Predicting change in self-reported and interviewer-assessed adult attachment: tests of the individual difference and life stress models of attachment change

The study tested the key assumption of the individual difference model of adult attachment change: that people who have experienced certain vulnerability factors will be prone to change attachment styles because they have developed unclear models of self and others that render their attachment models unstable. This model was compared to a life stress model, which states that change occurs as an adaptation to new, interpersonally relevant life circumstances. Changes in self-reported and interviewer-assessed attachment were examined among 94 young adults who were followed over 1 year. Analyses yielded support for the individual difference model for change in both self-reported and interviewer-assessed attachment. The life stress model was supported for change in interviewer-assessed attachment only. Implications for differential change processes for self-reported versus interviewer-assessed aspects of adult attachment are discussed.     

Hope as an Intellectual Virtue?

Hope is a ubiquitous feature of human experience, but there has been relatively little scholarship within contemporary analytic philosophy devoted to the systematic analysis of its nature and value. In the last decade, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in the study of hope and, in particular, its role in human agency. This scholarly attention reflects an ambivalence about hope's effects. While the possession of hope can have salutary consequences, it can also make the agent vulnerable to certain kinds of personal risk. The pervasiveness of hope is not a sign of its quality; only a well‐tuned hope can be a virtue. Recently, Nancy Snow has argued that hope can be an intellectual virtue. Framing her account as a contribution to regulative epistemology, she contends that the intellectual virtue of hope can (i) motivate the pursuit of important epistemic ends, (ii) create dispositions that enable the successful pursuit of these aims, and (iii) generate a method for enduring intellectual projects. In this paper, I provide a critical appraisal of Snow's account of hope as an intellectual virtue. One important implication of this critique is that hope can function as an intellectual virtue only to the extent that it has benefitted from the correcting and perfecting influence of other cognitive excellences.     

The influence of televised models on toy preference in children

Eighteen boys and 18 girls aged 4–6 years viewed one of three videotapes in which fantasy characters used culturally stereotyped arguments to assign masculinity, femininity, or sex-role neutrality to a standard set of sex-neutral toys. After viewing the videotape, subjects were observed for 10 minutes in free play with the test toys and with a less attractive set of comparison toys which were not shown. The videotaped portrayal of sex appropriateness significantly affected toy choice. Children of both sexes spent more time playing with the test toys when they were identified as sex appropriate than with the comparison toys. When the test toys were identified as inappropriate for their sex, however, children spent more time playing with the less desirable comparison toys. The implications of these findings were discussed in light of media protrayal of male and female models.