Bioethical issues in biostatistical consulting: development of a survey

To develop a survey, the Bioethical Issues in Biostatistical Consulting Questionnaire, for investigating bioethical issues in analysis, a comprehensive literature review was conducted to specify areas of bioethics. Through a focus group study and the evaluation by 10 biostatisticians, the questionnaire was constructed. Validation must involve a panel of experts. Now, test-retest reliability and factor analysis should be conducted on a group of eligible subjects.     

Longer you play, the more hostile you feel: examination of first person shooter video games and aggression during video game play

This study investigated the effects of video game play on aggression. Using the General Aggression Model, as applied to video games by Anderson and Bushman, [2002] this study measured physiological arousal, state hostility, and how aggressively participants would respond to three hypothetical scenarios. In addition, this study measured each of these variables multiple times to gauge how aggression would change with increased video game play. Results showed a significant increase from baseline in hostility and aggression (based on two of the three story stems), which is consistent with the General Aggression Model. This study adds to the existing literature on video games and aggression by showing that increased play of a violent first person shooter video game can significantly increase aggression from baseline.     

Promoting Self‐Advocacy Among Minority Students in School Counseling

This article presents self‐advocacy competencies developed to promote the academic, career, and personal/social success of minority students. The authors discuss challenges faced by minority students in today's educational environment and review principles of self‐advocacy. Competencies for developing self‐advocacy awareness, knowledge, and skills are discussed along with school counseling strategies for promoting self‐advocacy among minority students.     

Gender and Perceptions of Danger

This study examined how gender affects evaluations of potentially dangerous situations, perceptions of risk, and advice given to a potential victim. Responses of 660 university students (68% female; 52% Anglo, 34% Hispanic) to a multipart questionnaire indicated that gender of the respondent, the potential aggressor, and the potential victim can all influence evaluations of danger, willingness to use a gun, beliefs about risk, and advice concerning how to behave in a dangerous situation. As hypothesized, responses reflected stereotypes of greater male aggressiveness, greater female fearfulness, and greater perceived danger for women than for men. Also as predicted, respondents perceived greater danger to others than to themselves and from strangers rather than from intimates.     

Decomposing a Sense of Superiority: The Differential Social Impact of Self-Regard and Regard for Others

The tendency to self-enhance has been related to a host of beneficial psychological outcomes (Taylor & Brown, 1988), although some negative social consequences have also been identified (Colvin et al., 1995, Paulhus, 1998). One operationalization of self-enhancement is derived by subtracting the rater's evaluations of others from his or her self-ratings to yield a measure of the rater's sense of superiority/inferiority, i.e., rater-derived self-enhancement. The present research assessed the psychological and social correlates of a person's sense of superiority in groups whose members worked on tasks together for 3 months. A sense of superiority was scored as a composite but also separated into its two components, self-regard and regard for others, to determine if these components of a sense of superiority have separate relationships to psychological and social processes. A sense of superiority evidenced the same self-rated psychological benefits as had been found in Western research, though it showed both positive and negative social outcomes, as assessed on an eight-factor measure of the target's personality rated by his or her other group members. Positive psychological characteristics and a stereotypically masculine reputation were associated with higher levels of self-regard; lower levels of self-rated Agreeableness, a stereotypically nonfeminine reputation, and lower liking were associated with lower levels of regard for others. Given their different functions, it is proposed that self-regard and regard for others be separated in future research and attention directed toward characterizing the behavioral profiles of those high and low in these two measures of basic personality orientation.     

Context-Specific Learning, Personality, and Birth Order

Most people believe that learning to get along (or not get along) with their siblings played an important role in shaping their personality, and that their position in the family—oldest, youngest, or in the middle—had lasting effects. Yet studies of birth order generally fail to support these beliefs. The apparent contradiction can be resolved by taking into account the context-specific nature of learned behavior. There is abundant evidence that people do not automatically transfer behavior from one context to another: They wait until they have evidence that what they learned in Context 1 will also be useful in Context 2. Because patterns of behavior acquired in the family of origin tend to be useless or inappropriate in other settings, birth order effects show up only in that context. Outside the family they grew up in, firstborns and later-borns are indistinguishable in personality.     

An inheritance of terror: postmemory and transgenerational transmission of trauma in second generation jews after the holocaust

Postmemory, as Hirsch (1997) has defined it, describes the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic experiences that preceded their births, but that were nevertheless transmitted as to seem to constitute memories of their own. Although subsequent research has created a more complete picture of the interactions between parents and children, Hirsch’s definition has clear bearing on how descendants have attempted to commemorate the prior generation’s ordeals through various means, some narrative, some visual, while still qualifying those modes as acts of transfer or the resonant after-effects of trauma. Focusing on the Holocaust, this article examines certain lines of communication between survivors and their children as mediums of transgenerational transmission of trauma through both theoretical and experiential models of identification. It also attempts to signify how parenting styles contribute to children’s maladaptive behaviors if no intervention is staged. Additionally, I conclude that while second generation Jews may suffer negatively from intrapsychic and interpersonal problems observable by clinicians, they can also learn to integrate and understand their heritage through personal and therapeutic expression linked to the larger cultural context.

     

The Ideational Foundations of Symbolic Ideology

Theories of symbolic ideology view it as an affective orientation untouched by ideational content. Drawing on Shalom Schwartz's theory of basic human values, we propose that four bedrock values—universalism, openness to change, conservation, and self-enhancement—shape symbolic ideology. We explore whether politically sophisticated and unsophisticated individuals ground symbolic ideological identities in cognitive values to a comparable degree. Using data from two nationally representative U.S. surveys, we find that universalism and conservation predict liberal-conservative attachments for people at all levels of sophistication. By contrast, openness to change and self-enhancement values appear to have little influence on symbolic ideology. The universalism and conservation effects hold controlling for multiple psychological and individual differences variables. These results suggest that ideational predispositions play a substantial role in shaping symbolic ideology.     

Gentle Nazarene or Failure?

This paper argues through three case studies that representations of Jesus by practitioners of other religious traditions, in this case Buddhists, are conditioned by historical and social factors. The first two cases, David Hewavitarne/Anagārika Dharmapāla (1864–1933) and Allan Bennett/Ananda Metteyya (1872–1923), demonstrate that negative experience of Christian theology and practice broadly resulted in the judgment that Jesus was a failure. The more conciliatory and exploratory approach of my third case study, convert to Buddhism Maurice O’Connell Walshe (1911–1998), illustrates the factors that have led to (1) socially engaged cooperation between Buddhists and Christians and (2) the respectful dialogue on Jesus and the Buddha in the 21st century.