The authors report a series of studies designed to determine whether effects similar to those observed in the innate categorical perception of color and phonemes are induced during the learning of simple unidimensional categories and more complex multidimensional ones. In Experiment 1 no evidence was found for such effects when stimuli varied on 1 dimension. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated a within-category compression effect but no between-category expansion effect for stimuli varying in 2 dimensions. Compression only was also shown in Experiment 4, which used pictures of actual objects. Multidimensional scaling analyses illustrate how within-category compression without expansion was sut~cient to produce categorical clustering of items in the similarity space. These analyses also show that learning changed the dimensional structure of similarity space. Results are compared with those from other studies exploring similar phenomena and with neural network simulations. Most contemporary models of category learning rely to

Given the aim to motivate people to conserve energy in their homes, we need to understand what drives people’s energy use behavior and how it can be influenced. This article describes applied energy-conservation campaigns at two U.S. military installations where residents do not pay their own utility bills. Customized approaches were designed for each installation based on a broad social-psychological model. Before-and-after energy use was measured and residents were surveyed about their end-use behaviors. Residents said they were motivated by the desire to do the right thing, set a good example for their children, and have a comfortable home. For sustained change, respondents recommended continued awareness and education, disincentives, and incentives. Findings show support for some aspects of a social-psychological model, with emphasis on altruistic as well as egoistic motives for behavioral change. These studies may have implications for other situations where residents are not billed for individual energy use, including other government-subsidized facilities, master-metered apartments, and university dormitories. The Link Between Knowledge, Values, Attitudes, and Behavior Despite decades of research in energy conservation and other pro-environmental behaviors, considerable uncertainty remains about what motivates people to behave in environmentally responsible 1 Motivating residents to conserve energy without financial incentives / McMakin, Malone, Lundgren ways. Studies have investigated, for example, the contributions and links between environmental knowledge (e.g., Ostman & Parker, 1987), environmental values (e.g., Kempton, Boster, and Hartley, 1995;

Briefly studying names of four members of a hypothetical group produces identification with and attraction to that group, a finding labeled implicit partisanship (IP; Greenwald, Pickrell, & Farnham, 2002). The original demonstration of IP used human groups in a competitive context. Experiments 1 and 2 varied these procedures by using, respectively, a cooperative intergroup context and non-human group members (fictitious car brands). Neither of these variations eliminated the IP effect, indicating unanticipated robustness. Experiment 3 revealed a substantial reduction of the IP effect’s magnitude when the studied names represented a rival university. The reduction of IP through identity opposition supports the interpretation that spontaneous group identification effects carry psychological significance that is comparable to that of more ordinary group identifications. keywords group attraction, group identification, Implicit Association Test, implicit partisanship Please take a minute to memorize the following names

We present a novel problem of searching for ‘familiar strangers ’ in a social network. Familiar strangers are individuals who are not directly connected but exhibit some similarity. The power-law nature of social networks determines that majority of individuals are directly connected with a small number of fellow individuals, and similar individuals can be largely unknown to each other. Moreover, the individuals of a social network have only a local view of the network, which makes the problem of aggregating these familiar strangers a challenge. In this work, we formulate the problem, show why it is significant to address the challenge, and present an approach that innovatively employs the social identities of the individuals with competitive approaches. The blogger and citation network are used to showcase technical details and empirical results with related issues and future work.

Today’s work environment is complex and challenging for workers. Organizations are increasingly focused on collaboration and seek the advantages of flexibility to facilitate innovation. In many organizations, the rate of change itself has increased, driven by more intense competition. Information and communication technologies (ICT) are widespread and their use is deeply integrated into work processes, as workers collaborate electronically with co-workers they may never meet face-to-face or with employees of other companies. These trends are linked because of the widely held view that ICT overcomes barriers to collaboration and enhances flexibility to meet the demands of rapidly changing competitive environments. Work in these flexible organizations is often problematic. Many of the apparently unrelated characteristics of work are symptoms of a common underlying phenomenon, namely,

This paper categorizes multiracial youth (N 5 1,496) ages 14 to 19 and compares them with each other and with monoracial youth on identity development measures. The multiracial categories used here are derived from youths ’ reports of their own and their parents ’ race(s). Comparisons are made within groups of multiracial respondents who make different choices among single-race categories. Results show differences between subgroups in strength and importance of ethnic identity, self-esteem, and perceptions of ethnic discrimination. Multinomial logistic regression shows further that physiognomy, ethnic identity, and race of coresident parent(s) are significantly associated with reported race. Also related to racial identification among part-Hispanic youth are the racial distribution and socioeconomic status of their neighborhoods and the racial distributions of their schools. Carlos Petterson (not his real name) was in his ninthgrade English class when he filled out a survey that asked him, among other things, about his race: ‘‘Select the major ethnic group that best describes you.’’ This request posed a problem because Carlos’s mother is part Filipino and part Mexican, and his father is

Self-perception theory posits that people sometimes infer their own attributes by observing their freely chosen actions. We hypothesized that in addition, people sometimes infer their own attributes by observing the freely chosen actions of others with whom they feel a sense of merged identity—almost as if they had observed themselves performing the acts. Before observing an actor’s behavior, participants were led to feel a sense of merged identity with the actor through perspective-taking instructions (Study 1) or through feedback indicating that their brainwave patterns overlapped substantially with those of the actor (Studies 2-4). As predicted, observers incorporated attributes relevant to an actor’s behavior into their own self-concepts, but only when they were led to feel a sense of merged identity with the actor and only when the actor’s behavior seemed freely chosen. These changes in relevant self-perceptions led observers to change their own behaviors accordingly. Implications of these vicarious self-perception processes for conformity, perspective-taking, and the long-term development of the self-concept are discussed.

To support social interactions characterizing most activities in virtual communities, system design needs to go beyond functional and user-friendliness requirements to incorporate the demands for supporting social environments and activities. Social presence, as a subjective nature of communication media, reflects the perception of social actors as well as social settings and has been regarded as one of the major design principles for virtual communities. Our study explores its potential in facilitating the social identification process and promoting community participation. Drawing upon the social identity theory, we develop a model explaining the effects of social presence on social identification and community participation. An empirical study involving 430 members from four different virtual communities of interest provide strong support for our model. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

Experimental psychology provides a drastically different picture of human abilities, motives, and behavior from that which predominates economic analyses. Individual preferences are normatively assumed to be well-ordered and consistent, but descriptively shown to be inconsistent and malleable. Not having at their disposal clear and reliable procedures for assigning values to options, people need to construct their preferences in the context of decision, which is rife with, among other things, conflict, emotion, contextual influences, and shifts in perspective and attention. Like many other traits and behaviors, preference inconsistency is the outcome not of distracted shortcuts or avoidable errors, but of fundamental aspects of mental life that are central to how people process information. Thus, it may help to think of individual decision makers not as faulty economic agents, but as fundamentally different creatures.

European identities and everyday practices and views of citizenship, including tolerance and racism, among samples of young men and women living in across Europe. Our general aim includes the following specific scientific objectives: 1. To describe the salience and meanings of ‘being European ’ versus more personal, local, regional and national identities in the everyday worlds of strategically selected samples of young people. 2. To analyse respondents ' ideals and practices of belonging with friends and family, to a locality, neighbourhood or local community, to a region, to a nation, to Europe and to a global community, exploring the extent of emphasis on social obligations and civic participation, entitlements of birth and ethnicity, nationbased or ethnicity-based citizenship, inclusion or exclusion, tolerance or chauvinism and racism. 3. To document respondents ' orientation to migration and trans-national links through their perceptions of their family history, desires for and feelings of competence to achieve international mobility and experience and perceptions of