Most Popular Posts of 2016

As 2016 comes to an end, the editors take a look back at the most read posts of the year. Some are quickly becoming classics, while others tackle new research or cover discussions important to the field. Take a look for yourself. 

Anxious-Avoidant Duos: Walking on Thin Ice in Relationships and Physical Health

Originally published in 2015, this post continues to be a top pick among blog readers...While the Disney animated film “Frozen” is most famous for its lovable characters and award-winning song “Let it Go,” this kids’ movie can teach us a thing or two about attachment styles in close relationships and the important interplay between preferences for intimacy versus independence in relationships.

How Historical Migration Patterns Shape Emotional Expression

The most popular post written in 2016, Adrienne Wood explores historical cultural connections of emotional expressions in 19th century Nebraska. "Since people from very different cultures can recognize each other’s facial expressions of emotion at better than chance accuracy, facial expressions may be a particularly valuable tool for communication in situations where people have very little in common culturally and linguistically."

 

Are Stereotypes Accurate? A Viewpoint from the Cognitive Science of Concepts

Lin Bian and Andrei Cimpian discuss Lee Jusim's latest work “Social Perception and Social Reality,” and argue "Regardless of whether one understands stereotypes as generic or statistical beliefs about groups, skepticism remains about the rationality of social judgments." This post comes in two spots behind Jussim’s post (below) but for content clarity we’re listing it here.

Stereotype Accuracy is One of the Largest and Most Replicable Effects in All of Social Psychology

In Lee Jussim's response he argues that Stereotype accuracy is one of the largest effects in all of social psychology, challenging psychologists to confront their cherished beliefs given the available data. 

The Consequences of Dishonesty

Rounding out the top 5 is another popular post written in 2015 that continues to gain attention in 2016. "Lying has its benefits. It allows people to feel better about themselves, to make themselves look better in others’ eyes, and to maintain good relationships. At same time, lying can also create problems. Lying can be cognitively depleting, it can increase the risk that people will be punished, it can threaten people’s self-worth by preventing them from seeing themselves as “good” people, and it can generally erode trust in society." 

Rounding out the top 10 most viewed posts in 2016:

6. Bad Science Evolves. Stopping It Means Changing Institutional Selection Pressures

7. Onward and Upward with Psychology

8. An Open Letter to NPR's Invisibilia About "The Personality Myth"

9. Why the Internet Isn't Making Us Smarter - and How to Fight Back

10. Personality and Social Psychology's Hidden Gender Gap

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Learning a New Language as a Refugee: A Bitter Pill? Or Easy as Pie?

By mid-December of 2019, the number of international migrants across the globe had reached at least 272 million. For all of these migrants, like the millions who migrated before them, learning the local language is usually an essential first step toward self-sufficiency and economic success. Becoming fluent in the most commonly spoken language of one’s new home increases migrants’ chances of finding a job and helps them become integrated into their new community. This may be especially true for refugees who fled their nations under harsh conditions.

As it turns out, migrants differ greatly in how effectively they learn the dominant language. This means that insights into how and why migrants pick up new languages are crucial for helping migrants acquire a new language more easily. Our recent research in the Netherlands addressed this issue among a large sample of adult Syrian and Eritrean refugees.

In keeping with past research, we found that intelligence was the strongest predictor of Dutch language skills. This effect was not surprising as many earlier studies have shown that intelligence is indeed an important trait for learning knowledge and skills in work and educational settings.

But we also examined social, emotional, and motivational predictors of people’s success at picking up a new language. For example, we assessed mental health by asking participants how often they had experienced psychological distress in the previous month. We found that, the lower the psychological distress, the better the local language skills. Good mental health might offer a source of confidence and motivation to learn a new language. In addition, refugees who reported being more motivated to work had better Dutch language skills. Given that local language skills help people get and keep better jobs, having a strong desire to work may boost motivation to learn a local language.

Finally, age and educational attainment were also related to Dutch language learning. Younger adult refugees learned the local language more easily than older adults. The well-known advantage of children in second language learning thus appears to continue into adulthood. However, the degree to which this advantage is due to differences in raw ability or motivation in not clear. Older refugees might be less capable of learning a new language, or instead they might (sub)consciously question the relative cost-effectiveness of learning the local language. Consider the extreme case of a person who immigrates to a new nation at age 80. Is it really worth his or her time and effort to become fluent in a new language? Finally, a higher level of education in the person’s country of origin was an advantage. More years of formal schooling in Syria or Eritrea prior to immigration usually meant more success learning Dutch.

Although laws and policies in one’s new nation might facilitate or hinder how quickly refugees learn a new language, psychological traits may also play a role. Based on the current findings, we encourage communities to meet immigrants where they are and try to address the variables we’ve identified here. First, more intensive and user-friendly language courses should be offered to refugees who are older, who are less educated, and who score lower on intelligence tests. Second, providing professional mental health support is essential for refugees with psychological distress. Third, refugees need support and guidance in searching for jobs. These interventions could mean the difference between a bright future and years of struggle in a new home.


For Further Reading

Asfar, D., Born, M. P., Oostrom, J. K., & van Vugt, M. (2019). Psychological individual differences as predictors of refugees’ local language proficiency. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49(7), 1385-1400.

 

Dan Asfar is Ph.D. student at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam who studies the assessment of refugees.

Janneke K. Oostrom is an associate professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam who studies employee selection and assessment.