Reducing Implicit Prejudice

Implicit prejudices are social preferences that exist outside of conscious awareness or control. In this review, we summarize evidence for three mechanisms that influence the expression of implicit prejudice: associative change, contextual change, and change in control over implicit prejudice. We then review the evidence (or lack thereof) for answers to five open issues in implicit prejudice reduction research: (1) what shows effectiveness in real‐world application; (2) what doesn't work for implicit prejudice reduction; (3) what interventions produce long‐term changes in implicit prejudice; (4) measurement diversity in implicit prejudice reduction research; and (5) the relationship between implicit prejudice and behavior. Addressing these issues provides an agenda for clarifying the conditions and implications of reducing implicit prejudice.     

The problem of being and the question about God

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

The role of additional information in the compliance,satisfaction, psychological,and emotion responses of non-surgical patients with low back pain: An exploratory investigation

Abstract

Noncompliance and the psychological and emotional states of patients with low back pain are major concerns for health professionals. The current study evaluated whether amount of information available to patients enhanced compliance to a medical regimen and whether it reduced negative emotions in patients with low back pain. Forty-five orthopaedic non-surgical patients with low back pain were randomly assigned to one of three information presentation conditions: 1) Standard, 2) Pre-examination, and 3) Post-examination. Patients were also separated by compensation and noncompensation within each information group. Patients completed questionnaires at their initial visit and at their follow-up which evaluated their: levels of compliance to a prescribed treatment program, psychological, and emotional states. Results indicated that some patients benefitted from receiving additional information as the Pre-examination and Post-examination groups demonstrated superior comprehension and recall as well as higher levels of compliance to a physical therapy program. In addition, compensation patients complained of more negative psychological and emotional behaviors in comparison to noncompensation patients. Implications of the research and future research considerations were discussed.     

Using a Difficulty‐Anchored Rating Scale in Performing Angoff Ratings

While the Angoff (1971) is a commonly used cut score method, critics ( Berk, 1996; Impara & Plake, 1997 ) argue the Angoff places too‐high cognitive demands on raters. In response to criticisms of the Angoff, a number of modifications to the method have been proposed. Some suggested Angoff modifications include using an iterative rating process, presenting judges with normative data about item performance, revising the rating judgment into a Yes/No decision, assigning relative weights to dimensions within a test, and using item response theory in setting cut scores. In this study, subject matter expert raters were provided with a ‘difficulty anchored’ rating scale to use while making Angoff ratings; this scale can be viewed as a variation of the Angoff normative data modification. The rating scale presented test items having known p‐values as anchors, and served as a simple means of providing normative information to guide the Angoff rating process. Results are discussed regarding reliability of the mean Angoff rating (.73) and the correlation of mean Angoff ratings with item difficulty (observed r ranges from .65 to .73).     

中国祝圣主教也许是符合传统的

最近梵蒂冈和中国政府之间就祝圣五位新主教所产生的冲突,媒体普遍认为是世俗政权侵占教宗特权。西方评论家们通常认为,只有教宗享有任命主教的权力(见1月14日“美国天主教周报”,以下简称NCR)。然而,虽然中国祝圣主教可以完全认为是一种蔑视行为,但纵观教会历史会发现,任命主教问题,实际情况却要复杂得多。从历史上来讲,教宗拥有直接任命教区主教的权力还是后来的事。一方面,中国任命主教,发生在教廷与北京之间关系正常化期望值正升高的时刻,因而成为新闻。1951年,随着中国共产党政府的产生,上述关系就断绝了。据说,政府承认的天主教爱国…     

DO PEOPLE MAKE THE PLACE? AN EXAMINATION OF THE ATTRACTION-SELECTION-ATTRITION HYPOTHESIS

This study tests the hypotheses that (1) congruence between internal need states and external environments drives the organizational-choice process and (2) those attracted to particular organizations are more homogeneous than the applicant pool in general. Subjects were evaluated on 14 needs using the Jackson Personality Research Form. They then viewed two video-taped segments of simulated campus interviews to gain information about two distinct types of organizational reward systems. The interview segments entered the discussion in progress to avoid any reference to a particular job that might introduce an occupational confound. Subjects received job offers from both organizations and were asked to indicate which of the two organizations they found more attractive by accepting one of the offers. Analysis of variance results indicated only weak support for the congruency hypothesis. Differences were observed in nAch between the groups of subjects attracted to each organization. No differences were found for any of the other need strength measures. This suggests that the subjects attracted to the different organizations were substantially similar. Hierarchial factor analysis of the PRF has suggested a six-factor structure that appears consistent with the second-order factors from other respectable personality measures. This suggests that the second-order solution may be a parsimonious mapping of the personality domain and may therefore be more relevant in testing these hypotheses. The analysis was repeated using these dimensions. The results suggest that work force homogeneity may be more complex than originally considered. Implications for the homogeneity hypothesis are discussed, and suggestions for further study of this concept are offered.     

Spoken word recognition by eye

Spoken word recognition is thought to be achieved via competition in the mental lexicon between perceptually similar word forms. A review of the development and initial behavioral validations of computational models of visual spoken word recognition is presented, followed by a report of new empirical evidence. Specifically, a replication and extension of Mattys, Bernstein & Auer's (2002) study was conducted with 20 deaf participants who varied widely in speechreading ability. Participants visually identified isolated spoken words. Accuracy of visual spoken word recognition was influenced by the number of visually similar words in the lexicon and by the frequency of occurrence of the stimulus words. The results are consistent with the common view held within auditory word recognition that this task is accomplished via a process of activation and competition in which frequently occurring units are favored. Finally, future directions for visual spoken word recognition are discussed.     

A META-ANALYSIS OF THE CRITERION-RELATED VALIDITY OF ASSESSMENT CENTER DIMENSIONS

We used meta-analytic procedures to investigate the criterion-related validity of assessment center dimension ratings. By focusing on dimension-level information, we were able to assess the extent to which specific constructs account for the criterion-related validity of assessment centers. From a total of 34 articles that reported dimension-level validities, we collapsed 168 assessment center dimension labels into an overriding set of 6 dimensions: (a) consideration/awareness of others, (b) communication, (c) drive, (d) influencing others, (e) organizing and planning, and (f) problem solving. Based on this set of 6 dimensions, we extracted 258 independent data points. Results showed a range of estimated true criterion-related validities from .25 to .39. A regression-based composite consisting of 4 out of the 6 dimensions accounted for the criterion-related validity of assessment center ratings and explained more variance in performance (20%) than Gaugler, Rosenthal, Thornton, and Bentson (1987) were able to explain using the overall assessment center rating (14%).