Death and Dying in the Contemporary United States: What are the Psychological Implications of Anticipated Death?

Over the last 200 years, where, when and how Americans die has changed dramatically. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, most deaths occurred with little warning, typically due to short‐term infectious diseases. In the contemporary United States, death typically happens to older adults following a long‐term chronic illness. Most older adults die in institutions rather than at home, and many rely on life‐extending medical technologies. For most older Americans, it is more useful and accurate to conceptualize the end of life as an anticipated and protracted process (i.e., dying) rather than a discrete and sudden event (i.e., death). In this article, I summarize historical and epidemiologic patterns of death and dying, and describe the implications of these patterns for two psychological processes: preparations for one’s own end of life; and psychological adjustment to the death of a loved one.     

Who's Right About the Right? Comparing Competing Explanations of the Link Between White Evangelicals and Conservative Politics in the United States

Five competing explanations for why white evangelicals hold right‐of‐center political attitudes are examined using data from the 2000–2004 National Election Studies. Dependent variables include attitudes about abortion, homosexuality, immigration, national defense, and social spending. The five competing explanations accounting for conservative positions are: religiosity, moral standards traditionalism, gender and family ideology, class culture, and cultural geography. Moral standards traditionalism attenuated the evangelical effect on attitudes about abortion, homosexuality, and social spending. Religiosity and male‐dominant gender ideology attenuated the effect on abortion and homosexuality only. In a second set of models, which include members of all major religious groups, these three variables, together with low levels of education, were significantly associated with conservative attitudes. Moral standards traditionalism demonstrated the most consistent, and generally the strongest, effects across dependent variables.     

Stressed and Happy? Investigating the Relationship Between Happiness and Perceived Stress

Developing interventions to increase happiness is a major focus of the emerging field of positive psychology. Common beliefs about the need to reduce stress to obtain happiness suggest that stress management activities should be included in these interventions. However, the research on the relationship between positive and negative affect is equivocal. Theoretically, they are conceptualized as independent dimensions, but research has often found an inverse relationship between happiness and stress. In addition, the research generally attempts to assess stress objectively rather than in terms of the cognitive appraisal process. The current study examines the relationship between perceived stress and happiness among 100 college students to determine if the same inverse relationship exists. Linear correlations between happiness and perceived stress were significant indicating that there was an inverse relationship between these variables. The discussion focuses on several factors that might help to explain the observed relationship.     

Mass Killings in the United States from 2006 to 2013: Social Contagion or Random Clusters?

In line with previous research on suicide and social contagion, there has been widespread speculation that mass killings—which often involve suicidal offenders—are socially contagious for up to 14 days. This study tested these claims by making comparisons (i) between observed chronological clusters of mass killings in the United States from 2006 to 2013 and clusters in 500 simulations containing 116,000 randomly generated dates, and then (ii) between observed mass killings receiving varying levels of public attention. No evidence of short‐term contagion was found, although longer term copycat effects may exist. Further scholarly and policy implications are discussed.     

What Can We Learn from the Study of Mexican‐Origin Families in the United States?

Mexican‐origin families are a large and rapidly increasing subgroup of the U.S. population, but they remain underrepresented in family scholarship. This paper introduces a special section of four papers on Mexican‐origin families designed to contribute to the advancement of research on how cultural, family, and gender socialization processes unfold across key developmental periods and life transitions in this cultural context. Two longitudinal studies of Mexican‐origin families provided the data for these four papers: (a) The Juntos Project, an 8‐year longitudinal study of mothers, fathers, and adolescent sibling pairs in 246 Mexican‐origin families; and (b) The Supporting MAMI Project, a study following 204 adolescent mothers and their mother figures from the third trimester of pregnancy through their young children's 5th birthdays. In this introductory paper, we highlight four themes, including (a) differential acculturation and reciprocal socialization, (b) interdependence in families, (c) the intersection of culture and gender, and (d) methodological issues. We end with suggestions for future research.     

Are high levels of religiosity inconsistent with a high valuation of science? Evidence from the United States,China and Iran

We asked whether high levels of religiosity are inconsistent with a high valuation of science. We explored this possibility in three countries that diverge markedly in the relation between the state and religion. Parents in the United States (n = 126), China (n = 234) and Iran (n = 77) completed a survey about their personal and parental stance towards science. The relation between religiosity and the valuation of science varied sharply by country. In the U.S. sample, greater religiosity was associated with a lower valuation of science. A similar but weaker negative relation was found in the Chinese sample. Parents in the Iranian sample, by contrast, valued science highly, despite high levels of religiosity. Given the small size of our United States and Iranian samples, and the non-probabilistic nature of our samples in general, we caution readers not to generalise our findings beyond the current samples. Despite this caveat, these findings qualify the assumption that religiosity is inconsistent with the valuation of science and highlight the role of sociocultural context in shaping adults' perception of the relation between religion and science.     

Perceptions of social responsibilities in India and in the United States: moral imperatives or personal decisions?

Indian and American adults' and children's (N = 400) moral reasoning about hypothetical situations in which an agent failed to help someone experiencing either life-threatening, moderately serious, or minor need was compared. For 1/3 of Ss, the agent's relationship to the needy other was portrayed as that of parent; for another 1/3, as that of best friend; for the rest, as that of stranger. Indians tended to regard the failure to aid another in moral terms in all conditions. In contrast, Americans tended to view it in moral terms only in life-threatening cases or in cases of parents responding to the moderately serious needs of their children. The results imply that Indian culture forwards a broader and more stringent view of social responsibilities than does American culture. Discussion centers on theoretical implications of the various cultural, need, role, and developmental effects observed.     

Free the animals? Investigating attitudes toward animal testing in Britain and the United States

In this study, 185 British and 143 American undergraduates completed a battery of tests that measured attitudes toward animal testing and various individual difference variables. Attitudes toward animal testing factored into two interpretable factors: general attitudes toward animal testing, and animal welfare and conditions of testing. Overall, there was support for animal testing under the right conditions, although there was also concern for the welfare of animals and the conditions under which testing takes place. There were small but significant national difference on both factors (with Americans more positive about testing and less positive about animal welfare), and a significant sex difference on the first factor (women were more negative about testing). Correlation and regression analyses showed that there were few significant individual difference predictors of both factors. These results are discussed in relation to past and future work on attitudes toward animal testing.     

How special are the specialties? Workplace settings in counseling and clinical psychology in the United States

How special are the specialties? Although clinical and counseling psychology each have distinctive origins, past research suggests their potential convergence across time. In a survey of 5666 clinical and counseling psychologists, the similarities and differences between their workplace settings were examined during early-, mid-, and late-career phases to explore the distinctiveness of the two specialties. Overall, clinical and counseling psychologists reported markedly similar workplace settings. However, some significant differences remained; a greater proportion of counseling psychologists reported working in counseling centers, while a greater proportion of clinical psychologists reported working in medical settings. In addition, during late-career, substantially more counseling and clinical psychologists worked in independent practice contexts than in community mental health centers, medical settings, academia, or university counseling centers. Findings are discussed in relation to the ongoing distinctiveness of the two specialties and the implications of this for training and service in the field of professional psychology.     

Prior Divergence: Do Researchers and Participants Share the Same Prior Probability Distributions?

Do participants bring their own priors to an experiment? If so, do they share the same priors as the researchers who design the experiment? In this article, we examine the extent to which self‐generated priors conform to experimenters’ expectations by explicitly asking participants to indicate their own priors in estimating the probability of a variety of events. We find in Study 1 that despite being instructed to follow a uniform distribution, participants appear to have used their own priors, which deviated from the given instructions. Using subjects’ own priors allows us to account better for their responses rather than merely to test the accuracy of their estimates. Implications for the study of judgment and decision making are discussed.     

Is longing only for Germans? A cross-cultural comparison of Sehnsucht in Germany and the United States

Sehnsucht, the longing or yearning for ideal yet seemingly unreachable states of life, is a salient topic in German culture and has proven useful for understanding self-regulation across adulthood in a German sample (e.g., Scheibe, Freund, & Baltes, 2007). The current study tested whether findings for German samples could be generalized to the more individualistic and agentic U.S. American culture. Four samples of U.S. American and German participants (total N = 1,276) age 18 to 81 years reported and rated their 2 most important life longings and completed measures of subjective well-being and health. Measurement equivalence was established at the level of factor loadings for central life longing characteristics. German and U.S. American participants did not differ in self-reported ease of identifying personal life longings or their intensity. In comparison to Germans, however, U.S. Americans associated life longings less with utopian, unattainable states and reported less salience of the concept in everyday life. Associations with measures of adaptation suggest that life longings can be both functional and dysfunctional for development in both cultures.     

Does Positive Attitude Matter Only for Older Workers? Evidence from Simultaneous Estimation of Job Satisfaction,Wage and Positive Attitude in the United States

The current study tests two hypotheses. First, it claims that the worker’s job satisfaction is related not only to the objective variable wage rate, but also to the psychological variable positive attitude, and that all three variables are simultaneously related. Second, the study predicts that the psychological variable positive attitude as a covariate of job satisfaction matters more for matured adults who are already settled in their desired jobs than younger workers who may still be in search of their preferred employment. Using data on matured adults and younger adults from the United States and following a two-stage procedure the current study estimates job satisfaction, wage and positive attitude equations in a simultaneous equations framework. The study confirms the presence of this simultaneous relationship, and demonstrates that the job satisfaction of matured adults in fact is related to both objective (wage) and subjective (attitude) factors. For younger workers, however, wage, and not positive attitude, emerges as a significant covariate of their job satisfaction. Since positive attitude plays a significant role in the determination of their wages, it is related to their job satisfaction only indirectly through higher wages. Positive attitude thus benefits both older and younger workers thorough different channels. The study further presents interesting results on the covariates of wage and positive attitude which remain disguised when the simultaneous relationship among these three variables is ignored.     

Teachers’ attitudes toward homosexuality and the lesbian,gay, bisexual,and queer community in the United States

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) students are a substantial minority group within U.S. elementary, middle, and high schools. Many LGBQ students face harassment and discrimination, which can contribute to educational and psychological problems. Teachers play key roles in students’ school experiences, and their attitudes about homosexuality can influence their behavior toward LGBQ students. The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of teachers’ positive and negative LGBQ-related attitudes, potential changes in attitudes over time, and demographic and social variables that may be related to teachers’ attitudes. This study uses data from 305 pre-kindergarten through 12th grade teachers, collected in waves 2006–2014 of the General Social Survey. Results indicate that teachers’ attitudes toward homosexuality have become more favorable over time; however, many teachers still hold negative attitudes. Just under half of teachers exhibited at least one negative LGBQ-related attitude. Age, political conservativeness, religious attendance, and carryover of religious beliefs were significantly associated with negative LGBQ attitudes. Teachers with a fundamentalist religious orientation tended to have more negative attitudes about homosexuality than teachers with more progressive religious orientations. Negative attitudes were more often found among teachers of color, compared to White teachers, and teachers in the South, Midwest, and Mountain regions tended toward more negative attitudes than teachers in the Northeast and Pacific regions. Teachers have an ethical responsibility to see that all students, regardless of sexual orientation, receive a quality education. Education and training are needed to address problematic attitudes that may negatively affect LGBQ students.

     

Gazzaniga,Michael S., Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain

A review, with reflections, of Michael S. Gazzaniga's (2011) book, Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain. Gazzaniga, a distinguished neuroscientist, wishes to connect contemporary understandings of the functioning of the human brain to the proper functioning of the American courtroom. What effect, if any, should these current understandings (and current technologies) have on legal conceptions of personal responsibility, guilt, and punishment? If, as many neuroscientists hold, the functioning of the brain wholly determines the functioning of the mind, can people rightly be held responsible for their actions? Gazzaniga argues that they can.     

Sex-role stereotyping in the United States: Is it changing?

A checklist composed of 66 adjectives was used to measure sex-role stereotypes of college and senior high school students (15- to 21-year-olds) in the University of Kansas area. Three hypotheses were tested: (a) Traditional ways of describing men and women will be very much in evidence, and a strong agreement between the sexes concerning these attributes will exist. (b) Females will stereotype sex roles to a lesser degree than males. (c) Females will value feminine characteristics more positively than masculine characteristics, but males as usual will value masculine characteristics more positively than feminine characteristics. All the hypotheses were supported with a single exception: Male subjects did not differentially value masculine and feminine characteristics.     

Honor Crimes in the United States and Offenders’ Neutralization Techniques

Honor crimes are violent acts that are experienced among different religions and ethnicities. This type of offense can be justified, either before or after the crime, by the offender’s perceived need to protect honor-based values. This study used Sykes and Matza’s neutralization theory to explain the offender’s justification of honor crimes. We used data from the United States Extremist Crime Database, which has incident, victim, and perpetrator level indicators for the population of honor crimes in the United States (N = 16). Using open source search files for the cases, neutralizations and justifications provided by the offenders are presented.     

Psychosocial Variables as Predictors of Psychological Stress–Induced Ischemia in the Laboratory

This study examined ischemic reactivity to a psychological stress protocol and whether psychological variables could reliably classify individuals as ischemic reactors. Participants were 54 male Veterans Administration patients who had or were suspected of having CAD. Psychological inventories were administered prior to a psychological stress protocol consisting of a surgical video, the Stroop Color–Word task, an arithmetic task, and discussion of a stressful event. Cardiac functioning was evaluated using an ECG Holter monitor and 23.53% of participants were classified as reactors. Mean differences between reactors and nonreactors were found for State Anger, Health Locus of Control—Powerful Others (MHLC-PO), and Depression. State Anger and MHLC-PO emerged as significant predictors of reactor status in logistic regression analyses. Models based on individual scale items suggested three items could be used to achieve higher classification rates. Implications for revising screening procedures for determining risk and possible mechanisms underlying psychological stress–induced ischemia are discussed.     

Secularism,Fundamentalism, or Catholicism? The Religious Composition of the United States to 2043

We provide a cohort‐component projection of the religious composition of the United States, considering differences in fertility, migration, intergenerational religious transmission, and switching among 11 ethnoreligious groups. If fertility and migration trends continue, Hispanic Catholics will experience rapid growth and expand from 10 to 18 percent of the American population between 2003 and 2043. Protestants are projected to decrease from 47 to 39 percent over the same period, while Catholicism emerges as the largest religion among the youngest age cohorts. Liberal Protestants decline relative to other groups due to low fertility and losses from religious switching. Immigration drives growth among Hindus and Muslims, while low fertility and a mature age structure causes Jewish decline. The low fertility of secular Americans and the religiosity of immigrants provide a countervailing force to secularization, causing the nonreligious population share to peak before 2043.     

Wage Differentials in the United States: Does Religious Participation Matter?

Using data on non‐Hispanics from the 2005 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), this article examines the within‐religion association between religious participation and wages for mainline Protestants, conservative Protestants, and Catholics, the three major religious groups in the United States. While previous studies have examined this relationship for women only and using ordinary least squares (OLS), this article further analyzes gender differences and differences along the wage distribution using a quantile regression (QR) approach. The results indicate that high participation in religious services is associated with lower wages among mainline Protestant women and men, and among Catholic men. Among Catholic women, those who are not participating in religious activities earn higher wages relative to those who participate on a weekly basis. Furthermore, this advantage is more pronounced at high wages, as the QR estimates show. These results suggest the importance of defining religious participation in a manner that allows the detection of nonlinear effects. In addition, the findings speak to the importance of religion in the lives of individuals and may benefit policies dealing with male‐female wage differentials.