The Johns Hopkins University: Training center for social scientists

In 1878, Professor Benjamin Peirce of Harvard, president of the American Social Science Association, viewed the Johns Hopkins University as the headquarters for social science in the United States. With the guidance provided by Franklin B. Sanborn, secretary of the ASSA, the Hopkins initiated formal instruction in social science in 1888, with Amos G. Warner and Daniel C. Gilman as instructors. This article is concerned with the contributions the ASSA and the Hopkins made in developing a theory/practice model for education for the social sciences.     

Resisting Everything Except Temptation: Evidence and an Explanation for Domain‐specific Impulsivity

We propose a model of impulsivity that predicts both domain‐general and domain‐specific variance in behaviours that produce short‐term gratification at the expense of long‐term goals and standards. Specifically, we posit that domain‐general impulsivity is explained by domain‐general self‐control strategies and resources, whereas domain‐specific impulsivity is explained by how tempting individuals find various impulsive behaviours, and to a lesser extent, in perceptions of their long‐term harm. Using a novel self‐report measure, factor analyses produced six (non‐exhaustive) domains of impulsive behaviour (Studies 1–2): work, interpersonal relationships, drugs, food, exercise and finances. Domain‐general self‐control explained 40% of the variance in domain‐general impulsive behaviour between individuals, r_effect = .71. Domain‐specific temptation (r_effect = .83) and perceived harm (r_effect = ?.26) explained 40% and 2% of the unique within‐individual variance in impulsive behaviour, respectively (59% together). In Study 3, we recruited individuals in special interest groups (e.g. procrastinators) to confirm that individuals who are especially tempted by behaviours in their target domain are not likely to be more tempted in non‐target domains. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Seizing Perfume,Propped by Paradox

An odyssey from the terror of a bout with cancer to the recognition of some of the fear, as more primordial than the fear of separation and object loss, a constitutive given of our animal bodies, essential to survival and intrinsic to our insufficiency; to the cancer experience of terror becoming spiritual technology, a booster rocket catapulting the dis-eased body into a dreaded void paradoxically full of the mysterium tremendum of life where there is no body.     

Fear Associated With September 11 Television Coverage in Oklahoma City Bombing Survivors

This study explored television viewing of the September 11 attacks in 99 survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing and examined the relationships of event-related television viewing with concerns about safety and danger in survivors with and without bombing-related posttraumatic stress disorder. The number of hours of viewing September 11 television coverage was related to worry about personal and family danger and to increased checking on loved ones but not to September 11–related posttraumatic responses. Some bombing survivors discontinued September 11 media contact due to fear. The findings suggest the importance of monitoring television viewing in survivors of prior incidents.     

Choice Blindness and Preference Change: You Will Like This Paper Better If You (Believe You) Chose to Read It!

Choice blindness is the finding that participants both often fail to notice mismatches between their decisions and the outcome of their choice and, in addition, endorse the opposite of their chosen alternative. But do these preference reversals also carry over to future choices and ratings? To investigate this question, we gave participants the task of choosing which of a pair of faces they found most attractive. Unknown to them, we sometimes used a card trick to exchange one face for the other. Both decision theory and common sense strongly suggest that most people would easily notice such a radical change in the outcome of a choice. But that was not the case: no more than a third of the exchanges were detected by the participants. We also included a second round of choices using the same face pairs, and two stages of post‐choice attractiveness ratings of the faces. This way we were able to measure preference strength both as choice consistency and by looking at measures of rating differences between chosen and rejected options. We found that the initially rejected faces were chosen more frequently in the second choice, and the perceived attractiveness of these faces was increased even in uncoupled individual ratings at the end of the experiment. This result is discussed in relation to Chen and Risen's recent criticism of the Free Choice Paradigm, as it shows that choices can affect future preferences. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The psychological experiences of foster mothers of adolescent children

The present study explored the psychological experiences of foster mothers who were fostering adolescents abandoned by their biological parents and whose parents had passed away. A purposive sample of 20 foster mothers (age range 25 to 83 years) was informants. They completed semi-structured interviews on their experiences of providing care to foster children. Thematic analysis of the data revealed the following themes: structure of the support system, crisis management, relationships management, and resilience with spirituality as coping mechanisms. Foster parenting of adolescent children requires qualities of perseverance, love, humility, and faith in carers.