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Cooley et al. (2017) found that subtle shifts in linguistic framing can enhance the amount of "mind" perceived in a target, and in turn increase feelings of sympathy toward that target. The four studies reported here evaluated whether these findings generalize to different populations and contexts. The first two studies served as conceptual replications in a different participant population (university students, instead of mTurk workers), and found results largely consistent with Cooley et al.'s (2017): the group composition frame ("15 individuals who work for a small accounting company") evoked greater perceptions of experience and agency, and more sympathy for the target, than the group frame ("a small accounting company comprising 15 people"). Studies 3 and 4 tested whether the group composition technique would lead to similar persuasive outcomes (increased mind perception, helping, and donations) in a refugee aid context and found only limited evidence that it might. These inconclusive findings were likely complicated by both the liberal skew of the sample and the strong impact of political identity on responses to the politically charged topic of refugees. For the purposes of practical application, an expanded understanding of boundary effects can help provide a better sense of when, why, and on whom the use of adjusted linguistic frames is most likely to be effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of aversive or 'dark' personality traits (e.g., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) is afflicted by three types of issues. Measures of aversive traits that are meant to assess the same traits often capture different content—an issue of jingle. Measures that are meant to assess different traits often capture near‐identical content—an issue of jangle. Finally, disagreement over what unites aversive personality traits leads to different conclusions about what is and is not an aversive personality trait—an issue of conceptual centrality. This study outlines how decomposing personality traits into smaller elements can address these three issues. It also provides a primer on the history and assessment of these traits and sets an agenda for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of victim number effects in charitable giving consistently find that people care more and help more when presented with an appeal to help an individual compared with an appeal to help multiple people in need. Across three online experiments (N = 1,348), Bayesian estimation revealed the opposite pattern when people responded to multiple appeals to help targets of different sizes (1, 2, 5, 7, and 12). In this joint evaluation context, participants donated more to larger groups, when appeals were presented in both ascending order (Study 1) and random order (Study 2). The pattern held whether or not participants saw an overview of all appeals at the start of the study and when a single individual was added to the array (Study 3). These results clarify how compassion fade findings typical of separate evaluations may not generalize to contexts in which people encounter multiple appeals within a short temporal window. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Olympic weightlifting requires strength, speed, and explosive power. Vigorous physical activity such as Olympic weightlifting, for older adults has many benefits from improved strength, social interactions, and a healthy and independent lifestyle. Little is known about the training habits, health, and lifestyle of Masters weightlifters that includes top level athletes as well as beginners, and there is a dearth of data on women. Objectives: The primary aim was to describe demographics, training habits, and health including prevalence of injury and chronic disease in male and female Masters athletes in Olympic weightlifting. The secondary aim was to study gender differences and the age and impact of menopause on participation in the sport. Results: The 958 participants (46% men), ages 34 to 87, mostly train 3 to 4 days per week in 1 to 2 hour sessions. This is a highly educated and affluent group, 84% are white, 72% are married, 85% are post-secondary graduates. Exercise can also increase the risk of injury compared to less active older adults, but the rates of injury in weightlifting affecting training are lower than seen in other sports. The prevalence of depression and mental health is similar to a general population. Stress levels and sleep disturbances are more common among women than men. Women reach menopause at a similar age as women in industrialized countries, but menopausal symptoms constrained the training. Conclusion: Older athletes are capable of rigorous training programs and top performances while adjusting to changes due to biological aging. Weightlifting athletes, coaches, and health professionals must be aware of patterns of injuries and gender differences to incorporate successful prevention strategies. Knowledge of presentations of menopause and impact of menopausal symptoms on training allows women and health care providers to make informed treatment decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an evolutionary framework for understanding the sexual assault of women in the military. We specify the evolutionary underpinnings of tensions among heterosexual males, among heterosexual females, and between males and females and discuss how these tensions have played out in the strongly gendered context of warrior culture. In the absence of cultural interventions that take into account deep-seated conceptions of women in the military as unwelcome intruders, sexual resources for military men, or both, military women operate in an environment in which sexual assault may be deployed to enact and defend traditional military structures. We discuss how unit norms are likely to affect the choice of strategies by men and by women and how the resulting behaviors-including celibacy, consensual sex, and sexual assault-should affect horizontal and vertical unit cohesion. The framework is intended to guide future data collection in theoretically coherent ways and to inform the framing and enforcement of policies regarding both consensual and non-consensual sex among military personnel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An experience sampling study examined the degree to which feeling stereotyped predicts feelings of low power and inhibition among stigmatized and nonstigmatized individuals. For 7 days, participants with a concealable (gay and lesbian), a visible (African American), or no identifiable stigma recorded feelings of being stereotyped, of powerlessness, and of inhibition immediately following social interactions. For members of all three groups, feeling stereotyped was associated with more inhibition, and this relation was partially mediated by feeling low in power. Although stigmatized participants reported feeling stereotyped more often than nonstigmatized participants, they reacted less strongly to the experience, consistent with the presence of buffering mechanisms developed by those living with stigma. African Americans appeared to buffer the impact of feeling stereotyped more effectively than gay and lesbian participants, an effect that was partly attributable to African Americans’ higher identity centrality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the network approach to small groups. First, the core constructs that compose social network research are explained. The primary theories that provide the intellectual underpinning of the network approach are described, including theories of self-interest, theories of social exchange or dependency, theories of mutual or collective interest, cognitive theories, and theories of homophily. Highlights of the empirical work examining the internal and external networks of small groups is summarized. Finally, the primary challenges researchers face when applying the network perspective to small groups, and the primary benefits that can accrue to researchers who adopt that perspective, are enumerated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of clubs addresses the gap between purely private and purely public goods, being concerned with how groups ('clubs') form to provide themselves with goods that are available to their membership, but from which others (non-members) can be excluded. Despite 35 years of formal development, there have been virtually no laboratory studies of club formation. We develop the 'social poker' laboratory paradigm toward filling this gap, and test the predictions from club theory that populations will partition into a privately and socially optimal set of clubs. The experiment included three conditions: (1) 'Single shot' with one trial of club formation; (2) 'iterated' with a sequence of four trials; and (3) 'iterated dollar-guarantee', with four trials in which participants who were not included in clubs still earned a small amount of money. In all conditions, clubs were frequently larger than was privately or collectively optimal; in the second condition, clubs were increasingly likely to include unnecessary members across trials. After clubs formed, members had the opportunity to 'overclaim' - to take more than their agreed-upon share of the club good. Although the incidence of overclaiming was low, it was more common in larger clubs, further reducing the collective earnings of participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews literature that takes a temporal perspective on groups, focusing particularly on the theories that guide such work. The temporal perspective is a process-focused view that treats groups as systems in which change occurs across multiple time scales. The review is organized around six themes that have been especially genera five: (a) lime is socially constructed; (b) time is a resource; (c) time is a fundamental issue for theory and research; (d) groups change systematically over time; (e) group processes have temporal patterns; and (f) groups are complex systems characterized by nonlinear dynamics. The article closes by identifying the need for continued theory development and testing to better integrate the disparate theories and findings found in literature inspired by the temporal perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines group formation during multiple trials to track the impact of the social regimes on the emergence and stability of patterns. Relationship between membership dynamics and cooperative or exploitative behavior within groups; Factors that determine membership preferences and decisions; Information on how groups emerge; Reason that people form groups.

A century of research on small groups has yielded bountiful findings about many specific features and processes in groups. Much of that work, in line with a positivist epistemology that emphasizes control and precision and favors the laboratory experiment over other data collection strategies, has also tended to treat groups as though they were simple, isolated, static entities. Recent research trends that treat groups as complex, adaptive, dynamic systems open up new approaches to studying groups. In line with those trends, a theory of groups as complex systems is offered and some methodological and conceptual issues raised by this theory are identified. A 3-pronged research strategy based on theory development, computational modeling, and empirical research that holds promise for illuminating the dynamic processes underlying the emergence of complexity and the ongoing balance of continuity and change in groups is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Group identification is defined as member identification with an interacting group and is distinguished conceptually from social identity, cohesion, and common fate. Group identification is proposed to have three sources: cognitive (social categorization), affective (interpersonal attraction), and behavioral (interdependence). Inconsistent use of the term and problematic measurement mar existing literature on group identity and group identification. A new group identification scale, composed of three subscales that match the tripartite model for the cognitive, affective, and behavioral sources, is presented and its psychometric properties described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the effects of experience and change on group task performance and communication technology. Integrative complexity; Importance of studying groups over time; Workshop as a paradigm for study of experience and change.

Describes a framework for integrating diverse aspects of membership dynamics. Propositions about membership change and its impact on group structure, process and performance; Environmental context; Indexes of member change and continuity.

Examines the prediction in the accuracy of self-evaluations of performance. Determination of the work performance standards; Basis of self-appraisals, judgments and decision making; Specifications of the integrated hypothesis.