Music CD Purchase Decisions

The increasing ease and frequency of digital music piracy and the global nature of the music industry make it important to understand why consumers in different national markets purchase music CDs. Study 1 identified 5 factors underlying CD purchasing, noting these differences between British and Japanese participants. Study 2 investigated relationships between these 5 factors and individual-difference variables. Compliance was unrelated to scores on the Friendship factor. Experience seeking and scores on the Re-Experience the Music factor were correlated negatively. Scores on the Friendship factor and innovativeness were unrelated, although innovativeness and scores on the Need to Control and Be Involved With Music factor were positively associated with product, purchase decision, and consumption involvements. Implications for marketing and future research are discussed.     

An exploratory study on self‐evaluated aggression and androgens in women

Healthy, premenopausal women completed the Buss‐Perry Aggression Questionnaire. Venous blood samples were taken at the mid‐cycle phase of the menstrual cycle to determine plasma androgen levels. Total and free testosterone, 5α‐dihydrotestosterone, androstenedione, and dehydroepiandrosterone were assessed. Path analyses were aimed at finding out which of the five circulating hormones might best predict a latent aggression construct derived from the four subscales of the Aggression Questionnaire. A significant correlation was found between free testosterone and physical and verbal aggression subscales. In addition, the results demonstrate for the first time in women a significant link between 5α‐dihydrotestosterone and anger. Thus, both testosterone and 5α‐dihydrotestosterone may affect, by separate pathways, the basal regulation of aggression‐proneness in women. Aggr. Behav. 28:273–280, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Evaluating the Factor Structure and Internal Consistency Reliability of the Therapeutic Reactance Scale

Psychological reactance is an important construct for social scientists. The measure most often used to tap psychological reactance is the Therapeutic Reactance Scale (TRS; E. T. Dowd, C. R. Milne, & S. C. Wise, 1991). However, little research to date has examined the psychometric properties of the TRS. Eight hundred and eighty‐three individuals completed the TRS, and their responses were factor analyzed. Evidence indicates that psychological reactance is a multidimensional phenomenon. As currently written and interpreted however, the TRS is unable to accurately measure these multiple dimensions.     

Imagination links with schizotypal beliefs,not with creativity or learning

Imagination refers to creating mental representations of concepts, ideas, and sensations that are not contemporaneously perceived by the senses. Although it is key to human individuality, research on imagination is scarce. To address this gap, we developed here a new psychometric test to assess individual differences in imagination and explored the role of imagination for learning, creativity, and schizotypal beliefs. In a laboratory‐based (N = 180) and an online study (N = 128), we found that imagination is only weakly associated with learning achievement and creativity, accounting for 2–8% of the variance. By contrast, imagination accounted for 22.5% of the variance in schizotypal beliefs, suggesting overall that imagination may be more indicative of cognitive eccentricities rather than benefit the accumulation of knowledge or production of novel and useful ideas.     

Succeeding competently: towards an anti-luck condition for achievement

Achievements are among the things that make a life good. Assessing the plausibility of this intuitive claim requires an account of the nature of achievements. One necessary condition for achievement appears to be that the achieving agent acted competently, i.e. was not just lucky. I begin by critically assessing existing accounts of anti-luck conditions for achievements in both the ethics and epistemology literature. My own proposal is that a goal is reached competently (and thus an achievement), only if the actions of the would-be-achiever make success likely, and that this is the reason why she acts that way.     

Exploring Diurnal Cortisol Rhythms of Kindergarten Teachers in Kosovo and Ukraine

Teachers’ stress is a dynamic combination of the individual teacher's characteristics and characteristics of the classroom and school environment. To date, there are limited studies on teachers’ stress in the context of lower‐middle‐income countries (LMICs), where working conditions as well as general political and economic circumstances might pose a considerable threat for teachers’ well‐being. This study explores whether certain combinations of individual and environmental experiences of teachers in LMICs may result in stress, assessed as patterns of diurnal cortisol rhythm. Participants were kindergarten teachers in Kosovo and Ukraine, two LMICs in Europe. Latent Profile Analysis identified three subgroups of teachers that significantly differed on teachers’ education and experience. Preliminary results of Latent Growth Modeling suggested differences between profiles in baseline waking cortisol and patterns of diurnal decline. Teachers in the profile that was characterized by the longest experience working in the field but the lowest level of education showed blunted cortisol in the morning and a flatter slope; a pattern that could indicate a maladaptive cortisol response. Future directions for studying stress processes among teachers in LMICs and implications for policy and practice on how to support teacher well‐being in low‐resource contexts are discussed.     

Advertising: The contribution of applied cognitive psychology

This paper looks at the contribution of applied cognitive psychology primarily to the research on advertising. The first issue is to attempt to define and specify the unique contribution of applied, as opposed to “pure,” cognitive psychology to this research area. Next, the issue of the medium of message delivery is discussed. The importance of program involvement and mood impact on memory for advertisements is then reviewed. The major part of the review looks at the influence of humor, sex, violence, and unconventional sex roles in advertisements on their impact on viewer's memory. An attempt is made to document important and replicated findings in this area. Finally, some effort is made to consider future avenues of research.     

Advertisement–programme congruence in memory of sexual fragrance advertisements

The current study explored the effect of sexual content in advertisements and the programme–advertisement congruence on the memory of sexual and nonsexual advertisements. Seventy participants (41 females and 29 males) were randomly allocated to one of four conditions. They viewed either The Bachelorette (sexual programme) or I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! (nonsexual programme) with sexual or nonsexual fragrance advertisements placed within the programme. The order of the advertisements was counterbalanced across participants to control for order effects. Free and cued recall of the advertisements were assessed. As predicted, there was a main effect of advertisement type, with the sexual advertisements better recalled than the nonsexual advertisements. Contrary to our prediction, the sexual content of the programme did not have an effect on advertisement recall. There was an interaction between the advertisement type and programme type; sexual advertisements were remembered better when embedded within a sexual programme. Limitations of this study are considered.