Remembering the past and imagining the future: A role for nonvisual imagery in the everyday cognition of blind and sighted people

Past research has associated depression with memory biases pertaining to the frequency, duration, and specificity of past events. Associations have been proposed between both negative and positive memory biases and depression symptoms. However, research has not examined the occurrence of actual events over time in the study of memory bias. To address these limitations and investigate whether a negative or positive memory bias is associated with symptoms of depression, we collected weekly data on specific types of life events over a 4-year period from a sample of college students, and asked students to recall event frequency at the end of that period. Exaggerated recall of frequency for positive events but not other types of events was associated with depression symptoms, using both continuous and categorical measures. Moderator analyses indicated that these effects were evidenced primarily for memories involving the self and among individuals low in trait self-enhancement. The current study indicates that positive memory-frequency bias is an important type of memory bias associated with symptoms of depression. Results support the idea that the link between memory bias for positive event frequency and depressed mood arises out of a current-self vs past-self comparison.     

Orienting Under Load: Intrinsic Dynamics and Postural Affordances for Visual Perception

Orientation toward one's surroundings is necessary for prospective control of action, and constraints on orienting activity have consequences for animal survival. Physically coupled load is a constraint for humans wearing protective equipment (firefighters, soldiers, etc.). The consequences of load on postural affordances while transitioning to upright stance was used to quantify the impact of different soldier configurations. Eight participants established upright posture in 4 relevant load configurations (5.0 to 79.2 lb). Load affected the accessibility of optical information at a distance as evidenced by increasing downward head angles and reductions in postural coordination. Reductions in the variability of time to establish upright stance with load suggests a loss of functional adaptability. Load asymmetries played a significant role as the most asymmetric configuration (not the heaviest) had the most detrimental effect on postural affordances. Center of Pressure (CoP) dynamics reflected the consequences of asymmetric loading on postural regulation as greater power and fluctuations across frequencies were observed. Physically coupled load induces significant constraints on orienting activity, and load asymmetry contributes significantly to the detrimental effects of protective equipment on action-perception coupling during whole-body movements.     

Exposure to Unethical Career Events: Effects on Decision Making,Climate, and Socialization

An implicit goal of many interventions intended to enhance integrity is to minimize peoples' exposure to unethical events. The intent of the present effort was to examine if exposure to unethical practices in the course of one's work is related to ethical decision making. Accordingly, 248 doctoral students in the biological, health, and social sciences were asked to complete a field appropriate measure of ethical decision making. In addition, they were asked to complete measures examining the perceived acceptability of unethical events and a measure examining perceptions of ethical climate. When these criterion measures were correlated with a measure examining the frequency with which they had been exposed to unethical events in their day-to-day work, it was found that event exposure was strongly related to ethical decision making but less strongly related to climate perceptions and perceptions of event acceptability. However, these relationships were moderated by level of experience. The implications of these findings for practices intended to improve ethics are discussed.     

Environmental Influences on Ethical Decision Making: Climate and Environmental Predictors of Research Integrity

It is commonly held that early career experiences influence ethical behavior. One way early career experiences might operate is to influence the decisions people make when presented with problems that raise ethical concerns. To test this proposition, 102 first-year doctoral students were asked to complete a series of measures examining ethical decision making along with a series of measures examining environmental experiences and climate perceptions. Factoring of the environmental measure yielded five dimensions: professional leadership, poor coping, lack of rewards, limited competitive pressure, and poor career direction. Factoring of the climate inventory yielded four dimensions: equity, interpersonal conflict, occupational engagement, and work commitment. When these dimensions were used to predict performance on the ethical decision-making task, it was found that the environmental dimensions were better predictors than the climate dimensions. The implications of these findings for research on ethical conduct are discussed.     

A Sensemaking Approach to Ethics Training for Scientists: Preliminary Evidence of Training Effectiveness

In recent years, we have seen a new concern with ethics training for research and development professionals. Although ethics training has become more common, the effectiveness of the training being provided is open to question. In the present effort, a new ethics training course was developed that stresses the importance of the strategies people apply to make sense of ethical problems. The effectiveness of this training was assessed in a sample of 59 doctoral students working in the biological and social sciences using a pre–post design with follow-up and a series of ethical decision-making measures serving as the outcome variable. Results showed not only that this training led to sizable gains in ethical decision making but also that these gains were maintained over time. The implications of these findings for ethics training in the sciences are discussed.     

The Influence of Temporal Orientation and Affective Frame on Use of Ethical Decision-Making Strategies

This study examined the role of temporal orientation and affective frame in the execution of ethical decision-making strategies. In reflecting on a past experience or imagining a future experience, participants thought about experiences that they considered either positive or negative. The participants recorded their thinking about that experience by responding to several questions, and their responses were content-analyzed for the use of ethical decision-making strategies. The findings indicated that a future temporal orientation was associated with greater strategy use. Likewise, a positive affective frame was associated with greater strategy use. Future orientation may permit better strategy execution than a past orientation because it facilitates more objective, balanced contemplation of the reflected-upon situation and minimizes potential self-threat associated with past behavior. A positive affective frame likely improves strategy execution because it facilitates active analysis of the experience. Future directions and implications of these findings are discussed.     

Evaluations of White American versus Black American discrimination claimants' political views and prejudicial attitudes

Although White Americans experience less frequent and less severe forms of discrimination than ethnic minorities (Schmitt & Branscombe, 2002), White Americans may actually be more likely to claim discrimination compared to ethnic minorities (Goldman, 2001). The present research investigated evaluations of White and Black American discrimination claimants' political views and prejudicial attitudes. Across two studies, a White American target was evaluated as more politically conservative when claiming discrimination compared to a control condition. In contrast, a Black American target was evaluated as more politically liberal when claiming discrimination compared to a control condition. Both the White and Black American target were evaluated as more prejudiced against the outgroup when claiming discrimination; however the increase in prejudice evaluations was more pronounced for the White American target. The present research suggests that lay people make distinct inferences about the political views and prejudicial attitudes of White versus Black American discrimination claimants.     

The Semantics of Secrecy: Young Children's Classification of Secret Content

The authors explored whether young children can distinguish potential secrets from nonsecrets by their content, as can older children, adolescents, and adults. Ninety children, 4, 5, and 6 years old, rated the secrecy of items from an adult-validated list of personal information about an age- and gender-appropriate puppet. Two factors of the children's data corresponded to the adult categories of nonsecrets and secrets, and a third factor corresponded to surprises. All ages rated surprises as significantly more secret than nonsecret items; however, the surprise items contained linguistic cues to secrecy. A tendency to rate nonsecrets as secret decreased with age, but only the 6-year-olds rated secrets other than surprises as significantly more secret than nonsecrets. Thus, children acquire the implicit rules defining secret content from a somewhat later age than that reported for the cognitive or behavioral capacities for secrecy.     

Alterations in Rorschach's Experience Balance under Conditions of Food and Sleep Deprivation: A Construct Validation Study

Clinard, Marshall B. (Ed.), Anomie and Deviant Behavior: A Discussion and Critique. New York, Toronto, London: Collier-Macmillan, Ltd., 1964, Free Press of Glencoe, xii, pp. 324. Reviewed by Leon J. Whitsell     

Situating Moral Justification: Rethinking the Mission of Moral Epistemology

This is the first of two companion articles drawn from a larger project, provisionally entitled Undisciplining Moral Epistemology. The overall goal is to understand how moral claims may be rationally justified in a world characterized by cultural diversity and social inequality. To show why a new approach to moral justification is needed, it is argued that several currently influential philosophical accounts of moral justification lend themselves to rationalizing the moral claims of those with more social power. The present article explains how discourse ethics is flawed just in this way. The article begins by identifying several conditions of adequacy for assessing reasoning practices designed to achieve moral justification and shows that, when used in contexts of cultural diversity and social inequality, discourse ethics fails these conditions. It goes on to argue that the failure of discourse ethics is rooted in its reliance on a broader conception of moral epistemology that is invidiously idealized. It concludes by pointing to the need to rethink both the mission and the method of moral epistemology.