Ian R. McKee

Values and prejudice: Predictors of attitudes towards Australian Aborigines

This study related prejudice towards Australian Aborigines to value types assessed by the Schwartz Value Survey (SVS), right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), and social dominance orientation (SDO). One hundred and forty-eight students in Adelaide, South Australia, completed a Modern Racism Scale adapted for Australian Aborigines, the SVS, the RWA Scale, and the SDO Scale. We predicted that prejudice would be positively related to the importance of self-enhancement and conservation values from the SVS such as power and security and negatively related to the importance of self-transcendence values such as universalism and benevolence. Relations between the prejudice measures and RWA and SDO were also expected to reflect their degree of overlap with discrete value types from the SVS. These predictions were supported. Results were discussed in relation to the importance of considering how prejudice relates to a persons specific value priorities as well as to more general value variables such as RWA and SDO.

Differentiating emotions in relation to deserved or undeserved outcomes: A retrospective study of real-life events

A model is described that relates discrete emotions to the perceived deservingness of self or others positive or negative outcome (Feather, 2006). The model proposes that the evaluation of actions and their contingent outcomes is a key determinant of deservingness. The model was tested in a study in which participants (N=194) described an important recent positive or negative outcome that they deserved or did not deserve and then rated emotions relating to the outcome for their intensity. Results showed outcome effects and interaction effects involving deservingness and outcome for the self-related emotions of pleasure, pride, sadness, sympathy, guilt, regret, anger, and resentment that were consistent with the model. Implications of the model for appraisal theory and for future research on deservingness and emotions are discussed.

Jail sentence, community service, or compensation?

This study investigated the reactions of lay persons to a serious corporate offence (food-poisoning), focusing on executive officers and the organisations they represent. Two hundred and forty-one participants from Adelaide, South Australia, read a realistic scenario describing the offence and then responded to questions concerning carelessness, seriousness, responsibility, deservingness, harshness of penalty, anger, sympathy, jail sentence, community service, and compensation, as well as a measure of right-wing authoritarianism. Results showed that the predictors of the appropriateness of a penalty varied depending on penalty type, that reported anger failed to predict any type of penalty, that reported sympathy and female gender predicted community service, and that perceived responsibility mediated the relation between perceived carelessness and compensation judgments.

Australian and Japanese attitudes towards the fall of high achievers.

Abstract Australian and Japanese university students responded to hypothetical scenarios in which either a high or an average achieving student or golfer either maintained or failed to maintain their initial performance status. It was predicted that subjects in both cultures would feel relatively more pleased when the high achiever rather than the average achiever suffered a fall when compared with differences in the maintain condition (a tall poppy effect). This prediction was not supported, but results did indicate that the Japanese students saw the high achiever as relatively more assertive than the average achiever when compared with the Australian students, and that they also reacted more negatively in various ways when the stimulus person suffered a fall. Initially, the high achiever was envied more than the average achiever, and the difference was greater for the stimulus person who was a student, implying a relevance effect However, the golfer was especially favoured by the Japanese students. Resu...

How forgiveness promotes offender pro-relational intentions: the mediating role of offender gratitude

Although relationship restoration is an important outcome of forgiveness, little is known about how forgiveness facilitates such an outcome. In addition, in forgiveness research, little attention is paid to the perspective of the offender. We address these two shortcomings simultaneously, testing the idea that forgiveness promotes offender gratitude, which in turn encourages offender pro-relational intentions. Across three experimental studies, participants were induced to believe they had transgressed; recalled a time when they had transgressed; and imagined transgressing. In studies 1 and 2, forgiveness was manipulated; in Study 3, victim motivation for forgiving was manipulated. State gratitude--in comparison with guilt, indebtedness, and positive affect--was consistently found to play the primary mediating role between forgiveness and pro-relational intentions.

The transition to grandparenthood: a prospective study of mental health implications

Abstract Objectives: This study investigated the mental health of a cohort of 262 female and 168 male grandparents across the first two years of their transition to grandparenthood, with particular focus on the impact of providing childcare for the grandchild. Method: Baseline assessments were made during the pregnancy with the first grandchild, and subsequent assessments were at one and two years after the birth. The influence of demographic and psychosocial variables which could be expected to influence change in mental health from baseline was explored. Results: The lack of change in mental health measures in this cohort was more prominent than change. Specifically, there was a small significant decrease in anxiety over the first year for females, and a small significant increase in depression for males. Other variables, not unique to the transition to grandparenthood such as physical health and adverse life events, were strongly associated with changes in mental health. Notably, more time spent babysitting the grandchild was associated with improvement in mental health. Conclusion: The transition to grandparenthood did not have any substantial adverse impact on five well-validated measures of mental health, in contrast to earlier American findings of adverse effects which implied that childcare was burdensome.