Uncertainty and values: The case of environmental impact assessment

The increasing complexity of policy issues, as well as the centering of environmental issues in the policy arena, has led to an increased dependence on science in public policy. This has, in turn, led to increased attention to, among other things, the science-policy relationship and the way in which scientific uncertainty is treated in the public sphere. This article examines both problems in the field of environmental impact assessment (EIA). Our study reveals that, apart from the epistemic uncertainty concerned with the predictive capability of scientific theories, EIA brings additional components of uncertainty and challenges for the policymaker. We further confirm recent findings with respect to the inadequacy of the traditional rational model to account for extant science-policy relationships. The article also posits an alternative model that allows one to unpack the processual components of the science-policy relationship.     

Mobile Internet Testing: An analysis of equivalence,individual differences,and reactions

Mobile internet testing (MIT) is the latest cost effective technological push in employment testing. The ability to access assessments via the internet using mobile devices provides increased speed and convenience for both administrators and respondents. In this article, we examine the equivalence of MIT compared with testing on personal computers (PCs) and whether attitudes and other individual differences influence responses and reactions to MIT. Results demonstrated equivalence for a supervisory situational judgment test across testing modes, but not for a cognitive ability test. Significant relationships were found between anxiety and both performance and reactions to mobile assessment. Respondents also reported significantly more positive reactions when tested on a PC versus a mobile device. Future research and practical implications are discussed.     

Alcohol use among american college students in relation to need for cognition and expectations of alcohol's effects on cognition

This article describes the development of a new self-report measure for assessing expectations for alcohol's cognitive effects and presents an empirical investigation of the association between cognitive alcohol expectancies and alcohol use. The present study also examined the potential moderating effects of need for cognition on the association between cognitive expectancies and drinking. Participants consisted of 179 college undergraduates from a midsized public university in the southeastern United States. Results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses, conducted separately for males and females, indicated several main effects for both cognitive alcohol expectancies and need for cognition on alcohol use. In contrast to these main effects, there were no significant multiplicative interaction effects, suggesting that need for cognition did not moderate the direction of association between cognitive expectancies and drinking. The results of homologizer/moderator analyses, however, did indicate a number of significant interaction effects for both males and females. These significant homologizer findings indicated that thestrength of association between cognitive alcohol expectancies and drinking increased as need for cognition increased. Implications of the present findings for future research are discussed. This research was supported, in part, by a sabbatical award granted by the College of Charleston. The author thanks Michael Tavernetti for his assistance with this project and Dr. Rhonda Swickert for her helpful feedback on an earlier version of this article.     

Alcohol use among american college students in relation to need for cognition and expectations of alcohol's effects on cognition

This article describes the development of a new self-report measure for assessing expectations for alcohol's cognitive effects and presents an empirical investigation of the association between cognitive alcohol expectancies and alcohol use. The present study also examined the potential moderating effects of need for cognition on the association between cognitive expectancies and drinking. Participants consisted of 179 college undergraduates from a midsized public university in the southeastern United States. Results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses, conducted separately for males and females, indicated several main effects for both cognitive alcohol expectancies and need for cognition on alcohol use. In contrast to these main effects, there were no significant multiplicative interaction effects, suggesting that need for cognition did not moderate the direction of association between cognitive expectancies and drinking. The results of homologizer/moderator analyses, however, did indicate a number of significant interaction effects for both males and females. These significant homologizer findings indicated that thestrength of association between cognitive alcohol expectancies and drinking increased as need for cognition increased. Implications of the present findings for future research are discussed. This research was supported, in part, by a sabbatical award granted by the College of Charleston. The author thanks Michael Tavernetti for his assistance with this project and Dr. Rhonda Swickert for her helpful feedback on an earlier version of this article.     

victims and offenders: accounts of paybacks,invulnerability, and financial gain among homeless youth

In recent years, club-drug use among a segment of urban gay men has gained in popularity, contributing to a range of effects, including heightened sexual stimulation, increased sexual performance and endurance, but also, unsafe sexual practices, drug overdose, drug addiction and death. This article draws from a larger study of urban sexual careers and identifies two prominent forms of club-drug use: the first, to facilitate sexual performance; and the second, to facilitate community. The author argues that the basis of both patterns of drug use lie in adaptations to the institutional organization of urban gay sexual sociality.     

Perceptual interference decays over short unfilled intervals

The perceptual interference effect refers to the fact that object identification is directly related to the amount of information available at initial exposure. The present article investigated whether perceptual interference would dissipate when a short, unfilled interval was introduced between exposures to a degraded object. Across three experiments using both musical and pictorial stimuli, identification performance increased directly with the length of the unfilled interval. Consequently, significant perceptual interference was obtained only when the interval between exposures was relatively short (< 500 msec for melodies; < 300 msec for pictures). These results are consistent with explanations that attribute perceptual interference to increased perceptual noise created by exposures to highly degraded objects. The data also suggest that perceptual interference is mediated by systems that are not consciously controlled by the subject and that perceptual interference in the visual domain decays more rapidly than perceptual interference in the auditory domain.     

Stress and infectious disease in humans

This article reviews research on the role of stress in infectious disease as measured either by illness behaviors (symptoms and use of health services) or by verified pathology. Substantial evidence was found for an association between stress and increased illness behavior, and less convincing but provocative evidence was found for a similar association between stress and infectious pathology. Introverts, isolates, and persons lacking social skills may also be at increased risk for both illness behaviors and pathology. Psychobiological models of how stress could influence the onset and progression of infectious disease and a psychological model of how stress could influence illness behaviors are proposed.     

Freedom,Normativity and Finitude: Between Heidegger and Levinas

The present article aims to illuminate a notion of finite freedom in both Heidegger and Levinas. Levinas criticizes the Heideggerian ontology for holding an egoistic, unconstrained notion of freedom. The article first responds to such a criticism by showing that the Heideggerian notion of freedom as self-binding involves normativity. It then argues that both Heidegger and Levinas propose a notion of finite freedom as the unity of autonomy and heteronomy. Finally, the article also sheds light on what different approaches to the source of normativity separate the two philosophers’ understandings of freedom.

     

Do warnings of response verification moderate the relationship between personality and cognitive ability?

This article presents the results of 2 studies that examine the effect of presenting a warning of response verification by others on the relationship between measures of personality and cognitive ability. In both a field study and a laboratory study, stronger correlations were generally found between measures of personality and cognitive ability when a warning of verification was present. The results from the studies also showed that the warning of verification was associated with slower item response latencies for certain personality scales, suggesting that exposure to the warning increased the complexity of the response decision. Results are discussed in terms of the effects of altering test instructions on the construct validity of personality measures used in applied settings.     

A multilevel model of safety climate: cross-level relationships between organization and group-level climates

Organizational climates have been investigated separately at organization and subunit levels. This article tests a multilevel model of safety climate, covering both levels of analysis. Results indicate that organization-level and group-level climates are globally aligned, and the effect of organization climate on safety behavior is fully mediated by group climate level. However, the data also revealed meaningful group-level variation in a single organization, attributable to supervisory discretion in implementing formal procedures associated with competing demands like safety versus productivity. Variables that limit supervisory discretion (i.e., organization climate strength and procedural formalization) reduce both between-groups climate variation and within-group variability (i.e., increased group climate strength), although effect sizes were smaller than those associated with cross-level climate relationships. Implications for climate theory are discussed.     

Quarrelsomeness in Daily Life

ABSTRACT It is common in studies of interpersonal characteristics to examine personality variables as static predictors. Yet in recent years it has also become possible to examine personality and related interpersonal processes as they unfold over time in association with event specific cues. The present article reviews research that (1) identifies behaviors that reflect the occurrence of hostile-irritable-quarrelsome traits in daily life, (2) demonstrates both the stability and within-person variability of these behaviors over time, (3) documents event-level interpersonal cues that are systematically associated with within-person variation in quarrelsome behavior, and (4) describes how dispositional level agreeableness and irritability moderate the associations of event-level cues with quarrelsome behavior. The influence of the neurotransmitter serotonin on quarrelsome behavior is also considered. The studies indicate that quarrelsome individuals have reduced affective reactivity to engaging in quarrelsome behavior, increased behavioral reactivity to perceptions of quarrelsomeness in others, and greater responsiveness to change in serotonin levels.     

Interpersonal process in psychotherapy through the lens of the structural analysis of social behavior

As psychotherapy research focuses more and more on mechanisms of therapeutic change, increased attention has naturally been directed at therapy process. Over the past several decades, a variety of researchers have successfully applied Benjamin's 1974 Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB) to the study of in-session psychotherapy events. This system for conceptualizing and analyzing interpersonal and intrapsychic processes has been shown to provide theoretically rigorous and empirically tractable instantiations of both helpful and hindering therapeutic exchanges. In this article the therapeutic alliance is conceived in terms of interpersonal processes as demarcated according to the SASB. This article also provides a review of SASB's wide-ranging applications to observing and studying the therapeutic relationship, therapy process, and client outcome. Also discussed are several data analytic and methodological considerations related to the SASB model and several new ancillary measures based on the SASB. Finally, the applied and clinical utility of the SASB system is discussed in light of a variety of contemporary empirical findings.     

RETRACTED: UNDERSTANDING SUBJECT(S): THE SELF AS CORPORATION

This paper aims to make a contribution to work concerning the nature of the subject. The article pays special attention to the work of Parfit but will also cover the work of Hume and Locke. The article seeks to develop an ontological account of persons with important implications to the way in which we distinguish associations, groups and persons in both philosophy and moral theory.     

Using movies in pastoral counseling

This article uses a case study of a bereaved woman to illustrate the potential benefits of using movies as an adjunctive therapy in pastoral counseling. The article also references the literature on bibliotherapy and cinematherapy while summarizing relevant findings from studies for the use of movies in clinical practice. This article offers both suggestions and cautions for practitioners. At this time, research suggests that a considered therapeutic use of movies can be beneficial for personal growth.     

Job design,opportunities for skill utilization,and intrinsic job satisfaction

Arguably, job designs that provide for high levels of employee control also provide increased opportunities for the development and exercise of skill. Perceived skill utilization has consistently been found to be amongst the strongest predictors of job-related affective well-being, yet is frequently neglected in studies of work redesign. In this article, a theoretical framework linking the key job characteristics of perceived control and perceived cognitive demand to perceived skill utilization and intrinsic job satisfaction is presented. Results from one cross-sectional study and one longitudinal study are reported that support the mediational influence of perceived skill utilization on the perceived job control?–?job satisfaction relationship only. The relationship between perceived job demand and perceived skill utilization was mixed but no mediating effect was evident. It is argued that the level of both perceived demand and perceived control dictates the nature of the joint influence of both job characteristics on perceived skill utilization and work attitudes such as job satisfaction.     

The Ethical Implications of Social Media: Issues and Recommendations For Clinical Practice

The Internet and electronic communication technologies have taken the psychological field by storm. From the innovations of new web interventions for easier access to care to the increased ease of client scheduling and communication, these developments have greatly advanced mental health care. However, these advantages are also laced with ethical implications that warrant attention. Without judicious consideration, social media use by psychotherapists can lead to inadvertent self-disclosures to clients that risk damaging the therapeutic alliance, interfering with therapeutic processes, and placing both the client and clinician at risk. A better understanding of the ethical implications of social media use is warranted so that guidelines for appropriate use can be developed and implemented. This article highlights the potential risks associated with social media use by psychotherapists and, in absence of formalized guidelines, offers recommendations for best practices.     

Symbolic Filtering: Selectively Permeable Evangelical Boundaries in an Age of Religious Pluralism

Since Peter Berger's (1967, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, Garden City, NY: Doublday) early work on the sacred canopy, scholars have debated the effects of increased diversity on religious belief and vitality. Smith (1998, American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving, Chicago: University of Chicago Press), in particular, has suggested that subcultures like American evangelicalism can thrive in a religiously pluralistic environment by both engaging with the world while remaining symbolically distinct from it. This article builds on this work as well as recent scholarship on boundary permeability by exploring the mechanisms by which American evangelicals negotiate their boundaries as they adapt to their surroundings. Based on a qualitative content analysis of 109 articles from two evangelical missionary periodicals published over a period of over 20 years, I examine the use of both boundary‐strengthening and boundary‐weakening processes employed by evangelical missionaries and missiologists (or “boundary agents”). I find that almost every instance of boundary weakening is also accompanied by boundary strengthening, suggesting that symbolic boundaries are becoming selectively permeable through a process I identify as “symbolic filtering.” In conclusion, the article briefly considers the implications of these findings for the broader discussion of symbolic boundaries and religious pluralism.     

Letter-detection patterns in German: A window to the early extraction of sentential structure during reading

Letters are more difficult to detect in function words than in content words, presumably because function words serve to cue sentential structure but recede to the background as meaning unfolds. This function disadvantage was found for the definite article in German for all three genders and all four cases, but it was more pronounced when the article appeared in a nominative noun phrase than in an object noun phrase. It was also more pronounced for the typical subject-predicate-object sentential format than for the object-predicate-subject sentential format and also when the definite article unequivocally specified the case of a phrase than when it was ambiguous. The results suggest that the structural frames established on line in reading are finely tuned to both phrase-level and sentence-level organization.