be moderated by other contextual factors.

The Influence of Facial Feedback on Race Bias

Two studies were conducted to examine whether facial feedback can modulate implicit racial bias as assessed by the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Participants were surreptitiously induced to smile through holding a pencil in their mouth while viewing photographs of unfamiliar Black or White males or performed no somatic configuration while viewing the photographs (Study 1 only). All participants then completed the IAT with no facial manipulation. Results revealed a spreading attitude effect, with significantly less racial bias against Blacks among participants surreptitiously induced to smile during prior viewing of Black faces than among participants surreptitiously induced to smile during prior viewing of White faces.

Brain activation underlying threat detection to targets of different races

The current study examined blood oxygen level-dependent signal underlying racial differences in threat detection. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, participants determined whether pictures of Black or White individuals held weapons. They were instructed to make shoot responses when the picture showed armed individuals but don't shoot responses to unarmed individuals, with the cost of not shooting armed individuals being greater than that of shooting unarmed individuals. Participants were faster to shoot armed Blacks than Whites, but faster in making don't shoot responses to unarmed Whites than Blacks. Brain activity differed to armed versus unarmed targets depending on target race, suggesting different mechanisms underlying threat versus safety decisions. Anterior cingulate cortex was preferentially engaged for unarmed Whites than Blacks. Parietal and visual cortical regions exhibited greater activity for armed Blacks than Whites. Seed-based functional connectivity of the amygdala revealed greater coherence with parietal and visual cortices for armed Blacks than Whites. Furthermore, greater implicit Black-danger associations were associated with increased amygdala activation to armed Blacks, compared to armed Whites. Our results suggest that different neural mechanisms may underlie racial differences in responses to armed versus unarmed targets.

Testing an expanded theory of planned behavior model to explain marijuana use among emerging adults in a promarijuana community

Opinions about marijuana use in the United States are becoming increasingly favorable, making it important to understand how psychosocial influences impact individuals' use in this context. Here, we used the theory of planned behavior to examine the influence of initial attitudes, norms, and efficacy to resist use on initial intentions and then to examine the effect of initial intentions on actual marijuana use measured 1 year later using data drawn from a community with relatively high use. We expanded the traditional theory of planned behavior model by investigating 2 types of normative influence (descriptive and injunctive) and 2 types of intentions (use intentions and proximity intentions), reasoning that exposure to high use in the population may produce high descriptive norms and proximity intentions overall, but not necessarily increase actual use. By contrast, we expected greater variability in injunctive norms and use intentions and that only use intentions would predict actual use. Consistent with hypotheses, intentions to use marijuana were predicted by injunctive norms (and attitudes) and in turn predicted marijuana use 1 year later. By contrast, descriptive norms were relatively high among all participants and did not predict intentions. Moreover, proximity intentions were not predictive of actual use. We also found that increasing intentions to use over a 1-year period predicted greater use. Given the greater efficacy of theory-based as compared with non-theory-based interventions, these findings provide critical information for the design of successful interventions to decrease marijuana-associated harms.

Social identity modifies face perception: an ERP study of social categorization

Two studies examined whether social identity processes, i.e. group identification and social identity threat, amplify the degree to which people attend to social category information in early perception [assessed with event-related brain potentials (ERPs)]. Participants were presented with faces of Muslims and non-Muslims in an evaluative priming task while ERPs were measured and implicit evaluative bias was assessed. Study 1 revealed that non-Muslims showed stronger differentiation between ingroup and outgroup faces in both early (N200) and later processing stages (implicit evaluations) when they identified more strongly with their ethnic group. Moreover, identification effects on implicit bias were mediated by intergroup differentiation in the N200. In Study 2, social identity threat (vs control) was manipulated among Muslims. Results revealed that high social identity threat resulted in stronger differentiation of Muslims from non-Muslims in early (N200) and late (implicit evaluations) processing stages, with N200 effects again predicting implicit bias. Combined, these studies reveal how seemingly bottom-up early social categorization processes are affected by individual and contextual variables that affect the meaning of social identity. Implications of these results for the social identity perspective as well as social cognitive theories of person perception are discussed.

Toward a comprehensive understanding of executive cognitive function in implicit racial bias

Although performance on laboratory-based implicit bias tasks often is interpreted strictly in terms of the strength of automatic associations, recent evidence suggests that such tasks are influenced by higher-order cognitive control processes, so-called executive functions (EFs). However, extant work in this area has been limited by failure to account for the unity and diversity of EFs, focus on only a single measure of bias and/or EF, and relatively small sample sizes. The current study sought to comprehensively model the relation between individual differences in EFs and the expression of racial bias in 3 commonly used laboratory measures. Participants (N = 485) completed a battery of EF tasks (Session 1) and 3 racial bias tasks (Session 2), along with numerous individual difference questionnaires. The main findings were as follows: (a) measures of implicit bias were only weakly intercorrelated; (b) EF and estimates of automatic processes both predicted implicit bias and also interacted, such that the relation between automatic processes and bias expression was reduced at higher levels of EF; (c) specific facets of EF were differentially associated with overall task performance and controlled processing estimates across different bias tasks; (d) EF did not moderate associations between implicit and explicit measures of bias; and (e) external, but not internal, motivation to control prejudice depended on EF to reduce bias expression. Findings are discussed in terms of the importance of global and specific EF abilities in determining expression of implicit racial bias.

The role of expression and race in weapons identification

Emotional expressions can signal intentions and so possess the power to moderate social inferences. Here, we test whether stereotypes implicitly elicited by a stigmatized racial outgroup member are moderated by facial expression. Participants classified pictures of guns and tools that were primed with pictures of Black and White male faces posing angry, happy, and neutral expressions. Across the 3 measures examined--response latencies, error rates, and automatic processing, facial expression modulated implicit stereotyping (Study 1, n = 71; Study 2, n = 166). A Black angry prime elicited implicit stereotyping, while a Black happy prime diminished implicit stereotyping. Responding after neutral primes varied as a function of the expression context. When viewed alongside more threatening expressions (Study 1), neutral Black targets no longer elicited implicit stereotyping, but when viewed alongside more threatening expressions (Study 2), neutral Black targets primed crime and danger-relevant stereotypes. These results demonstrate that an individual can activate different associations based on changes in emotional expression and that a feature present in many everyday encounters (a smile) attenuates implicit racial stereotyping.

The effect of context on responses to racially ambiguous faces: changes in perception and evaluation

Reactions to individuals who possess features associated with multiple racial groups may be particularly susceptible to external contextual influences, leading to meaningfully different racial perceptions and judgments in different situations. In the present study, we found that an extrinsic race-label cue not only changed evaluative associations activated by a racially ambiguous face, but also changed quickly occurring neural responses sensitive to racial perception. Behaviorally, prototypical Black faces and racially ambiguous faces labeled as Black activated more negative implicit associations than prototypical White faces and racially ambiguous faces labeled as White. Neurally, prototypical faces and racially ambiguous faces cued with the same race elicited similar responses. Specifically, prototypical Black and racially ambiguous faces labeled as Black elicited larger P200s but smaller N200s than prototypical White and racially ambiguous faces labeled as White. These results show that racial perception can be changed by an external cue and this, in turn, influences subsequent evaluative reactions.

Cannabis cue reactivity and craving among never, infrequent and heavy cannabis users

Substance cue reactivity is theorized as having a significant role in addiction processes, promoting compulsive patterns of drug-seeking and drug-taking behavior. However, research extending this phenomenon to cannabis has been limited. To that end, the goal of the current work was to examine the relationship between cannabis cue reactivity and craving in a sample of 353 participants varying in self-reported cannabis use. Participants completed a visual oddball task whereby neutral, exercise, and cannabis cue images were presented, and a neutral auditory oddball task while event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Consistent with past research, greater cannabis use was associated with greater reactivity to cannabis images, as reflected in the P300 component of the ERP, but not to neutral auditory oddball cues. The latter indicates the specificity of cue reactivity differences as a function of substance-related cues and not generalized cue reactivity. Additionally, cannabis cue reactivity was significantly related to self-reported cannabis craving as well as problems associated with cannabis use. Implications for cannabis use and addiction more generally are discussed.

Tracking the dynamics of the social brain: ERP approaches for social cognitive and affective neuroscience

Event-related potential (ERP) approaches to social cognitive and affective neuroscience (SCAN) are not as widely used as other neuroimaging techniques, yet they offer several unique advantages. In particular, the high temporal resolution of ERP measures of neural activity make them ideally suited for studying the dynamic interplay of rapidly unfolding cognitive and affective processes. In this article, we highlight the utility of ERP methods for scientists investigating questions of SCAN. We begin with a brief description of the physiological basis of ERPs and discussion of methodological practices. We then discuss how ERPs may be used to address a range of questions concerning social perception, social cognition, attitudes, affect and self-regulation, with examples of research that has used the ERP approach to contribute important theoretical advances in these areas. Whether used alone or in combination with other techniques, the ERP is an indispensable part of the social and affective neuroscientist's methodological toolkit.

Probing prejudice with startle eyeblink modification: a marker of attention, emotion, or both?

In social neuroscience research, startle eyeblink modification can serve as a marker of emotion, but it is less clear whether it can also serve as a marker of prejudice. In Experiment 1, 30 White students viewed photographs of White and Black targets while the startle eyeblink reflex and facial EMG from the brow and cheek regions were recorded. Prejudice was related to facial EMG activity, but not to startle modification, which instead appeared to index attention to race. To test further whether racial categorizations are associated with differential attention, a dual-task paradigm was used in Experiment 2. Fifty-four White and fifty-five Black participants responded more slowly to a tone presented when viewing a racial outgroup member or a negative stimulus, indicating that both draw more attention than ingroup members or positive stimuli. We conclude that startle modification is useful to index differential attention to groups when intergroup threat is low.

Structural face encoding: How task affects the N170's sensitivity to race

The N170 event-related potential (ERP) component differentiates faces from non-faces, but studies aimed at investigating whether the processing indexed by this component is also sensitive to racial differences among faces have garnered conflicting results. Here, we explore how task affects the influence of race on the N170 among White participants. N170s were larger to ingroup White faces than outgroup Black faces, but only for those required to attend to race, suggesting that attention to race can result in deeper levels of processing for ingroup members. Conversely, N170s were larger to Black faces than White faces for participants who attended to the unique identity of the faces, suggesting that attention to identity can result in preferential recruitment of cognitive resources for outgroup members. Taken together, these findings suggest that race can differentially impact face processing at early stages of encoding, but differences in processing are contingent upon one's goal state.

Contextual Variation in Automatic Evaluative Bias to Racially-Ambiguous Faces

Three studies examined the implicit evaluative associations activated by racially-ambiguous Black-White faces. In the context of both Black and White faces, Study 1 revealed a graded pattern of bias against racially-ambiguous faces that was weaker than the bias to Black faces but stronger than that to White faces. Study 2 showed that significant bias was present when racially-ambiguous faces appeared in the context of only White faces, but not in the context of only Black faces. Study 3 demonstrated that context produces perceptual contrast effects on racial-prototypicality judgments. Racially-ambiguous faces were perceived as more prototypically Black in a White-only than mixed-race context, and less prototypically Black in a Black-only context. Conversely, they were seen as more prototypically White in a Black-only than mixed context, and less prototypically White in a White-only context. The studies suggest that both race-related featural properties within a face (i.e., racial ambiguity) and external contextual factors affect automatic evaluative associations.

Current Emotion Research in Psychophysiology: The Neurobiology of Evaluative Bivalence

Evaluative processes have their roots in early evolutionary history, as survival is dependent on an organism’s ability to identify and respond appropriately to positive, rewarding or otherwise salubrious stimuli as well as to negative, noxious, or injurious stimuli. Consequently, evaluative processes are ubiquitous in the animal kingdom and are represented at multiple levels of the nervous system, including the lowest levels of the neuraxis. While evolution has sculpted higher level evaluative systems into complex and sophisticated information-processing networks, they do not come to replace, but rather to interact with more primitive lower level representations. Indeed, there are basic features of the underlying neuroarchitectural plan for evaluative processes that are common across levels of organization—including that of evaluative bivalence.

Attitudes toward complementary and alternative medicine influence its use

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to explore how attitudes toward complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and conventional medicine influence CAM use in a healthy population, and how health locus of control and exercise further affect CAM use.

DESIGN

A cross-sectional survey design was used.

PARTICIPANTS

The sample consisted of 65 healthy graduate students.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Since previous studies have focused on the attitudes of medical providers toward CAM, there are currently no standard, widely used measures of attitudes toward CAM from the perspective of the healthcare recipient. Thus, a new measure, the Complementary, Alternative, and Conventional Medicine Attitudes Scale (CACMAS) was created to address how attitudes of healthcare recipients affect CAM use. The Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale (MHLC) was used to investigate effects of health locus of control on CAM use, and participants reported which of 17 listed CAM treatments they had used in the past, were currently using, or would likely use in the future. Participants also reported days of exercise in the past month to explore if those engaging in healthy behaviors might report more CAM use.

RESULTS

Having a philosophical congruence with CAM and agreement with holistic balance was associated with increased CAM use. Dissatisfaction with conventional medicine was also related to increased CAM use, but to a lesser extent. Those attributing health to personal behaviors (an internal health locus of control) reported more CAM use, as did those engaging in more resistance training in the previous month.

Reducing the gender achievement gap in college science: a classroom study of values affirmation

In many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines, women are outperformed by men in test scores, jeopardizing their success in science-oriented courses and careers. The current study tested the effectiveness of a psychological intervention, called values affirmation, in reducing the gender achievement gap in a college-level introductory physics class. In this randomized double-blind study, 399 students either wrote about their most important values or not, twice at the beginning of the 15-week course. Values affirmation reduced the male-female performance and learning difference substantially and elevated women's modal grades from the C to B range. Benefits were strongest for women who tended to endorse the stereotype that men do better than women in physics. A brief psychological intervention may be a promising way to address the gender gap in science performance and learning.

The neural correlates of race

Behavioral analyses are a natural choice for understanding the wide-ranging behavioral consequences of racial stereotyping and prejudice. However, studies using neuroimaging and electrophysiological research have recently considered the neural mechanisms that underlie racial categorization and the activation and application of racial stereotypes and prejudice, revealing exciting new insights. Work that we review here points to the importance of neural structures previously associated with face processing, semantic knowledge activation, evaluation and self-regulatory behavioral control, enabling specification of a neural model of race processing. We show how research on the neural correlates of race can serve to link otherwise disparate lines of evidence on the neural underpinnings of a broad array of social-cognitive phenomena; we also consider the implications for effecting change in race relations.

A Foot in Both Worlds: Asian Americans' Perceptions of Asian, White, and Racially Ambiguous Faces

Past research on racial perception has often focused on responses from White participants, making it difficult to determine the role of perceiver race in the perception of others. Similarly, studies examining perceptions of individuals whose racial category membership is unclear have not systematically examined responses from non-Whites. This was addressed by showing Asian participants pictures of Whites, Asians, and racially ambiguous White-Asian faces. Event-related potentials were recorded to measure early attention responses. Participants initially oriented more to outgroup White than ingroup Asian or racially ambiguous faces. Shortly after that, they showed sensitivity to the racial context in which the faces were presented, more deeply processing ingroup Asian and racially ambiguous faces when they were seeing lots of other Asians, but more deeply processing outgroup White and racially ambiguous faces when they were seeing lots of other Whites. Still later, responses were more sensitive to the objective physical properties of the faces, with racially ambiguous faces differentiated from both Whites and Asians. These results demonstrate the fluidity of racial processing, and when compared to responses obtained from White participants, show how perceiver race and racial context influences attention to racial cues.

The influence of processing objectives on the perception of faces: An ERP study of race and gender perception

In two experiments, event-related potentials were used to examine the effects of attentional focus on the processing of race and gender cues from faces. When faces were still the focal stimuli, the processing of the faces at a level deeper than the social category by requiring a personality judgment resulted in early attention to race and gender, with race effects as early as 120 msec. This time course corresponds closely to those in past studies in which participants explicitly attended to target race and gender (Ito & Urland, 2003). However, a similar processing goal, coupled with a more complex stimulus array, delayed social category effects until 190 msec, in accord with the effects of complexity on visual attention. In addition, the N170 typically linked with structural face encoding was modulated by target race, but not by gender, when faces were perceived in a homogenous context consisting only of faces. This suggests that when basic-level distinctions between faces and nonfaces are irrelevant, the mechanism previously associated only with structural encoding can also be sensitive to features used to differentiate among faces.

Race and gender on the brain: Electrocortical measures of attention to the race and gender of multiply categorizable individuals

The degree to which perceivers automatically attend to and encode social category information was investigated. Event-related brain potentials were used to assess attentional and working-memory processes on-line as participants were presented with pictures of Black and White males and females. The authors found that attention was preferentially directed to Black targets very early in processing (by about 100 ms after stimulus onset) in both experiments. Attention to gender also emerged early but occurred about 50 ms later than attention to race. Later working-memory processes were sensitive to more complex relations between the group memberships of a target individual and the surrounding social context. These working-memory processes were sensitive to both the explicit categorization task participants were performing as well as more implicit, task-irrelevant categorization dimensions. Results are consistent with models suggesting that information about certain category dimensions is encoded relatively automatically.

Negative information weighs more heavily on the brain: the negativity bias in evaluative categorizations

Negative information tends to influence evaluations more strongly than comparably extreme positive information. To test whether this negativity bias operates at the evaluative categorization stage, the authors recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs), which are more sensitive to the evaluative categorization than the response output stage, as participants viewed positive, negative, and neutral pictures. Results revealed larger amplitude late positive brain potentials during the evaluative categorization of (a) positive and negative stimuli as compared with neutral stimuli and (b) negative as compared with positive stimuli, even though both were equally probable, evaluatively extreme, and arousing. These results provide support for the hypothesis that the negativity bias in affective processing occurs as early as the initial categorization into valence classes.

Negative information weighs more heavily on the brain: the negativity bias in evaluative categorizations

Negative information tends to influence evaluations more strongly than comparably extreme positive information. To test whether this negativity bias operates at the evaluative categorization stage, the authors recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs), which are more sensitive to the evaluative categorization than the response output stage, as participants viewed positive, negative, and neutral pictures. Results revealed larger amplitude late positive brain potentials during the evaluative categorization of (a) positive and negative stimuli as compared with neutral stimuli and (b) negative as compared with positive stimuli, even though both were equally probable, evaluatively extreme, and arousing. These results provide support for the hypothesis that the negativity bias in affective processing occurs as early as the initial categorization into valence classes.

The modern face of prejudice and structural features that moderate the effect of cooperation on affect

Facial muscle activity and self-reports were examined for racial bias in 3 studies. In the first 2 experiments, While participants imagined cooperating with a Black or White partner. Experiment 1 manipulated reward structure in the context of cooperating with a deficient partner. Experiment 2 manipulated partner deficiency and willingness to expend compensatory effort. On both facial EMG and self-report measures, joint rewards produced more negative affect than independent rewards. However, all partners were liked more when they were willing to try to compensate for their deficits. In addition, more liking was reported for Black partners, but EMG activity indicated bias against Blacks. Experiment 3 investigated individual differences in prejudice. Again, a greater preference for Blacks than Whites occurred on self-report measures, but in their facial muscle activity, high-prejudiced participants exhibited bias against Blacks.

Alcohol and aggression: a meta-analysis on the moderating effects of inhibitory cues, triggering events, and self-focused attention

The authors conducted a meta-analysis of 49 studies to investigate 2 explanations of how alcohol increases aggression by decreasing sensitivity to cues that inhibit it. Both the level of anxiety and inhibition conflict moderated the difference between the aggressive behavior of sober and intoxicated participants, but neither level adequately accounted for variation in effect sizes. Additional analyses of 3 social psychological moderating variables-provocation, frustration, and self-focused attention-showed that the aggressiveness of intoxicated participants relative to sober ones increased as a function of frustration but decreased as a function of provocation and self-focused attention. The authors also examined the moderating effects of dose.