Big Five facets' associations with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors

Climate change mandates us to understand why individuals do (not) behave pro-environmentally and personality traits are well suited for this purpose. Past research has mostly focused on how broad domain-level personality traits were associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. In two datasets (N = 501 and 287), we examined whether personality facets provided a more detailed picture of how personality traits were associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. It was found that some facets were the main drivers of domain-level associations. Furthermore, it was found that facets, collectively, predicted pro-environmental attitudes (r = .50 to .52) and behaviors (r = .29 to .42) in holdout datasets. This predictive ability was on par with the predictive ability of domains. Therefore, facets provided a greater understanding of how personality traits were associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. Furthermore, facets provided a similar predictive ability of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors to that of domains.     

Hindu Women,Destiny and Stridharma

Ideas about destiny —about how and why things occur and what they promise for the future —have rarely been discussed in relation to gender. By discussing the sociological and anthropological literature on karma and other sources of misfortune, andstridharma, I provide a context for examining the views of Hindu women on destiny, particularly those living in Britain. In addition to examining their references to a variety of spiritual forces which influence events and to their duties as daughters, wives and mothers, I consider the issues of resistance, intervention, agency and autonomy. It is my contention that when contemporary Hindu women speak about fate, karma, divine agency and freewill what they say can only be understood with reference to their dharma as women.     

Divided attention at retrieval disrupts knowing but not remembering

The view that remember and know responses can be explained within a dual-process framework has recently been questioned (e.g., Gardiner, Konstantinou, Karayianni, & Gregg, 2005). The aims of the present study were to investigate further discrepancies between remember/know (R/K) studies and dual-process models of recognition memory. In two experiments participants were required to make old/new and R/K decisions under full and divided attention conditions. Experiment 1 used a two-step R/K procedure and showed that attention during retrieval reduced overall recognition performance. Experiment 2 used a one-step R/K procedure and showed that dividing attention at retrieval only affected know responses, suggesting that knowing but not remembering relies on controlled retrieval processes. These findings and findings from recent research provide evidence that is inconsistent with the dual-process explanation for R/K research.     

Some effects of alcohol and eye movements on cross-race face learning

This study examines the impact of acute alcohol intoxication on visual scanning in cross-race face learning. The eye movements of a group of white British participants were recorded as they encoded a series of own-and different-race faces, under alcohol and placebo conditions. Intoxication reduced the rate and extent of visual scanning during face encoding, reorienting the focus of foveal attention away from the eyes and towards the nose. Differences in encoding eye movements also varied between own-and different-race face conditions as a function of alcohol. Fixations to both face types were less frequent and more lingering following intoxication, but in the placebo condition this was only the case for different-race faces. While reducing visual scanning, however, alcohol had no adverse effect on memory, only encoding restrictions associated with sober different-race face processing led to poorer recognition. These results support perceptual expertise accounts of own-race face processing, but suggest the adverse effects of alcohol on face learning published previously are not caused by foveal encoding restrictions. The implications of these findings for alcohol myopia theory are discussed.     

What factors underlie associative and categorical memory illusions? The roles of backward associative strength and interitem connectivity

Factors that affect categorical and associative false memory illusions were investigated in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, backward associative strength (BAS) from the list word to the critical lure and interitem connectivity were manipulated in Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) and category list types. For both recall and recognition tasks, the likelihood of producing DRM and category false memories was greater for lists with high BAS and low interitem connectivity. In Experiment 2, DRM and category lists with high BAS showed similar indirect priming effects in a word stem completion task. With low BAS, category lists, unlike DRM lists, showed no priming effect. We discuss the role of BAS, interitem connectivity, and associate-level differences in implicit and explicit measures of false memory production.     

Constructing measures with maximum reliability

The scoring of response vectors to give maximum test-retest correlation is investigated. Simple sufficiency arguments show that the form of the best scores is very restricted. A general method is given for finding the best scores, deriving the best scores for the normal factor model, and showing by calculation of several particular cases that for a standard model for binary response it is easy to approximate the best scores.