People Awakening: Collaborative Research to Develop Cultural Strategies for Prevention in Community Intervention

The consequences of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and suicide create immense health disparities among Alaska Native people. The People Awakening project is a long-term collaboration between Alaska Native (AN) communities and university researchers seeking to foster health equity through development of positive solutions to these disparities. These efforts initiated a research relationship that identified individual, family, and community protective factors from AUD and suicide. AN co-researchers next expressed interest in translating these findings into intervention. This led to development of a strengths-based community intervention that is the focus of the special issue. The intervention builds these protective factors to prevent AUD and suicide risk within AN youth, and their families and communities. This review provides a critical examination of existing literature and a brief history of work leading to the intervention research. These work efforts portray a shared commitment of university researchers and community members to function as co-researchers, and to conduct research in accord with local Yup’ik cultural values. This imperative allowed the team to navigate several tensions we locate in a convergence of historical and contemporary ecological contextual factors inherent in AN tribal communities with countervailing constraints imposed by Western science.     

Watching for gains and losses: The effects of motivational challenge and threat on attention allocation during a visual search task

This experiment tests predictions based on research and evidence around the biopsychosocial model (BPSM) that people in a challenge state have faster, more gain orientated search patterns than those in a threat state. Participants (n = 44) completed a motivated performance task involving the location of a target appearing in one of two search arrays: one associated with gaining points and the other associated with avoiding the loss of points. Midway through the task, participants received a false feedback prime about their performance invoking either challenge or threat. We found that participants receiving a challenge prime (high performance feedback) spent longer searching the gain array and made fewer fixations on the loss array. Those receiving a threat prime (low performance feedback) made fewer fixations on the gain array. These findings are in line with the BPSM and provide evidence that allocation of attention (measured using eye movement data) is related to challenge and threat.     

Disaggregating Job Satisfaction: Effects of Perceived Demands,Control, and Support

Purpose

Our purpose was to inductively examine how employees’ perceptions of stressor and resource work characteristics relate to nine distinct facets of job satisfaction, in accordance with the demand–control (–support) [JDC(S)] theory. Job satisfaction is a multidimensional construct composed of various facets that differ greatly from one other. However, most stress studies have examined job satisfaction at the global level. This may be problematic for managers looking to redesign the workplace to increase employee job satisfaction based on established recommendations from previous research.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Data were obtained from employees of a public sector human services organization that provides services to protect children from neglect and other forms of abuse (n = 343). A series of t tests for dependent correlations determined facet-level differences in satisfaction with demand and resource work characteristics.

Findings

We found different patterns of correlations across facets for all seven demand, control, and support workplace characteristics.

Implications

Those re-balancing types of demands, control, and support for workplace redesign should not presume consistent effects on all aspects of satisfaction with work. By doing so, expected positive outcomes may fail to materialize, perhaps to the detriment of workplace redesign as a whole in the minds of management. A more detailed approach to workplace redesign is recommended.

Originality/Value

This is the first study which adopts the JDC(S) framework to examine job satisfaction at the facet level. Our findings shed new light on how workplace characteristics relate to different aspects of satisfaction.     

Moving Forward Indirectly: Reanalyzing the validity of employment interviews with indirect range restriction methodology

This study provides updated estimates of the criterion‐related validity of employment interviews, incorporating indirect range restriction methodology. Using a final dataset of 92 coefficients (N = 7,389), we found corrected estimates by structural level of .20 (Level 1), .46 (Level 2), .71 (Level 3), and .70 (Level 4). The latter values are noticeably higher than in previous interview meta‐analyses where the assumption was made that all restriction was direct. These results highlight the importance of considering indirect range restriction in selection. However, we found a number of studies involving both indirect and direct restriction, which calls into question the viability of assuming all restriction is now indirect. We found preliminary empirical support for correction of one of these multiple restriction patterns, indirect then direct.     

AN AUGUSTINIAN PHILOSOPHER BETWEEN DUALISM AND MATERIALISM: ERNAN MCMULLIN ON HUMAN EMERGENCE

In claiming the independence of theology from science, Ernan McMullin nevertheless saw the danger of separating these disciplines on questions of mutual significance, as his accompanying article “Biology and the Theology of the Human” in this edition of Zygon shows. This paper analyzes McMullin's adoption of emergence as a qualified endorsement of a view that avoids the excesses of both dualism and materialism. I argue that McMullin's distinctive contribution is the conceptual clarification of emergence in the light of a precise understanding of matter, in light of Aristotelian metaphysics and Darwinian theory. As applied to human nature, McMullin retains an Augustinian outlook that sees spirit as emergent in the human body and which posits a credible biblical hermeneutic. I indicate briefly how McMullin's perspective could be fortified by a fuller natural theology.     

Debiasing by instruction: The case of belief bias

Abstract

The study is concerned with the question of whether robust biases in reasoning can be reduced or eliminated by verbal instruction in principles of reasoning. Three experiments are reported in which the effect of instructions upon the belief bias effect in syllogistic reasoning is investigated. Belief bias is most clearly marked by a tendency for subjects to accept invalid conclusions which are a priori believable. Experiment 1 attempted to replicate and extend an experiment reported by Newstead, Pollard, Evans and Allen (1992). In contrast with their experiment, it was found that belief bias was maintained despite the use of augmented instructions which emphasised the principle of logical necessity. Experiment 2 provided an exact replication of the augmented instructions condition of Newstead et al., including the presence of problems with belief-neutral conclusions. Once again, significant effects of conclusion believability were found. A third experiment examined the use of elaborated instructions which lacked specific reference to the notion of logical necessity. The use of these instructions significantly reduced the effects of belief on the reasoning observed.

Taking the current findings together with the experiment of Newstead et al., the overall conclusion is that elaborated instructions can reduce the belief bias effect in syllogistic reasoning, but not eliminate it. This conclusion is discussed with reference to (1) the practical implications for improving thinking and reasoning via verbal instruction and (2) the nature of the belief bias phenomenon.     

Reactions to Others' Selfish Actions in the Absence of Tangible Consequences

This research assessed the role of perceived selfishness in people's reactions to events without tangible consequences. In Experiment 1, participants were assigned to complete a boring task by another person who gave a selfish, legitimizing, or exculpatory explanation for the decision. However, half of the participants knew that the other's decision was irrelevant and that they would complete the task regardless of the person's decision. In a second experiment, participants were told that the decision was irrelevant either before or after learning that the other person assigned them to do the boring task. Both studies showed that participants who received a selfish explanation responded strongly to the other person whether or not the person's decision had tangible consequences for them.     

Studies in Substance Learning and Retention: XI. The Effect of Maturity Level on Verbatim and Summary Retention

(Abt, L. E., &; Bellak, L. Projective Psychology: Clinical Approaches to the Total Personality. New York: Knopf, 1950. Pp. 485.) Reviewed by Dorothy Tilden Spoerl.     

Are forward and backward recall the same? A dual-task study of digit recall

There is some debate surrounding the cognitive resources underlying backward digit recall. Some researchers consider it to differ from forward digit recall due to the involvement of executive control, while others suggest that backward recall involves visuospatial resources. Five experiments therefore investigated the role of executive-attentional and visuospatial resources in both forward and backward digit recall. In the first, participants completed visuospatial 0-back and 2-back tasks during the encoding of information to be remembered. The concurrent tasks did not differentially disrupt performance on backward digit recall, relative to forward digit recall. Experiment 2 shifted concurrent load to the recall phase instead and, in this case, revealed a larger effect of both tasks on backward recall, relative to forwards recall, suggesting that backward recall may draw on additional resources during the recall phase and that these resources are visuospatial in nature. Experiments 3 and 4 then further investigated the role of visual processes in forward and backward recall using dynamic visual noise (DVN). In Experiment 3, DVN was presented during encoding of information to be remembered and had no effect upon performance. However, in Experiment 4, it was presented during the recall phase, and the results provided evidence of a role for visual imagery in backward digit recall. These results were replicated in Experiment 5, in which the same list length was used for forward and backward recall tasks. The findings are discussed in terms of both theoretical and practical implications.