Examining Sex Differences in Altering Attitudes About Rape: A Test of the Elaboration Likelihood Model

This intervention sought to improve first-year college students' attitudes about rape. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) was used to examine men and women's attitude change processes. Both quantitative and qualitative methodologies were used to examine how men and women construed rape prevention messages. Results indicated numerous sex differences in the ways in which men and women experienced and changed during and after the rape prevention intervention. Women seemed to use more central-route attitude change processes and showed more lasting change from the intervention at 2-month follow-up, whereas men seemed to attend more to peripheral cues of the speaker and demonstrated more transient attitude change.     

EFFECTS OF TRANSMITTER TUNING ON ATTITUDE CHANGE PERSISTENCE:

Abstract— assiter, Petto, and Apple (this issue) replicated the effect of transmitter tuning on attitude change persistence (Boninger, Brock, Cook, Cruder, & Romer, 1990) and included an additional condition as the basis for an alternative explanation. Although their independent replication is an important contribution that provides significant empirical corroboration, a superficial rendering of the interrupted-task literature (Zeigarnik, 1927/1938) and ambiguity in the operationalization of the additional condition appear to weaken their proposed interruption-perseveration explanation. We also summarize ancillary data from our earlier work (Boninger et al., 1990) that shed further doubt on this alternative explanation.     

Justice, health care, and the elderly

Concern over rising health costs in the United States has led to an intensifying policy debate over health care for the elderly and a rethinking of questions on intergenerational justice and the claims of the aged on social resources. Major contributions to this debate have been made by Daniel Callahan in his Setting Limits (Simon & Schuster; 1987) and by Norman Daniels in his Am I My Parents' Keeper? (Oxford University Press; 1988). Brock reviews Callahan's and Daniels' work, identifying the central focus of both as the age-group problem of resource allocation. He sees Callahan as calling upon a communitarian political philosophy and Daniels as arguing from a tradition of political liberalism. While disagreeing in part with both authors, Brock identifies compatible elements in their arguments that contribute significantly to the public debate over health care and the aged.     

Rural Families Experiencing Homelessness: Demographics,Program Design,Outcome of High Barrier Transitional Housing and Rehabilitation Program

Journal of Child and Family Studies - To date most research on homelessness has centered on urban and metropolitan environments, with little data on the characteristics of rural families...     

Perceptual similarity in autism

People with autism have consistently been found to outperform controls on visuo-spatial tasks such as block design, embedded figures, and visual search tasks. Plaisted, O'Riordan, and others (Bonnel et al., 2003; O'Riordan & Plaisted, 2001; O'Riordan, Plaisted, Driver, & Baron-Cohen, 2001; Plaisted, O'Riordan, & Baron-Cohen, 1998a, 1998b) have suggested that these findings might be explained in terms of reduced perceptual similarity in autism, and that reduced perceptual similarity could also account for the difficulties that people with autism have in making generalizations to novel situations. In this study, high-functioning adults with autism and ability-matched controls performed a low-level categorization task designed to examine perceptual similarity. Results were analysed using standard statistical techniques and modelled using a quantitative model of categorization. This analysis revealed that participants with autism required reliably longer to learn the category structure than did the control group but, contrary to the predictions of the reduced perceptual similarity hypothesis, no evidence was found of more accurate performance by the participants with autism during the generalization stage. Our results suggest that when all participants are attending to the same attributes of an object in the visual domain, people with autism will not display signs of enhanced perceptual similarity.     

Time Theft in Organizations: The development of the Time Banditry Questionnaire

Time banditry has recently been introduced as a conceptually distinct construct in the counterproductive work behavior literature. An employee is engaged in time banditry if s/he pursues unsanctioned and/or unethical nonwork activities during work time. An analysis of the time banditry construct would be facilitated by the rigorous development of a measure of this construct. The purpose of this research was to develop and refine a multidimensional measure of time banditry. Items were generated through an extensive literature review and numerous workplace discussions with a diverse sample of employees. Through this process, we developed a 45‐item time banditry scale (Time Banditry Questionnaire; TBQ) and utilized it with a diverse sample. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the construct of time banditry is multidimensional, exhibiting three distinct factors (classic, technology, and social). The TBQ demonstrated an internal consistency reliability of .90. Implications for the use of the TBQ in future research and application in organizations are discussed. The most salient suggestion in this study is that time banditry is more closely related to situational variables and personality variables than it is related to demographic variables.     

In search of those boundary conditions that might influence the effectiveness of supportive supervision

Supportive supervision is doubtlessly beneficial in many instances in organizations. Paustian‐Underdahl, Shanock, Rogelberg, Scott, Justice, and Altman ( 2013 ) have examined the predictors of supportive supervision. We might suggest that they have underidentified those factors that impact the potential influence of supportive supervision and suggest a more comprehensive approach to this important variable.     

Normative Influences on Secondary Disturbance: The Role of Social Expectancies

A “new wave” within psychotherapy has introduced the concept of acceptance into people's emotional repertoires. Accepting unpleasant emotional states has been demonstrated as an important pathway towards reducing secondary disturbances and improving emotional and psychological functioning. What is often overlooked, however, is whether this move towards acceptance is reinforced within the social and cultural contexts in which people experience their emotional states. Our research has begun to explore the contribution that normative influences make to secondary disturbance, specifically the perception that feeling happy is a desired state, and that experiencing and expressing negative emotions is undesirable and unacceptable to others. We review evidence here that these perceived “social expectancies” are associated with increased negative emotionality and depression, and reduce well‐being. Furthermore, we highlight that the effects of social expectancies are more apparent in Australia than Japan, consistent with the view that a higher premium is placed on happiness within Australia. We also review experimental evidence that social messages that reinforce these social expectancies serve to increase secondary disturbances. The implications of taking a social perspective on emotion regulation and dysfunction, and specifically implications for promoting happiness and acceptance in the field, are discussed.