Evaluation of the Cultural, Social and Emotional Wellbeing Program with Aboriginal women in the Boronia Pre-Release Centre for Women: a mixed methods study.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the effectiveness of the Cultural, Social and Emotional Wellbeing Program for reducing psychological distress and enhancing the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal women preparing for release from prison. STUDY DESIGN: Mixed methods; qualitative study (adapted reflexive thematic analysis of stories of most significant change) and assessment of psychological distress. SETTING, PARTICIPANTS: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women at the Boronia Pre-release Centre for Women, Perth, Western Australia, May and July 2021. INTERVENTION: Cultural, Social and Emotional Wellbeing Program (two days per week for six weeks). The Program involves presentations, workshops, activities, group discussions, and self-reflections designed to enhance social and emotional wellbeing. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Themes and subthemes identified from reflexive thematic analysis of participants' stories of most significant change; change in mean psychological distress, as assessed with the 5-item Kessler Scale (K-5) before and after the Program. RESULTS: Fourteen of 16 invited women completed the Program; ten participated in its evaluation. They reported improved social and emotional wellbeing, reflected as enhanced connections to culture, family, and community. Mean psychological distress was lower after the Program (mean K-5 score, 11.3; 95% confidence interval [CI], 9.0-13.6) than before the Program (9.0; 95% CI, 6.5-11.5; P = 0.047). CONCLUSION: The women who participated in the Program reported personal growth, including acceptance of self and acceptance and pride in culture, reflecting enhanced social and emotional wellbeing through connections to culture and kinship. Our preliminary findings suggest that the Program could improve the resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander in contact with the justice system.

Lessons Learned during a Rapidly Evolving COVID-19 Pandemic: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-Led Mental Health and Wellbeing Responses Are Key.

As the world journeys towards the endemic phase that follows a pandemic, public health authorities are reviewing the efficacy of COVID-19 pandemic responses. The responses by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia have been heralded across the globe as an exemplary demonstration of how self-determination can achieve optimal health outcomes for Indigenous peoples. Despite this success, the impacts of pandemic stressors and public health responses on immediate and long-term mental health and wellbeing require examination. In December 2021, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health and wellbeing leaders and allies (N = 50) attended a virtual roundtable to determine the key issues facing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities, and the actions required to address these issues. Roundtable attendees critically reviewed how the rapidly evolving pandemic context has impacted Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health and social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB). This paper presents an overview of this national collaborative consultation process, and a summary of the key issues and actions identified. These results build on evidence from other roundtables held in Australia during 2020, and the emerging consensus across the globe that Indigenous self-determination remains essential to Indigenous SEWB, especially during and following a pandemic.

Identifying the key characteristics of a culturally safe mental health service for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples: A qualitative systematic review protocol.

BACKGROUND: Mental health inequities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations are well documented. There is growing recognition of the role that culturally safety plays in achieving equitable outcomes. However, a clear understanding of the key characteristics of culturally safe mental health care is currently lacking. This protocol outlines a qualitative systematic review that aims to identify the key characteristics of culturally safe mental health care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, at the individual, service, and systems level. This knowledge will improve the cultural safety of mental health care provided to Indigenous peoples, with a focus on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. METHODS AND EXPECTED OUTPUTS: Through a review of academic, grey, and cultural literature, we will identify the key characteristics of culturally safe mental health care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. We will consider the characteristics of culturally safe care at the individual practitioner, service, and systems levels. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42021258724.

Children's dynamic use of face- and behavior-based cues in an economic trust game.

Who do children trust? We investigated the extent to which children use face-based versus behavior-based cues when deciding whom to trust in a multiturn economic trust game. Children's (N = 42; aged 8 to 10 years; 31 females; predominantly White) trust decisions were informed by an interaction between face-based and behavior-based cues to trustworthiness, similarly to those of adults (N = 41; aged 17 to 48 years; 23 females; predominantly White). Facial trustworthiness guided children's investment decisions initially, such that they invested highly with trustworthy-looking partners and less with untrustworthy-looking partners. However, by the end of the trust game, after children had experienced game partners' fair or unfair return behavior, they overcame this bias and instead used partners' previous behavior to guide their trust decisions. Using partners' return behavior to guide decisions was the most rational strategy, because partners' facial trustworthiness was not an accurate cue to their actual trustworthiness. This dynamic use of different cues to trustworthiness suggests sophisticated levels of social cognition in children, which may reflect the social importance of trust impressions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Evidence for a kernel of truth in children's facial impressions of children's niceness, but not shyness.

Adults teach children not to "judge a book by its cover." However, adults make rapid judgments of character from a glance at a child's face. These impressions can be modestly accurate, suggesting that adults may be sensitive to valid signals of character in children's faces. However, it is not clear whether such sensitivity requires decades of social experience, in line with the development of other face-processing abilities (e.g., facial emotion recognition), or whether this sensitivity emerges relatively early, in childhood. An important theoretical question therefore, is whether or not children's impressions are at all accurate. Here, we examined the accuracy in children's impressions of niceness and shyness from children's faces. Children (aged 7-12 years, ∼90% Caucasian) and adults rated 84 unfamiliar children's faces (aged 4-11 years, 48 female, ∼80% Caucasian) for niceness (Study 1) or shyness (Study 2). To measure accuracy, we correlated facial impressions with parental responses to well-established questionnaires about the actual niceness/shyness of those children in the images. Overall, children and adults formed highly similar niceness (r = .94) and shyness (r = .84) impressions. Children also showed mature impression accuracy: Children and adults formed modestly accurate niceness impressions, across different images of the same child's face. Neither children nor adults showed evidence for accurate shyness impressions. Together, these results suggest that children's impressions are relatively mature by middle childhood. Furthermore, these results demonstrate that any mechanisms driving accurate niceness impressions are in place by 7 years, and potentially before. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Adults' facial impressions of children's niceness, but not shyness, show modest accuracy.

Lay wisdom warns against "judging a book by its cover." However, facial first impressions influence people's behaviour towards others, so it is critical that we understand whether these impressions are at all accurate. Understanding impressions of children's faces is particularly important because these impressions can have social consequences during a crucial time of development. Here, we examined the accuracy of two traits that capture the most variance in impressions of children's faces, niceness and shyness. We collected face images and parental reports of actual niceness/shyness for 86 children (4-11 years old). Different images of the same person can lead to different impressions, and so we employed a novel approach by obtaining impressions from five images of each child. These images were ambient, representing the natural variability in faces. Adult strangers rated the faces for niceness (Study 1) or shyness (Study 2). Niceness impressions were modestly accurate for different images of the same child, regardless of whether these images were presented individually or simultaneously as a group. Shyness impressions were not accurate, for images presented either individually or as a group. Together, these results demonstrate modest accuracy in adults' impressions of niceness, but not shyness, from children's faces. Furthermore, our results reveal that this accuracy can be captured by images which contain natural face variability, and holds across different images of the same child's face. These results invite future research into the cues and causal mechanisms underlying this link between facial impressions of niceness and nice behaviour in children.

Individual differences in trust evaluations are shaped mostly by environments, not genes.

People evaluate a stranger's trustworthiness from their facial features in a fraction of a second, despite common advice "not to judge a book by its cover." Evaluations of trustworthiness have critical and widespread social impact, predicting financial lending, mate selection, and even criminal justice outcomes. Consequently, understanding how people perceive trustworthiness from faces has been a major focus of scientific inquiry, and detailed models explain how consensus impressions of trustworthiness are driven by facial attributes. However, facial impression models do not consider variation between observers. Here, we develop a sensitive test of trustworthiness evaluation and use it to document substantial, stable individual differences in trustworthiness impressions. Via a twin study, we show that these individual differences are largely shaped by variation in personal experience, rather than genes or shared environments. Finally, using multivariate twin modeling, we show that variation in trustworthiness evaluation is specific, dissociating from other key facial evaluations of dominance and attractiveness. Our finding that variation in facial trustworthiness evaluation is driven mostly by personal experience represents a rare example of a core social perceptual capacity being predominantly shaped by a person's unique environment. Notably, it stands in sharp contrast to variation in facial recognition ability, which is driven mostly by genes. Our study provides insights into the development of the social brain, offers a different perspective on disagreement in trust in wider society, and motivates new research into the origins and potential malleability of face evaluation, a critical aspect of human social cognition.

Testing the functional basis of first impressions: Dimensions for children's faces are not the same as for adults' faces.

Despite warnings not to "judge a book by its cover," people rapidly form facial impressions. In Oosterhof and Todorov's (2008) two-dimensional model of facial impressions, trustworthiness, and dominance underlie impressions and primarily function to signal the potential threat of others. Here, we test a key assumption of these models, namely that these dimensions are functional, by evaluating whether the adult-face dimensions apply to young children's faces. Although it may be functional for adults to judge adult faces on dimensions that signal threat, adults associate different social goals with children, and these goals are likely to impact the impressions adults make of such faces. Thus, a functional approach would predict that the dimensions for children's faces are not threat focused. In Studies 1 and 2, we build a data-driven model of Caucasian adults' impressions of Caucasian children's faces, finding evidence for two dimensions. The first dimension, niceness, is similar (although not identical) to the adult dimension of trustworthiness. However, we find a second dimension, shyness, that is clearly dissociable from dominance (Study 3), and critically, is not focused on threat. We demonstrate that adults are sensitive to subtle facial manipulations of these dimensions (Studies 4 and 5) and that these impressions impact adults' behavioral expectations of children (Study 6). Finally, we show that niceness and shyness dimensions generalize to an independent sample of ambient images, demonstrating their robustness (Study 7). Our results suggest that social goals have the power to drive functional impressions and highlight the flexibility of our visual system when forming such inferences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A new other-race effect for gaze perception.

The well-known other-race effect in face recognition has been widely studied, both for its theoretical insights into the nature of face expertise and because of its social and forensic importance. Here we demonstrate an other-race effect for the perception of a simple visual signal provided by the eyes, namely gaze direction. In Study 1, Caucasian and Asian participants living in Australia both showed greater perceptual sensitivity to detect direct gaze in own-race than other-race faces. In Study 2, Asian (Chinese) participants living in Australia and Asian (Chinese) participants living in Hong Kong both showed this other-race effect, but Caucasian participants did not. Despite this inconsistency, meta-analysis revealed a significant other-race effect when results for all 5 participant groups from corresponding conditions in the 2 studies were combined. These results demonstrate a new other-race effect for the perception of the simple, but socially potent, cue of direct gaze. When identical morphed-race eyes were inserted into the faces, removing race-specific eye cues, no other-race effect was found (with 1 exception). Thus, the balance of evidence implicated perceptual expertise, rather than social motivation, in the other-race effect for detecting direct gaze. (PsycINFO Database Record