Search

How do humans learn, through social interaction, whom to depend on in different situations? We compared the extent to which inferred trait attributes—as opposed to learned reward associations previously examined in feedback-based learning contexts—could adaptively inform cross-context social decision making. In four experiments, participants completed a novel task in which they chose to “hire” other players to solve math and verbal questions for money. These players varied in their trait-level competence across these contexts, and, independently, in the monetary rewards they offered to participants across contexts. Results revealed that participants chose partners primarily based on context-specific traits, as opposed to either global (e.g., cross-context) trait impressions or material rewards. When making choices in novel contexts—including determining who to choose for social and emotional support—participants generalized trait knowledge from past contexts that required similar traits. Reward-based learning, by contrast, demonstrated significantly weaker context-sensitivity and generalization. These findings suggest that people form context-dependent trait impressions from interactive feedback and use this knowledge to make flexible social decisions. These results support a novel theoretical account of how interaction-based social learning can support context-specific impression formation and adaptive decision making.

The social neuroscience approach to prejudice investigates the psychology of intergroup bias by integrating models and methods of neuroscience with the social psychology of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination. Here, we review major contemporary lines of inquiry, including current accounts of group-based categorization; formation and updating of prejudice and stereotypes; effects of prejudice on perception, emotion, and decision making; and the self-regulation of prejudice. In each section, we discuss key social neuroscience findings, consider interpretational challenges and connections with the behavioral literature, and highlight how they advance psychological theories of prejudice. We conclude by discussing the next-generation questions that will continue to guide the social neuroscience approach toward addressing major societal issues of prejudice and discrimination.

Social prejudices, based on race, ethnicity, gender, or other identities, pervade how we perceive, think about, and act toward others. Research on the neural basis of prejudice seeks to illuminate its effects by investigating the neurocognitive processes through which prejudice is formed, represented in the mind, expressed in behavior, and potentially reduced. In this article, we review current knowledge about the social neuroscience of prejudice regarding its influence on rapid social perception, representation in memory, emotional expression and relation to empathy, and regulation, and we discuss implications of this work for prejudice reduction interventions.

We agree with Cesario's premise but reject his conclusion: Although experimental studies of racial stereotyping, weapons perception, and shoot decisions typically exclude real-world contextual factors and thus have limited relevance to race disparities (e.g., in policing), these excluded factors comprise systemic, institutional, and individual-level biases that are more likely to amplify racial disparities than negate them.

For 40 years, research on impression formation and attitudes has relied on dual-process theories that represent knowledge in a single associative network. Although such models explain priming effects and some implicit responses, they are generally silent on other forms of learning and on the interface of social cognition with perception and action. Meanwhile, advances in cognitive neuroscience reveal multiple, interacting forms of learning and memory (e.g., semantic associative memory, Pavlovian conditioning, and instrumental learning), with detailed models of their operations, neural bases, and connections with perceptual and behavioral systems. This memory systems perspective offers a more refined, neurally plausible model of social cognition and attitudes that, I argue, provides a useful and generative account of human social behavior.

Social media has become a modern arena for human life, with billions of daily users worldwide. The intense popularity of social media is often attributed to a psychological need for social rewards (likes), portraying the online world as a Skinner Box for the modern human. Yet despite such portrayals, empirical evidence for social media engagement as reward-based behavior remains scant. Here, we apply a computational approach to directly test whether reward learning mechanisms contribute to social media behavior. We analyze over one million posts from over 4000 individuals on multiple social media platforms, using computational models based on reinforcement learning theory. Our results consistently show that human behavior on social media conforms qualitatively and quantitatively to the principles of reward learning. Specifically, social media users spaced their posts to maximize the average rate of accrued social rewards, in a manner subject to both the effort cost of posting and the opportunity cost of inaction. Results further reveal meaningful individual difference profiles in social reward learning on social media. Finally, an online experiment (n = 176), mimicking key aspects of social media, verifies that social rewards causally influence behavior as posited by our computational account. Together, these findings support a reward learning account of social media engagement and offer new insights into this emergent mode of modern human behavior.

How do societal stereotypes about social groups become internalized as an individual’s own group-based preferences? Although stereotypes are known to create social expectancies, we propose that stereotypes also shape how one experiences and learns from interactions with group members—a process that may induce internalized group-based preferences. In a series of experiments, participants interacted with players from two groups, described with either positive or negative stereotypes, in a reinforcement learning task presented as a money sharing game. Although players’ sharing behaviors were equated between groups, participants formed more positive reward associations with players from positively-stereotyped groups. Computational modeling revealed that stereotypes set participants’ expectancies about group members’ behavior and biased how they learned from player feedback. We then show that these preferences, once formed, spread unwittingly to others who observe these interactions. Finally, we show that this pattern of biased learning and propagation occurs even when the stereotypic message comes from an opposed politician, suggesting that this transmission—from societal stereotypes to personal preferences—may occur despite one’s explicit goals. These findings provide a mechanistic account of how exposure to social stereotypes can transform into personal group-based preferences and spread to others.

How do group-based interaction tendencies form through encounters with individual group members? In three experiments, in which participants interacted with group members in a reinforcement learning task presented as a money sharing game, participants formed instrumental reward associations with individual group members through direct interaction and feedback. Results revealed that individual-level reward learning generalized to a group-based representation, as indicated in self-reported group attitudes, trait impressions, and the tendency to choose subsequent interactions with novel members of the group. Moreover, group-based reward values continued to predict interactions with novel members after controlling for explicit attitudes and impressions, suggesting that instrumental learning contributes to an implicit form of group-based choice. Experiment 3 further demonstrated that group-based reward effects on interaction choices persisted even when group reward value was no longer predicted of positive outcomes, consistent with a habit-like expression of group bias. These results demonstrate a novel process of prejudice formation based on instrumental reward learning from direct interactions with individual group members. We discuss implications for existing theories of prejudice, the role of habit in intergroup bias, and intervention strategies to reduce prejudice.

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are known sources of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) spreading into the environment, as well as, of unpleasant odors. CECs represent a potential hazard for human health and the environment being pharmaceutical or biologically active compounds and they are acquiring relevance in European directives. Similarly, the public concern about odour emissions from WWTPs is also increasing due to the decreasing distance between WWTP and residential areas. This study focuses on the effectiveness of the recently developed MULESL technology (MUch LEss SLudge; WO2019097463) in removing CECs and limiting odour emissions from WWTPs. MULESL technology has been developed for its ability to reduce up to 80% the sludge production from WWTPs. However, it is ought to evaluate if the benefits coming from sludge production reduction do not invalidate CECs removal or negatively affect odour emissions. Thus, the performances of a MULESL and a conventional WWTP (flow rate of 375 m3/d and 3600 m3/d, respectively) were compared while treating the same municipal sewage. Whereas both plants succeeded in removing the traditional gross parameters characterizing wastewaters (e.g. chemical oxygen demand, nitrogen), the MULESL was much more effective than the conventional one in terms of CECs removal for about 60% of the identified compounds showing, however, the same or lower effectiveness for about 30% and 10% of them, respectively. This result was attributed to the high sludge retention time and biomass concentration in the MULESL (enabling enrichment of slow growing microorganisms and forcing biomass to use unusual substrates, respectively), and to the biomass feature to grow in the form of biofilm and granules (favoring micropollutants absorption on biomass). Furthermore, odour impact analysis has shown that the MULESL was characterized by a much lower impact, i.e. 45% lower than that of primary and secondary treatments of the conventional WWTP.

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd Successful social relationships require a consideration of a partner's thoughts and intentions. This aspect of social life is captured in the social mindfulness paradigm (SoMi task), in which participants make decisions that either limit or preserve options for their interaction partner's subsequent choice. Here we investigated the neural correlates of spontaneous socially mindful and unmindful behaviours. Functional magnetic resonance data were acquired from 47 healthy adolescents and young adults (age 16–27) as they completed the SoMi task. Being faced with socially relevant choices was associated with activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, caudate, and insula, which is consistent with prior neuroeconomical research. Importantly, socially mindful choices were associated with activity in the right parietal cortex and the caudate, whereas unmindful choices were associated with activity in the left prefrontal cortex. These neural findings were consistent with the behavioural preference for mindful choices, suggesting that socially mindful decisions are the basic inclination, whereas socially unmindful responses may require greater effort and control. Together, these results begin to uncover the neural correlates of socially mindful and unmindful choices, and illuminate the psychological processes involved in cooperative social behaviour.

When the economy declines, existing racial disparities typically expand, suggesting that economic scarcity may promote racial discrimination. To understand this pattern, we examined the effect of perceived scarcity on resource allocations to Black and White American recipients, and tested whether this effect depends on a decision maker's motivation to respond without prejudice. We proposed that scarcity would lead to increased discrimination among those with relatively low internal motivation but not those high in internal motivation. Indeed, we found that when resources were framed as scarce (vs. abundant or a control condition), low-motivation participants allocated less to Black than White recipients, whereas high-motivation participants allocated more to Black than White recipients (Studies 1 and 2). This pattern was strongest when decisions could be made deliberatively (Study 3), and anti-Black allocation bias emerged even in a non-zero-sum context (Studies 4 and 5), suggesting a strategic bias directed against Black recipients rather than in favor of White recipients. These findings indicate that the psychological perception of scarcity can produce racial bias in the distribution of economic resources, depending on the motivations of the decision maker-an effect that may contribute to the increase in racial disparities observed during economic stress. (PsycINFO Database Record

Why do essentialist beliefs promote prejudice? We proposed that essentialist beliefs increase prejudice toward Black people because they imply that existing social hierarchies reflect a naturally occurring structure. We tested this hypothesis in three studies ( N = 621). Study 1 revealed that racial essentialism was associated with increased prejudice toward Blacks among both White and Black adult participants, suggesting that essentialism relates to prejudice according to social hierarchy rather than only to group membership. Studies 2 and 3 experimentally demonstrated that increasing essentialist beliefs induced stronger endorsement of social hierarchies in both Black and White participants, which in turn mediated the effect of essentialism on negative attitudes toward Black people. Together, these findings suggest that essentialism increases prejudice toward low-status groups by increasing endorsement of social hierarchies and existing inequality.

Do habits play a role in our social impressions? To investigate the contribution of habits to the formation of social attitudes, we examined the roles of model-free and model-based reinforcement learning in social interactions – computations linked in past work to habit and planning, respectively. Participants in this study learned about novel individuals in a sequential reinforcement learning paradigm, choosing financial advisors who led them to high- or low-paying stocks. Results indicated that participants relied on both model-based and model-free learning, such that each type of learning was expressed in both advisor choices and post-task self-reported liking of advisors. Specifically, participants preferred advisors who could provide large future rewards as well as advisors who had provided them with large rewards in the past. Although participants relied more heavily on model-based learning overall, they varied in their use of model-based and model-free learning strategies, and this individual difference influenced the way in which learning related to self-reported attitudes: among participants who relied more on model-free learning, model-free social learning related more to post-task attitudes. We discuss implications for attitudes, trait impressions, and social behavior, as well as the role of habits in a memory systems model of social cognition.

Do habits play a role in our social impressions? To investigate the contribution of habits to the formation of social attitudes, we examined the roles of model-free and model-based reinforcement learning in social interactions—computations linked in past work to habit and planning, respectively. Participants in this study learned about novel individuals in a sequential reinforcement learning paradigm, choosing financial advisors who led them to high- or low-paying stocks. Results indicated that participants relied on both model-based and model-free learning, such that each independently predicted choice during the learning task and self-reported liking in a post-task assessment. Specifically, participants liked advisors who could provide large future rewards as well as advisors who had provided them with large rewards in the past. Moreover, participants varied in their use of model-based and model-free learning strategies, and this individual difference influenced the way in which learning related to self-reported attitudes: among participants who relied more on model-free learning, model-free social learning related more to post-task attitudes. We discuss implications for attitudes, trait impressions, and social behavior, as well as the role of habits in a memory systems model of social cognition.

People learn about the world by making choices and experiencing feedback—a process characterized by models of reinforcement learning in which people learn to associate their actions with rewarding outcomes. Although reinforcement models provide compelling accounts of feedback-based learning in nonsocial contexts, social interactions typically involve inferences of others' trait characteristics, which may be independent of their reward value. As a result, people may learn differently about humans and nonhumans through reinforcement. In two experiments (and a pilot study), participants interacted with human partners or slot machines that shared money. Computational modeling of behavior revealed different patterns of learning for humans and non-humans: participants relied more on feedback indicating trait generosity (relative to monetary reward) when learning about humans but relied more on monetary reward (relative to generosity) when learning about slots. Furthermore, this pattern of learning had implications for attitudes: whereas participants preferred generous humans, they preferred rewarding slot machines, relative to their respective counterparts. These findings reveal a distinct role for reinforcement learning in social cognition, showing that humans preferentially form abstract trait inferences about other people through feedback in addition to reward associations.

Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary approach to studying the social mind and behavior by considering their neural and biological underpinnings. This chapter describes the methodological approach of social neuroscience and research that has applied this approach to address the interplay of the person and situation in the domains of social cognition, attitudes, emotion and motivation, intergroup relations, and personality. This chapter illustrates the contribution of neuroscience to classic questions about personality and social psychology, with an emphasis on how the social neuroscience approach promotes the integration of dispositional and situational accounts of the mind and behavior.

Four experiments examined the effect of proactive control on expressions of implicit racial bias. Whereas reactive control is engaged in response to a biasing influence (e.g., a stereotype, temptation, or distraction), proactive control is engaged in advance of such biases, functioning to strengthen task focus and, by consequence, limiting the affordance for a bias to be expressed in behavior. Using manipulations of response interference to modulate proactive control, proactive control was found to eliminate expressions of weapons bias, prejudice, and stereotyping on commonly used implicit assessments. Process dissociation analysis indicated that this pattern reflected changes in controlled processing but not automatic associations, as theorized, and assessments of neural activity, using event-related potentials, revealed that proactive control reduces early attention to task-irrelevant racial cues while increasing focus on task-relevant responses. Together, these results provide initial evidence for proactive control in social cognition and demonstrate its effectiveness at reducing expressions of implicit racial bias. Based on these findings and past research, we present a model of proactive and reactive control that offers a novel and generative perspective on self-regulation and prejudice reduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

Social anxiety—the fear of social embarrassment and negative evaluation by others—ranks among people's worst fears, and it is often thought to impair task performance. We investigated the neurocognitive processes through which trait social anxiety relates to task performance, proposing a model of the joint contributions of reactive control, theoretically associated with conflict monitoring and activity of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), and proactive control, theoretically associated with top-down regulation and activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Participants varying in their degree of trait social anxiety completed the Eriksen flanker task while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. Task-related left dlPFC activity was indexed by relative left prefrontal EEG (inverse alpha), and conflict-related dACC activity was indexed by the N2r component of the event-related potential. Stronger activity in both regions predicted better response control, and greater social anxiety was associated with worse response control. Furthermore, for all participants, greater left prefrontal EEG activity predicted better behavioral control, but for high social anxiety participants only, greater N2r responses also predicted behavioral control. This pattern suggests that low social anxiety individuals engaged a proactive control process, driven by dlPFC activity, whereas high social anxiety individuals relied additionally on a reactive control process, driven by conflict-related dACC activity. These findings support a model of control that involves different patterns of interplay between proactive and reactive strategies and may help to explain self-regulatory impairments in social anxiety.

Power is known to promote effective goal pursuit, especially when it requires one to overcome distractions or bias. We proposed that this effect involves the ability to engage and implement cognitive control. In Study 1, we demonstrated that power enhances behavioral performance on a response conflict task and that it does so by enhancing controlled processing rather than by reducing automatic processing. In Study 2, we used an event-related potential index of anterior cingulate activity to test whether power effects on control were due to enhanced conflict sensitivity or action implementation. Power did not significantly affect neural sensitivity to conflict; rather, high power was associated with a stronger link between conflict processing and intended action, relative to low power. These findings suggest a new perspective on how social factors can affect controlled processing and offer new evidence regarding the transition between conflict detection and the implementation of action control.

The primary aim of this chapter is to provide a framework to understand and synthesize the processes of person construal—early perceptions that lead to initial ingroup/outgroup categorizations—with the processes involved in intergroup relations. To this end, we review research examining the initial perception and categorization of ingroup and outgroup members and its downstream consequences. We first discuss bottom-up processes in person construal based on visual features (e.g., facial prototypicality and bodily cues), and then discuss how top-down factors (e.g., beliefs, stereotypes) may influence these processes. Next, we examine how the initial categorization of targets as ingroup or outgroup members influences identification, stereotyping, and group-based evaluations, and the relations between these constructs. We also explore the implications of the activation of these constructs for a range of social judgments including emotion identification, empathy, and intergroup behaviors. Finally, we describe a variety of well established and more recent strategies to reduce intergroup bias that target the activation of category-based knowledge, including intergroup contact, approach orientations, evaluative conditioning, and perspective taking.

Despite global increases in diversity, social prejudices continue to fuel intergroup conflict, disparities and discrimination. Moreover, as norms have become more egalitarian, prejudices seem to have 'gone underground', operating covertly and often unconsciously, such that they are difficult to detect and control. Neuroscientists have recently begun to probe the neural basis of prejudice and stereotyping in an effort to identify the processes through which these biases form, influence behaviour and are regulated. This research aims to elucidate basic mechanisms of the social brain while advancing our understanding of intergroup bias in social behaviour.

When the economy declines, racial minorities are hit the hardest. Although existing explanations for this effect focus on institutional causes, recent psychological findings suggest that scarcity may also alter perceptions of race in ways that exacerbate discrimination. We tested the hypothesis that economic resource scarcity causes decision makers to perceive African Americans as "Blacker" and that this visual distortion elicits disparities in the allocation of resources. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that scarcity altered perceptions of race, lowering subjects' psychophysical threshold for seeing a mixed-race face as "Black" as opposed to "White." In studies 3 and 4, scarcity led subjects to visualize African American faces as darker and more "stereotypically Black," compared with a control condition. When presented to naïve subjects, face representations produced under scarcity elicited smaller allocations than control-condition representations. Together, these findings introduce a novel perceptual account for the proliferation of racial disparities under economic scarcity.

Although group membership has many privileges, members are expected to reciprocate those privileges. We tested whether in-group members would be punished more harshly than out-group members for marginal fairness norm violations within ultimatum game bargaining interactions. Participants considered monetary splits (of US$20) from in-group and out-group proposers, which ranged in proportion. Accepting an offer yielded the proposed payout; rejecting it caused each player to earn nothing—a punishment of the proposer at a personal cost. Participants exacted stricter costly punishment on racial in-group than out-group members for marginally unfair offers (Study 1), an effect that was replicated with college group membership and magnified among strong in-group identifiers (Study 2). Importantly, ultimatum game decisions were driven by fairness perceptions rather than proposer evaluations (Study 3), suggesting our effects reflected norm enforcement and not esteem preservation. These findings illuminate a previously unexplored process for maintaining group-based norms that may promote in-group favoritism.

In order to assess indoor air quality (IAQ), two 1-week monitoring campaigns of volatile organic compounds (VOC) were performed in different areas of a multistorey shopping mall. High-spatial-resolution monitoring was conducted at 32 indoor sites located in two storehouses and in different departments of a supermarket. At the same time, VOC concentrations were monitored in the mall and parking lot area as well as outdoors. VOC were sampled at 48-h periods using diffusive samplers suitable for thermal desorption. The samples were then analyzed with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The data analysis and chromatic maps indicated that the two storehouses had the highest VOC concentrations consisting principally of terpenes. These higher TVOC concentrations could be a result of the low efficiency of the air exchange and intake systems, as well as the large quantity of articles stored in these small spaces. Instead, inside the supermarket, the food department was the most critical area for VOC concentrations. To identify potential emission sources in this department, a continuous VOC analyzer was used. The findings indicated that the highest total VOC concentrations were present during cleaning activities and that these activities were carried out frequently in the food department. The study highlights the importance of conducting both high-spatial-resolution monitoring and high-temporal-resolution monitoring. The former was able to identify critical issues in environments with a complex emission scenario while the latter was useful in interpreting the dynamics of each emission source.

The emergence of political neuroscience—an interdisciplinary venture involving political science, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience—has piqued the interests of scholars as well as the mass public. In this chapter, we review evidence pertaining to four areas of inquiry that have generated most of the research in political neuroscience to date: (1) racial prejudice and intergroup relations; (2) the existence of partisan bias and motivated political cognition; (3) the nature of left-right differences in political orientation; and (4) the dimensional structure of political attitudes. Although these topics are well-known to political psychologists, the application of models and methods from neuroscience has renewed interest in each of them and yielded novel insights. There is reason to believe that many other areas of political psychology await similarly promising renewals and that innovative methods will continue to advance our understanding of the physiological processes involved in political cognition, evaluation, judgment, and behavior. We address limitations, criticisms, and potential pitfalls of existing work—including the “chicken-and-egg problem”—and propose an ambitious agenda for the next generation of research in political neuroscience.

The atmosphere is a carrier on which some natural and anthropogenic organic and inorganic chemicals are transported, and the wet and dry deposition events are the most important processes that remove those chemicals, depositing it on soil and water. A wide variety of different collectors were tested to evaluate site-specificity, seasonality and daily variability of settleable particle concentrations. Deposition fluxes of POPs showed spatial and seasonal variations, diagnostic ratios of PAHs on deposited particles, allowed the discrimination between pyrolytic or petrogenic sources. Congener pattern analysis and bulk deposition fluxes in rural sites confirmed long-range atmospheric transport of PCDDs/Fs. More and more sophisticated and newly designed deposition samplers have being used for characterization of deposited mercury, demonstrating the importance of rain scavenging and the relatively higher magnitude of Hg deposition from Chinese anthropogenic sources. Recently biological monitors demonstrated that PAH concentrations in lichens were comparable with concentrations measured in a conventional active sampler in an outdoor environment. In this review the authors explore the methodological approaches used for the assessment of atmospheric deposition, from the analysis of the sampling methods, the analytical procedures for chemical characterization of pollutants and the main results from the scientific literature.

Humans learn about people and objects through positive and negative experiences, yet they can also look beyond the immediate reward of an interaction to encode trait-level attributes. We found that perceivers encoded both reward and trait-level information through feedback in an instrumental learning task, but relied more heavily on trait representations in cross-context decisions. Both learning types implicated ventral striatum, but trait learning also recruited a network associated with social impression formation.

An assessment of the fugitive emission impact on ambient air PM, PAHs and metal concentrations was performed in a residential area near the biggest European steel plant. A careful experimental design was developed to characterize fugitive emissions produced by the integrated steel plant. A PM10 and PM2.5 monitoring campaign was conducted at three sampling sites around the steel plant, in order to perform a triangulation in the area surrounding the investigated site and evaluate its impact based on wind direction. Data analysis showed that the transport of air mass, from the steelworks to one of the receptor sites, resulted in ambient air concentrations of Fe, Mn, Zn and PAHs higher than those observed in the other two sites. Principal component analysis allowed the identification of four emission sources: coke ovens stack, mineral park, a crustal source and vanadium source. The first two sources were characterized by high concentrations of PAHs and metals and related to the steelworks, while the vanadium source was probably associated with maritime traffic in the port area. This preliminary monitoring approach proved effective in identifying the fugitive emission contribution of the steel plant to the surrounding air quality.

article i nfo According to the principle of hypodescent, multiracial individuals are categorized according to their most so- cially subordinate group membership. We investigated whether the tendency to apply this principle is relat- ed to political ideology. In three studies, participants categorized a series of morphed faces that varied in terms of racial ambiguity. In each study, self-reported conservatism (vs. liberalism) was associated with the tendency to categorize ambiguous faces as Black. Consistent with the notion that system justification mo- tivation helps to explain ideological differences in racial categorization, the association between conserva- tism and hypodescent was mediated by individual differences in opposition to equality (Study 2) and was stronger when U.S. participants categorized American than Canadian faces (Study 3). We discuss ways in which the categorization of racially ambiguous individuals in terms of their most subordinate racial group may exacerbate inequality and vulnerability to discrimination.

Faces are inherently social, but the extent to which social group information affects early face processing remains unknown. To address this issue, we examined cortical activity associated with structural encoding of novel ingroup vs. outgroup faces. Participants were assigned to one of two arbitrarily-defined groups using the minimal group procedure, and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants categorized faces of people identified as members of their novel ingroup vs. outgroup. Our analysis focused on the N170 component of the ERP, which peaks 170 ms following face onset and reflects face structural encoding. Ingroup faces elicited larger N170 amplitudes than outgroup faces, suggesting that mere group information affects this initial stage of face perception. These findings show that social categories influence how we “see” faces, thus providing insight into the process through which categorizations may lead to biased intergroup perceptions.

Atmospheric particulate matter (PM) characterizes the atmospheric air quality. PM particles can adsorb and include several toxic air pollutants of urban areas. The current study aimed to develop an experimental procedure to assess the toxicity of the pollutants on PPM10 by means of the comet assay on earthworms directly exposed to PM10 collecting filters. A particular focus was the amount of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the filter, in spite of their very low concentration in PM, because of their strong mutagenic and carcinogenic effects. A quartz filter exposed to polluted air containing 24.9 mg/g of PM10 and 14.1 μg/g of PAHs was characterized and mechanically reduced into a very fine powder by means of a planetary ball mill. This powder was combined with artificial soil samples allowing treatments at 15 μg/g of PM10 (0.008 μg/g of PAHs), 22.5 μg/g of PM10 (0.012 μg/g of PAHs), 30 μg/g of PM10 (0.016 μg/g of PAHs). Earthworms were exposed to each treatment for seven days, including blank treatments with powdered clean quartz filter, such as phenanthrene (used as the standard), and an untreated soil. DNA damage was observed starting from 0.012 μg/g of PAHs in 22.5 μg/g of PM10. No single PAH was detected or quantified in the bodies of the earthworms after microwave assisted solvent extraction (MASE) and GC-MS analysis. The results demonstrate that even a very low amount of PM10 absorbed by the earthworms had a toxic effect on their immune systems, which could also have been caused by other xenobiotics included into the filter.

Taranto (in the Apulia Region of southern Italy) has been included in a list of the most polluted sites of national interest because of its large industrial area that is situated near the urban centre. The impact of this on urban air quality has been evaluated by monitoring PM2.5 and PM10 at the industrial site of ‘via Orsini’ and the urban station of ‘via Dante’. At both sites, the temporal distribution and chemical composition of PM, in terms of PAHs and element concentrations, were used to characterize the air quality in the urban area and to deduce the possible and theoretical carcinogenic indices, and thus the impact on human health. High PM concentrations were found to be caused by wind coming from the north (industrial area), and during days when the wind was from this direction the PAH and elemental concentrations (such as iron, manganese and zinc) were the highest of the sampling period. These data confirm the impact of this industrial area, in particular its steel plant activities, on urban air quality in Taranto. In order to determine the source contributions to PM levels at the two investigated sites, Principal Component Analysis was applied to the collected data. Statistical investigations also included PAH and elemental concentrations determined at two other sites in Apulia Region, characterized by traffic and biomass burning sources. These investigations made it possible to distinguish the samples collected in via Dante and via Orsini from those collected at the two other sites, confirming the effects of industrial activities on urban air quality in Taranto.

This study examined factors that predicted children's gender intergroup attitudes at age 5 and the implications of these attitudes for intergroup behavior. Ethnically diverse children from low-income backgrounds (N = 246; Mexican-, Chinese-, Dominican-, and African American) were assessed at ages 4 and 5. On average, children reported positive same-gender and negative other-gender attitudes. Positive same-gender attitudes were associated with knowledge of gender stereotypes. In contrast, positive other-gender attitudes were associated with flexibility in gender cognitions (stereotype flexibility, gender consistency). Other-gender attitudes predicted gender-biased behavior. These patterns were observed in all ethnic groups. These findings suggest that early learning about gender categories shape young children's gender attitudes and that these gender attitudes already have consequences for children's intergroup behavior at age 5.

This study was aimed to the development of an integrated approach for the characterization of particulate matter (PM) pollution events in the South of Italy.PM(10) and PM(2.5) daily samples were collected from June to November 2008 at an urban background site located in Bari (Puglia Region, South of Italy). Meteorological data, particle size distributions and atmospheric dispersion conditions were also monitored in order to provide information concerning the different features of PM sources.The collected data allowed suggesting four indicators to characterize different PM(10) exceedances. PM(2.5)/PM(10) ratio, natural radioactivity, aerosol maps and back-trajectory analysis and particle distributions were considered in order to evaluate the contribution of local anthropogenic sources and to determine the different origins of intrusive air mass coming from long-range transport, such as African dust outbreaks and aerosol particles from Central and Eastern Europe. The obtained results were confirmed by applying principal component analysis to the number particle concentration dataset and by the chemical characterization of the samples (PM(10) and PM(2.5)).The integrated approach for PM study suggested in this paper can be useful to support the air quality managers for the development of cost-effective control strategies and the application of more suitable risk management approaches.

Racial disparities are a major public health concern in the United States. The authors examined whether Black and Latina community members’ perceptions of stigmatization and personal feelings about their group relate to immune and endocrine markers associated with health risk, including the cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6), which coordinates the immune response to infection, the anabolic hormone dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), which promotes cellular resilience, and the catabolic hormone cortisol, which releases metabolic stores in response to threat. Greater perceived stigmatization was associated with higher basal IL-6, whereas greater ingroup pride was related to elevated basal DHEA. These associations remained with adjustment for general perceived stress, experience with discrimination, age, and income. No significant perceived stigmatization or ingroup pride effects emerged for basal cortisol. These findings provide new evidence that perceived stigmatization and ingroup pride are linked to indicators of ...

How does intergroup anxiety affect the activation of implicit racial evaluations and stereotypes? Given the common basis of social anxiety and implicit evaluative processes in memory systems linked to classical conditioning and affect, we predicted that intergroup anxiety would amplify implicit negative racial evaluations. Implicit stereotyping, which is associated primarily with semantic memory systems, was not expected to increase as a function of intergroup anxiety. This pattern was observed among White participants preparing to interact with Black partners, but not those preparing to interact with White partners. These findings shed new light on how anxiety, often elicited in real-life intergroup interactions, can affect the operation of implicit racial biases, suggesting that intergroup anxiety has more direct implications for affective and evaluative forms of implicit bias than for implicit stereotyping. These findings also support a memory-systems model of the interplay between emotion and cognition in the context of social behavior.

Ideology is a potent motivational force; human beings are capable of committing atrocities (as well as acts of generosity and courage) and sacrificing even their own lives for the sake of abstract belief systems. In this article, we summarize the major tenets of a model of political ideology as motivated social cognition (Jost et al. in Psychol Bull 129:339–375, 2003a, Psychol Bull 129:389–393, 2003b, Person Soc Psychol Bull 33:989–1007, 2007), focusing on epistemic, existential, and relational motives and their implications for left-right (or liberal-conservative) political orientation. We review behavioral evidence indicating that chronically and temporarily activated needs to reduce uncertainty, ambiguity, threat, and disgust are positively associated with conservatism (or negatively associated with liberalism). Studies from neuroscience and genetics suggest that right- (vs. left-) wing orientation is associated with greater neural sensitivity to threat and larger amygdala volume, as well as less sensitivity to response conflict and smaller anterior cingulate volume. These findings and others provide converging evidence for Jost and colleagues’ model of ideology as motivated social cognition and, more broadly, reflect the utility of an integrative political neuroscience approach to understanding the basic cognitive, neural, and motivational processes that give rise to ideological activity.

In middle childhood, many girls go through a curious metamorphosis, in which their earlier embrace of all-things-feminine appears to transform into an identity as a tomboy. We believe this striking shift, observed in girls but not boys, signifies a critical development in children’s socio-cognitive functioning, with implications for their understanding of gender as it relates to their identity and their social relationships. In this article, we review the evidence for this identity shift and present a theoretical account that integrates ideas from social cognition and social development. We argue that this identity shift involves the emergence of public regard and status awareness, with concurrent increases in the complexity with which knowledge associated with gender categories is represented in the mind. We then posit that these changes have important implications for the developmental trajectory of implicit and explicit gender attitudes and stereotypes, and we present a set of predictions generated by our theoretical analysis.

We examined the relation between neural activity reflecting early face perception processes and automatic and controlled responses to race. Participants completed a sequential evaluative priming task, in which two-tone images of Black faces, White faces, and cars appeared as primes, followed by target words categorized as pleasant or unpleasant, while encephalography was recorded. Half of these participants were alerted that the task assessed racial prejudice and could reveal their personal bias (“alerted” condition). To assess face perception processes, the N170 component of the ERP was examined. For all participants, stronger automatic pro-White bias was associated with larger N170 amplitudes to Black than White faces. For participants in the alerted condition only, larger N170 amplitudes to Black versus White faces were also associated with less controlled processing on the word categorization task. These findings suggest that preexisting racial attitudes affect early face processing and that situational factors moderate the link between early face processing and behavior.

Individuals who are primarily internally motivated to respond without prejudice show less bias on implicit measures than individuals who are externally motivated or unmotivated to respond without prejudice. However, it is not clear why these individuals exhibit less implicit bias than others. We used the Quad model to examine motivation-based individual differences in three processes that have been proposed to account for this effect: activation of associations, overcoming associations, and response monitoring. Participants completed an implicit measure of stereotyping (Study 1) or racial attitudes (Study 2). Modeling of the data revealed that individuals who were internally (but not externally) motivated to respond without prejudice showed enhanced detection and reduced activation of biased associations, suggesting that these processes may be key to achieving unbiased responding. © 2011 by the Society for Personalityand Social Psychology, Inc.

Implicit social cognition refers to the mental processes that influence social perception and behavior independently of conscious awareness. To date, implicit social processes have been explained by single-system models of associations among concepts that, while addressing questions of information processing, are generally silent regarding the interface of implicit social processes with behavior. In this article, we present a multisystem model of implicit social cognition based on emerging cognitive neuroscience research on systems of learning and memory. This model describes how different underlying memory systems, characterized by different patterns of learning, unlearning, and behavioral expression, may contribute to implicit social processes. We describe how the memory systems model differs from previous theories of implicit social cognition and how it makes new and increasingly refined predictions regarding implicit sociocognitive processes and their influences on behavior.

A screening monitoring campaign of volatile organic compounds (VOC) was conducted in the main cities of the metropolitan area of Bari, south-eastern Italy, in order to evaluate the impact of the vehicular traffic on the urban air quality. VOC were sampled with diffusive samplers suitable for thermal desorption. The monitoring was planned considering the number of inhabitants and the intensity of the vehicular traffic in each city. The same concentration pattern and the correlation among benzene versus toluene levels in all sites confirmed the presence of a single source, the vehicular traffic, having a strong impact on urban air quality.

Social neuroscience is a young and thriving area of research in psychology that integrates diverse literatures and methodologies to address broad questions about the brain and behavior. But despite the excitement and activity generated by this approach, its contribution to ideas in social psychology is sometimes questioned. This article discusses the ways in which social neuroscience research may or may not contribute to theoretical issues in social psychology. Still a young field, much research in this area has focused on issues of brain mapping and methodological development, with less emphasis on generating and testing novel social psychological hypotheses. The challenges to theoretical advancement, including psychometric and methodological issues, are considered, and a set of guidelines for conducting theoretically-informative social neuroscience is offered. In the final analysis, it is argued that neuroscience has much to offer to social psychology, both theoretically and methodologically, but that l...

Chemical composition data (ionic fraction, carbonaceous compounds and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons) for PM2.5 were acquired during 2005–2007 years by seasonal sampling campaigns performed at six urban sites in Apulia Region. In addition, an industrial site was considered. Discriminant Function Analysis, Principal Component Analysis and Absolute Principal Component Scores were applied to dataset in order to identify PM2.5 sources and to estimate their contributions to samples mass. Three main sources were obtained for the urban sites: combustion processes, natural sources and secondary particulate. Moreover, the application of Principal Component Analysis on chemical and meteorological data highlighted the influence of temperature and relative humidity on natural sources, and the relevance of pressure on secondary particulate content. In PM2.5, secondary particulate contributed on average with 78% to total mass, while combustion processes and natural sources accounted, respectively, 15% and 6.5% of the fine fraction mass. For this reason the secondary background should be taken into account in order to suggest the efficient abatement strategies to improve local air quality in South of Italy.

The present work studied how much the meteorological parameters and the emission sources can influence the particulate polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (Invalid Journal Information PAHs) concentrations in two areas located in Southern Italy (Bari and Taranto). It was found that when the vehicular traffic is the main source of PAHs, there is a negative correlation between ambient temperature, wind speed and PAHs concentration (Bari). This is because these parameters are generally correlated with the dispersion capacity of the atmosphere. In the presence of a large industrial area, the wind direction becomes an important parameter able to determinate large changes in PAHs concentrations. This happened in Taranto where PAHs concentrations are exceptionally high. During the study the seasonal trend of particulate PAHs and PM10 was compared. PM10 did not show a significant seasonal cycle during the year because it is conditioned from a high regional aerosol background, especially during the summertime. On the contrary, particulate PAHs exerted distinct seasonal variation with higher concentrations in the winter and lower concentration during other months of the year. This evidence suggested that PAHs concentrations can be considered a more reliable index for air-quality assessment. In order to identify an index that considers the contributions of other particulate PAHs, it is necessary to calculate the carcinogenic potency of total PAHs (i.e., total BaPeq) obtained by the sum of the benzo[a]pyrene equivalent concentration (BaPeq) for each PAH.