Attachment,caregiving, and relationship functioning in couples: Effects of self and partner

We examined the links among attachment, caregiving, and relationship functioning in both dating (Study 1) and married couples (Study 2), assessing both partners' perspectives. We found that (1) men and women generally evidenced caregiving characteristics similar to those of their parent% especially their same-sex parent; (2) individuals who reported giving more care to their partner evidenced less fearful-avoidant attachment (Studies 1 and 2) and less preoccupation with attachment (Study 2); and (3) individuals' own attachment models and their partner's attachment models and caregiving jointly predicted relationship functioning, but individuals' own attachment models remained strong predictors even after the partner's attachment and caregiving were taken into account. The results suggest that caregiving learned in childhood attachment relationships may be carried forward into adult romantic relationships, and they support the idea that attachment and caregiving are central components of romantic love.     

Causation, Liability and Toxic Risk Exposure

ABSTRACT Persons injured as a result of exposure to toxic or carcinogenic substances are seldom able to recover damages from those who are responsible for the exposure. Tort law requires proof of causation, and causation is often unprovable because of long latency periods, because of the relative infrequency of the injuries and because many of the injuries among the exposed population are the result of other factors. A number of proposals for modifying the legal causation requirement to allow those who create hazardous risks to be held liable for the injuries that materialise are considered and found inadequate. A proposal to treat risk exposure itself as an injury for which compensation under private law is possible is also considered and ultimately found incoherent. The paper concludes by arguing for a public law solution, modelled on criminal law, but providing compensation for victims.     

When similars do not attract: Tests of a prediction from the self‐expansion model

This study tested the hypothesis from the self‐expansion model that the usual effect of greater attraction to a similar (vs. dissimilar) stranger will be reduced or reversed when a person is given information that a relationship would be likely to develop (i.e., that they would be very likely to get along) with the other person. The study employed the “bogus stranger” paradigm and focused on similarity/dissimilarity of interests in the context of attraction to a same‐gender other. The effect for similarity under conditions in which no information is given about relationship likelihood replicated the usual pattern of greater attraction to similars. However, as predicted, a significant similarity by information interaction demonstrated that this effect was significantly reduced (and slightly reversed) when participants had been given information that the partner will like self. In analyses for each gender separately, both of these effects were significant only for men, suggesting that the focus on interest similarity may have been less relevant for women.     

Order of Information Affects Clinical Judgment

Family practice physicians read a case vignette describing a patient with a history of lung cancer, a new transient neurological disturbance, and a normal computerized tomographic (CT) scan of the head. They then estimated the probabilities of two diagnoses: transient ischemic attack (TIA) and brain tumor. Probability estimates of TIA were lower if the history of lung cancer was presented at the end of the case rather than at the beginning. This recency effect was found for both more and less experienced physicians and whether subjects were prompted for a single end-of-sequence probability judgment or multiple step-by-step judgments after each piece of information. These results are inconsistent with Hogarth and Einhorn's (1992) belief-adjustment model, which predicts a recency effect for the step-by-step condition but a primacy effect for the end-of-sequence condition.