The Role of Motor Skills in the Sociometric Status and Perceived Social Status of Schoolchildren

Los niños con mejores habilidades motoras tienden a desarrollar relaciones más positivas con sus compañeros. Sin embargo, se sabe poco sobre la relación entre las habilidades motoras y los cinco grupos de estatus sociométrico, así como sobre cuánto interfiere con la autopercepción del estatus social. Objetivo: Analizar la asociación entre la motricidad baja con el estatus sociométrico y el social estado percibido en estudiantes de 7 a 10 años.Sujetos y Método: Estudio transversal, descriptivo. Muestreo por conveniencia de niños de colegios estatales de Florianópolis, Brasil. Se excluyeron niños con discapacidad y los que se cambiaron del colegio durante el periodo de estudio. Las habilidades motoras fueron evaluadas por la Batería de Evaluación del Movimiento para Niños (MABC-2) validado para la población, se consideró habilidades de movimiento bajas cuando se encontraba bajo el percentil 15. El Estado Sociométrico se evaluó mediante la Escala Subjetiva de Estado Social en el Aula, según el método sociométrico y el social estado percibido por la Escala MacArthur de Estado Social Subjetivo, a partir de los cual se clasificaron los niños en 5 grupos. Se realizó análisis de regresión logística multinomial.Resultados: Participaron 439 niños (242 niñas y 197 niños), edad promedio 8,94 ± 1,03. Los participantes clasificados como rechazados, desatendidos y controvertidos con respecto al estado sociométrico tenían, respectivamente, 5,01, 2,40, y 2,86 veces mayor probabilidad de presentar habilidades motoras bajas en comparación con el grupo promedio. En cuanto al social estado percibido, no se encontraron diferencias significativas.Conclusión: Las dificultades encontradas en niños con habilidades motoras bajas van más allá del dominio motor, extendiéndose a las relaciones sociales.

Cross-cultural asymmetries in oculomotor interference elicited by gaze distractors belonging to Asian and White faces

The averted gaze of others triggers reflexive attentional orienting in the corresponding direction. This phenomenon can be modulated by many social factors. Here, we used an eye-tracking technique to investigate the role of ethnic membership in a cross-cultural oculomotor interference study. Chinese and Italian participants were required to perform a saccade whose direction might be either congruent or incongruent with the averted-gaze of task-irrelevant faces belonging to Asian and White individuals. The results showed that, for Chinese participants, White faces elicited a larger oculomotor interference than Asian faces. By contrast, Italian participants exhibited a similar oculomotor interference effect for both Asian and White faces. Hence, Chinese participants found it more difficult to suppress eye-gaze processing of White rather than Asian faces. The findings provide converging evidence that social attention can be modulated by social factors characterizing both the face stimulus and the participants. The data are discussed with reference to possible cross-cultural differences in perceived social status.

Subtle Signals of Status on Social Network Sites: Evidence From China

Social network sites (SNS) have been indispensable channels for people to access information, present themselves, and conduct commercial activities. Existing literature on online consumer behavior mainly focus on Western consumers and on explicit conspicuous signals. However, reports have shown that SNS users in China have exceeded 370 million, ranking the first in the world. Meanwhile, more and more consumers display status in more implicit ways nowadays. To fill these gaps, the present research was conducted to investigate the subtle signals of status for Chinese consumers on SNS. We proposed that frequent SNS posting leads to higher status perception among Chinese consumers. The psychological process of this effect is perceived busyness. These hypotheses received convergent support in a set of three studies. Study 1 used secondary data to preliminarily verify the positive correlation between SNS posting frequency and perceived social status. Studies 2A and 2B adopted the causal chain method to test the underlying mechanism of the effect, and to provide causal evidence for the entire relationship chain. Specifically, Study 2A examined how SNS posting frequency affects perceived busyness. Furthermore, Study 2B explored whether the differences in perceived busyness will affect social status perceptions. Implications of these findings and potential extensions in future are discussed.

Perceived Social Status and Suicidal Ideation in Maltreated Children and Adolescents

Recent decades have seen an alarming increase in rates of suicide among young people, including children and adolescents (“youth”). Although child maltreatment constitutes a well-established risk factor for suicidal ideation in youth, few efforts have focused on identifying factors associated with maltreated youths’ increased risk for suicidal ideation, especially across development. The present study examined the relations between maltreated youths' (N = 279, M = 12.06 years, 52% female, 53% Latinx) perceptions of their social status and suicidal ideation and compared those relations between pre-adolescents and adolescents. Findings revealed unique developmental patterns: Perceived social status was associated with suicidal ideation, but only in adolescents, who showed greater risk for suicidal ideation if they viewed themselves as lower ranked in society and lower risk for suicidal ideation if they viewed themselves as higher ranked in society. Findings have implications for scientific and practical efforts aimed at better understanding and preventing suicide in a high-risk developmental population.

The nationalist movements in Spain, today: a Catalonian and Basque comparison

Pro-independence movements in the Basque Country and in Catalonia have old historical roots. Whereas in Catalonia the pro-independence social mobilization has recently gained energy, in the Basque Country it seems less prominent nowadays. We explore the psychosocial predictors associated with individuals’ involvement in collective efforts towards independence in both these contexts. We distributed an online questionnaire among Basque (n=132) and Catalonian (n=152) independence supporters. Among the Basque independence supporters, pro-independence collective action tendencies were negatively predicted by perceived social status and identification with Spain, and positively predicted by patriotism and collective efficacy. Among the pro-independence Catalonians, only identification with Catalonia and collective efficacy beliefs predicted pro-independence collective action tendencies. These results are discussed considering historical, political, and socioeconomic factors.

Ethnic Stereotypes in the Central Highlands of Vietnam: Minority Students’ Perspectives

This study examines ethnic stereotypes toward majority and minority people in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. It contributes a more multidimensional perspective on ethnic stereotypes by exploring minority students’ perspectives on how their ethnic group stereotypes Kinh majority people and how they are being stereotyped by the Kinh. Status and solidarity are used as the theoretical lens to gain insights into different stereotype traits and the social meanings underlying the stereotypes. Interviews with eight students in a college in the Central Highlands, which were carried out in 2013, are the main data source. Findings reveal that the students highly appreciated Kinh people’s status-related traits and minority people’s solidarity-related traits. The stereotypes functioned as maintaining the social status quo – where the Kinh justified their position and advantages, while the minorities tended to accept the perceived social status hierarchies. Implications for diminishing negative stereotypes, improving minorities’ existing status, fostering trust-based cross-ethnic contact, and inspiring mutual respect among people of all ethnicities, are hence suggested.

Dominance is necessary to explain human status hierarchies [exposition of three concerns]

Durkee et al. (2020) conducted a cross-cultural investigation of people’s beliefs about how traits, behaviors, and practices that enhance an individual’s perceived ability to generate benefits (prestige) or inflict costs (dominance) promote perceived social status in humans. In this document, we (a) identify multicollinearity in the authors’ statistical analyses and explain how this statistical problem renders their results inconclusive as to how benefit-delivery and cost-infliction contribute to status allocation; (b) outline flaws in the authors’ operationalization and measures of social status, and discuss how they bias results toward benefit-delivery and underestimate any effect of cost-infliction; and (c) discuss a broader problem with the critical assumption underlying Durkee et al.’s approach: people’s subjective beliefs about what determines status do not serve as sufficient evidence for determining how status asymmetries are actually established in real life. Together, these three major issues severely undermine the authors’ conclusion that there is little evidence for dominance. In closing, we briefly survey the broader empirical record on actual status relations among real people (rather than people’s beliefs about what leads to status), conducted both in the lab and in naturalistic settings; these studies consistently yield opposite conclusions to Durkee et al. and demonstrate that both prestige and dominance govern human status hierarchies.

Examining the Persistence Intentions of College Students of Color

This study used the Social Cognitive Career Theory—Career Self-Management Model (SCCT-CSM) to understand the process by which background variables impact students of color’s intentions to persist in college. Findings from 329 students of color revealed that perceived social status related positively to self-efficacy for self-regulated learning, that increased experiences of racism related negatively to self-efficacy for self-regulated learning, and that self-efficacy for self-regulated learning related positively to intentions to persist in college. Further, self-efficacy for self-regulated learning mediated the relationship between perceived social status and persistence intentions among this sample of college students of color. Lastly, SEM analyses provided support for several pathways of the SCCT-CSM model with students of color. Limitations of the current study are discussed. Implications and future directions for practice and research are presented.

Dominance is necessary to explain human status hierarchies - Extended online version and supplemental

Durkee et al. (2020) conducted a cross-cultural investigation of people’s beliefs about how traits, behaviors, and practices that enhance an individual’s perceived ability to generate benefits (prestige) or inflict costs (dominance) promote perceived social status in humans. In this online extended version of our letter, we identify multicollinearity in the authors’ statistical analyses and explain how this statistical problem renders their results inconclusive as to how benefit-delivery and cost-infliction contribute to status allocation. Moreover, we briefly survey the broader empirical record on actual status relations among real people (rather than people’s beliefs about what leads to status), conducted both in the lab and in naturalistic settings; these studies consistently yield opposite conclusions to Durkee et al. and demonstrate that both prestige and dominance govern human status hierarchies.