Christian Churches and Immigrant Support in Canada: An Organizational Ecology Perspective

Canada receives roughly 250,000 immigrants each year, and the government spends considerable resources on assisting them to settle and integrate into Canadian society through the agencies they support. Most of these new immigrants settle in Canada’s largest cities, where churches meet specific needs that extend beyond the capacities of government agencies. In smaller centers, churches cover a wide range of services because few government supports are available. Little is known about the work of churches in Canada in spite of their importance to immigrant settlement and integration. In this study, we examine the services offered to immigrants by Canadian Christian churches. We show how the service provision of Christian churches is constrained by other organizations and groups in their environment, in ways consonant with the organizational ecology framework. Specifically, churches service the needs of immigrants by adapting to specific niche needs and by filling in gaps left by other service providers.     

A Closer Look at the Yardstick: A New Discount Rate Measure with Precision and Range

In intertemporal choice research, choice tasks (i.e., choosing between $80 today and $100 in a year) are often used to elicit a discount rate. The discount rate derived from a choice task, however, is largely restricted by the granularities and ranges of the questions asked. We examined this restriction in three popular discount rate measurements using simulations and experiments, and we propose an alternative procedure (Three‐option Adaptive Discount rate measure (ToAD)), which is capable of measuring a wide range of discount rates (from approximately .035% to 350 000% annual percentage rate) with high precision using 10 questions, in under a minute. ToAD can be easily implemented in online surveys (i.e., Qualtrics). Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social enhancement of laughter: an experimental analysis of some companion variables.

Three experiments, investigate companion influences on humorous laughter and smiling. Boys and girls, aged 7 to 9 years, were played humorous recordings through headphones in dyadic and solitary conditions. Experiment I demonstrates that social facilitation effects in laughter and smiling reported in Chapman (1973) generalize to cases where a 2-year age/status difference exists between naturalistic coactors. In Experiments II and III companions were confederates, 2 years senior to subjects. They responded to directions relayed through headphones (coaction conditions) or a concealed speaker (audience conditions). It is shown in Experiment II that subjects' laughter, smiling, and looking are facilitated by increases in the laughter and smiling of coactors and, in Experiment III, that audiences are less effective in promoting high levels of responses. While increments in the coactor's looking enhance smiling and looking, corresponding increases in laughter are not statistically significant. Humor-ratings are associated with behavioral responses in Experiment II, but not Experiment III. Interaction data and results from subsidiary conditions are discussed.     

Dimensional separability or flexibility of attention? Age trends in perceiving configural stimuli

The hypothesis that perceptual development proceeds from less to greater dimensional separability was tested by giving a speeded classification task to first and fouth graders. In Experiment 1, children sorted line drawings of a cartoon figure into two piles according to his eyes (open or closed) or his mouth (smiling or frowning). First graders exhibited the pattern characteristic of integral dimensions: An interference effect was found when dimensions were combined orthogonally and a facilitation effect when dimensions were correlated, relative to a condition in which only one dimension varied. Fourth graders exhibited an optional separable pattern: There was facilitation in the correlated condition but no interference in the orthogonal condition. These results support the hypothesis that development proceeds toward greater flexibility of attention rather than simply toward increasing separability. A flexible field hypothesis of visual attention was suggested to explain how older children can exercise such optional separability. This hypothesis correctly predicted the asymmetrical relation between dimensions found in Experiments 2 and 3: For both first and fourth graders, the eyes of a cartoon figure (open or closed) and his location (right or left) were nonseparable when the eyes were relevant and separable (or optional separable) when location was relevant.     

Social facilitation of laughter in children

This experiment was designed primarily to show that laughter can be socially facilitated. Independent groups of 7-yr-old children listened on headphones to amusing material under three conditions: they were tested in isolation (alone condition), with a nonlistening companion (audience condition), or with another who also listened to the material (coaction condition). Pairs of children were of like sex. The companions from the audience condition listened on a later occasion. Total times spent laughing and smiling were highest in the coaction condition, and were higher in the audience condition than in the alone condition. The data provide some support for Zajonc's “mere presence” hypothesis. They are also discussed in relation to: (1) informational aspects of laughter; (2) the relationship between overt expressive responses and subjective ratings of funniness; (3) an operational definition of “mirth”; (4) sex differences in laughter and smiling.     

Eliciting children’s and adults’ accounts of road accidents

Psychological knowledge from eye-witness research is applied here to the particular problem of reporting road accidents. Thereby the paper highlights some of the assumptions in eye-witness research. The interface between that research and the reporting of road accidents is examined by reference to existing social psychological notions. These are notions about questioning and about hypothesis testing. The paper makes special reference to the questioning of child witnesses because problems therein are particularly acute.     

The impact of socially projected group composition on behavior in a commons dilemma: A self-attention perspective

Socially projected group compositions, based on subjects’ expectancies about the behavior of others and the number of subjects taking part on the resource use task, were indexed using Mullen’s Additive Other-Total Ratio (Mullen, 1987) and used to predict harvesting behavior in a commons dilemma. One-hundred forty-three males took part in a resource use task in groups ranging in size from two to six members. Just prior to harvesting trials, subjects indicated the number of those taking part that they expected to overharvest and to underharvest, and indicated to which of these groups they had assigned themselves. Results indicated that harvesting behavior varied as a function of the number of others expected to behave differently from self, and conformed to patterns predicted by Self-Attention Theory. With increases in the number of others expected to underharvest, indexing an increase in self-attention, subjects who indicated they would overharvest become more conservative in resource use. However, subjects who indicated they would underharvest did not significantly decrease harvest size with increases in the number of others expected to overharvest. These subjects were already harvesting at an optimal or sub-optimal rate, and therefore had no need to reduce the size of their harvests to match their behavior to standards stressing conservatism in resource use.