William Atkins
Saturday, 03 January 2009 22:12
Science -
Biology
Page 2 of 3
Past inferences from some scientists contend such bullies target the most successful and most wealthy of employees. However, Wilson and his colleagues suggest this is not so.
To verify their claims, the psychologists used 44 male college students in an experiment of social memory recall.
They asked each participant to look at various faces of artificially created characters.
Each face was accompanied with a name, a job, and personal information such as hobbies. Each face was male or female, happy or sad, and with a high-paying or low-paying job.
The participants were then asked by the researchers to recall the biographical details of each face.
The researchers used facial characteristics that emphasized
“career success” and
“emotional vulnerability.”
They found that participants, who had earlier been tested as being highly psychopathic, were able to recall with
“near-perfect” ability faces of
“sad, unsuccessful female” characters.
Page three provides comments from Wilson.
