Living Space in an Urban Ghetto

In this paper I will outline the idea of human territoriality and then describe some territorial arrangements and behaviors in the households we have studied. The environment of people is prestructured socially and temporally. For two years our research team has been studying the prestructured living spaces and the territorial behavior of urban people in a central Bronx ghetto. We have conducted interviews in about 1800 households, photographically surveyed space layouts in 35, and videotaped space usage and territorial behavior intensively in six. In the main, our data is about Puerto Ricans and Afro-Americans; we have a little data about Italian-Americans, but the Jewish and old British American families have moved out of the East Tremont area.     

Dangers of Transpersonal Psychology: A Reply to Ken Wilber

This article is a reply to Ken Wilber's critique of Albert Ellis's “Fanatacism that may lead to a nuclear holocaust,” which outlines some of the dangers of transpersonal psychology and psychotherapy.     

COMMUNICATION FACTORS RELATED TO CLOSER INTERNATIONAL TIES

The question of what promotes closer ties between nations has long been central to the study of intercultural communication. This research develops and tests a model that specifies three factors drawn from social distance and systems perspectives that are posited to have an influence on the desire for closer ties between the U.S. and Mexico. Each of the factors, perceptions of homophily, shared interests, and threats, have previously been identified as occupying central positions in the development of international relationships. The sample used to test the model was drawn from eight elite occupational groups within Mexican urban centers (N = 800). The results were supportive of the model, with quite acceptable goodness of fit measures, with a high level of variance accounted for in the dependent variable, and with support for the paths between exogenous and endogenous variables as predicted in the model.     

Inverse association between dopaminergic neurotransmission and Iowa Gambling Task performance in pathological gamblers and healthy controls

Linnet, J., Møller, A., Peterson, E., Gjedde, A. & Doudet, D. (2011). Inverse association between dopaminergic neurotransmission and Iowa Gambling Task performance in pathological gamblers and healthy controls. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 52, 28–34. The dopamine system is believed to affect gambling behavior in pathological gambling. Particularly, dopamine release in the ventral striatum appears to affect decision‐making in the disorder. This study investigated dopamine release in the ventral striatum in relation to gambling performance on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) in 16 Pathological Gamblers (PG) and 14 Healthy Controls (HC). We used Positron Emission Tomography (PET) to measure the binding potential of [¹¹C] raclopride to dopamine D2/3 receptors during a baseline and gambling condition. We hypothesized that decreased raclopride binding potentials in the ventral striatum during gambling (indicating dopamine release) would be associated with higher IGT performance in Healthy Controls, but lower IGT performance in Pathological Gamblers. The results showed that Pathological Gamblers with dopamine release in the ventral striatum had significantly lower IGT performance than Healthy Controls. Furthermore, dopamine release was associated with significantly higher IGT performance in Healthy Controls and significantly lower IGT performance in Pathological Gamblers. The results suggest that dopamine release is involved both in adaptive and maladaptive decision‐making. These findings may contribute to a better understanding of dopaminergic dysfunctions in pathological gambling and substance related addictions.     

Directed Evolution

Though we humans are immensely more gifted than other animals, yet we are not the outcome of an inevitable selection of the 'fittest'. Nor on the other hand is our importance diminished by our evolutionary inheritance. Besides, we are already here! Faith in inevitable progress is a 'scientific', not a Christian, delusion. We realise that the universe has its own rules and complications which intrude on our lives and often thwart our choices. It is therefore legitimate to talk of chance, but we often fail to appreciate the real significance of this word. Chance is not a cause; in essence it refers to our own consciousness that we are immersed in circumstance, and it has no reality without our own purposiveness. Thus chance is not some blind and indifferent or even hostile cosmic mystery; it is the occasion of our own responses, and it even offers the opportunity of human growth. Just as we accept the laws (and dangers) of physics (e.g. gravitation), as the framework of our ordered existence, so also we may accept the surprises of chance without any despairing conclusion either from our latest researches in astronomy or from a fatal accident in the street.     

FACTORS AFFECTING PRE-DECISIONAL COMMUNICATION BEHAVIOR AFTER HELPING REQUESTS1

A field experiment was conducted to explore the relationship between two known determinants of helpfulness (cost of helping and dependency of other) and predecisional communication behavior. Male undergraduates were contacted by telephone and asked to volunteer for a survey study. The caller was either very dependent or less dependent on the subject for help. The survey was described as taking 3 hours (high cost), 1 hour (moderate cost), or 20 minutes (low cost). Following the request for aid, the information seeking and information giving behavior of the subject was coded. As anticipated, the greatest information giving was elicited from non-helpers, especially among subjects in the high cost-high dependency condition. Path analysis of the data indicated a causal sequence in which information giving mediated the effects of cost on decision to help. The findings were discussed in terms of Schwartz's (1975) model of normative behavior.