Judges', lay judges', and police officers' beliefs about factors affecting children's testimony about sexual abuse

The authors examined Swedish judges', lay judges', and police officers' beliefs about factors that may complicate or facilitate children's reports of sexual abuse. Participants (N = 562) rated potential complicating and facilitating factors and freely reported which criteria they considered important when assessing the reliability of child witnesses. The groups had similar opinions regarding which factors are complicating and facilitating. Furthermore, the groups tended to regard emotional factors as more complicating than cognitive factors. When freely reporting criteria that are important when assessing reliability, judges and police officers reported criteria pertaining mainly to the child, whereas lay judges reported mainly criteria pertaining mainly to the police interview. Results indicate that participants believe that children have the capacity to remember and report about abuse but are hindered in doing so by emotional factors. Results also suggest that police officers may underestimate their own influence on the reliability of children's reports.     

Impact of Terrorism, Insurgency, and Other Human-caused Catastrophes on Pivotal National Leaders’ Vision Statements

Vision statements articulated by seven pivotal national leaders before and after a catastrophe were examined for changes in moral reasoning stage, moral reasoning orientation, explanatory style, and rumination. Established two-stage structured content analysis methods were used and a perspective of shared leadership. Five leaders showed no significant change in moral reasoning stage but two showed a statistically significant reduction following overt attack on their homeland. After a catastrophe, six showed significant change in moral reasoning orientation, four showed less positive or negative explanatory style, and all seven showed high rumination. From an organizational systems perspective, an impact of human-caused catastrophe was adjustment of these four variables in pivotal national leaders’ vision statements as if they are systems levers.     

Own-other differences in the realism of some metacognitive judgments

The present study investigated differences in judgments of one's own and others' knowledge (the own-other difference). Consistent with the below-average effect (e.g., Kruger, 1999), our main results showed that the participants gave lower knowledge ratings of their own extent of knowledge than of another person's extent of knowledge (Experiment 1). Furthermore, lower and more realistic judgments were found when the participants judged their own as compared with when judging another person's overall accuracy (frequency judgments) of answering knowledge questions correctly (Experiment 1 and 2). On the basis of these results it is argued that judgmental anchoring may be important also in the context of indirect comparisons, and that previous conclusions of cross-cultural psychology regarding the above-average effect may be oversimplified.     

The approximation of one matrix by another of lower rank

The mathematical problem of approximating one matrix by another of lower rank is closely related to the fundamental postulate of factor-theory. When formulated as a least-squares problem, the normal equations cannot be immediately written down, since the elements of the approximate matrix are not independent of one another. The solution of the problem is simplified by first expressing the matrices in a canonic form. It is found that the problem always has a solution which is usually unique. Several conclusions can be drawn from the form of this solution.A hypothetical interpretation of the canonic components of a score matrix is discussed.     

Explanatory style and immunoglobulin A (IgA)

The construct of explanatory style has been related to numerous aspects of human psychology, including health. Our research has focused on the effects of various psychological variables on the immune system, in particular Immunoglobulin A (IgA). We had participants fill out the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ), the predominant measure of explanatory style, and assayed saliva samples for secretory IgA. No relationship was observed between overall ASQ score and IgA, or composite optimism score and IgA. However we observed significant negative correlations between both the composite pessimism score and IgA, as well as the hopelessness score and IgA. Pessimistic explanatory style may therefore be related to immune system deficits and poor health.     

Co-responsibility for research integrity

To enlarge the discussion of scientific responsibility for research integrity, this paper offers two historico-philosophical observations. First, in the broad history of ideas, modern ethics replaces social role responsibility with appeals to abstract principles; by contrast, discussions within the scientific community of responsibility for research integrity constitute a rediscovery of the continuing vitality of role responsibility. This is a rediscovery from which philosophy itself may benefit. Second, within the context of scientists' concerns, the idea of role responsibility has undergone significant evolution from "collective responsibility" to the notion of responsibility resting with a "trans-scientific community." Further challenges nevertheless remain in order to relate scientific role responsibility for scientific integrity to the relationship between science and society. To promote a notion of integrity not just in science but in the science-society relationship, it may be useful to think in terms of a "co-responsibility" for scientific integrity.