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We propose that the two dominant culture institutions (individualist and collectivist) are neither learned nor cognitively represented by the people who practice them. Instead, they exist as group-level payoff structures that reflect differential distributions of child attachment patterns within a society. Individualist societies reflect an overrepresentation of insecure-avoidant attachments and collectivist societies reflect an overrepresentation of insecure-anxious attachments. Moreover, attachment patterns are embodied rather than representational-schedule-induced rather than incrementally shaped or verbally learned. If attachment patterns are schedule-induced, the prospects are poorer for effecting cultural change through economic incentives or informational campaigns (top-down). Rather, cultural practices will be responsive to changes in family practices-to the extent they affect attachment patterns (bottom-up). For example, if breastfeeding rates decline or the workforce participation of women increases, a society will become more individualist and less collectivist. That is because those practices increase avoidant as compared to anxious attachments. Moreover, because insecurely attached children are behaviorally less flexible than are securely attached children, the former have a greater impact on cultural practices than do the latter.

The present study utilized a short-term longitudinal research design to examine the hypothesis that shyness in preschoolers is differentially related to different aspects of emotion processing. Using teacher reports of shyness and performance measures of emotion processing, including (1) facial emotion recognition, (2) non-facial emotion recognition, and (3) emotional perspectivetaking, we examined 337 Head Start attendees twice at a 24-week interval. Results revealed significant concurrent and longitudinal relationships between shyness and facial emotion recognition, and either minimal or non-existent relationships between shyness and the other aspects of emotion processing. Correlational analyses of concurrent assessments revealed that shyness predicted poorer facial emotion recognition scores for negative emotions (sad, angry, and afraid), but not a positive emotion (happy). Analyses of change over time, on the other hand, revealed that shyness predicted change in facial emotion recognition scores for all four measured emotions. Facial emotion recognition scores did not predict changes in shyness. Results are discussed with respect to expanding the scope of research on shyness and emotion processing to include timedependent studies that allow for the specification of developmental processes.

Research assessing children's emotion understanding has increased over the past several years. Despite the proliferation of research, there have been few studies conducted examining the development of emotion understanding in children from diverse backgrounds. Further, there has been no research conducted examining the psychometric properties of emotion understanding measures when used with children from diverse backgrounds. A total of 597 preschool children from low-income families enrolled in Head Start (248 Spanish-speaking and 349 English-speaking) were given an emotion understanding assessment in their native language at two sessions separated by six months. All children showed significant growth in emotion understanding abilities from time 1 to time 2, with English-speaking children generally outperforming Spanish-speaking children. The psychometric performance of the measure was analyzed for both English and Spanish samples and for English-speaking children at different levels of language ability.

With unemployment at record highs and rising job insecurity due to the fear of unemployment, it is important to understand the behavioral, physical, psychological, and social ramifications of such insecurity. More importantly, it is crucial to identify variables that may help to prevent and/or alleviate the effects of such job insecurity. To date, there has been scant theorizing or empirical research examining how spirituality may influence the experience of job insecurity or fear of job loss. The purpose of our paper is to develop theoretical propositions regarding the roles that spirituality may play in the appraisal of and response to job insecurity. We begin by briefly reviewing known correlates of job insecurity. Next, we define spirituality for the purposes of this paper; and finally, we develop propositions regarding the role of spirituality in these processes and suggest avenues for empirically testing these propositions. As research on the efficacy of spirituality is growing, investigators look to non‐traditional but complementary methods of treating disease, trauma, and other adverse life events. In a similar vein, we call upon researchers to examine the role that spirituality may play in how employees react to the stressor of job insecurity.

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Attachment theory is perhaps the most well-researched framework for understanding how early life experiences shape the developing child and his or her future social functioning. Influential cultural psychologists and anthropologists object to it, however, claiming it to be incompatible with non-Western child rearing practices and values. A rapprochement is attempted here based on a biologically informed understanding of attachment patterns as relatively enduring reflections of reinforcement schedules (i.e., continuous, intermittent, and extinction) for security-seeking behavior. Those schedules give rise to, respectively, the three primary attachment classifications described by attachment theorists (secure, insecure-anxious, and insecure-avoidant). Moreover, depending on their distribution within a population, those patterns establish the group-level payoff structures that define individualist and collectivist cultures. In this way, attachment and culture reflect the same evolutionary impulse-security-seeking. They interact as hierarchically interlocked contingencies, each serving as a deep source of stability for the other. Neither is cortically represented-attachment is primarily embodied (subcortical, scheduleinduced) and culture is distributed (group-level payoffs). The products of culture (rituals, customs, social practices) are cortically represented. This bidirectional biobehavioral-cultural model establishes the cultural compatibility of attachment theory, and challenges some evolutionary conceptions of it.

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