28th International Congress of Psychology August 8 ... - U-netSURF

understanding and display of respect, and no known research has addressed associations between
respect and social competence in peer relationships. The present study evaluated whether
children’s attributions of respect contributed to social competence beyond constructs such as
liking and friendship for US and Chinese.
2050.3 Loneliness as a function of sociometric status and self-perceived social competence in
middle childhood, D.M. Zhao 1 , Z.K. Zhou 1 , J. Chen 1 , R. Hundley 2 , 1 Central China Normal
University, Wuhan, China; 2 The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA
Scales and peer nomination were used to examine the relations between sociometric status,
self-perceived social competence and loneliness in primary students from Grade 3 through Grade
6.The results indicated that there was significant gender difference on score of loneliness, boys
scored higher than girls. And significant differences on score of loneliness were also observed
among sociometric groups. The low-accepted children scored significantly higher on loneliness
than the normally accepted and high-accepted children. The relation between children’s loneliness
and sociometric status was discussed in respect of cultural differences.
2051 INVITED SYMPOSIUM
The social foundations underlying our understanding of this world: How shared reality is
constructed through the act of communication.
Convener and Chair: Y. Endo, Japan
2051.1 Social construction of reality: An empirical study using Japanese national surveys, K.
Ikeda, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Without sharing the meaning and contents communicated human being fails to obtain social
reality of things and happenings. This social reality is sustained by three layers all of which are
closely related with communication; (1) large institutional layer constructed by the work of mass
media or education, (2) small institutional layer which is realized through interpersonal
communication environment, and (3) intrapersonal layer which is made of individual beliefs and
cognitions. These three layers construct social reality interactively. The construction of political
reality has the same structure. The author will elucidate it empirically through the analyses on
major Japanese national surveys.
2051.2 Communication and essentialism: Can socio-cultural processes underlie essentialist
thinking? Y. Kashima, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Psychological essentialism, a tacit belief in the underlying essence of a class of objects in the
world, has been suggested to derive from innate modules that humans acquired through evolution.
Although this possibility cannot be rejected, there is also evidence for cultural variability in
essentialist thinking, implying the importance of socio-cultural influences on essentialism. In this
paper, communication processes are examined as a potential cause of essentialist thinking,
especially exploring the roles played by both language-specific linguistic practices and
collaborative processes universally necessary for communication.
2051.3 The influence of perceived social consensus on stereotyping, prejudice, and
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