The contact hypothesis and the virtual revolution: Does face-to-face interaction remain central to improving intergroup relations?

Research on the contact hypothesis has traditionally prioritized the role of positive, direct, face-to-face interactions in shaping intergroup prejudices, but it has recently expanded to study indirect vicarious, negative, and online contact experiences. In the majority of studies though, there has been little direct comparison of the relationship between these different forms of contact and prejudice. The present research set out to compare the amount and effects of negative, online, and vicarious contact in the context of positive, face-to-face and direct contact in two studies. Study 1 comprised a national cross-sectional survey of relations between White and Black UK residents (n = 1014), and Study 2 comprised a national longitudinal survey of relations between Catholic and Protestant residents of Northern Ireland (n = 1030). The results of both studies indicated that positive face-to-face contact occurred more frequently and had a comparatively stronger relationship with prejudice than other forms of contact. However, they also indicated the effects of online, negative and vicarious forms of contact existed independently of those of direct, positive face-to-face contact. Moreover, online negative contact generally had a stronger relationship to prejudice than negative contact experienced face-to-face. Exploratory mediation analyses suggested the affective pathways from contact to prejudice may vary for different forms of contact.

Changes in the own group bias across immediate and delayed recognition tasks

Face recognition is biased in favour of in-group identity, particularly strongly for race or ethnicity but to some extent also for sex and age. This ‘own group bias’ (OGB) can have profound implications in practical settings, with incorrect identification of black suspects by white witnesses constituting 40% of criminal exonerations investigated by the Innocence Project. Although authors have offered several explanations for the OGB in face recognition, there is little consensus, apart from the acknowledgement that the bias must reflect perceptual learning history. One matter that is not currently clear is whether the bias occurs at encoding, or at retrieval from memory. We report an experiment designed to tease out bias at encoding, versus bias at retrieval. Black and white South African participants encoded 16 target faces of both the same and other race and gender, and attempted immediately afterward to match the target faces to members of photograph arrays that either contained or did not contain the targets. After a further delay, they attempted to identify the faces they had encoded from memory. Results showed a strong crossover OGB in the delayed matching task, but an asymmetrical OGB at retrieval (only white participants showed the OGB). Further investigation of recognition performance, considering only images correctly matched in the delayed matching task, showed a narrowly non-significant OGB at retrieval, but the investigation was likely not sufficiently powered to discover the effect, if it exists.

Evaluating the utility of facial identification information: Accuracy versus precision

Facial identification evidence obtained from eyewitnesses, such as person descriptions and facial composites, plays a fundamental role in criminal investigations and is regularly regarded as valuable evidence for apprehending and prosecuting perpetrators. However, the reliability of such facial identification information is often queried. Person descriptions are frequently reported in the research literature as being vague and generalisable, whilst facial composites often exhibit a poor likeness to an intended target face. This raises questions regarding the accuracy of eyewitness facial identification information and its ability to facilitate efficient searches for unknown perpetrators of crimes. More specifically, it questions whether individuals, blind to the appearance of a perpetrator of a crime (i.e. the public), can correctly identify the intended target face conveyed by facial identification information recalled from eyewitness memory, and which of the two traditional facial identification formats would be better relied upon by law enforcement to enable such searches. To investigate this, in the current study (N=167) we employed two metrics – identification accuracy and identification precision – to assess the utility of different formats of eyewitness facial identification information in enabling participants to correctly identify an unknown target face across three different formats: facial descriptions, facial composites and computer-generated description-based synthetic faces. A statistically significant main effect for the format of facial identification information on identification accuracy (p<0.001) was found, with a higher target identification accuracy yielded by facial descriptions in comparison to composites and description-based synthetic faces. However, the reverse relationship was established for identification precision, where composites and description-based synthetic faces enabled significantly greater precision in the narrowing down of a suspect pool than did facial descriptions, but did not necessarily result in the retainment of the intended target face (p<0.001).

Non-linear effects of stress on eyewitness memory

The effect of stress on face identification is not yet clear, with recent experiments finding positive, negative and null results. Here we report the results of two experiments examining the effect of stress on eyewitness performance in line-up face recognition tasks. Both experiments use a stress manipulation and live mock crime paradigm to examine the relationship between stress at encoding and subsequent line-up performance. Experiment 1 replicated an experiment by Sauerland et al. (Behav Sci Law. 2016;34(4):580–594) which induced stress using the Maastricht Acute Stress Test. The replication found the same null result as the original experiment. Experiment 2 aimed to address a limitation of many laboratory experiments which dichotomise stress into low and high groups for comparison. As the Yerkes-Dodson law (1908) suggests that a non-linear relationship exists between stress and performance, it was hypothesised that using a low, medium and high stress manipulation might show clearer results than a dichotomous paradigm. The results of Experiment 2 show a non-linear relationship, with no difference between the low and high stress groups but better performance by the middle stress group. The results suggest that a different approach is required in experiments on stress and face recognition, as the stress–performance relationship is likely non-linear.

Cooperating with the outgroup rather than the ingroup: The effects of status, individual mobility, and group mobility on resource allocation and trust in an interactional game

We describe a team game that implements a social dilemma between ingroup cooperation and defection by self-enriching outgroup exchange. We test hypotheses derived from social identity theory about how group status and belief about individual mobility and group mobility affect exchange behavior. We ran 60 experimental team games between rich and poor groups under one of four experiment conditions in a fully crossed design, manipulating the presence or absence of individual mobility and group mobility beliefs. Each game was played over 10 rounds in which participants generated wealth for self or group by allocating tokens to either the ingroup or outgroup bank or to outgroup individuals. We identify 10 exchange strategies via latent class analysis and show how class membership and resulting perceptions of group trust are predicted by the experimental conditions. The results show that rich status and individual mobility promote defecting exchanges with outgroup individuals, and that behavior under individual mobility beliefs weakens ingroup trust. In contrast, intergroup competition of the group mobility condition did not affect ingroup cooperation versus defection or trust.

Intergroup Contact and Prejudice Reduction: Prospects and Challenges in Changing Youth Attitudes

Intergroup contact has long been lauded as a key intervention to reduce prejudice and improve intergroup attitudes among youth. In this review, we summarize classic perspectives and new developments in the intergroup contact literature, highlighting both prospects and challenges associated with achieving desired youth outcomes through contact. First, we review literature showing how positive intergroup outcomes can be facilitated through cultivating optimal conditions for contact, as well as by attending to youth’s emotional responses to contact. We then discuss how desired contact outcomes may be inhibited by limited understanding of ways in which contact strategies may affect youth across developmental stages, as well as by limited focus on societal inequalities and intergroup conflict, which require examination of outcomes beyond prejudice reduction. We also review growing bodies of research on indirect contact strategies—such as extended contact, vicarious contact, and online contact—showing many options that can be used to promote positive relations among youth from diverse backgrounds, beyond the contact literature’s traditional focus on face-to-face interaction. We conclude this review by acknowledging how understanding both prospects and challenges associated with implementing contact strategies can enhance our capacity to prepare youth to embrace group differences and build more inclusive societies.

'When the walls come tumbling down': The role of intergroup proximity, threat, and contact in shaping attitudes towards the removal of Northern Ireland's peace walls

Institutional structures of segregation typically entrench social inequality and sustain wider patterns of intergroup conflict and discrimination. However, initiatives to dismantle such structures may provoke resistance. Executive proposals to dismantle Northern Ireland's peace walls by 2023 provide a compelling case study of the nature of such resistance and may thus provide important clues about how it might be overcome. Drawing on a field survey conducted in north Belfast (n = 488), this research explored the role of physical proximity, realistic and symbolic threat, and past experiences of positive and negative cross-community contact on Catholic and Protestant residents' support for removing the walls. Structural equation modelling suggested that both forms of contact and proximity were significantly related to such support and that these relationships were partially mediated by realistic threat. It also suggested that positive contact moderated the effects of proximity. That is, for residents who had more frequent positive interactions with members of the other community, proximity to a peace wall had a weaker relationship with resistance to their removal than residents who had less frequent contact.

The development of a South African Early Learning Outcomes Measure: A South African instrument for measuring early learning program outcomes

BACKGROUND

Assessment of early childhood development programme effectiveness in South Africa is hampered by a lack of suitable measures that account for variations in cultural and socio-economic backgrounds and can be administered by non-professionals. This contribution reports the standardisation of the South African Early Learning Outcomes Measure (ELOM), an instrument designed for population level monitoring of the developmental status of children aged 50-69 months and for evaluation of early learning programmes.

METHODS

The development of the ELOM was informed by South Africa's National Curriculum Framework from Birth to Four and its National Early Learning and Development Standards. ELOM items were drawn from reliable and valid instruments, particularly those used in Africa and other developing regions and were clustered in five domains: gross motor development, fine motor coordination and visual motor integration, emergent numeracy and mathematics, cognition and executive functioning, emergent literacy and language. The ELOM was standardised on a sample of 1,331 children aged 50-69 months, from five South African official languages and five socio-economic strata. Item Response Theory techniques were used to establish reliability, validity, and differential item functioning.

RESULTS

Confirmatory Factor Analysis established that ELOM domains are unidimensional and internally consistent. Items discriminate reliably between more and less able children and do not discriminate unfairly between children of the same ability from different language backgrounds. Socio-economic gradients were evident in children's performance. South African Early Learning Development Standards (ELDS) based on standard scores were developed and set at the 60th percentile of the sample standard score distribution.

CONCLUSIONS

This research produced the first South African, age-validated population-level standardised instrument that can be administered relatively cheaply by trained non-professionals. This will facilitate the assessment of the efficacy of early learning programmes in enabling children to reach ELDS prior to entering Grade R and track progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 4.2.

How good are we at detecting deception? A review of current techniques and theories

The task of discerning truth from untruth has long interested psychologists; however, methods for doing so accurately remain elusive. In this article, we provide an overview and evaluation of methods of detecting deception used in the laboratory and the field. We identify and discuss three broad approaches to detecting deception: measurement of non-verbal behaviour, verbal interview methods, and statement evaluation by humans and computers. Part of the problem in devising good methods for detecting deception is the absence of a sound understanding of deception in human lives. We thus consider three theories of deception – leakage, reality monitoring, and truth-default – and conclude that although promising, they do not yet provide an adequate foundation. We review 10 extant methods of detecting deception in the second part of the article, focusing at greatest length on the most widely used method in South Africa, the polygraph test of deception. Our conclusion is that non-verbal methods that work by inducing anxiety in interviewees are fundamentally flawed, and that we ought to move away from such methods. Alternate methods of detecting deception, including statement analysis, are considered, but ultimately our view is that there are currently no methods sufficiently accurate for practitioners to rely on. We suspect that a precondition for developing such measures is a coherent and validated theory.

Can we look past people's race? The effect of combining race and a non-racial group affiliation on holistic processing

Face memory is worse for races other than one's own, in part because other-race faces are less holistically processed. Both experiential factors and social factors have been suggested as reasons for this other-race effect. Direct measures of holistic processing for race and a non-racial category in faces have never been employed, making it difficult to establish how experience and group membership interact. This study is the first to directly explore holistic processing of own-race and other-race faces, also classed by a non-racial category (university affiliation). Using a crossover design, White undergraduates (in Australia) completed the part-whole task for White (American) and Black South African faces attributed to the University of Western Sydney (own) and University of Sydney (other). Black South African undergraduates completed the same task for White and Black South African faces attributed to the University of Cape Town (own) and Stellenbosch University (other). It was hypothesised that own-race faces would be processed more holistically than other-race faces and that own-university faces would be processed more holistically than other-university faces. Results showed a significant effect of race for White participants (White faces were matched more accurately than Black faces), and wholes were matched more accurately than parts, suggesting holistic processing, but only for White faces. No effect of university was found. Black South African participants, who have more experience with other-race faces, processed wholes better than parts irrespective of race and university category. Overall, results suggest that experiential factors of race outweigh any effects of a non-racial shared group membership. The quality of experience for the named populations, stimuli presentation, and degree of individuation are discussed.

The Contact Hypothesis and Intergroup Relations 50 Years on: Introduction to the Special Issue

This article introduces the special issue on intergroup contact. We remind readers of the visit to South Africa, 50 years ago, of Gordon Allport and his associate, Thomas Pettigrew, and review work on one of Allport's central contributions to social psychology, the ‘contact hypothesis’. This hypothesis proposes that contact between groups will, under the right conditions, reduce prejudice and promote better intergroup relations. Although there is considerable support for the hypothesis, we note that much recent work in South Africa points to the infrequency of interracial contact, and the spontaneous self-segregation of interactants in conditions that are ostensibly optimal for intergroup contact. We discuss the contributions that individual articles in the special issue make to the wider question of intergroup contact, as well as to the specific questions of self-segregation and contact avoidance.

Inherent and Organisational Stress in the SAPS: An Empirical Survey in the Western Cape

Police work has been identified as a stressful occupation. Considered in the context of the South African (SA) situation, the paucity of research on the topic is cause for concern. This paper reports a preliminary exploration of stress in the South African Police Service (SAPS). Ninety-one SAPS members in the Cape Peninsula completed a questionnaire consisting of (i) Spielberger's 60-item Police Stress Survey (Spielberger, Westbury, Grier & Greenfield, 1981), and (ii) a 12-item Likert scale identifying potentially stressful areas specific to the South African context. Results show the SA sample to evidence a greater degree of stress than a USA sample. Results indicate that the way In which the police organisation operates in SA creates stress additional to the inherent pressure already existing as a result of the nature of police work. This finding indicates a potential area of intervention, and also shows that further research could profitably be conducted.

Accounting for Lack of Interracial Mixing Amongst South African University Students

The persistence of informal segregation in post-apartheid South Africa is now well documented. As the articles in this journal issue attest, this segregation is rife in many public spaces, including university campuses. This article explores the reasons to which students attribute the lack of interracial mixing at their institutions. Students from four universities were surveyed using an internet-based questionnaire. The final sample consisted of 1 068 black African and 1 521 white students. Their agreement or disagreement with eight reasons for avoidance of contact was analysed and found to vary as a function of race. The relationship of their responses to levels of prejudice and amount of interracial contact was examined.

Predicting Eyewitness Identification Accuracy with Mock Witness Measures of Lineup Fairness: Quality of Encoding Interacts with Lineup Format

After viewing a staged crime under varying levels of encoding optimality, eyewitnesses made identifications from lineups that were either presented to them as a simultaneous line of people, or individually, in sequence. Lineups did not contain the perpetrator of the staged crime, and were purposefully constructed to have varying levels of bias. There was an interaction between encoding optimality and type of lineup, with sequential-presentation lineups leading to more correct rejections than simultaneous-presentation lineups for moderate encoding optimality. Sequential-presentation lineups did not provide good protection against mistaken identifications in the two other conditions of encoding optimality. Measures of the fairness of the lineups significantly predicted identification rates for both simultaneous-presentation lineups and sequential-presentation lineups, regardless of encoding optimality.

Off-Space and on the Sidelines: A Reply to Marx and Feltham-King

Marx and Feltham-King offer an insightful critique of the special focus section of the South African Journal of Psychology (SAJP) (volume 35 number 3 2005) on ‘racial’ contact and isolation in everyday life. They note several methodological limitations of the studies presented and point to some potential misinterpretations of the overall message. In this response, we clarify and defend the rationale of the special focus section and acknowledge its limitations. We also argue, however, that Marx and Feltham-King's commentary fails to offer any forward-looking vision of how to develop psychological research on ‘race segregation’ in South Africa. What is required now is a concrete programme of work that advances our knowledge of the issues at the heart of this exchange.

Decalage Effects for Heating and Cooling

This study investigated a horizontal décalage phenomenon in the development of children's knowledge about heating and cooling. Décalage phenomena have posed a problem to orthodox Piagetian theory and have reinforced the objection by some domain-specific theorists to the central Piagetian notion of overarching structures. The aim of this study was to contribute to this debate by empirical observation of décalage phenomena. A total of 270 children from 3 ethnic groups were tested for their understanding of heating and cooling concepts, using a standard task and a structured interview. Results showed a strong décalage effect: Children used more sophisticated explanations, at earlier ages, for heating than for cooling phenomena. This horizontal décalage was present in a similar form in all three ethnic groups. We argue that the uniformity of the décalage is difficult to reconcile with domain-specific views.

Intergroup Contact and Attitudes Toward the Principle and Practice of Racial Equality

Research on racial attitudes indicates that acceptance of the principle of racial equality is frequently offset by opposition to policies designed to eliminate injustice. At the same time, research on the contact hypothesis indicates that positive interaction between groups erodes various kinds of prejudiced attitudes. Integrating these two traditions of research, this study examined whether or not interracial contact reduces the principle-implementation gap in racial attitudes. The study comprised a random-digit-dialing survey of the attitudes and contact experiences of White and Black South Africans (N = 1,917). The results suggest that among Whites, there remains a stubborn core of resistance to policies designed to rectify the injustices of apartheid. The results also indicate that interracial contact has differential, and somewhat paradoxical, effects on the attitudes of Whites and Blacks toward practices aimed at achieving racial justice.

Own-race faces capture attention faster than other-race faces: evidence from response time and the N2pc

Studies have shown that people are better at recognizing human faces from their own-race than from other-races, an effect often termed the Own-Race Advantage. The current study investigates whether there is an Own-Race Advantage in attention and its neural correlates. Participants were asked to search for a human face among animal faces. Experiment 1 showed a classic Own-Race Advantage in response time both for Chinese and Black South African participants. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), Experiment 2 showed a similar Own-Race Advantage in response time for both upright faces and inverted faces. Moreover, the latency of N2pc for own-race faces was earlier than that for other-race faces. These results suggested that own-race faces capture attention more efficiently than other-race faces.

A quasi-experimental comparison of spreadsheet- and classroom-based statistics tutorials

This article reports an evaluation of a set of eight spreadsheet-based tutorials developed for the statistics portion of an undergraduate psychology research methods course. The evaluation involved a quasi-experimental comparison of spreadsheet-based and traditional classroom teaching methods in a course that gave equal teaching time to both solutions, and took the unique approach of investigating both outcomes-based and attitudinal measures in the same study. Compared to traditional pen-and-paper-based tutorials, the spreadsheet-based tutorials improved student outcomes-based performance on an end-of-semester test. After using the spreadsheet-based tutorials, student attitudes towards the course material were found to have improved on some, but not all, of the measures used. Taken together, these results indicate that spreadsheet-based tutorials may be advantageous in the teaching of statistics, although effect sizes were small to moderate.

Red, Green, Blue, Red, Argh! A Missing Shift in Processing: The Stroop Task Does Not Affect Facial Recognition

The transfer-inappropriate processing shift is one explanation for the verbal overshadowing effect: a phenomenon that prevents accurate face recognition following a verbal description of that same face. Rather than examining a shift from configural to featural processing, this experiment investigated whether a shift from automatic to controlled processing could have similar deleterious effects on facial recognition. Automatic, and controlled, processing were induced using a computer-based Stroop task. Participants ( n = 288) processed the font colour, or word reading conditions of the Stroop task; afterwards, their facial recognition was tested. Even though the Stroop effect did occur, the differences in facial recognition between participants who responded to the automatic condition and participants who responded to the controlled condition of the Stroop task did not differ significantly. The results suggest that the processing shift from configural to featural processing, which is induced by the Navon letters, would better explain the verbal overshadowing effect than the processing modes underlying the Stroop task.

Historical Trends in South African Race Attitudes

This article presents an historical survey of intergroup attitudes in South Africa, tracing social distance scores back to 1934 and semantic differential scores back to 1975. We compare the attitudes of different race groups towards each other over time by standardizing the scores from different historical periods on a common metric. This enables us to pursue two lines of investigation: (1) to chart the effect that racial classification has had on ingroup bias patterns, and (2) to assess the impact of changing historical contexts on intergroup attitudes — especially the threatening and competitive context of the post-1976 struggle for liberation and the post-1994 context of democracy and reconciliation. The data indicate that dramatic changes may be taking place, with white respondents showing declining levels of prejudice, the inversion of the historically asymmetric attitude ‘colour bar’, and a slight, perhaps negative, change in attitudes of black African respondents toward other groups.

Race preferences in children: insights from South Africa

Minority-race children in North America and Europe often show less own-race favoritism than children of the majority (White) race, but the reasons for this asymmetry are unresolved. The present research tested South African children in order to probe the influences of group size, familiarity, and social status on children's race-based social preferences. We assessed South African children's preferences for members of their country's majority race (Blacks) compared to members of other groups, including Whites, who ruled South Africa until 1994 and who remain high in status. Black children (3-13 years) tested in a Black township preferred people of their own gender but not race. Moreover, Black, White, and multiracial children (4-9 years) tested in a racially diverse primary school showed in-group bias by gender but not by race: all favored people who were White. Relative familiarity and numerical majority/minority status therefore do not fully account for children's racial attitudes, which vary with the relative social status of different racial groups.

Perception of 'best likeness' to highly familiar faces of self and friend

We investigated the idea that our memory for familiar faces involves an accurate representation of their unique spatial configuration and, further, whether this configuration may be caricatured in memory. In separate experimental blocks, thirty-five Irish participants were presented with a series of photographic images of their own face and of the face of a close friend, and were asked to choose the image which looked most like themselves or their friend. Both sets of images included an original full-face colour photograph, and photographic distortions ranging from a highly caricatured (+100%) to a highly anti-caricatured (-100%) version of the original, generated with reference to newly created average male and female Irish faces. Contrary to suggestions that we hold a slightly caricatured version of a familiar face in memory, the mean 'best-likeness' image, calculated across both self and friend trials, was an anti-caricature of -13.88% which was significantly different from 0 (t69 = -5.34, p < 0.0001). The difference in the mean 'best-likeness' image chosen for self (-12.06%) and friend (-15.7%) was not significant (t34 = 0.715, p = 0.48). These results are discussed with reference to our ability to discriminate facial shape, together with the possibility that we idealise the attractiveness of faces of those close to us.

“Let Them Eat Harmony”

Research on intergroup prejudice has generally adopted a model of social change that is based around the psychological rehabilitation of members of advantaged groups in order to foster intergroup harmony. Recent studies of prejudice-reduction interventions among members of disadvantaged groups, however, have complicated psychologists’ understanding of the consequences of inducing harmonious relations in historically unequal societies. Interventions encouraging disadvantaged-group members to like advantaged-group members may also prompt the disadvantaged to underestimate the injustice suffered by their group and to become less motivated to support action to challenge social inequality. Thus, psychologists’ tendency to equate intergroup harmony with “good relations” and conflict with “bad relations” is limited.

Sexual Harassment of Women in the South African Navy

We report on a study that investigated sexual harassment within the South African Navy. We firstly used a survey to examine the prevalence of sexual harassment in the shore-based fleet, just prior to the gender integration of naval ships, and found evidence of widespread sexual harassment. Secondly, we used interviews and focus groups to examine the experiences of sexual harassment on ships one year after gender integration, and found a relative absence of sexual harassment. A number of contributing factors are considered (e.g. methodological issues, organisational factors, contextual constructions of masculinity), before informal mechanisms of behaviour regulation (e.g. the enactment of informal discipline, and sailors' use of metaphors) are introduced as mechanisms to understand the differences between the survey and interview findings. We argue that using divergent methodological approaches would lead to a more nuanced understanding of the experiences around sexual harassment on navy ships.

Time-on-task, technology and mathematics achievement

Information and communication technologies hold much promise for use in education in developing countries. This study reports on an evaluation conducted on the introduction of computers in the delivery of the mathematics curriculum in one of the provinces of South Africa. Although the request was for an outcome evaluation very early in the implementation of the program, it was tailored in such a way as to fulfill a more formative role. Despite substantial variability in implementation, and in most cases with very weak exposure of the learners to the intervention, sufficient evidence emerged to indicate that this mode of curriculum delivery may be effective. Improvement in mathematics performance was related to a range of variables: some concerned classroom teaching practices, some referred to social differences between the learners, and some to the specific intervention. The strongest of these predictors in the sample was the strength of the intervention: the more time learners spent on using the software to study mathematics, the more improvement they showed from 1 year to the next in their performance in the subject.

Intergroup contact and attitudes toward the principle and practice of racial equality

Research on racial attitudes indicates that acceptance of the principle of racial equality is frequently offset by opposition to policies designed to eliminate injustice. At the same time, research on the contact hypothesis indicates that positive interaction between groups erodes various kinds of prejudiced attitudes. Integrating these two traditions of research, this study examined whether or not interracial contact reduces the principle-implementation gap in racial attitudes. The study comprised a random-digit-dialing survey of the attitudes and contact experiences of White and Black South Africans (N = 1,917). The results suggest that among Whites, there remains a stubborn core of resistance to policies designed to rectify the injustices of apartheid. The results also indicate that interracial contact has differential, and somewhat paradoxical, effects on the attitudes of Whites and Blacks toward practices aimed at achieving racial justice.

Threat in dreams: an adaptation?

Revonsuo's influential Threat Simulation Theory (TST) predicts that people exposed to survival threats will have more threat dreams, and evince enhanced responses to dream threats, compared to those living in relatively safe conditions. Participants in a high crime area (South Africa: n=208) differed significantly from participants in a low crime area (Wales, UK: n=116) in having greater recent exposure to a life-threatening event (chi([1,N=186])(2)=14.84, p<.00012). Contrary to TST's predictions, the SA participants reported significantly fewer threat dreams (chi([1,N=287])(2)=6.11, p<.0134), and did not differ from the Welsh participants in responses to dream threats (Fisher's Exact test, p=.2478). Overall, the incidence of threat in dreams was extremely low-less than 20% of dreams featured realistic survival threats. Escape from dream threats occurred in less than 2% of dreams. We conclude that this evidence contradicts key aspects of TST.

A brain-behaviour initiative for South Africa: the time is right

BACKGROUND

Many have advocated for science and health research in developing world settings. However, there has been less focus on the value of basic and clinical neuroscience research in this context. The current paper focuses on the relevance of a brain-behaviour research initiative in South Africa.

METHODS

Workshops sponsored by the University of Cape Town Research Office and by the National Research Foundation have recently focused on the state of South African basic and clinical neuroscience, and on how to strengthen research in these areas. The context of the discussion included national science and health priorities, as well as local research opportunities.

RESULTS

Neuropsychiatric disorders account for the second largest proportion of the burden of disease in South Africa, but receive relatively little research funding. There is a critical need for research, and there are unique research opportunities, in areas such as trauma and resilience, impulsive behaviour (eg violence, sexual risk taking, and substance abuse), and neuroAIDS. Basic, clinical, and systems research can all make important contributions.

CONCLUSION

There is a need to apprise policy-makers in developing world countries such as South Africa of the need for increased expenditure on basic and clinical neuroscience research. Local and international collaboration may be useful in increasing research capacity in South Africa, and ultimately in improving mental health services.

Beyond the optimal contact strategy: a reality check for the contact hypothesis

The contact hypothesis proposes that interaction between members of different groups reduces intergroup prejudice if--and only if--certain optimal conditions are present. For over 50 years, research using this framework has explored the boundary conditions for ideal contact and has guided interventions to promote desegregation. Although supporting the contact hypothesis in principle, the authors critique some research practices that have come to dominate the field: (a) the prioritizing of the study of interactions occurring under rarefied conditions, (b) the reformulation of lay understandings of contact in terms of a generic typology of ideal dimensions, and (c) the use of shifts in personal prejudice as the primary measure of outcome. The authors argue that these practices have limited the contact hypothesis both as an explanation of the intergroup dynamics of desegregation and as a framework for promoting social psychological change. In so arguing, the authors look toward a complementary program of research on contact and desegregation.

Patterns of Racial Segregation in University Residence Dining-Halls

Social psychologists have long been interested in the effects of ‘contact’ between racial groups. The conditions under which this contact can manifest have usually been experimentally manipulated in order to determine optimal combinations. A shortcoming of this approach is that it constructs contact situations that are unnatural and contrived. Some researchers have proposed an approach that examines contact as a natural phenomenon (Dixon & Durrheim, 2003). The present research adopts this approach, and reports on a naturalistic, observational study of ‘contact’ between students in university residence dining-halls. Seating patterns of students were observed for one month and analysed along dimensions of spatial variation. The results show high levels of informal segregation and that the segregation manifests as a specific spatial configuration. Such results, which occur despite the presence of apparently favourable conditions, illustrate how this approach may lead to different conclusions to those achieved through experimental manipulation.

Prejudice and Social Contact in South Africa: A Study of Integrated Schools Ten Years after Apartheid

In this article the relationship between intergroup contact and racial prejudice in formerly segregated schools in Cape Town, South Africa, is investigated. A total of 1 119 black African, coloured, Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking white learners were surveyed, using three measures of intergroup prejudice, a self-report intergroup contact measure and a racial identification scale. In general, quality of contact with individuals of other race groups and an increase in contact both in and outside of the school improved learners' race attitudes. Higher levels of demographic integration within schools were also positively related to race attitudes, but a high degree of identification with one's own race led in several instances to less positive attitudes towards other race groups. Intergroup contact seemed to be the single most important predictor of attitudes for all four groups in this study.

On the Micro-Ecology of Racial Division: A Neglected Dimension of Segregation

This article provides a general background to this special focus section of the journal on ‘racial interaction and isolation in everyday life’. It reviews both the geographic literature on segregation and the psychological literature on the contact hypothesis, and calls for more research on how, when and why racial isolation manifests at a micro-ecological level; that is, the level at which individuals actually encounter one another in situations of bodily co-presence. Some conceptual and methodological implications of this extension of the segregation literature are described. The social psychological significance of the racial organisation of such ordinary activities as eating in cafeterias, relaxing on beaches and occupying public seating are also explored. The focus of the argument is that everyday boundary processes may maintain the salience of racial categories, embody racial attitudes and regulate the possibility of intimate contact.

Preserving Spatial and Temporal Dimensions in Observational Data of Segregation

Recent approaches to the study of intergroup contact have emphasised the need for naturalistic studies and the importance of paying attention to the spatiality of contact. In this article it is argued that it is important to preserve both spatiality and temporality when studying inter-group contact in naturalistic settings. This is not easy to do with existing observational methods, and a novel approach is proposed. Photographs are taken of a public space with a fixed periodicity and vantage point, and with knowledge of the physical layout of the space, three-dimensional, time-marked data points are recorded for each inhabitant. A public space on a university campus was used as a test bed, and data are reported that show it to be very useful, giving fresh insights into the nature of segregation and integration in informal leisure spaces, as well as providing evidence of the importance of taking temporality into account when studying naturalistic instances of inter-group contact.

Beyond the Optimal Contact Strategy: A Reality Check for the Contact Hypothesis

The contact hypothesis proposes that interaction between members of different groups reduces intergroup prejudice if--and only if--certain optimal conditions are present. For over 50 years, research using this framework has explored the boundary conditions for ideal contact and has guided interventions to promote desegregation. Although supporting the contact hypothesis in principle, the authors critique some research practices that have come to dominate the field: (a) the prioritizing of the study of interactions occurring under rarefied conditions, (b) the reformulation of lay understandings of contact in terms of a generic typology of ideal dimensions, and (c) the use of shifts in personal prejudice as the primary measure of outcome. The authors argue that these practices have limited the contact hypothesis both as an explanation of the intergroup dynamics of desegregation and as a framework for promoting social psychological change. In so arguing, the authors look toward a complementary program of research on contact and desegregation.

Social Identity Theory and the Authoritarian Personality Theory in South Africa

Social identity theory assumes that individuals and collectives apply identity management strategies in order to cope with threatened social identities. It is argued here that an integration of social identity theory and the authoritarian personality theory may help to investigate identity management strategies for minority and majority groups. It was intended to investigate predictors of identity management strategies applied by students at the University of Cape Town. Analyses are based on a questionnaire survey of 457 university students. Results only partially confirmed assumptions derived from social identity theory. Group identification and perceptions of legitimacy were related to the individual identity management strategy, “individualisation”, while the collective strategy “social competition” was associated with collective efficacy and authoritarianism. Perceptions of instability and authoritarianism predicted preferences for “temporal comparisons”. ‘Superordinate recategorisation’ was only very weakly predicted by group identification. The study indicated that social identity theory and the authoritarian personality theory might play different roles in preferences for identity management strategies. While social identity theory appears better in explaining individual identity management strategies, the authoritarian personality theory might be better in explaining collective strategies.

A direct measure of facial similarity and its relation to human similarity perceptions

Research is reported on a measure of facial similarity in which the similarity of 2 faces is defined as the Euclidean distance between them in a principal-component space. Five studies were conducted in which participants rated sets of facial images, and in which the measure was applied to 2 problems in the eyewitness literature. Comparisons of ratings with distances derived from the principal-component analysis suggest that the measure corresponds reasonably well to perceptions of facial similarity. In addition, the measure correlates strongly with empirical measures of lineup fairness and is related to eyewitness identification performance. Further potential applications include a software tool for constructing arrays of faces of varying similarity, and a software tool for reconstructing facial images from memory.

Cigarette smoking in an adolescent psychiatric population

OBJECTIVE

To examine the relationship between cigarette smoking and psychiatric symptomatology in an outpatient psychiatric population of adolescents.

METHOD

A retrospective analysis was done of 934 patient charts at an outpatient psychiatric centre.

RESULTS

48.4% of the psychiatric sample reported regular smoking behaviour, which is substantially more than the 18.1% prevalence found in a local epidemiological study. In comparing smokers and non-smokers within the psychiatric sample, it was noted that smokers were significantly younger and scored somewhat higher on depression rating scales than non-smokers. A logistical regression, using quasi-Newton estimation, was chosen as the most suitable statistical method for building a classificatory model of smoking. Two continuous variables, age and the Hamilton depression score, along with 39 discrete variables, were chosen for modelling purposes. Model building was conducted in a hierarchical fashion, starting with demographic variables, the variable selection being controlled by using chi-square tests of model differences. A predictive model of smoking with nine variables was finally selected.

CONCLUSIONS

As a whole the results support the strong association between smoking and psychiatric problems, but in this adolescent sample smoking is more likely to be part of a general risk-taking behaviour pattern than an attempt to medicate depression. Anti-tobacco campaigns that highlight the risks of smoking are therefore open invitations for adolescents to take up the habit.