If It's Difficult to Pronounce, It Must Be Risky

ABSTRACT— Low processing fluency fosters the impression that a stimulus is unfamiliar, which in turn results in perceptions of higher risk, independent of whether the risk is desirable or undesirable. In Studies 1 and 2, ostensible food additives were rated as more harmful when their names were difficult to pronounce than when their names were easy to pronounce; mediation analyses indicated that this effect was mediated by the perceived novelty of the substance. In Study 3, amusement-park rides were rated as more likely to make one sick (an undesirable risk) and also as more exciting and adventurous (a desirable risk) when their names were difficult to pronounce than when their names were easy to pronounce.     

Advances in Behaviorism: It's Not What It Used to Be

Behaviorism has changed over the past half century and its modern form is not familiar to many educators and other applied professionals. Put briefly, behaviorism has changed from the molecular and absolutist form of years past, when basic researchers, therapists and educators sought to modify isolated target behaviors. Modern behaviorism is relativistic and molar and the articles included in this issue are meant to illustrate this changed emphasis. The first article shows how the matching law has redefined the old law of effect and how that affects application. The second shows how relational frames provide a behavioral treatment of cognitive variables that dispels the stereotyped view of behavior modification. The third treats molar classes of behaviors as traits, and individual behaviors as states, applying that distinction to aspects of the relative frequencies of behaviors of children at home and at school. Finally, the last article shows specifically how behavioral methods have been (and are) applied to the behavior of autistic children, in a program that has been extremely successful over the past few years.     

Religion and Psychology in Transition: How It Came to Be Written

Pastoral Psychology -     

It Was Nice to Be There: Construct Validity Then and Now

I appear to be one of the few persons who attended both the colloquium at Princeton titled Construct Validity in Psychological Measurement held in 1979 and the conference at Newport Beach titled Construct Validity: Issues and Opportunities held in 1990. As a discussant for both meetings, I have compared construct validity as seen by participants at the 1979 meetings with construct validity as seen by participants at the 1990 meeting. Comparisons are drawn according to conceptualizations of construct validity, construct va- lidity as scientific inquiry, and construct validity in assessment technology. A most noteworthy conclusion is that these three aspects no longer apply very well to the articles herein that were originally delivered at the 1990 meeting. Instead these articles show strongly that classification according to scientific inquiry versus applications is not possible. Such a conceptual gap no longer seems to exist for construct validity. Instead, these articles as well as the one by Hogan (1991) all emphasize large scale programmatic efforts characterized by approaches driven primarily by conceptualizations derived from construct validity. A secondary theme in these articles emphasizes analysis according to taxonomies at both the predictor and criterion levels. A primary conclusion from reviewing these articles is that construct validity no longer revolves around issues, but it clearly does connote opportunities for future research and applications.     

My Family Made Me Do It: The Influence of Family Therapists'' Families of Origin on Their Occupational Choice

This study is an empirical test and exploration of the folklore about family life correlates of family therapists' occupational choice. The folklore is translated into systems concepts, including role complementarity and the mutually determining effect of process and roles. Fifty-nine family therapists, 49 siblings of the therapists, and 51 undifferentiated, non-helping professionals were compared on FACES (29), The Complementary Role Questionnaire, and on demographic data. Inconsistencies in the results led to a critique of the clinical faithfulness of current systems measures. Family therapists did not differ on FACES, but did differ in aspects of roles from their siblings and from the control professionals.     

Influence of a Photograph on a Charitable Appeal: A Picture May Be Worth a Thousand Words When It Has to Speak for Itself

Several studies were conducted examining the influence of the use of photographs of a needy individual on a charity appeal for either a well-known or lesser-known charity organization. Results of an initial study indicated that people expected the use of a photograph to enhance the effectiveness of a door-to-door solicitation campaign and that a well-known charity would fare better than a lesser-known one in its efforts. Results of two subsequent studies involving door-to-door solicitations, however. indicated that the proportion of people contributing and the average amount contributed was not dependent upon either the photograph or familiarity with the charity. A final study using a passive countertop solicitation in stores did result in greater contributions when the photograph was present, whereas there was no difference due to charity familiarity. These findings are discussed in terms of image-maintenance concerns and social pressures associated with the immediacy of a request.     

I Can't Get You Out of My Head: The Influence of Secrecy on Consumers’ Self‐Brand Connections

Although research provides anecdotal evidence of consumers keeping their brand consumption a secret, there is little empirical corroboration to justify its study or illuminate the resulting consequences. The goals of this research are to provide evidence for the prevalence of keeping brand consumption a secret and to understand the resulting cognitive processing and consequences. Specifically, we first explore the occurrence of secrecy in the context of brand consumption, its types, and its motivations, underscoring the need for further investigation. Then, through a series of three subsequent studies, we demonstrate that keeping brand consumption a secret can lead to enhanced self‐brand connections through the underlying processes of thought suppression and thought intrusion. We rule out alternative explanations and enhance generalizability through the examination of passive (e.g., avoiding) versus active (e.g., lying) secrecy and variations in agency (i.e., instructed vs. voluntary secrecy).     

What It Means to Be a Man: Aging and Anxiety in Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape and That Time

One of the great writers of Twentieth-century doubt, Samuel Beckett is perhaps best known for endowing his protagonists with some of the more classic symptoms of anxiety and depression. The result is an extraordinary corpus that unfolds how the intricacies and excesses of anxiety affect the behavior of men and women involved in intimate relationships, and how that behavior is exhibited in their aging years. While this discussion of Krapp's Last Tape (1960) and That Time (1976) will explore anxiety from a specifically male point of view, the works themselves compel various responses from readers of both sexes. Both pieces also may be of interest to those concerned with the rethinking of sexual roles in intimate relationships in light of an individual's response to the physical and emotional aspects of aging.     

Downsizing and Supersizing: How Changes in Product Attributes Influence Consumer Preferences

This paper investigates how changing the value of one attribute while keeping other attributes constant influences consumers' judgments and behaviors. We find that in two options, a proportionally equal change in one attribute tilts people's preference toward the option with higher (or lower) absolute magnitude of change when the change is desirable (or undesirable). We propose that when individuals face an attribute change, they use a deliberative and effortful response, known as System 2, to detect the change. However, they rely less on this system to evaluate the changed options. Instead, a more automatic System 1 processing influences their decision by making them apply the bigger‐is‐better heuristic (bigger‐is‐worse for an undesirable change) to prefer the option with the highest (lowest) absolute magnitude of change. Six studies demonstrate this phenomenon in both lab and real settings and support our hypothesis. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Problem of Simple Minds: Is There Anything It Is Like to Be a Honey Bee?

Philosophical Studies -     

Making Thinking Real Enough to Make It Better: Using Posters to Develop Skills for Constructing Disciplinary Arguments

How does one teach critical thinking, the procedures of an academic discipline, and the composition of plausible interpretations and arguments to students who are more facile with visual than with written modes of expression? How does one make real to students the construction of meaning in that unfamiliar epistemological space between brute fact and mere opinion? The “argument poster,” a pedagogical strategy that helps students translate their skills for critical thinking from a visual frame to a written frame, results in better quality historical essays and research papers.     

Consumers’ Response to an Advertisement Using Brand Popularity in a Foreign Market

Abstract : This research examined how domestic consumers respond to an advertisement using brand popularity in a foreign market. By using structural equation modeling, it shows that the consumers’ response can change as a function of three characteristics of brand popularity in a foreign market: (a) expertise of foreign consumers, (b) similarity between domestic consumers and foreign consumers, and (c) animosity to a foreign country. Meanwhile, the similarity effect is found to be stronger for high‐preference heterogeneity than low‐preference heterogeneity. This research documents the importance of understanding the underlying mechanism to determine the effects of brand popularity in a foreign market on brand attitude and purchase intention.     

"It Could Be Us!": Cognitive and Social Psychological Factors in UK National Lottery Play

This study examines the cognitive and social psychological factors underlying UK National Lottery play. A total of 384 respondents were asked about their own lottery playing behaviours, their knowledge of lottery odds and their beliefs about the role of skill, chance, luck and optimism in lottery play. Using hypothetical scenarios, respondents were also asked to rate the likelihood of winning the lottery jackpot (matching all six numbers) with number combinations reflecting different levels of apparent randomness, previous matches, near misses and prize size manipulations. Frequency of lottery play was found to be positively correlated with age, income, Instants scratchcard play, gambling on horse/greyhound racing, the football pools, and bingo as well as with beliefs about skill, luck and optimism. Frequency of lottery play was negatively correlated with general education and estimate of relative win likelihoods based on the perceived randomness of number combinations. Planned contrasts revealed that compared to individual (non‐syndicate) players, syndicate lottery players played more regularly and gambled more on the football pools. Results are discussed in the light of current cognitive theories surrounding the misperception of probability and their relation to lottery play and in the need for future models to recognise the social factors inherent in syndicate‐based lottery participation.     

It takes two to tango: Using the actor-partner interdependence model for studying the coach-athlete relationship

Research has repeatedly shown the importance of the relationship between a coach and an athlete. Despite these findings, we argue that the approaches used in previous research fail to sufficiently consider the dyadic and bidirectional nature of the coach-athlete relationship. Although the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) was already proposed as a useful methodology for investigating and understanding the coach-athlete relationship, its potential has been underexploited in sport psychology. We discuss the possibly misleading conclusions that can be drawn from studies with an individual rather than a dyadic perspective and we propose to closely examine the dyadic pattern that can be inferred from the APIM, rather than making a priori assumptions about it. Practical implementations of the APIM in user-friendly apps are envisaged, as are relevant extensions of the APIM that allow to answer more advanced research questions by using more complex designs.     

Be It Ever So Humble...: The Controversial Issue of Psychotherapy Groups in the Home Office Setting

Group leaders who have home offices may be disclosing more about their personal lives than they consciously intend. While the home office may be convenient and financially advantageous for the leader, this disclosure can be problematic for both the group therapist and group members. It may provide more information about the leader than some members want to know or are able to metabolize. And although poor boundary maintenance can occur in a professional office setting as well, the leakage in the home office is inevitable. The potential pitfalls seem to be at least threefold: over-stimulation, gaslighting, and the emperor's new clothes effect. These hazards exist independently of the leader's training, competence, or ethics. This paper examines the impact of the home office setting on group treatment. Leaders who practice from the home need to be ever-vigilant of untoward treatment reactions that are related to the setting itself. The article provides vignettes that illustrate the benefits and liabilities of the home office.     

Developmental Differences in Preferences for Using Color,Size, and Location Information to Disambiguate Hiding Places

We conducted four experiments to examine developmental differences in preferences for using color, size, and location information to disambiguate hiding places. Three- and 4-year-olds and adults described how to find a miniature mouse that was hidden in one of two highly similar small objects in a dollhouse. In Experiment 1, the hiding places could be disambiguated by either color or location. Three-year-olds preferred color to location whereas adults preferred location to color information. Four-year-olds showed no preferences. In Experiment 2, the hiding places could be disambiguated by either size or location. Four-year-olds preferred size to location information whereas adults preferred location to size information. Three-year-olds showed no preferences. In Experiment 3, the hiding places could be disambiguated by either color or size information. Adults preferred size to color information, but 3- and 4-year-olds showed no preference for either type of information. Experiment 4 revealed that when only location information was available for disambiguating the hiding places, 4-year-olds referred to disambiguating location information on a significantly greater percentage of trials than did 3-year-olds. Discussion focuses on the role of relational complexity and pragmatic knowledge in producing preferences for disambiguating information in spatial communication tasks.     

“We Must Be the Change We Want to See in the World”: Integrating Norms and Identities through Social Interaction

In this article, we propose a social psychological mechanism for the formation of new social change movements. Here, we argue that social change follows the emergence of shared injunctive social norms that define new collective identities, and we systematically spell out the nature of the processes through which this comes about. We propose that these norms and identities are created and negotiated through validating communication about a normative conflict; resulting in an identity‐norm nexus (INN), whereby people become the change they want to see in the world. We suggest that injunctive norms are routinely negotiated, validated, and integrated with shared identity in order to create the potential to effect change in the world. Norms and identities need not be integrated or connected in this way, but the power of social actors to form new social movements to bring about sociopolitical change will tend to be severely limited unless they can bring about the integration of identity and action.