Domination et impérialisme en psychologie

We offer some arguments in support of the idea that the only goal the teaching and research system of the United States can serve is that of the global system to which it belongs, namely, domination. We show how, within the last few decades, French research in psychology - its issues, its institutions, its practices, its ethics - has undergone a process of Americanization that has turned it into a mainstream Western (and basically American) psychology. We point out some research trends that have contested this mainstream psychology, either because it appears too male chauvinist or liberal (opposition psychologies) or because it is grounded in the individualist and liberalist postulates of Western cultures (indigenous psychologies). Unfortunately, because dominant epistemology is governed by a principle of continuity, these contesting trends have not increased our scientific requirements; on the contrary, they have often led to anti-scientific approaches. It is still the task of psychology to break away from kwoledges and values of common sense.     

Collegiate contingencies

We discuss contemporary trends and developments that affect colleges and universities and describe several central contingencies that have given rise to, maintain, and operate in response to these trends and developments. We identify the differential impacts of these contingencies on faculty, students, and administrators in various types of higher education institutions. These contingencies are sources of conflict between and among these three groups within the academy that, we argue, cause significant instability in contemporary academe. We discuss prominent domains of this dis-equilibrium and propose several general interventions to address the sources of the instability.     

Is Religious Attendance Bottoming Out? An Examination of Current Trends Across Europe

The purpose of this research note is to summarize the available data on trends in religious attendance across 24 European countries to determine whether a base level has been reached in some countries. We focus on the changes observed in the period 1990–2012. After critically assessing the data quality of the recent European Social Survey (ESS) and European Values Study (EVS), we present four different methods of assessing current trends. First, we assess intercohort differentials, an indicator previously used extensively. We then look at trends in young people's rates of attendance, followed by trends of the postwar cohorts born in 1950–1981. We proceed to an appraisal of individual life‐course variations by looking at attendance as a child and young adult. A compilation of these indicators shows that they often do not fully agree on whether there is growth, decline, or stability. To generalize, the high‐attending Catholic countries are more likely to exhibit religious decline, whilst a few ex‐communist countries are seeing sustained growth. The most secular countries seem to be generally stabilizing in the 5–20 percent range for attendance rates of the postwar generations.     

Adolescents' theories about the development of their relationships with parents

Using a retrospective method, we assessed late adolescents' developmental theories about their affective relationships with their parents. Subjects used drawings and questionnaire ratings to portray their relationships with parents at five points between infancy and the present. From infancy to their current age, adolescents portrayed their relationships in two major ways. They perceived themselves as gaining in responsibility, dominance, independence, and similarity from infancy to the present, whereas they portrayed their parents as experiencing a decline on these dimensions. For variables indicating closeness and love, however, there was a striking discontinuity in these linear trends: Although adolescents perceived linear trends from infancy to adolescence, they depicted their current relationships as involving a great deal more love and closeness. They also portrayed their relationships with mothers and fathers somewhat differently. More responsibility was felt towards the mothers and they were portrayed as especially friendly, but subjects felt more similar to their fathers, whom they perceived as dominant. We interpreted the results as indicating that late adolescents constructed theories of the affective components of their relationships with their parents to serve the needs of separation while maintaining a close affective tie to the parents.     

Traditional Christian Belief and Belief in the Supernatural: Diverging Trends in the Netherlands Between 1979 and 2005?

Is there an ongoing decline in religious beliefs in the Netherlands? Using cross-sectional data from 1979 up to 2005, we focus on traditional Christian faith and belief in the supernatural; the literature suggests that they undergo diverging trends. We first describe these trends using the Social and Cultural Developments in the Netherlands surveys covering the 1979–2005 period. Explanations for the trends are formulated and tested using OLS regression models and a counterfactional simulation technique. Our findings indicate that during the 1979–2005 period both traditional Christian faith and belief in the supernatural declined, although the latter at a slower rate. Since church membership rates are continuously declining as well, belonging and believing still go hand in hand in the Netherlands. The most important explanation for both the decline in traditional Christian faith and the decline in belief in the supernatural is the slow but continuous replacement of older religious affiliated cohorts with younger nonaffiliated cohorts.     

Trends and developments in community and applied social psychology: JCASP 1991–2010

This paper looks back on the trends and developments in and of the Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology since its inception twenty years ago. We review to what extent the aims that were originally set for JCASP have been fulfilled. The trends in nationality of authors, themes of publications and their methodology are discussed. Possible implications of these trends and developments for JCASP and its future are pointed at. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Handling complex real-world data with two cognitive engineering tools: COGENT and MacSHAPA

The ultimate concern of cognitive engineering is how complex sociotechnical systems might be designed so that humans can work within them and control them safely and effectively. Because of this, large amounts of observational data analysis and knowledge elicitation are incorporated in cognitive engineering. At many points, these two methodologies coalesce. In this paper, we describe two complementary cognitive engineering software tools—MacSHAPA and COGENT—that are being developed alongside each other. MacSHAPA is designed for observational data analysis, and COGENT is designed for knowledge elicitation and cognitive engineering, but both sup-port requirements gathering. We first outline current trends in cognitive engineering that have given rise to the need for tools like MacSHAPA and COGENT. We then describe the two tools in more detail, and point to their similarities and differences. Finally, we show how the two tools are complementary, and how they can be used together in engineering psychology research.     

Electronic Journals in Religious Studies

SUMMARY

A number of factors have kept scholarly religious studies journals from having a significant presence on the Internet. This paper examines two projects that are addressing these barriers, the American Theological Library Association Serials project and the Association of Peer-Reviewed Electronic Journals in Religion, and offers theological librarians an overview of the advantages, disadvantages, issues, and trends associated with online journal delivery as they plan for the future.     

A Confirmatory Analysis of Item Reliability Trends (CAIRT): Differentiating True Score and Error Variance in the Analysis of Item Context Effects

Numerous studies have shown increasing item reliabilities as an effect of the item position in personality scales. Traditionally, these context effects are analyzed based on item-total correlations. This approach neglects that trends in item reliabilities can be caused either by an increase in true score variance or by a decrease in error variance. This article presents the Confirmatory Analysis of Item Reliability Trends (CAIRT) that allows estimating both trends separately within a structural equation modeling framework. Results of a simulation study prove the CAIRT method to provide reliable and independent parameter estimates; the power exceeds the analysis of item-total correlations. We present an empirical application to self- and peer ratings collected in an Internet-based experiment. Results show that reliability trends are caused by increasing true score variance in self-ratings and by decreasing error variance in peer ratings.     

Children's Understanding of the Instrumental Value of Products and Brands

Gelman and Echelbarger (2019—this issue) provide a valuable discussion about children's understanding of the inferred or nonobvious features of objects, which has implications for how children value products. We further this conversation by examining how children value products and brands as a means for meeting important goals, which we refer to as instrumental valuation. Specifically, we examine developmental trends in instrumental valuation for three goals—self‐concept development, self‐presentation, and happiness. Across these areas, we find that children place greater value on products and brands for meeting these goals as they grow older, particularly during late childhood and early adolescence. We conclude with a discussion of how age differences in instrumental valuation add to the general conversation about how children of different ages value objects.     

Prematurity at birth: trends,racial disparities,and epidemiology

While infant mortality rates have continued to decline in the U.S., low birth weight and preterm rates have dramatically increased. Although the combination of factors that underlies these trends has not been fully described, there is growing concern that an appreciable part of the rise in prematurity rates stems from efforts taken to improve the survival of these high-risk infants. While advancements in medical technology and practice, augmented by improvements in prenatal care use, may have adversely effected prematurity rates and played a role in broadening racial disparities in pregnancy outcomes, they have positively impacted infant survival. Although many risk factors for prematurity have been identified, there are presently few areas for effective prevention. Accordingly, there is little encouragement for a downturn in prematurity rates in the near future. The prospect of continuing growth in the annual number of surviving preterm infants in the U.S. highlights the need for early detection and treatment of developmental problems for these high-risk survivors, and emphasizes the importance of assuring that needed support services are available to these children and their families.     

The Changing Relationship Between Anatomic and Cognitive Explanation in the Neuropsychology of Language

Changing trends in the approach to neurolinguistics are reviewed. We suggest that these trends are marked by a distinct convergence between linguistic/cognitive and anatomic/physiological approaches to the study of aphasia. With respect to the former, we cite the refinement of analysis of language symptoms and the introduction of experimental methods that reveal real-time aspects of language processing. With respect to the latter, we cite the technical advances in static and dynamic brain imaging that have allowed the in vivo analysis of lesion sites in aphasic patients, and the identification of foci of metabolic activity during linguistic/cognitive tasks in normal brains. We cite recent imaging studies of category-specific lexical dissociations as examples of the productive convergence of anatomic and technological advances to illuminate a particularly challenging problem.     

Sibling loss, guilt and reparation: A case study

Psychoanalysis has shown that the death of a sibling is likely to have a long-standing impact on the character development of a surviving child. Among common adult manifestations are the identifi cation with the deceased sibling, repetitive self-punitive behaviors, and the development of masochistic trends. In treatment, these patients can become entrenched in a negative therapeutic reaction that compromises the outcome of their analysis. In this paper, the author discusses the analysis of a woman with a history of losses that included the loss of a sibling at an early age. A critical part of the treatment focused on helping this patient overcome a negative therapeutic reaction that emerged as she became aware of hostile and vengeful fantasies, not only as they related to her deceased brother but, more importantly, as they related to her parents.     

Nicknames as Sex-Role Stereotypes

Nicknames are powerful indicators of attitudes towards gender categories and because of their transient and optional nature, it has been argued that they are more likely to show a closer relationship to ongoing trends in the culture and society than other more fixed parts of the language E. B. Phillips (1990) [“Nicknames and Sex Role Stereotypes,” Sex Roles, Vol. 23, pp. 281–289]. This study reports on a survey of nickname usage among a group of South African adolescents from mixed socioeconomic backgrounds (approximately 25% other than white) in an attempt to explicate gender-linked trends in frequency of occurrence, usage and attitudes to such special names. It reveals that conventions regarding nickname coinage and usage are intimately connected to the gender of bearers and users, and that more males have nicknames and coin them than females; it also shows significant sex-linked differences in the linguistic sources and users of nicknames, and reveals a greater tendency for female nicknames to function as indicators of affection rather than for humorous or critical effect. It could be argued that these trends could be linked to the nurturing and nurtured role of females in society, and to the differences in social power generally between males and females.     

Context-sensitive heuristics in statistical reasoning

Previous work has shown that people use anchor-and-adjust heuristics to forecast future data points from previous ones in the same series. We report three experiments that show that they use different versions of this heuristic for different types of series. To forecast an untrended series, our subjects always took a weighted average of the long-term mean of the series and the last data point. In contrast, the way that they forecast a trended series depended on the serial dependences in it. When these were low, people forecast by adding a proportion of the last difference in the series to the last data point. When stronger serial dependences made this difference less similar to the next one, they used a version of the averaging heuristic that they employed for untrended series. This could take serial dependences into account and included a separate component for trend. These results suggest that people use a form of the heuristic that is well adapted to the nature of the series that they are forecasting. However, we also found that the size of their adjustments tended to be suboptimal. They overestimated the degree of serial dependence in the data but underestimated trends. This biased their forecasts.     

Gender Differences in Body Image Are Increasing

It has been speculated that the prevalence of eating disorders in women has risen because of increases in women's body dissatisfaction. We conducted a meta-analysis of gender differences in attractiveness and body image using 222 studies from the past 50 years. The analysis shows dramatic increases in the numbers of women among individuals who have poor body image. Moreover, these trends were found across multiple conceptualizations of body image, including self-judgments of physical attractiveness.     

Small‐Group Research in Social Psychology: Topics and Trends over Time

Research on small groups has a long history within social psychology. Unfortunately, interest in studying social processes within small groups has diminished over time despite predictions of its resurgence. Moreland, Hogg, and Hains (1994 ) computed an index of interest in small groups in the major social psychology journals between 1975 and 1993, finding an increase in the mid 1980s and early 1990s. This increase was due largely to the influence of European and social cognition approaches, which do not focus on intragroup processes. We replicated their procedures through 2006 and found that these trends have persisted. Over half of the group‐related research published from 1975 to 2006 involved intergroup relations (e.g., social identity, stereotyping), whereas other topic areas (i.e., group composition, structure, performance, conflict, and ecology) that involve intragroup processes were largely ignored. The implications of these trends for the fields of small groups and social psychology are discussed.     

Moral tribalism and its discontents: How intuitive theories of ethics shape consumers' deference to experts

We study the psychology at the intersection of two social trends. First, as markets become increasingly specialized, consumers must increasingly defer to outside experts to decide among complex products. Second, people divide themselves increasingly into moral tribes, defining themselves in terms of shared values with their group and often seeing these values as being objectively right or wrong. We tested how and why these tribalistic tendencies affect consumers' willingness to defer to experts. We find that consumers are indeed tribalistic in which experts they find convincing, preferring products advocated by experts who share their moral values (Study 1), with this effect generalizing across product categories (books and electronics) and measures (purchase intentions, information‐seeking, willingness‐to‐pay, product attitudes, and consequential choices). We also establish the mechanisms underlying these effects: because many consumers believe moral matters to be objective facts, experts who disagree with those values are seen as less competent and therefore less believable (Studies 2 and 3), with this effect strongest among consumers who are high in their belief in objective moral truth (Study 4). Overall, these studies seek not only to establish dynamics of tribalistic deference to experts but also to identify which consumers are more or less likely to fall prey to these tribalistic tendencies.     

Combination pharmacotherapy in alcoholism: a novel treatment approach

Combination pharmacotherapy has proven effective in a number of psychiatric disorders, including depression and schizophrenia. However, compared with other affective disorders, few studies have explored the use of combination therapy in alcoholism, and the majority have been limited to animal models. There is evidence to support a role for combination therapy in alcoholism. For example, several neurochemical systems, including the dopaminergic, serotonergic, and opioidergic, appear to affect alcohol intake. Studies in several different types of alcohol-preferring rats have suggested that coadministration of agents to target more than one of these systems simultaneously may produce beneficial effects on alcohol intake, while avoiding problematic effects, such as alterations in food or water intake. Data from preliminary clinical studies have shown trends toward combination therapy reducing alcohol intake in humans. While such findings are encouraging, they must be explored further in larger, randomized, double-blind trials.     

Effects of sociocultural factors on social trends in society

We aimed to determine the effect of gender, age, marital status, number of the people in the household, number of children, and regular reading habits on social trends by using the social trends scale for adults. Economically independent 290 adults were selected on a volunteer basis by family practitioners. Our findings indicate that violence avoidance and economic status were correlated to book reading and having children; and gender, regular reading, and having children have impact on economic status. We conclude that promoting regular reading in society, efforts on protecting the institution of marriage, and counseling services that assist toward normalization of the number of children and promoting knowledge and awareness of parenthood would be beneficial to the social trends in society.