Journal Of Personality

Individualism: valued differently by parents and teachers of primary, junior high and high school students.

The present study was designed to examine if individualism, a core characteristic of Western societies, is socially valued in two fundamental institutions: Family and school. Parents and teachers of fourth graders (primary school), sixth graders (junior high school) and tenth graders (high school) completed an Individualism Scale (covering the main factors of self-realization, autonomy, emotional independence and social differentiation) which was adapted for each grade. For each item, they had to choose the answer their child, or students, would need to give in order to make a good, or bad, impression. The results showed that individualism is valued differently as a function of the evaluator. Parents valued it in their children (with the exception of sixth graders) although teachers actually devalued it in their students. Additionally, individualism appeared as a multifaceted phenomenon since its different components were not judged consistently.  

Copyright of Social Psychology of Education is the property of Springer Science & Business Media B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
 

Personal project commitment in adolescence: The role of relatedness, competence and integrity.

University (n = 175) and high school (n = 162) students rated their commitment to three personal projects self-identified as central to their lives, the extent to which each project generated experiences of relatedness, competence and integrity, and how much approval it received from significant others. This study compared the ‘life’ (hobbies, fitness, church, life transitions, intrapersonal, etc.) and education projects of participants who spontaneously generated an example of each (98 university and 70 high school participants). Integrity and competence received higher ratings than relatedness and were the most important predictors of commitment to both types of project. For both groups, education projects received more family/adult approval than life projects and there was much greater variation in approval ratings for the latter. The results suggest that, at least for young people in New Zealand, feeling that you are good at a project and it fits with your values, is almost a proxy for commitment. It is possible that social factors play a less direct role, perhaps by influencing the choice of interpersonal settings in which to carry out important projects. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

 Copyright of European Journal of Social Psychology is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Contribution of Sound Intensity in Vocal Emotion Perception: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence.

Although its role is frequently stressed in acoustic profile for vocal emotion, sound intensity is frequently regarded as a control parameter in neurocognitive studies of vocal emotion, leaving its role and neural underpinnings unclear. To investigate these issues, we asked participants to rate the angry level of neutral and angry prosodies before and after sound intensity modification in Experiment 1, and recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) for mismatching emotional prosodies with and without sound intensity modification and for matching emotional prosodies while participants performed emotional feature or sound intensity congruity judgment in Experiment 2. It was found that sound intensity modification had significant effect on the rating of angry level for angry prosodies, but not for neutral ones. Moreover, mismatching emotional prosodies, relative to matching ones, induced enhanced N2/P3 complex and theta band synchronization irrespective of sound intensity modification and task demands. However, mismatching emotional prosodies with reduced sound intensity showed prolonged peak latency and decreased amplitude in N2/P3 complex and smaller theta band synchronization. These findings suggest that though it cannot categorically affect emotionality conveyed in emotional prosodies, sound intensity contributes to emotional significance quantitatively, implying that sound intensity should not simply be taken as a control parameter and its unique role needs to be specified in vocal emotion studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]