“Socializing” Achievement Goal Theory: The Need for Social Goals

Cultures shape the types of goals that students pursue in the classroom. However, research in achievement goal theory seems to have neglected this cultural aspect with its exclusive focus on individualistically-based goals such as mastery and performance goals. This emphasis on mastery and performance goals may reflect Western individualist psychological thinking. Thus, social goals, which may be more salient in collectivist cultures, are relatively neglected. There is a dearth of studies investigating the role of social goals in academic motivation, and the few studies that did explore them are somewhat problematic. This paper reviews research done within the achievement goal theory, considers the need for more studies on social goals, and concludes with the argument that social goals are important in understanding student motivation especially in collectivist cultures.     

Three Problems for “strong” Modal Fictionalism

Philosophical Studies -     

Is Self‐Determined Functioning a Universal Prerequisite for Motive–Goal Congruence? Examining the Domain of Achievement in Three Cultures

ABSTRACT Research has shown that capacity for accessing implicit motives promotes congruence between the implicit and the explicit motivational system: Individuals able to test a conscious goal for its fit with their implicit motivation commit themselves more fully to self‐congruent goals. However, it has not yet been shown whether this is a universal phenomenon or limited to Euro‐American cultures in which individual needs are less strictly constrained by the social environment than in other cultural contexts. Thus, the present study examined whether self‐determination interacts with the implicit achievement motive to predict how much importance individuals from Cameroon, Germany, and Hong Kong ascribe to achievement goals. Moreover, the importance ascribed to goals should indirectly predict life satisfaction via success in goal realization. Results showed that the associations described above are valid in all three cultural groups and are discussed in terms of their implications for the universal processes characterizing motivation.     

Motivation for Reading and Upper Primary School Students’ Academic Achievement in Reading in Kenya

This study examined primary school students' reading motivation and performance on the standardized exam. Participants included 901 seventh and eighth grade students from Kenya. There were 468 females and 433 males. Contrary to previous studies, results showed reading challenge and aesthetics, but not efficacy, predicted reading achievement, indicating reading motivation may not influence achievement similarly across cultures. Gender differences were found in reading achievement but not motivation, an indication of a complex relationship between reading motivation and achievement. Students who read mostly for compliance and recognition did poorly in reading. Eighth graders did better in both reading motivation and achievement.     

A Clash of Civilizations? Preferences for Religious Political Leaders in 86 Nations

Huntington claimed that today's major conflicts are most likely to erupt between religiously defined “civilizations,” in particular between Christianity and Islam. Using World Values Surveys from 86 nations, we examine differences between Christians and Muslims in preferences for religious political leaders. The results suggest a marked difference between Muslims and Christians in their attitudes toward religious politicians, with Muslims more favorable by 20 points out of 100. Devoutness, education, degree of government corruption, and status as a formerly Communist state account for the difference. Little support is found for the clash‐of‐civilizations hypothesis. Instead, we find that a clash of individual beliefs—between the devout and the secular—along with enduring differences between the more developed and less developed world explains the difference between Islam and Christianity with regards to preferences for religious political leaders.     

“Broader Impacts” or “Responsible Research and Innovation”? A Comparison of Two Criteria for Funding Research in Science and Engineering

Our subject is how the experience of Americans with a certain funding criterion, “broader impacts” (and some similar criteria) may help in efforts to turn the European concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) into a useful guide to funding Europe’s scientific and technical research. We believe this comparison may also be as enlightening for Americans concerned with revising research policy. We have organized our report around René Von Schomberg’s definition of RRI, since it seems both to cover what the European research group to which we belong is interested in and to be the only widely accepted definition of RRI. According to Von Schomberg, RRI: “… is a transparent, interactive process by which societal actors and innovators become mutually responsive to each other with a view to the (ethical) acceptability, sustainability and societal desirability of the innovation process and its marketable products (in order to allow a proper embedding of scientific and technological advances in our society).” While RRI seeks fundamental changes in the way research is conducted, Broader Impacts is more concerned with more peripheral aspects of research: widening participation of disadvantaged groups, recruiting the next generation of scientists, increasing the speed with which results are used, and so on. Nevertheless, an examination of the broadening of funding criteria over the last four decades suggests that National Science Foundation has been moving in the direction of RRI.     

New evidence for “closure” in perception

A new criterion of perceptual grouping (Gillam, 1972), namely, that contours appear to reverse together under conditions of depth ambiguity, was used to test for the reality of “closure” and explore the parameters determining its degree. It was found that contours which would form a closed space but for a linear gap were responded to as a unit to a degree which decreased monotonically with gap size. Neither “proximal” nor “distal” gap was found to be the sole determinant of closure. Several levels of processing appear to be involved.

     

Guards as Embezzlers: The Consequences of “Nonshareable Problems” in Prison Settings

The purpose of this paper is to examine the pandering activities of pimps and to formulate a critique of the concept of pandering. First, popular perceptions of the phenomenon are described in terms of a case story. Information on preferred recruitment sites (e.g., bus terminals) and standard modes of operation (talk, drugs, and violence) is provided. Next, the results of two exploratory studies are reported. Police perspectives are revealed through a survey of Port Authority police officers. An attempt to generate pandering is carried out by means of participant observation. These studies yield contradictory information, and an attempt to institute a compromise moves the analysis to the question of control, specifically whether prostitutes are victims or volunteers. Upon analysis, the relationships that previously constituted the process of pandering and the activities that usually characterized the pimp's role are reversed. Finally, perspectives on the social construction of the pandering reality are summarized.     

Pain in the Past and Pleasure in the Future: The Development of Past–Future Preferences for Hedonic Goods

It seems self-evident that people prefer painful experiences to be in the past and pleasurable experiences to lie in the future. Indeed, it has been claimed that, for hedonic goods, this preference is absolute (Sullivan, 2018). Yet very little is known about the extent to which people demonstrate explicit preferences regarding the temporal location of hedonic experiences, about the developmental trajectory of such preferences, and about whether such preferences are impervious to differences in the quantity of envisaged past and future pain or pleasure. We find consistent evidence that, all else being equal, adults and children aged 7 and over prefer pleasure to lie in the future and pain in the past and believe that other people will, too. They also predict that other people will be happier when pleasure is in the future rather than the past but sadder when pain is in the future rather than the past. Younger children have the same temporal preferences as adults for their own painful experiences, but they prefer their pleasure to lie in the past and do not predict that others' levels of happiness or sadness vary dependent on whether experiences lie in the past or the future. However, from the age of 7, temporal preferences were typically abandoned at the earliest opportunity when the quantity of past pain or pleasure was greater than the quantity located in the future. Past–future preferences for hedonic goods emerge early developmentally but are surprisingly flexible.     

A Review of “Gender Identity Disorder and Psychosexual Problems in Children and Adolescents”

Abstract

The New Hypnosis in Family Therapy, by Daniel L. Araoz&;Esther Negley-Parker. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1988, 304 pages, $30.00

The Family Interpreted, by Deborah Anne Leupnitz. New York: Basic Books, 352 pages, $22.95.

Family Evaluation, by Michael Kerr&;Murray Bowen. New York: W. W. Norton, 416 pages, $29.95

Family Therapy Techniques for Problem Behaviors of Children and Teenagers, by Charles E. Schaefer, James M. Briesmeister&;Maureen E. Fitton. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 482 pages, $28.95

Family of Origin Therapy, edited by Alan J. Hovestadt&;Marshal Fine. Rockville, MD: Aspen Publications, 1987, 106 pages, $29.67

Siblings in Therapy: Life Span and Clinical Issues, edited by Michael D. Kahn&;Karen Gail Lewis. New York: W. W Norton, 1988, 469 pages, $34.95

A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development, by John Bowlby. New York: Basic Books, 1988, 205 pages, $16.95

Developing Ericksonian Therapy: State of the Art, edited by Jeffrey K. Zeig&;Stephen R. Lankton. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1988, 523 pages, $50.00

Journey with Grandpa: Our Family's Struggle with Alzheimer's Disease, by Rosalie Walsh Honel. Maryland: The John Hopkins University Press, 243 pages, $16.95

The Divorce Decision: What It Can Mean for Your Children, Your Finances, Your Emotions, Your Relationships, Your Future, by Gary Richmond. Waco, TX: Word Book Publishers, 1988, 215 pages, $8.99     

Explanations for “understating” in self-reported speeding behaviour

Self-report is a valuable methodology of social research, especially in regard to offending behaviour on and off the road. While assessing the validity of self-report is rarely easy, taking objective measures of drivers' speed choice behaviour does provide an opportunity to assess the correlation with subjective measures. Noting studies where this has been possible, research carried out by the author and colleagues in England which allowed similar assessments is discussed. Significant correlations resulted between reported and observed speed in all six surveys comprising the research, but they were of a low order. Analysis of the data showed a consistent and systematic bias towards drivers travelling above the 30 mph speed limit reporting their normal speeds as lower than those observed, with those travelling below the 30 mph speed limit reporting their speeds as higher than those observed. These patterns are discussed in light of other studies which have found tendencies either to overstate or to understate, and the possibilities that drivers either have difficulty reporting accurately or choose not to do so. Psychophysical limitations on accuracy of self-report and the social and cognitive processes that could mediate them are considered. In particular, the notion that drivers may seek to comply with normative speeds, and that these can be perceived as safer than complying with posted limits are discussed in light of normal police practice to tolerate low margins of excess speed.     

Risk Factors for Boy’s Conduct Problems in Poor and Lower–middle-class Neighborhoods

The joint trajectory analysis version of Nagin's (Group-based modeling of development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005) semiparametric, group-based approach for modeling trajectories was used to assess how boy's trajectories of conduct problems (CP) and neighborhood SES covaried from ages 5 to 12. Participants were recruited from Women, Infants, and Children clinics when they were 18 months old. Subsequent analyses examined whether boys from poor and more prosperous neighborhoods differed in the degree to which they were exposed to familial risk factors for CP during early childhood and the extent to which risk factors for CP were generalizable across communities. Findings revealed a small, but positive relationship, between boy's trajectories of CP and neighborhood SES. In addition, chronic CP boys from more prosperous communities were found to have more child/individual risk factors for CP than their counterparts from poorer communities. Implications for prevention and intervention are discussed.     

“The Most Difficult of all Phenomenological Problems”

I argue in this essay that Edmund Husserl distinguishes three levels within time-consciousness: an absolute time-constituting flow of consciousness, the immanent acts of consciousness the flow constitutes, and the transcendent objects the acts intend. The immediate occasion for this claim is Neal DeRoo’s discussion of Dan Zahavi’s reservations about the notion of an absolute flow and DeRoo’s own efforts to mediate between Zahavi’s view and the position Robert Sokolowski and I have advanced. I argue that the flow and the tripartite distinction it introduces into consciousness is firmly grounded in Husserl’s texts and is philosophically defensible. The absolute flow is distinct but inseparable from what it constitutes. It is intentional in a nonobjectivating way, and accounts for the awareness I have of my individual acts of consciousness and of the unity and continuity of my conscious life. In its absence, consciousness would become an incoherent stream of episodic acts. There is nothing mysterious about the flow. What would be mysterious is consciousness without the flow.     

On “Interactional Semantics” and Problems of Meaning

This article is a comment on papers being published in this special issue concerned with interactional semantics. As these papers are concerned with abstractions, formulations, generalizations, and other uses of categorizations whereby participants’ everyday understandings and interpretations come to the foreground of analysis, I explore the wider issue with which the papers wrestle. That issue is whether problems of meaning—related to subjectivity, intersubjectivity, mutual comprehension, and the like—are pervasive in interaction, or are limited and situational. I examine problems of meaning through the lenses of social theory and ethnomethodology, and take the position that analytic preoccupation with interpretation should be one that follows participants’ own orientations to problems of meaning. This is different from but related to what each author argues in his own paper.     

Can Item Format (Multiple Choice vs. Open-Ended) Account for Gender Differences in Mathematics Achievement?

The purpose of this study was to investigate differential performance of boys and girls on open-ended (OE) and multiple-choice (MC) items on the 1988 and 1991 International Assessment of Educational Progress (IAEP) mathematics test. In the 1988 mathematics assessment, a representative sample of approximately 1,000 13-year-olds in each of the six participating countries was assessed. In the 1991 mathematics assessment, a representative sample of 9- and 13-year-olds (approximately 1,650 from each age group) in some 20 participating countries was assessed. Analyses of both assessments yielded results that indicated that boys generally performed better than girls in mathematics. In the 1988 assessment, gender effects were larger on MC items than on OE items, corresponding to results of earlier studies. However, the 1991 IAEP assessment produced contrary results: gender effects tended to be larger for OE items than for MC items. These inconsistent results challenge the assertion that girls perform relatively better on OE test items, and suggest that item format alone cannot account for gender differences in mathematics performance. Further investigation of the data revealed that the inconsistent patterns of gender effects with regard to item format were related to the difficulty level of the items, regardless of item format. Correlations between item difficulty and item gender effect size were computed for age 13 in the 1988 assessment and for ages 9 and 13 in the 1991 assessment. The correlations obtained were 0.26, 0.47, and 0.53, respectively, suggesting that the more difficult the items, the better boys perform relative to girls.