The obligation to succeed when it matters the most–The influence of skill and pressure on the success in football penalty kicks

In order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the influence of skill and pressure on the success in football penalty kicks, we analyzed 1711 penalties taken over a 15-year period in major international tournaments. We conducted a multiple correspondence analysis in order to reduce six variables that are associated with skill and pressure to two dimensions that reflect our target concepts. Then, we used these two factors as independent variables in a logistic regression and fit different models using three binary dependent variables. The results show that high situational pressure significantly increases the probability of missing the goal entirely by about 6%, independent of the player’s skill level. The probability that the goalkeeper saves a penalty significantly decreases by roughly 4% when a highly skilled player takes the shot. In general, high situational pressure decreases the probability of scoring a penalty kick. Furthermore, the probability to score a penalty increases if a highly skilled player takes the kick which indicates that a high skill level can act as a kind of buffer against debilitating effects caused by performance pressure.     

“The world around me”: The environment and single women

The environment has often been taken as a backdrop for feminist research and theory, as a setting within which issues of feminist concern are played out. This environment, however, is not a neutral setting; rather, research over the past 15 years has evidenced the assumptions about a woman's place as a man's wife literally built into women's worlds. Space speaks, and the stories it tells center around particular and identifiable assumptions about gender and where a woman should be, when, and with whom. Unmarried women are in a unique position in this environment: they are subjected not only to the economic disadvantages and social subjugation of being a woman, but also to the social and economic drawbacks of being single in a couple-oriented society and in an environment they see as not built for them. Although research exists on the sexism in the physical environment, on women's economic and social position, and on singlehood, a need exists to bridge these areas to explore how single women experience their singlehood, their womanhood, and the environment in their everyday lives and decision making. I conducted in-depth interviews with 25 single women, 23 white and 2 African-American women, about their experiences of living single. This article, based on the results of those interviews and a series of focus group discussions, examines how single women negotiate and respond to their necessary environmental decisions about housing, transportation, and leisure activities in an environment not likely to be conducive to their ways of life.This article is based on my M.A. thesis at the University of Tennessee (1992) and as such would not have happened without the guidance of my thesis committee: Samuel Wallace (chair), Donald Hastings, and Suzanne Kurth. For the preparation of this article, Suzanne Kurth offered her patience and invaluable criticisms to countless drafts, and Sherry Cable gave an early draft a thorough and helpful reading. I also wish to thank two anonymousSex Roles reviewers, whose comments guided this piece into this form. Parts of this paper were presented at the Southern Sociological Meetings in New Orleans, April 1992, and at the Second Annual Continental Conference on Social Ecology, Townsend, Tennessee, May 1992.     

‘Get me out of this dream!’: making a therapeutic alliance and working in the transference with a psychotic adolescent boy

This paper discusses the challenges of struggling to build and maintain a therapeutic alliance with a psychotic adolescent boy who did not share an allied perception of reality with his therapist, and who insisted that his therapist did not exist. The paper poses the question of whether, under such circumstances, it is ever appropriate or tolerable to make transference interpretations. Drawing on detailed clinical material, the author attempts to make sense of how it was possible to make some contact with his patient, given these technical difficulties.     

Does calling it “Morgan's way” reduce student learning? Evaluating the effect of person-presentation during comparison and discussion of worked examples in mathematics classrooms

Mathematics textbooks sometimes present worked examples as being generated by particular fictitious students (i.e., person-presentation). However, there are indicators that person-presentation of worked examples may harm generalization of the presented strategies to new problems. In the context of comparing and discussing worked examples during extended classroom instruction, the current study compared the impact of person-presentation to strategy labels on students' posttest accuracy and ratings of strategy generalizability. Five algebra teachers and their 168 students used worked examples either presented using fictitious students or with a strategy label during a multiweek unit on equation solving, with teachers randomly assigned to condition. All students compared and discussed the worked examples. In this context, we found no effect of condition on student accuracy at posttest, nor on their ratings of the generalizability of the presented strategies. We discuss why previously found negative effects of person-presentation may not have extended to this context.     

The way of life of Mr. Nowhere: examining Harding’s “Objectivity and Diversity”

In the following critique of Sandra Harding’s 2015 book Objectivity and Diversity I will raise three sets of interrelated issues. One: that Harding’s arguments for re-conceptualizing the term ‘objectivity’ may not be persuasive to those who continue to cling to the ‘view from nowhere’ understanding of the term. Two: that because of this entrenchment of the view from nowhere, Harding’s rhetorical strategy of referring to traditional knowledge as ‘science’ may result in further marginalization of already marginalized groups. And Three: that not all cases of multiple and conflicted selves are necessarily cases of increased access to knowledge and increased empowerment. Thus, while I am deeply sympathetic to the arguments being made in Harding’s book, I think this new scientific self that Harding proposes at the end of her book needs to be developed and clarified further.     

“Y'all trying to make a mockery out of me.” The confined sexualities of girls in a US juvenile detention facility

This paper examines how girls confined in a juvenile detention facility contend with messages from adult staff about their gender, sexual, and racial identities and practices. I show that girls are perpetually on the cusp of being punished for sexual misconduct for merely being sexually expressive, although actual punishment is arbitrary and inconsistently applied by staff. More importantly, girls' stories about their sexualities illuminate the force of punitive confinement sculpted by intergenerational relations that mask carceral logics under a façade of adult care. Constant surveillance and behavioral evaluations deem all sexuality to be available for inspection and introspection. I explore how girls come to understand their capacities for sexual expression within these limits of tight spatial control, persistent behavioral scrutiny, and a pervasive adult language of youth pathology. Racism and heterosexism centrally situate intergenerational relations of control and care in the facility, disturbingly burdening African-American and queer girls with the added pain of coming to terms with the impossibility of achieving the conformity that they are taught should be within their grasp with proper gender-sexual behaviors. Thus, rehabilitation is perpetually beyond girls' reach, since in spaces of juvenile detention personal and behavioral reform is an unending process.     

Carson Strong's “positive killing and the irreversibly unconscious patient”: A commentary

There is general agreement that death of the entire brain results in death of the person, and that such a condition can exist in a body which is still technically “alive.”1,2 Dr. Strong additionally contends that in cases of irreversible coma, since cognitive abilities characteristic of the person are no longer manifest and cannot be expected to reappear, such an individual no longer has the “right to life” and somatic death can be initiated by “positive killing.” This, the author claims, can be considered a logical and morally acceptable extension of the conceptual framework now in force for dealing with cases of isolated brain death.     

Developmental study of the comprehension and production of the pronoun “it”

Forty-two English-speaking children aged 3,3 to 7,0 were asked to act out instructions of the type There is clay on the table, give it to me, where the pronoun it occurs in object position and refers to a collective noun, or to a count noun, or to a noun (chocolate) which can be either. They were also asked to describe actions performed by the experimenter and to repeat the experimenter's instructions. A hierarchical pattern of behavior emerged and unexpected errors were noted. The results do not appear to be interpretable from the purely linguistic point of view; it is argued that analogous observations have been made in problem-solving tasks and that therefore cognitive development in general must play an important part.     

The Validity of the “Mother” and “Father” Cards of the Rorschach

This article presents analyses on psychometric properties of a recent revision of the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory (SASSI-3). Participants were 772 individuals from a range of clinical settings who were independently diagnosed according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed., rev. [DSM-III-R]; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 1987) or DSM-IV (APA, 1994) criteria regarding the presence or absence of a substance-dependence disorder. A development sample (n = 391) was used to formulate SASSI-3 decision rules that yielded 95% agreement with clinical diagnoses of substance dependence. Correspondence with the criterion variable was shown to be 97% in a cross-validation sample (n = 381) from the same clinical settings. Convergent relations were demonstrated with a variety of other indexes of substance misuse, including clinical assessments of substance abuse history, alcohol and drug-related arrests, self-reported use of illicit drugs, and other instruments designed to screen for substance misuse. Further, logistic regression analyses indicated no significant differences in the overall accuracy of the SASSI-3 as a function of respondents' demographic characteristics or clinical ratings of respondents' level of adjustment and functioning (Global Assessment of Functioning ratings; APA, 1987, 1994).     

The Symbol and the Theory of the Life-World: “The Transcendences of the Life-World and Their Overcoming by Signs and Symbols”

This essay presents a phenomenological analysis of the functioning of symbols as elements of the life-world with the purpose of demonstrating the interrelationship of individual and society. On the basis of Alfred Schutz's theory of the life-world, signs and symbols are viewed as mechanisms by means of which the individual can overcome the transcendences posed by time, space, the world of the Other, and multiple realities which confront him or her. Accordingly, the individual's life-world divides itself into the dimensions of time, space, the social world and various reality spheres which form the boundaries or transcendences that the I has to understand and integrate. Signs and symbols are described as appresentational modes which stand for experiences originating in the different spheres of the life-world within the world of everyday life, within which they can be communicated, thereby establishing intersubjectivity. Schutz's theory of the symbol explains how social entities – such as nations, states or religious groups – are symbolically integrated to become components of the individual's life-world. The following paper reconstructs Schutz's concept of the symbol as a crucial component of his theory of the life-world, which is seen as an outstanding phenomenological contribution to the theory of the sign and the symbol in general.     

“Just do it… before you talk yourself out of it”: the self-talk of adults thinking about physical activity

ObjectivesLittle is known about what adults are thinking about and doing for health-promoting physical activity (PA). We examined the PA levels of middle-aged (40–55 years) and older men and women (56+) as well as their intentions for future activity.MethodsRandom telephone surveys stratified for age, gender and geographic location assessed the weekly PA and plans for exercise among 40 adults.ResultsNumerical data showed that activity patterns were age-determined and gender-patterned with adults aged 40–55 expending far more energy at both work and leisure-time PA than adults aged 56+. Self-talk strategies occurred among 88% of the respondents but a key strategy used by active people was to ignore activity self-talk and ‘just do it’ lest they talk themselves out of exercising.ConclusionsInactive people already know that keeping active is important to their health and still do not participate. The group to target with positive triggering messages, assistance in getting started and reminders are those who already want to be more active but have not got a regular pattern established. Future research is needed to explore the impact of various kinds of social cueing. Messages such as, “Just do it” or “Don’t think about it” may be all that is needed to trigger adults who are already seriously contemplating how to increase their PA.     

“Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!” Interpersonal strain at work and burnout

Interpersonal strain represents the feeling of discomfort and disengagement in the relationships with people at work resulting from exceeding social requests and pressures. This article has three aims: (1) to introduce the Interpersonal Strain at Work scale (ISW), (2) to examine its construct validity and reliability, and its relationship with the Maslach Burnout Inventory exhaustion and cynicism; and (3) to test the generalizability of the ISW across different work settings. Multilevel CFA on two samples of call centre agents (5407) and hospital professionals (753), nested in 191 and 43 units, respectively, confirmed the good psychometric properties of the ISW and its distinctiveness from established burnout dimensions. The generalizability of ISW was also supported. Interpersonal strain at work seems to be a promising construct to recapture the interpersonal nature of the burnout syndrome that was lost when the concept of burnout was extended beyond the human services.     

“Bad philosophy” and “derivative philosophy”: Labels that keep women out of the canon

Efforts to include women in the canon have long been beset by reactionary gatekeeping, typified by the charge “That's not philosophy.” That charge doesn't apply to early and mid-analytic female philosophers—Welby, Ladd-Franklin, Bryant, Jones, de Laguna, Stebbing, Ambrose, MacDonald—with job titles like lecturer in logic and professor of philosophy and publications in Mind, the Journal of Philosophy, and Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. It's hopeless to dismiss their work as “not philosophy.” But comparable reactionary gatekeeping affects them, this paper argues, typified by the labels “bad philosophy” and “derivative philosophy.” Virtue and vice epistemology help explain why these women have been neglected and why their own approaches are epistemically virtuous. Their contemporaries and historians are deficient in scholarly virtues in labelling these women's work “bad” or derived from male mentors with no or specious justification. Their disparaged qualities—intellectual humility, modesty, critical self-reflection, disclosing biases—are often epistemic virtues.