When the poor give more than the rich: The role of resource evaluability on relative giving

Five experiments examined the role of resource evaluability on giving. We systematically varied participants' resources they and another potential donor received and whether they could donate to a recipient either by themselves or with the other donor. Participants in the relative advantage condition received more resources than the other donor, and those in the relative disadvantage condition received fewer resources than the other donor. The presence of the other donor made participants' resources evaluable and shaped giving: Relatively disadvantaged participants were proportionally more generous than advantaged participants but only when they could evaluate their resources. Neither the mere presence of others nor reputational concerns could explain the results. Exploratory mediation and moderation analyses further showed that relatively disadvantaged participants give proportionally more the higher and the more equal they perceive their status to the advantaged donor. This shows that the generosity of those who have less does depend on how they evaluate their status compared to other donors. Our results provide insights into the question of why and when resource asymmetries between donors result in prosocial giving and can influence fundraising strategies of charitable organizations.     

A teaching framework for cross-cultural genetic counseling

The increasing diversity of American society has brought growing recognition of the need to bridge cultures in the delivery of genetic counseling services. New immigrants and members of diverse ethnic groups face multiple barriers to genetic counseling services. The need to train genetic counselors to deal with cultural diversity is especially crucial in the new genetic era, given the rapid expansion of available technology, with the resulting social and ethical ramifications. A framework for teaching cross-cultural issues in genetic counseling training programs is presented that can be implemented in step-wise fashion, consistent with available resources. Cross-cultural issues can be incorporated into existing teaching and training modalities by expanding the orientation from monocultural to multicultural. Relevant clinical experience, exploration of students' preconceptions and biases, reading materials, and lectures by invited speakers can all enhance students' knowledge and sensitivity. It is critically important that training programs furnish students with the basic tools necessary for the ongoing process of learning about cultural diversity.     

A test of the bidirectional association between sleep and mood in bipolar disorder and insomnia

The present study investigates sleep, mood, and the proposed bidirectional relationship between the two in psychiatric disorders. Participants with interepisode bipolar disorder (n = 49), insomnia (n = 34), and no psychiatric history (n = 52) completed seven consecutive days of sleep diaries and mood measures. The interepisode bipolar and insomnia participants exhibited greater sleep disturbance than the healthy control individuals. Negative mood was equally heightened in both interepisode bipolar disorder and insomnia, and there were no differences between the three groups in positive mood. Total wake time was associated with next morning negative mood in bipolar disorder, whereas evening negative mood was associated with subsequent total wake time in both bipolar disorder and insomnia. Additionally, positive mood was associated with subsequent total wake time for the insomnia group. Results support the theory that disruptions in nighttime sleep and daytime mood may be mutually maintaining and suggest the potential importance of transdiagnostic or universal processes.     

A psychometric comparison of anxiety-relevant attention measures

Background and Objectives: Preferential attention to threat, emotional response inhibition, and attentional control each purportedly play a key role in anxiety disorders. Divergent psychometric properties among attention measures may produce differential detection of anxiety-related associations and treatment-related changes. However, no studies have directly compared the psychometric properties of these attention measures in the same sample.

Design: Eighty-five young adults (M?=?19.41 years, SD?=?1.47, 48 Females) completed a cognitive task battery and a subset of 60 participants (M?=?19.42 years, SD?=?1.48, 33 Females) completed the task battery again approximately two weeks later.

Method: To assess preferential attention to threat, emotional response inhibition, and attentional control, the cognitive task battery included a dot-probe task, emotion and gender Stroop tasks, and a flanker task. Tasks varied in how attention was directed and if emotional stimuli were included. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were compared across measures.

Results: Within the same sample, internal consistency and reliability differed across attention measures. Explicit attention measures (emotional Stroop and flanker) exhibited stronger internal consistency and greater test-retest reliability compared to implicit measures (dot-probe and gender Stroop).

Conclusions: These results inform clinical research using attention measures to assess anxiety-related differences and treatment response.     

Some Structural Variables in Auditory Projective Testing

This study explored perceived pleasantness of auditory projective stimuli as related to three aspects of the projective response; emotional tone, RT and length of stories. Thirty blind and 30 sighted males, comparable in age and intelligence, told stories in response to eight selected auditory stimuli and rated them for pleasantness. Emotional tone varied significantly with pleasantness for 5 out of 8 sounds. Pleasantness was not significantly related to story length nor to RT, except for the sound of weeping. Blind Ss told longer stories than the sighted. Apparent consistent individual differences in response to the auditory projective method were observed. This technique seems useful in the study of personality, perception and cognition of sighted and blind persons.     

Initial Notes on Content in Auditory Projective Testing

A comparative approach was used in studying content in auditory projective testing. Stories told by sighted and blind persons in response to the sounds of a train and water were presented. Qualitative differences in the content of stories were noted. The negative tone of the projective response was discussed in terms of stimulus properties, the nature of the auditory modality, and the particular contributions of the auditory method in personality assessment.     

The Duty to Support Nationalistic Policies

We demonstrate that citizens perceive a duty to support policies that benefit their nation, even when they themselves judge that the consequences of the policies will be worse on the whole, taking outsiders into account. In terms of actions, subjects think they would do their perceived duty rather than violate it for the sake of better consequences. The discrepancy between duty and judged consequences does not seem to result from self‐interest alone. When asked for reasons, many subjects felt an obligation to help their fellow citizens before others, and they also thought that they owed something to their nation, in return for what it did for them. The obligation to help fellow citizens was the strongest predictor of perceived duty. In an experiment with Israeli and Palestinian students, group membership affected both perceived overall consequences and duty, but the effect of group on perceived consequences did not account for the effect on perceived duty. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Attributions for Memory Performance in Adulthood: Age Differences and Mediation Effects

We examined age differences in attributions to internal (controllable and uncontrollable), external (uncontrollable), and unstable factors for performance on a free recall memory task in 149 young, middle-aged, and older adults. Attributions varied by age and by level of memory performance. Middle-aged and older adults rated internal, uncontrollable factors (ability and genes) as more influential for high performance than for low performance, and they were less likely than young adults to attribute low performance to these factors. Within age groups, only the older adults rated memory ability as more influential than strategy use, even though they were as likely as the other age groups to use a categorization strategy. Attributions to both internal controllable (strategy use) and uncontrollable (ability) factors as well as to health were associated with better memory performance. These attributions partially mediated the relationship between age and memory performance. Thus, attributions may provide some insight into sources of age differences in memory performance.     

On Silencing and Systematicity: The Challenge of the Drowning Case

Silencing is a speech‐related harm. We here focus on one particular account of silencing offered by Jennifer Hornsby and Rae Langton. According to this account, silencing is systematically generated, illocutionary‐communicative failure (of a very specific sort). We here raise an apparent challenge to that account. In particular, we offer an example—the drowning case—that meets these conditions of silencing but does not intuitively seem to be an instance of it. First, we explore several conditions one might add to the Hornsby‐Langton account, but we argue that none are satisfactory. Then, we further explore the systematicity condition, which is insufficiently characterized in the current literature. Although we explore several promising ways to further characterize this condition, we ultimately conclude that more work needs to be done. Consequently, because this systematicity condition is under‐specified, the Hornsby‐Langton account of silencing is incomplete.