Sophie Brunot

BRIEF REPORT Perception of the duration of emotional events

Participants were trained on a temporal bisection task in which visual stimuli (a pink oval) of 400 ms and 1600 ms served as short and long standards, respectively. They were then presented comparison durations between 400 ms and 1600 ms, represented by faces expressing three emotions (anger, happiness, and sadness) and a neutral‐baseline facial expression. Relative to the neutral face, the proportion of long responses was higher, the psychophysical functions shifted to the left, and the bisection point values were lower for faces expressing any of the three emotions. These findings indicate that the duration of emotional faces was systematically overestimated compared to neural ones. Furthermore, consistent with arousal‐based models of time perception, temporal overestimation for the emotional faces increased with the duration values. It appears, therefore, that emotional faces increased the speed of the pacemaker of the internal clock.

Culture, gender, and the self: Variations and impact of social comparison processes

Psychological differences between women and men, far from being invariant as a biological explanation would suggest, fluctuate in magnitude across cultures. Moreover, contrary to the implications of some theoretical perspectives, gender differences in personality, values, and emotions are not smaller, but larger, in American and European cultures, in which greater progress has been made toward gender equality. This research on gender differences in self-construals involving 950 participants from 5 nations/cultures (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States, and Malaysia) illustrates how variations in social comparison processes across cultures can explain why gender differences are stronger in Western cultures. Gender differences in the self are a product of self-stereotyping, which occurs when between-gender social comparisons are made. These social comparisons are more likely, and exert a greater impact, in Western nations. Both correlational and experimental evidence supports this explanation.

Geometry Versus Drawing: Changing the Meaning of the Task as a Means to Change Performance

There is now much convincing evidence that the context in which children are given cognitive tasks can have a huge effect on their performance in those tasks, even when the experimental and control conditions make exactly the same logical and cognitive demands. According to this, we found that children faced with a cognitive-perceptual task (the Rey–Osterrieths complex figure reproduction test) performed better or worse in one context (geometry) than in another (drawing), depending on their performance history in these contexts, although the task was the same in both conditions. These effects are discussed both in relation to underlying processes and in perspective with another phenomenon (stereotype threat) which also provides evidence for the social regulation of cognitive functioning in the school environment.

Performance feedback and self-focused attention in the classroom: When past and present interact

An experiment tested the impact of performance feedback on self-focused attention in high and low achievers. On the basis of previous research, which suggested that inconsistent feedback (i.e., feedback which contradicts ones performance history) receives considerable attention, it was predicted that such feedback would increase self-focus regardless of its valence (i.e., positive or negative). As predicted, high achievers were more self-focused when receiving failure feedback than when receiving success feedback or no feedback. The low achievers were more self-focused when receiving success feedback than when receiving failure feedback or no feedback. These findings are discussed in relation to Kluger and DeNisis (1996) Feedback intervention theory and the literature on self-focused attention.

Comparaisons sociales et temporelles, estime de soi et activité de recherche d’emploi en situation de chômage de longue durée

Resume Cette etude concerne le role des comparaisons temporelles a soi et des comparaisons sociales dans la regulation de l’estime de soi et des comportements de recherche d’emploi chez 85 personnes sans travail depuis au moins un an. Les resultats, bases sur la modelisation d’equations structurelles par l’approche des moindres carres partiels, revelent d’une part que la frequence des comparaisons sociales ascendantes aux personnes actives contribue negativement a l’estime de soi des participants. Ils indiquent d’autre part que l’estime de soi et l’investissement dans l’activite de recherche d’emploi sont d’autant plus eleves que la frequence des comparaisons temporelles ascendantes au futur est grande. En revanche, les frequences des comparaisons sociales (ascendantes et descendantes) a l’endogroupe des chomeurs ne predisent ni l’estime de soi, ni les comportements de recherche d’emploi des participants. Ces resultats sont notamment discutes au regard de ceux obtenus aupres d’autres populations desavantagees.