Measuring Attitudes in Test-Alien Cultures: When Illiteracy and Unfamiliarity Do Not Matter

This study reports the construction of an attitude scale called a "Shah attitude scale." This scale overcomes the problems of scale construction and attitude measurement in test-alien cultures peculiar to Western scales. The major problems with the use of these scales are the non-correspondence of the samples used in scale construction and attitude measurement, difficulty of their use with the illiterate and rural samples, unfamiliarity of their verbal character and the response modality. Our scale is simple to construct and can be easily used with every section of society. Its conceptualization and development is based upon the agreed upon bipolar definition of attitude and the ideas derived from well-known attitude scales. The scale is based upon trait adjectives and can be used easily in cross-cultural attitudinal studies.     

父母冲突、青少年的认知评价及其与青少年社会适应的关系

以446名小学五年级至初中二年级的学生为被试,采用问卷法,让被试报告父母冲突形式、内容,对父母冲突的认知评价,以及抑郁、焦虑、自尊、学习问题和不良行为,以探讨父母冲突形式和内容、青少年对冲突的评价与其社会适应的关系,并检验认知评价在父母冲突与青少年适应间的中介作用。结果发现：（1）男女生除在父母情绪冲突和自尊方面的报告有显著差异外,其余各个方面都没有显著差异;随年级升高,儿童知觉的父母冲突内容显著增多,抑郁情绪、学习问题显著增多,而自尊水平显著下降;（2）父母冲突的不同形式和内容,以及青少年对父母冲突的不同认知评价可以预测青少年不同方面的社会适应;（3）认知评价在父母冲突与青少年的内部适应中起中介作用,但在父母冲突与青少年的外部适应中不起中介作用。     

The Self- and Other-Blame Scale (SOBS). The background and presentation of a new instrument for measuring blame in families

This article presents an account of the development and reliability of an observational instrument to measure blame: the Self- and Other-Blame Scale (SOBS). Fifty-one eating disordered patients together with eighty of their relatives were interviewed using a semi-structured family interview. Videotapes were assessed by two independent raters. Inter-rater reliability was good for both dimensions of SOBS: self-blame (SB) and other-blame (OB). One of the aims in developing the instrument was to be able to explore the relationship between self- and other-blame and criticism. Preliminary data are presented showing the distribution of SOBS scores within families rated as high or low on Expressed Emotion (EE). High EE was associated with high levels of self-blame in the parents, but not in the patients. Fathers in high EE families were more blaming of the patient than those in Low EE families but this was not true for mothers' levels of daughter blaming.     

The greening of engineers: A cross-cultural experience

Experience with a group of mechanical engineering seniors at the University of Colorado led to an informal experiment with engineering students in India. An attempt was made to qualitatively gauge the students’ ability to appreciate a worldview different from the standard engineering worldview—that of a mechanical universe. Qualitative differences between organic and mechanical systems were used as a point of discussion. Both groups were found to exhibit distinct thought and behavior patterns which provide important clues for sensitizing engineers to environmental issues in future educational initiatives. Cross-cultural and global dimensions of these initiatives are discussed.     

Activation and integration of motor components in a short-term priming paradigm

The aim of the present research was to study the processes involved in knowledge emergence. In a short-term priming paradigm, participants had to categorize pictures of objects as either "kitchen objects" or "do-it-yourself tools". The primes and targets represented objects belonging to either the same semantic category or different categories (object category similarity), and their use involved gestures that were either similar or very different (gesture similarity). The condition with a SOA of 100ms revealed additive effects of motor similarity and object category similarity, whereas another condition with a SOA of 300ms showed an interaction between motor and category similarity. These results were interpreted in terms of the activation and integration processes involved in the emergence of mental representations.     

A note on monotone likelihood ratio of the total score variable in unidimensional item response theory

This note provides a direct, elementary proof of the fundamental result on monotone likelihood ratio of the total score variable in unidimensional item response theory (IRT). This result is very important for practical measurement in IRT, because it justifies the use of the total score variable to order participants on the latent trait. The proof relies on a basic inequality for elementary symmetric functions which is proved by means of few purely algebraic, straightforward transformations. In particular, flaws in a proof of this result by Huynh [(1994) . A new proof for monotone likelihood ratio for the sum of independent Bernoulli random variables. Psychometrika, 59, 77–79] are pointed out and corrected, and a natural generalization of the fundamental result to non‐linear (quasi‐ordered) latent trait spaces is presented. This may be useful for multidimensional IRT or knowledge space theory, in which the latent ‘ability’ spaces are partially ordered with respect to, for instance, coordinate‐wise vector‐ordering or set‐inclusion, respectively.     

A qualitative investigation of Muslim and Christian women's views of religion and feminism in their lives

This qualitative investigation explored a relatively understudied aspect of cultural diversity: feminism and religion in the lives of religiously diverse women. More specifically, structured interviews were used to investigate views of religion, women's issues, gender roles, culture, and feminism for a small group of Muslim and Christian women living in the United States. The data were analyzed using consensual qualitative research methods (Hill, Thompson, & Williams, 1997). Findings indicated a complex relationship between feminism, gender roles, culture, and religion for these women with the majority of the Muslim women reporting that their religion supports feminist principles and identifying themselves as feminist. Christian women were less willing to endorse the feminist label. Implications for multicultural feminist practice are discussed.     

Religion,Ethnicity, Culture,Way of Life: Jews,Muslims, and Multicultural Counseling

Jews and Muslims represent 2 unique cultural groups that have been relatively under‐examined by multicultural counseling scholars. In this article, the authors review the recent literature on Jews and Muslims, synthesize and discuss the commonalities across these 2 groups, provide some recommendations for counseling members of these populations, and offer suggestions for future research.     

Empathy deficits and trait emotional intelligence in psychopathy and Machiavellianism

This study investigated the relationships between psychopathy (primary and secondary), Machiavellianism, trait emotional intelligence and empathy, using an image task that required an appropriate empathic response to the emotional displays of others (happy, sad and neutral). Results indicated that primary psychopathy and Machiavellianism were positively associated with the experience of positive affect from sad stimuli, while secondary psychopathy and Machiavellianism were positively associated with the experience of negative affect in response to neutral stimuli, and the opposite pattern was found for trait emotional intelligence. Regressional analyses demonstrated that secondary psychopathy, Machiavellianism, trait emotional intelligence and state anxiety are important predictors when stimuli are ambiguous.     

How Scientific Is Scientific Essentialism?

Scientific essentialism holds that: (1) each scientific kind is associated with the same set of properties in every possible world; and (2) every individual member of a scientific kind belongs to that kind in every possible world in which it exists. Recently, Ellis (Scientific essentialism, 2001; The philosophy of nature 2002) has provided the most sustained defense of scientific essentialism, though he does not clearly distinguish these two claims. In this paper, I argue that both claims face a number of formidable difficulties. The necessities of scientific essentialism are not adequately distinguished from semantic necessities, they have not been shown to be necessities in the strictest sense, they must be relativized to context, and they must either be confined to a subset of scientific properties without warrant or their connection to causal powers must be revoked. Moreover, upon closer examination (1) turns out to be a trivial thesis that can be satisfied by non-kinds, and (2) is inapplicable to some of the most fundamental kinds in the basic sciences.