The Shooting-Room Paradox and Conditionalizing on Measurably Challenged Sets

Synthese - We provide a solution to the well-known “Shooting-Room” paradox, developed by John Leslie in connection with his Doomsday Argument. In the “Shooting-Room”...     

Cultural Similarity, Foreign Policy Actions, and Regime Perception: An Experimental Study of International Cues and Democratic Peace

This study examines previous explanations of democratic peace in light of sociocultural factors and foreign policy actions that influence public perceptions of another country. Two experiments assessed the effects of relevant sociocultural and foreign policy action cues on perception of the regime type of a target nation and on public approval of the use of force. The findings suggest that sociocultural cues affect regime perception. Moreover, perceived similarity of a target nation and foreign policy actions are significant determinants of the public approval of the use of force in addition to perceptions of regime type.     

Effects of Interspersing Additional Brief Math Problems on Student Performance and Perception of Math Assignments: Getting Students to Prefer to Do More Work

Three experiments were conducted to assess the effects of the interspersing procedure on students' mathematics performance, perceptions of mathematics assignments, and preference for mathematics assignments when more work was added. In Experiment I, college students worked computation problems from two assignments. The control assignment contained 15 three-digit by two-digit problems (3 × 2) and the experimental assignments contained 18 3 × 2 problems and 6 additional interspersed one-digit by one-digit problems (1 × 1). Students then rated the assignments and chose one for homework. Results showed significantly more students preferred (i.e., chose it for homework) the experimental assignment with the additional target (i.e., 3 × 2) and interspersed problems. Furthermore, significantly more students rated this experiment as requiring less effort and being less difficult. Moreover, students' mathematics performance was not affected by the procedure. Experiment II strengthened the internal validity by showing that students did not prefer the experimental assignment because it contained more target problems. Experiment III showed that the interspersing procedure was not powerful enough to extend findings beyond the 20% level (i.e., 40 and 60% more conditions). Results showed how the interspersing procedure could be used to encourage students to choose to do more target computation tasks. Discussion focuses on the applied value of the interspersing procedure and plausible causal mechanisms that may account for current and past findings related to student choice and interspersing brief tasks.     

Truth,authority and epistemological individualism in new age thought

Several problems are involved in studying the New Age, ranging from mapping its enormous diversity of beliefs and practices to locating it with reference to the conditions of modernity and postmodernity. With the latter issue in mind, the article is an analysis of understandings of truth and authority in the New Age. Against the assumption of some theorists, one of the central aims of the discussion is to demonstrate that, epistemologically speaking, the New Age is essentially a manifestation of modernity rather than postmodernity. Having established that, it is also shown that there are certain postmodern elements within the New Age network, as well as a superficial embracing of postmodernity and an emerging postmodern critique, all of which produce increasingly apparent tensions and confusion. The final section provides a critique of some of the principal problem areas.     

Catholic health care in the United States: American pluralism and religious meanings.

This essay chronicles the development of Catholic health care in the United States during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The author points to the religious pluralism and the respect for that pluralism as well as to the evangelical drive for conversion evident in Catholic hospitals. This essay is a phenomenological study of this commitment to pluralism and the evangelical impulse within the contexts of health care.     

Assessing the winning teams program of interactive satellite-based training

This research assessed an interactive satellite-based training program integrating interactive audiovisual experiences with face-to-face interactions. Key elements were content created by experts, high-quality video segments, satellite-based interaction, off-line interactions among teams of parents and caregivers, workshops, and team building exercises. For pragmatic reasons, it was necessary to develop brief assessment instruments concurrently with training. A large set of survey items were created from draft materials and reduced empirically through piloting to those with the best psychometric properties. To avoid the appearance of traditional testing, knowledge was assessed with Likert items. Surveys measured participant satisfaction, knowledge, attitudes, and the application and articulation of concepts. Participant satisfaction was high. Participants increased positive attitudes and learned appropriate vocabulary. Training was more effective than no training or watching videotapes. The program appears to represent a viable model of training that could successfully be applied to Internet technologies.     

Longitudinal assessment of the low-end specificity of maternal reports of depressive symptoms

Recent studies have raised concerns about the specificity of self-report measures of depression with respect to low-end scores. Because of the high face validity of measures such as the Beck Depression Inventory, it is suspected that extremely low scores may reflect individuals who may harbor depressive symptoms or other psychological abnormalities, yet are inclined to 'fake-good', or respond in a socially desirable manner on the BDI. The presence of this phenomenon was tested in a sample of adolescent mothers who were assessed at four time points over 8 years. It was hypothesized that low-scoring mothers (compared with medium- and high-scoring mothers) would have more negative outcomes on a variety of self-report and observational measures of parenting, as well as have children with more negative outcomes on adjustment and behavior. This study employed multiple assessments, multiple informants and multiple domains of functioning. The analyses controlled for the possible effects of social desirability and demographic differences between the depression groups. The hypotheses were not supported. The majority of analyses found no differences between the groups; where differences did exist, there were no indications that the low-scoring group was at a disadvantage to the medium or high scoring groups.     

Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness: Religiosity and Obsessiveness

Within the field of psychology of religion there has been increasing interest to test established theoretical perspectives with empirical data. One such initiative is concerned with examining theories derived from Freud and has examined the relationship between religiosity and obsessionality. This initiative has become increasingly complex, using a variety of different measures of both religiosity (attitude, practice and orientation) and obsessionality (personality traits and symptoms). The findings can be summarized: More positive religious attitude and greater frequency of religious practice are associated with higher scores on measures of obsessional personality traits, but not with scores on a measure of obsessional symptoms. Further, the limited data on the relationship between religious orientation and obsessionality is contradictory.