Sales Force Motivation Using Travel Incentives: Some Empirical Evidence

This study examines the use of travel incentives as motivators for a commission only life insurance sales force in the United Kingdom. A sample of 1,083 sales representatives reported that travel is a strong motivator and valued more highly than several other types of incentives.     

The Discipline of Do Easy

Do Easy is a discipline that seems similar to Zen Buddhism or Toaism, and yet has a flavor all its own. It was conceived through a poem written by Willaim S. Burroughs and brought into vivid monochrome through a YouTube video created by the avant garde filmmaker Gus Van Sant in 1978. Although Burroughs' poem and Van Sant's film are irreverent, humorous, and subversive, there is a deeply therapeutic quality to this approach, which mainstream psychology has sadly overlooked. If there is such a thing as spiritual behaviorism, this could be it.     

A Brief Group Intervention Using Video Games to Teach Sportsmanship Skills to Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Impaired social skills represent a fundamental deficit for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Despite the potential importance of “good sportsmanship,” this social skill has received relatively little attention in the literature. The current study utilized a Behavioral Skills Training (BST) approach to teach three sportsmanship skills (i.e., complimenting, turn taking, and being a good sport) during video game play (Wii Sports). Six children with ASD completed this study. Findings suggest BST can be used effectively to teach sportsmanship skills to children with ASD. The use of video-game technology as part of social skills intervention programs is also discussed.     

Authoritarianism and arranged marriage in Bangladesh and Korea

The relationships between authoritarianism and attitudes about arranged marriage were studied in Bangladesh and Korea. According to regression analyses (N = 417), authoritarianism was positively related to support for arranged marriages in closed-ended and open-ended responses. Authoritarianism was also negatively related to open-ended discussions about the importance of love in selecting a partner and in the importance of emotional connection in establishing a relationship. Replicating prior results from the US on women, authoritarianism was related to desires to marry individuals who were gender-typed, traditional, and with narrow interests. Despite some differences in patterns of relationships due to gender and country of origin, the findings support the general hypothesis that authoritarians are invested in maintaining the traditions of their culture.     

Negativity and outgroup biases in attitude formation and transfer

In an initial experiment, the behavior of one person had a stronger influence on implicit evaluations of another person from the same group when (a) the attitude was negative rather than positive and (b) the people were outgroup members rather than ingroup members. Explicitly, participants resisted these attitude transfer effects. In a second experiment, negative information formed less negative explicit attitudes when the target was Black than when the target was White, and participants were more vigilant not to transfer that negative attitude to a new Black person. Implicit attitudes, however, transferred to both Black and White targets. Positive information formed stronger positive explicit attitudes when the target was Black than when the target was White, and that evaluation transferred to another Black person both implicitly and explicitly. Even when deliberately resisting outgroup negativity in attitude formation and transfer, people appear unable to avoid it implicitly.     

Sterba on Affirmative Action,or, it Never was the bus,it was Us!

Professor Sterba argues for two interesting and provocative positions regarding affirmative action. First, affirmative action programs are still needed to ensure diversity in educational institutions of higher learning. Secondly, the proponents and opponents of affirmative action are not as far apart as they seem to think. To this end, he proposes a position that would give weight to race as a category for affirmative action that can withstand the challenges of affirmative action opponents while giving the needed support for affirmative action proponents. It is his contention that both sides can support arguments for diversity affirmative action. This paper raises concerns about the ability of arguments for racial diversity to resolve or bring together opponents and proponents of affirmative action. It is argued that the negative social climate, regarding the social and intellectual merits of black Americans, works against the acceptance of affirmative action programs. In sum, it is argued that Professor Sterba’s position continues to put the social onus of changing racial attitudes on blacks with little or no effort on the part of whites other than allowing blacks admittance to formerly segregated educational institutions to interact with white students.     

Personality and politics: introduction to the special issue

This special issue of Journal of Personality brings together 10 original articles addressing the intersection of personality and politics. Articles build on classic traditions in political psychology by presenting both idiographic and nomothetic work on the motivational, cognitive, ideological, attitudinal, and identity correlates of many different aspects of political behavior. This work is used to understand political activism and leadership as well as everyday political behavior. We hope this collection of articles will inspire our readers to explore new investigations in personality and political psychology.     

GLOBAL OBLIGATIONS AND THE AGENCY OBJECTION

Many authors hold that collectives, as well as individuals can be the subjects of obligations. Typically these authors have focussed on the obligations of highly structured groups, and (less often) of small, informal groups. One might wonder, however, whether there could also be collective obligations which fall on everyone – what I shall call ‘global collective obligations’. One reason for thinking that this is not possible has to do with considerations about agency: it seems as though an entity can only be the subject of obligations if it is an agent. In this paper, I try to show that the argument from agency is not a good reason for being sceptical about the existence of global collective obligations: it derives whatever plausibility it has from the idea that claims about obligation need to be addressable to some agent. My suggestion is that we should accept this principle about the addressability of obligations, but deny that the addressee of an obligation need be the subject of that obligation. The collective obligations of unstructured collections of individuals, including global collective obligations, meet the addressability requirement insofar as they require something of the individuals who make up the collective.