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In the present study, we used a valence classification task to investigate the common and distinct neural basis of the two fundamental dimensions of social cognition (agency and communion) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The results showed that several brain areas associated with mentalizing, along with the inferior parietal gyrus in the mirror system, showed overlap in response to both agentic and communal words. These findings suggest that both content categories are related to the neural basis of social cognition; further, several areas in the default mode network (DMN) showed similar deactivations between agency and communion, reflecting task-induced deactivation (TID). In terms of distinct activations, the findings indicated greater deactivations for communal than agentic content in the ventral anterior cingulate (vACC) and medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC). Communion also showed greater activation in some visual areas compared to agentic content, including occipital gyrus, lingual gyrus, and fusiform gyrus. These activations may reflect greater allocation of attentional resources to visual areas when processing communal content, or inhibition of cognitive activity irrelevant to task performance. If so, this suggests greater attention and engagement with communion-related content. The present research thus suggests common and differential activations for agency- versus communion-related content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to review the literature on the fundamental dimensions of social judgment and reflect on how these can help to boost our understanding of attitudes towards immigrants. We start by reviewing the work on the "fundamental dimensions" along which these judgments are organized, describing the different conceptions that have been put forward, identifying the regularities found in the content of these dimensions and the distinctions between them. Next, we propose a new way of looking at these fundamental dimensions by situating them within the specific field of intergroup relations in an immigration context and explain how all the different examples of dimensions map onto this "new perspective". We conclude by discussing how these two dimensions mirror the two fundamental topics that organize the discourse and the opinions about immigrants and immigration in society and how attitudes towards immigrants can be differentially shaped by these two fundamental dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to discuss a wrong statement written about dimensional analysis in a physics text book prepared for the students who are studying in science, engineering and teaching undergraduate programs at universities and who have to take compulsory physics courses, to analyse the use of the text book including the wrong expression and its effects, and to define it again. Document analysis is used as the main method of data collection instrument in qualitative studies. The data of this qualitative study were gathered by examining the documents such as book or scientific paper published on the subject with a descriptive analysis method. The attention drawing statement in the physics textbook commonly used around the word is, "All quantities can be converted into length, time and mass units in the end. No matter how complex any physical quantity is, it is stated as algebraic combination of these three basic quantities." The most important findings of this study are as follows: the wrong description about dimensional analysis will not only be a book error, it will lead to misconceptions, and it will hinder learning dimensional analysis correctly and students' studying physics course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communion and agency are fundamental dimensions of social perception and judgment. Previous research revealed a primacy of communion in social information processing. The present research investigates whether there is a similar asymmetry in the "density" of communion and agency. We test whether communal content is more densely clustered in memory than agentic content, that is, more similar to other communal content than agentic content is similar to other agentic content. Three multidimensional scaling studies address this question and suggest an interaction with valence: While negative communal content is more densely clustered than negative agentic content, we find no differences in density between positive communal and positive agentic content. In addition to enhancing our understanding of the fundamental dimensions and their structural representation, this research might open a new perspective on old questions regarding person perception and implicit personality theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In intergroup comparisons one group usually becomes the implicit norm that other groups are compared to. Three studies address the consequences that the direction of the comparison has for perceptions of the compared groups. For real groups (Experiment 1) and fictitious groups (Experiments 2 and 3) participants perceived a group as more powerful and higher in status when it had been the norm rather than the effect to be explained in a text comparing two groups. Moreover, norm groups and their "typical" members were perceived as more agentic and less communal than comparison groups, and these attributions were mediated by the ascription of power. The authors conclude that systematic ways of explaining one group rather than another could serve as a subtle tool to perpetuate the status quo of intergroup power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]