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The revised version of the Inventory of Father Involvement (IFI-BR-27) shows evidence of validity for use in Brazil, but the influence of social desirability bias on its scores has not yet been verified. For this evaluation, 238 men with children in early childhood education and primary school settings answered a Sociodemographic Questionnaire, the IFI-BR-27, and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Two structural equation models were used: a Multiple Indicators and Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model and a bifactor model. Two items remained linked to social desirability in the final MIMIC model. In the bifactor model, three items also loaded on the factor that contained social desirability. These results indicate that the IFI-BR-27 suffers little influence from social desirability, as only three of the 27 items may be susceptible to this bias. However, additional research is needed to understand the influence of keeping these items on the measure's scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mitigating bias in algorithmic systems is a critical issue drawing attention across communities within the information and computer sciences. Given the complexity of the problem and the involvement of multiple stakeholders—including developers, end users, and third-parties—there is a need to understand the landscape of the sources of bias, and the solutions being proposed to address them, from a broad, cross-domain perspective. This survey provides a “fish-eye view,” examining approaches across four areas of research. The literature describes three steps toward a comprehensive treatment—bias detection, fairness management, and explainability management—and underscores the need to work from within the system as well as from the perspective of stakeholders in the broader context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supplemental Digital Content is Available in the Text. Introduction: Daily antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a safe and effective method of preventing HIV. Clinicians' assumptions, biases, and judgments may impede access to PrEP. Specifically, concern that patients will engage in more condomless sex ("risk compensation") has been cited by clinicians as a reason for not prescribing PrEP. Methods: In this experimental study among medical students, we systematically varied race (White or Black) and condom-use behaviors (continued-use, planned-discontinuation, or continued-nonuse) of a fictional patient (all men with multiple male sex partners). Participants indicated the patients' assumed adherence to PrEP, patients' overall HIV risk, and willingness to prescribe PrEP. Participants completed an implicit association test to detect implicit racism and measures of heterosexism and attitudes toward nonmonogamy, which were examined as moderators of patient race and condom-use effects on participants' assumptions and ultimate willingness to prescribe PrEP. Results: Participants (N = 600) were most willing to prescribe PrEP to the continued-nonuse patient and least willing to prescribe to the planned-discontinuation patient. No differences were identified based on patient race. The continued-nonuse (vs. continued-use) patient was perceived as less likely to adhere to PrEP, which was associated with lower willingness to prescribe. Negative attitudes toward nonmonogamy exacerbated this effect. No effects of implicit racism or explicit heterosexism were identified. Conclusions: Participants were least willing to prescribe PrEP to patients who planned to discontinue condom use. Patients seeking PrEP are exhibiting agency over their sexual health, and clinicians should fulfill their role in ensuring access to this primary preventative therapy. Training and curricular reform regarding PrEP are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that explain the central concepts underlying social biases and their negative effects on healthcare outcomes. Topics include describe approaches to the reduction of explicit and implicit social biases and their associated risks; and apply an understanding of social biases to your personal interactions with colleagues and patients.

Cognitive biases restrict and even prevent the acceptance of new information, but the introduction of critical thinking may help control bias. The subject is a case study of how educators with adult students use critical thinking to control cognitive bias. The topic of cognitive bias is well researched, with over 150 different types of bias identified and insights into how instructors' biases might affect student success in the literature review. Hopefully, this addition to the field will reveal how we design curriculum, invite students to join, and share our knowledge about how we know what we know. The recognition and understanding of why we think the way we do is perhaps the first step to acquiring knowledge and program success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universalism is a principle according to which a rule or a standard should be applied in social situations in the same way irrespective of the social attributes of those who are affected by this rule/standard. This normative claim collides with the fundamental mechanisms of social cognition, which underlie social biases, prejudice, and discrimination. Social biases are the main source of violation from the universalism principle across various domains of human life: evaluations, judgments, decision‐making, problem‐solving, social interaction, among others. Whereas normative universalism is a moral principle, the present study asks how it can be realised in practice. The study identifies three broad classes of such strategies. The first one targets individuals' cognitive and psychological traits, which give rise to social biases and include intergroup contact, social cognitive strategy, reappraisal, motivational strategy, and bias control. The second class targets the situation and includes three strategies: disengagement, randomisation, and counterbalancing biases by aggregation. The third class includes two strategies, which rely on technological solutions: automation and neural administration. The study describes the core idea and main problems of each strategy and discusses how the choice of a strategy depends on the context and the task, which requires a universal solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pre-trained Language Models (PLMs) have been shown to inherit and even amplify the social biases contained in the training corpus, leading to undesired stereotype in real-world applications. Existing techniques for mitigating the social biases of PLMs mainly rely on data augmentation with manually designed prior knowledge or fine-tuning with abundant external corpora to debias. However, these methods are not only limited by artificial experience, but also consume a lot of resources to access all the parameters of the PLMs and are prone to introduce new external biases when fine-tuning with external corpora. In this paper, we propose a C ontrastive Self- D ebiasing Model with D ouble D ata Augmentation (named CD3) for mitigating social biases of PLMs. Specifically, CD3 consists of two stages: double data augmentation and contrastive self-debiasing. First, we build on counterfactual data augmentation to perform a secondary augmentation using biased prompts that are automatically searched by maximizing the differences in PLMs' encoding across demographic groups. Double data augmentation further amplifies the biases between sample pairs to break the limitations of previous debiasing models that heavily rely on prior knowledge in data augmentation. We then leverage the augmented data for contrastive learning to train a plug-and-play adapter to mitigate the social biases in PLMs' encoding without tuning the PLMs. Extensive experimental results on BERT, ALBERT, and RoBERTa on several real-world datasets and fairness metrics show that CD3 outperforms baseline models on gender debiasing and race debiasing while retaining the language modeling capabilities of PLMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the persistence of oppression in contemporary society, social workers may expect to encounter social bias in the clinical setting. On the one hand, clients who identify as a member of a disadvantaged social group may report experiences of oppression accompanied by emotional, behavioral, and physical responses (Carter in Couns Psychol 35(1):13–105, 2007; Sue in Microaggressions and marginality: manifestation, dynamics, and impact, Wiley, Hoboken, 2010). On the other hand, those who are members of a historically privileged social group may present with negative affective and behavioral responses associated with prejudicial ideations towards disadvantaged social groups (Sullaway and Dunbar in Clin Psychol 3(4):296–309, 1996). This paper provides evidence from my field experiences that directly confronting social bias encountered in the clinical setting promotes client wellbeing and social justice with diverse clients. In doing so, I respond to the call for front line practitioners to share their perspectives regarding the integration of social justice and social work (Maschi et al. in J Soc Work Pract 25(2):233–253, 2011). I also elaborate on Howard University School of Social Work's Black Perspective as a theoretical orientation for clinical social work with diverse populations (Gourdine and Brown in Howard University School of Social Work in the 1970s: social action, advocacy, and agents of change, Black Classic Press, Baltimore, 2016). Because Black perspectives are often marginalized in scholarship and practice, I hope to shed light on their critical role in addressing contemporary clinical issues (Bent-Goodley et al. in J Hum Behav Soc Environ 27(1–2):27–35, 2017; Graham in Soc Work Educ 28(3):268–280, 2009). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PURPOSE: Children with strabismus may face difficulties interacting with their peers in elementary school. This study investigates the psychosocial effect of different types of strabismus on Saudi children's selection of a playmate. METHODS: Photographs of orthotropic children were digitally modified to simulate various magnitudes of strabismus. Orthotropic children with normal visual acuity viewed 18 sets of paired photographs and were asked to choose a playmate from each pair. Parents were asked to fill out a questionnaire on their socioeconomic background and to determine whether surgery should be indicated in strabismic patients for psychosocial reasons. Parents were also asked to rate their perception of seven personal characteristics of two images of the same child (one orthotropic and one strabismic). RESULTS: Two hundred and thirty-three children, aged 3–15 years (mean age: 9.94 [3.6] years), were studied. Children aged ≤6 years were significantly more likely not to distinguish between orthotropic children and those with strabismus (P < 0.001). Out of 233 participants, 69.6% were significantly in favor of orthotropic faces as opposed to 30.4% (P < 0.0001). Children perceived esotropia as less disturbing than exotropia and hypertropia (P < 0.001). Smaller magnitudes of strabismus were significantly preferred over larger angles (P < 0.001). Parents judged strabismic faces more negatively than orthotropic faces on all seven characteristics. Almost 88.4% of the adults thought that strabismic patients should undergo surgery for correction. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that children with apparent strabismus are perceived negatively and might be subjected to social alienation at a young age. Therefore, there is a need for strategies to address negative social bias toward children with strabismus and to enhance their peer acceptance in our society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observing nonverbal signals being directed toward unfamiliar individuals is known to influence attitudes and behavior toward those individuals. Specifically, observing biased nonverbal signals in favor of one individual over another can produce nonverbal signal-consistent attitudes among preschool children. Research has also shown that people have a tendency to mimic the behavior of others. The phenomenon of mimicking another's nonverbal emotional response and "catching" their emotions has long been established. However, it has yet to be examined whether this phenomenon is associated with attitude contagion. We hypothesized that preschool children who mimic the biased nonverbal signals of others will be more likely to adopt their social attitudes. Results of the current study indicated that as emotional mimicry became more frequent, children showed an increasingly greater probability of acquiring nonverbal signal-consistent attitudes. Moreover, the frequency of negative—but not positive—emotional mimicry was related to an increased probability of showing nonverbal signal-consistent attitudes. Our findings provide initial support for the notion that mimicking others' biased nonverbal signals may help facilitate attitude contagion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The opinions of others have a profound influence on decision making in adults. The impact of social influence appears to change during childhood, but the underlying mechanisms and their development remain unclear. We tested 125 neurotypical children between the ages of 6 and 14 years on a perceptual decision task about 3D-motion figures under informational social influence. In these children, a systematic bias in favor of the response of another person emerged at around 12 years of age, regardless of whether the other person was an age-matched peer or an adult. Drift diffusion modeling indicated that this social influence effect in neurotypical children was due to changes in the integration of sensory information, rather than solely a change in decision behavior. When we tested a smaller cohort of 30 age- and IQ-matched autistic children on the same task, we found some early decision bias to social influence, but no evidence for the development of systematic integration of social influence into sensory processing for any age group. Our results suggest that by the early teens, typical neurodevelopment allows social influence to systematically bias perceptual processes in a visual task previously linked to the dorsal visual stream. That the same bias did not appear to emerge in autistic adolescents in this study may explain some of their difficulties in social interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As more industries integrate machine learning into socially sensitive decision processes like hiring, loan-approval, and parole-granting, we are at risk of perpetuating historical and contemporary socioeconomic disparities. This is a critical problem because on the one hand, organizations who use but do not understand the discriminatory potential of such systems will facilitate the widening of social disparities under the assumption that algorithms are categorically objective. On the other hand, the responsible use of machine learning can help us measure, understand, and mitigate the implicit historical biases in socially sensitive data by expressing implicit decision-making mental models in terms of explicit statistical models. In this article we specify, implement, and evaluate a “fairness-aware” machine learning interface called themis-ml, which is intended for use by individual data scientists and engineers, academic research teams, or larger product teams who use machine learning in production systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current "autism spectrum" DSM 5 diagnostic criteria and autism standardized diagnostic instruments promote considerable heterogeneity or clinical indecision and may be detrimental to the advancement of fundamental research on autism mechanisms. To increase clinical specificity and reorient research towards core autistic presentations, we propose new diagnostic criteria for prototypical autism during the age of 2- to 5-years. We include autism within other non-dominant, familiarly aggregated phenomena sharing asymmetrical developmental bifurcations, such as twin pregnancy, left handedness, and breech presentation/delivery. Following this model, nature, trajectory, and positive/negative signs structure of autism would result from the polarized problem of whether or not language and information is processed in a socially biased manner. Prototypical autism would follow a canonical developmental trajectory by which a gradual decline in social bias in the processing of incoming information, overtly beginning at the end of the first year, bifurcates into a prototypical autistic presentation in the second half of the second year of life. This bifurcation event is followed by a plateau, in which these atypicalities show maximal stringency and distinctiveness, and then ultimately, in most cases, by partial normalization. During the plateau period, the orientation towards, and processing of, information is considerably modified, with an absence of bias for social information, contrasting with a high level of interest in complex, unbiased information, independently of its social or non-social nature. Integrating autism into asymmetrical developmental bifurcations would explain the absence of deleterious neurological and genetic markers and the presence of familial transmission in canonical autistic presentations. • Criteria for prototypical autism include qualitative signs that are more specific than those of the DSM 5. • Prototypical, familial autism is not associated with identified deleterious mutations. • The absence of social bias structures positive and negative prototypical autistic signs. • Autistic development is economically modeled as an asymmetrical, non-dominant bifurcation. • Autism boundaries are determined by the presence of specific elements, not by a unitary etiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying the origins of social bias is critical to devising strategies to overcome prejudice. In two experiments, we tested the hypothesis that young children can catch novel social biases from brief exposure to biased nonverbal signals demonstrated by adults. Our results are consistent with this hypothesis. In Experiment 1, we found that children who were exposed to a brief video depicting nonverbal bias in favor of one individual over another subsequently explicitly preferred, and were more prone to behave prosocially toward, the target of positive nonverbal signals. Moreover, in Experiment 2, preschoolers generalized such bias to other individuals. The spread of bias observed in these experiments lays a critical foundation for understanding the way that social biases may develop and spread early in childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BackgroundPatients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) show negative and unstable self- and other-evaluations compared to healthy individuals. It is unclear, however, how they process self- and other-relevant social feedback. We have previously demonstrated a positive updating bias in healthy individuals: When receiving social feedback on character traits, healthy individuals integrate desirable more than undesirable feedback. Here, our aim was to test whether BPD patients exhibit a more negative pattern of social feedback processing.MethodWe employed a character trait task in which BPD patients interacted with four healthy participants in a real-life social interaction. Afterwards, all participants rated themselves and one other participant on 80 character traits before and after receiving feedback from their interaction partners. We compared how participants updated their ratings after receiving desirable and undesirable feedback. Our analyses included 22 BPD patients and 81 healthy controls.ResultsHealthy controls showed a positivity bias for self- and other-relevant feedback as previously demonstrated. Importantly, this pattern was altered in BPD patients: They integrated undesirable feedback for themselves to a greater degree than healthy controls did. Other-relevant feedback processing was unaltered in BPD patients.ConclusionsOur study demonstrates an alteration in self-relevant feedback processing in BPD patients that might contribute to unstable and negative self-evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Propaganda frequently leverages themes of dirtiness and disease to foster negative attitudes toward marginalized social groups. Although history suggests that this tactic is highly successful, empirical evidence is required to evaluate propaganda's potential efficacy. Inspired by previous evidence that children rapidly form attitudes about social groups, we conducted an exploratory investigation into whether 5- to 9-year-olds' (N = 48) judgments of novel foreign groups could be swayed by visually depicting one of these groups as disgusting in poster-sized illustrations. Across a wide battery of tasks, there was no clear indication that children readily internalize messages from propaganda in evaluating members of novel social groups. This finding held regardless of the type of disgustingness that was depicted in the propaganda, and generalized across the age range we investigated. Overall, our results are encouraging in a practical sense, suggesting that children are not easily swayed by negative misrepresentations of immigrants in propaganda. • We studied how negative depictions of immigrants shape 5- to 9-year-olds' biases. • Propaganda demeaning novel outgroups did not clearly impact children's attitudes. • Children's age did not influence their receptivity to disgust-eliciting propaganda. • There were no differences across three distinct portrayals of immigrants as gross. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social tolerance towards left-handed people is commonly accepted in the twenty-first century, though not universal. However, at the level of social cognition a subtle bias against this visible minority group might not have disappeared. To investigate this possibility we adopted the theoretical framework of the stereotype content model (SCM) whereby two fundamental dimensions (warmth and competence) are sufficient to explain group differences in stereotype content. We examined how a large sample of medical students (N=300) perceived nine social groups (seven with various physical, social, or mental handicaps, and the two target groups of left- and right-handers), and four “anchor” groups comprising educated people, pensioners, drug addicts, and rich people) which are considered as prototypical in terms of the SCM. Hierarchical cluster analysis was performed to determine similarity of groups in the warmth×competence two-dimensional space. Four clusters were identified, with left- and right-handers located in the same cluster together with educated people. This cluster had higher ratings on both warmth and competence (i.e., more positive stereotype) compared with all other groups. However, within-cluster analysis showed that the left-handed group was perceived as lower on both dimensions compared to the right-handed group. This statistically significant difference suggests that implicit bias against left-handed individuals has not vanished despite pervasive social tolerance. Possible mechanisms that may explain this subtle and subliminal stereotyping are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among social species, iterative interactions may lead to social preferences among group-mates and often are associated with increased mating opportunities or improved indirect fitness benefits. Although preferential associations have been documented in multiple species, this phenomenon has never been empirically studied in bats-the second largest order of mammals, where many of the 1200+ species live in groups of tens to hundreds of individuals. Given the current understanding of the social behaviour exhibited in this species, we explored the possibility that adult female big brown bats ( Eptesicus fuscus (Beauvois, 1796)) show preferential association between group-mates using a pairwise choice design with individuals from a captive colony. Focal individuals were placed in a Y-maze and were given free choice of two familiar conspecifics. We measured the time focal individuals spent in close proximity to each conspecific. Our results indicate that some bats exhibit preferential association between group-mates, as multiple individuals spent significantly more time in close proximity to one conspecific versus another, despite randomizing the position of stimulus bats between trials. Given the frequent and long-term associations between group members of this species, social preferences could play a significant role in the outcomes of their long-term fitness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime has sparked a tremendous amount of research examining the link between levels of self-control and involvement in delinquent and criminal acts. Recently, studies testing this theory have begun to investigate the factors that are related to the development of self-control. The current study expands on this body of research by examining whether social bias, as measured by the ability to identify facial expressions, contributes to variation in self-control in a sample of children. Analysis of data drawn from the National Survey of Children revealed some evidence that children who had difficulty correctly identifying facial expressions depicting fear and happiness had lower levels of self-control, whereas errors in identifying faces expressing anger were related to higher levels of self-control. The authors discuss the need for Gottfredson and Hirschi’s theory on the development of self-control to be expanded. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Modelling students' behaviour in relation to tuition fees is a complex task since students' ‘talent’ is not common knowledge. Students observe a private noisy signal of their abilities, while university receives noisy information based on the quantitative and qualitative data provided by university applicants. In this article, we add the heterogeneity of the population to this model: we assume that this heterogeneity means that the perception of skills among a part of the population is biased and underestimates the capabilities of its members to succeed in the higher education system. Our conclusions differ from those derived in the literature and show in particular that the optimal tuition fees for a given number of students are lower than those obtained for a homogeneous population. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research examines how destination perceptions are socially constructed in the context of international tourism. Building on social identity theory, this research proposes that the process of international stereotyping might be triggered when two countries have conflicts, resulting in the formation of negatively biased country and destination images. The results show that individuals who have higher identification with their own country (guest country) might possess poorer evaluations of the host country. The results further indicate that biased perceptions are fairly solid in that they might not be dispelled after actual visitation. The results of this research provide evidence that destination image might be a collective construction and that biased destination perceptions might be determinant factors influencing destination choice decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The intramural gerontological research program in the National Institutes of Health underwent a substantial growth after its creation within the precincts of the Baltimore City Hospitals in 1940. This paper analyzes its development and the associated problems of its early years. Gerontologists aimed at improving the social and economic life of the elderly through scientific research. With this aim in mind, they conducted various investigations using the indigent aged patients of the Baltimore City Hospitals. Yet the scientists of aging, who hoped to eliminate negative social factors that might bias their research and heighten the confusion between pathology and aging per se, eventually stopped using these patients in the hospital as human subjects. Instead they sought educated affluent subjects in order to eliminate the impact of poverty. By doing so, however, they introduced a new source of social bias to their work, especially within the novel project begun in 1958, the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. This article thus examines the context of the development of gerontologists' research by analyzing their agenda, institutional environment, and research subjects in the 1940s and the 1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Teaching is a highly personal endeavor shaped by ‘funds of knowledge’ and beliefs about teaching, learning, and students. This case study examines how one Asian immigrant teacher’s personal expectations and beliefs influenced his expectations of students and the teaching and instructional strategies he employed. His expectations of students’ behavior and their failure to conform to his expectations influenced him to utilize more traditional, didactic instructional practices and responses to classroom management dilemmas. It is generally assumed that immigrant and minority students will benefit from exposure to teachers from similar backgrounds, and that ethnically diverse teachers can better prepare minority students for the multicultural workplace and global economy. This study focuses on the role a teacher’s background and experiences play in development of their beliefs about teaching and learning, their expectations of students, and the instructional decisions they make regarding teaching and learning. This study suggests that teachers draw on their personal histories and cultural understandings to create classroom practices which are molded by microcosms of personal ‘funds of knowledge’ and beliefs about teaching and learning. In contrast to conventional wisdom and unquestioned myths, this study emphasizes the importance of knowing that teachers’ cultural backgrounds do not necessarily qualify them to provide the most appropriate instructional environment for students from similar cultural backgrounds. This study suggests that all teachers need to learn to recognize and negotiate the unique social elements culturally diverse students bring to the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Nystagmus is a repetitive, involuntary, rhythmic eye movement which may have physiological or pathological causes. However, no studies on the effect of nystagmus on social prejudice have been conducted to date. Methods: Research participants (n=163) were asked to rate one of two 45-second videos presenting a part of an interview for the position of an editor in a local newspaper. The only difference between the two clips was that they presented a female who either had or did not have an induced optokinetic nystagmus. The participants were asked to rate the candidate with regard to 11 personality features using a scale from 1 to 5. Results: After Bonferroni correction, statistically significant differences were observed with regard to communication skills, competence level, dependability, intelligence, and organizational skills. For sincerity, leadership skills, attractiveness, emotional stability, honesty, and sense of humor, the differences were not statistically significant. Conclusions: Individuals with nystagmus are being judged with regard to fundamental characteristics which are paramount not only for professional opportunities but also in many other significant areas of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 25 years of regional politics, little is known of those politicians that have held a seat in regional assemblies, especially their social profile, its evolution and whether or not this social profile mirrors the structure of society. For the first time, data presented in this article sheds some light over these issues. The author uses the independence and agglutination models, and the Social Bias Index, to find out that young and educated men born in the region they serve and mainly lawyers and educators have had more chances of entering the regional political elite than people with other profiles. The regional parliamentarian elite has changed its internal composition and has become more diverse in some respects (gender) but more homogeneous in others (internal migrants). The data shows, as well, a tendency towards the microcosmic model of representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract. Purpose: To determine whether the presence of noticeable strabismus creates a negative social bias against children. Methods: Photographs of two boys and two girls were digitally altered to create photographs of the same child in orthotropic, esotropic and exotropic states. Elementary school teachers rated their perceptions of the children's personal characteristics (using a 10-item list of personal characteristics) based on their responses to these whole-face photographs. The participants were also asked to answer five questions related to the first impressions created by the photographs. Results: Children with esotropia and exotropia were rated more negatively than orthotropic children on all 10 characteristics. Children with esotropia were rated more negatively than those with exotropia on most of these characteristics. Conclusions: Children with noticeable strabismus are viewed negatively. Hence, correction of strabismus may provide psychosocial benefits even when there is no hope of improving visual function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Biases against physically unclean and unhygienic people emerge by the age of 5. • These biases are generally constant across different causes of dirtiness. • Children's and adults' biases are stronger when evaluating people of similar ages. • Biases manifest similarly for participants from the United States and from India. Cleanliness is universally valued, and people who are dirty are routinely marginalized. In this research, we measured the roots of negative attitudes toward physically unclean individuals and examined the differences that exist in these attitudes between childhood and adulthood. We presented 5- to 9-year-old children and adults (total N = 260) with paired photographs of a dirty person and a clean person, and we measured biases with a selective trust task and an explicit evaluation task. In Study 1, where images of adults were evaluated, both children and adults demonstrated clear biases, but adults were more likely to selectively trust the clean informant. Study 2 instead used images of children and included several additional tasks measuring implicit attitudes (e.g., an implicit association task) and overt behaviors (a resource distribution task) and also manipulated the cause of dirtiness to include illness, enjoyment of filth, and accidental spillage. Children and adults again revealed strong biases regardless of the cause of dirtiness, but only children exhibited a bias on the explicit evaluation task. Study 3 replicated these findings in India, a country that has historically endorsed strong purity norms. Overall, this research indicates that dirty people are targets of discrimination from early in development, that this is not merely a Western phenomenon, and that this pervasive bias is most strongly directed at individuals of similar ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is ample evidence of racial and gender bias in young children, but thus far this evidence comes almost exclusively from children's responses to a single social category (either race or gender). Yet we are each simultaneously members of many social categories (including our race and gender). Among adults, racial and gender biases intersect: negative racial biases are expressed more strongly against males than females. Here, we consider the developmental origin of bias at the intersection of race and gender. Relying on both implicit and explicit measures, we assessed 4‐year‐old children's responses to target images of children who varied systematically in both race (Black and White) and gender (male and female). Children revealed a strong and consistent pro‐White bias. This racial bias was expressed more strongly for males than females: children's responses to Black boys were less positive than to Black girls, White boys or White girls. This outcome, which constitutes the earliest evidence of bias at the intersection of race and gender, underscores the importance of addressing bias in the first years of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Zika virus (ZIKV) spread rapidly in the Americas in 2015. Targeting effective public health interventions for inhabitants of, and travellers to and from, affected countries depends on understanding the risk of ZIKV emergence (and re-emergence) at the local scale. We explore the extent to which environmental, social and neighbourhood disease intensity variables influenced emergence dynamics. Our objective was to characterise population vulnerability given the potential for sustained autochthonous ZIKV transmission and the timing of emergence. Logistic regression models estimated the probability of reporting at least one case of ZIKV in a given municipality over the course of the study period as an indicator for sustained transmission; while accelerated failure time (AFT) survival models estimated the time to a first reported case of ZIKV in week t for a given municipality as an indicator for timing of emergence. Results: Sustained autochthonous ZIKV transmission was best described at the temporal scale of the study period (almost one year), such that high levels of study period precipitation and low mean study period temperature reduced the probability. Timing of ZIKV emergence was best described at the weekly scale for precipitation in that high precipitation in the current week delayed reporting. Both modelling approaches detected an effect of high poverty on reducing/slowing case detection, especially when inter-municipal road connectivity was low. We also found that proximity to municipalities reporting ZIKV had an effect to reduce timing of emergence when located, on average, less than 100 km away. Conclusions: The different modelling approaches help distinguish between large temporal scale factors driving vector habitat suitability and short temporal scale factors affecting the speed of spread. We find evidence for inter-municipal movements of infected people as a local-scale driver of spatial spread. The negative association with poverty suggests reduced case reporting in poorer areas. Overall, relatively simplistic models may be able to predict the vulnerability of populations to autochthonous ZIKV transmission at the local scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]