Can everyone become highly intelligent? Cultural differences in and societal consequences of beliefs about the universal potential for intelligence.

We identify a novel dimension of people's beliefs about intelligence: beliefs about the potential to become highly intelligent. Studies 1-3 found that in U.S. American contexts, people tend to believe that only some people have the potential to become highly intelligent. In contrast, in South Asian Indian contexts, people tend to believe that most people have the potential to become highly intelligent. To examine the implications of these beliefs, Studies 4-6 measured and manipulated Americans' beliefs about the potential for intelligence and found that the belief that everyone can become highly intelligent predicted increased support for policies that distribute resources more equally across advantaged and disadvantaged social groups. These findings suggest that the belief that only some people have the potential to become highly intelligent is a culturally shaped belief, and one that can lead people to oppose policies aimed at redressing social inequality.

Deference in Indians' decision making: introjected goals or injunctive norms?

We examine the claim that Indians are more likely than Americans to act deferentially in the presence of authority figures and explore 2 possible psychological mechanisms for this cultural difference: introjected goals and injunctive norms. Studies 1 and 2 showed that after reflecting upon an authority's expectations, Indians were more likely than Americans to make clothing and course choices consistent with the authority's expectations, but there was no such cultural difference for peers' expectations. Study 3 showed that merely activating the concept of authority figures, without highlighting specific expectations, was sufficient to influence Indians' choices but not their evaluations. Examining a more basic distinction underlying introjected goals versus injunctive norms, Study 4 showed that authority primes influenced Indians' sense of what they should do but not what they want to do. Study 5 showed that, inconsistent with the internalized goal mechanism, the effect of explicit authority primes did not increase after brief delays. However, Indian participants who were less likely to accommodate to the salient authority experienced more guilt across delay conditions, which supported the injunctive norms mechanism. The findings suggest that manipulating injunctive norms can be an effective means for inducing or eliminating deferential behaviors in Indian settings.

Beliefs about emotional residue: the idea that emotions leave a trace in the physical environment.

Drawing upon the literatures on beliefs about magical contagion and property transmission, we examined people's belief in a novel mechanism of human-to-human contagion, emotional residue. This is the lay belief that people's emotions leave traces in the physical environment, which can later influence others or be sensed by others. Studies 1-4 demonstrated that Indians are more likely than Americans to endorse a lay theory of emotions as substances that move in and out of the body, and to claim that they can sense emotional residue. However, when the belief in emotional residue is measured implicitly, both Indians and American believe to a similar extent that emotional residue influences the moods and behaviors of those who come into contact with it (Studies 5-7). Both Indians and Americans also believe that closer relationships and a larger number of people yield more detectable residue (Study 8). Finally, Study 9 demonstrated that beliefs about emotional residue can influence people's behaviors. Together, these finding suggest that emotional residue is likely to be an intuitive concept, one that people in different cultures acquire even without explicit instruction.

Cultural conditioning: understanding interpersonal accommodation in India and the United States in terms of the modal characteristics of interpersonal influence situations.

We argue that differences between the landscapes of influence situations in Indian and American societies induce Indians to accommodate to others more often than Americans. To investigate cultural differences in situation-scapes, we sampled interpersonal influence situations occurring in India and the United States from both the influencee's (Study 1) and the influencer's (Study 2) perspectives. We found that Indian influence situations were dramatically more likely than U.S. situations to feature other-serving motives and to result in positive consequences for the relationship. Yet Study 3 found that targets of influence felt no less free to decide whether to accommodate in India than the United States, but felt more concerned about the influencer. To investigate the effects of situation-scapes on people's expectations and decisions, we exposed Indian and American participants to descriptions of situations from both societies (with their origins obscured). Study 4 found that both groups of participants expected more positive consequences from accommodation in Indian situations than in American situations. Finally, Study 5 found that both groups decided to accommodate more often in Indian situations than in American situations. At the same time, Indian participants were more likely than Americans to accommodate across all situations, but both groups converged over 100 trials as they were exposed to more and more situations drawn from each other's cultures. We interpret these effects in terms of the default decisions or biases conditioned by people's recently encountered situations.

What counts as a choice? U.S. Americans are more likely than Indians to construe actions as choices.

People everywhere select among multiple alternatives, but are they always making choices? In five studies, we found that people in U.S. American contexts, where the disjoint model of agency is prevalent, are more likely than those in Indian contexts to construe their own and other individuals' behaviors as choices, to construe ongoing behaviors and behaviors recalled from memory as choices, to construe naturally occurring and experimentally controlled behaviors as choices, to construe mundane and important actions as choices, and to construe personal and interpersonal actions as choices. Indians showed a greater tendency to construe actions as choices when these actions involved responding to other people than when they did not. These findings show that whether people construe actions as choices is significantly shaped by sociocultural systems of meanings and practices. Together, they suggest that the positive consequences associated with maximizing the availability of personal choice may not be universal and instead may be limited to North American contexts.

Electrochemical study of potassium isobutyl xanthate at a mercury electrode.

Polarographic studies of potassium isobutyl xanthate at a mercury electrode reveal that the product of an anodic reaction is strongly adsorbed at the mercury surface, as indicated by a prewave. The adsorbed film greatly affects the characteristics of the anodic wave of xanthate in an aqeous medium. The current of total wave is proportional to the concentration of xanthate from 0.32 to 1.6 mM.

Effect of some penicillins on the sensitivity of limulus amoebocyte lysate test.

A group of penicillins have been tested for their effect on the sensitivity of limulus amebocyte lysate test (LAL). Cloxacillin, cephalothin and cefuroxime inhibited the gel formation at concentrations above 2 mg mL-1, while ampicillin, methicillin and mecillinam showed no inhibitory effects upto concentrations of 10 mg mL-1. For benzylepenicillin the maximum non-inhibitory concentration was 10,000 units mL-1. However, the dilutions required to overcome inhibition were within the limits of maximum valid dilutions computed for each product showing that LAL test is valid for these products at their non-inhibitory concentrations.

A simple spectrophotometric method for determination of isoxsuprine hydrochloride in pharmaceuticals.

A spectrophotometric method has been developed for the determination of isoxsuprine hydrochloride and its dosage forms, based on its coupling reaction with diazotized sulphanilic acid. The yellow chromophore has an absorption maximum at 440 nm. Beer's law holds over the range 0.8-8 mu/ml in the final solution.

Lack of genetic and cytogenetic effects in mice fed on irradiated wheat.

Experiments were conducted to test the mutagenicity of wheat irradiated with 20 and 200 krad gamma-rays by feeding male and female mice for various periods starting from weaning time. The results obtained from dominant lethal tests, specific locus mutation test, studies on chromosome rearrangements in males and gonadal cell survival studies indicated no positive evidence for genetic and cytogenetic effects.