Climate action now: How to fuel a social movement

Our research develops a framework that explores how to fuel the climate movement by accelerating grassroots, community-based climate action. Drawing on insights from consumer psychology, our framework identifies the psychological mechanisms that encourage and motivate people, both individually and collectively, to take climate action, thereby contributing to our understanding of how to advance social action and propel a social movement. Our climate action framework builds on: (1) individuals we describe as climate upstanders who rise up to take climate action with like-minded others, and (2) communities of climate upstanders who engage in collective action aimed at addressing the climate crisis. Our framework expands the field of consumer psychology by redefining the role of consumers to include the practice of social action and broadening the study of consumers to include collective, community-based action. We call on consumer psychologists to research individual and collective consumer practices related to social action and contribute to making social good central to the study of consumer psychology.     

Family therapy and the notion of accountability: With reference to trends in individual psychotherapy

Family therapy both overseas and within Australia has seen a rapid rise in popularity and general acceptance as an important therapeutic intervention. Along with the growth in interest, however, has come an increased demand for accountability. The foundation stone for the accountability issue surrounds the questions of therapy efficacy. How effective is family therapy, and, indeed, if it is effective, what are the active elements or ingredients which facilitate positive client change? Three groups, in particular, have vested interests in questions relating to the effectiveness of family therapy: researchers, therapists, and consumers. Although both researchers and therapists, for a variety of reasons, have been concerned with the effectiveness of treatment for some time, it has only been relatively recently that there has been a concerted push from various sections of the consumer group, including administrators, legislators, and policy makers. The consumer group is now providing pressure on professionals as to what we have done, and are doing, to demonstrate that family therapy really “works.”     

Respect for autonomy and medical paternalism reconsidered

We offer a critique of one prominent understanding of the principle of respect for autonomy and of analyses of medical paternalism based on that understanding. Our main critique is that understanding respect for autonomy as respect for freedom from interference is mistaken because it is overly influenced by ‘four-alarm’ cases, because it fails to appreciate the full dimensions of legal self-determination (one of its main sources), because it conflates the research and therapeutic settings, and because it fails to appreciate themes of authority and power that have historically shaped the principle of respect for freedom from interference. We argue that respect for autonomy involves more than just freedom from interference and, on this basis, offer a critique of prevailing accounts of medical paternalism.     

Short-term haptic memory for three-dimensional objects

In 8 experiments college students felt 32 geometric objects and were tested in a signal-detection framework to same or distractor items. Retention intervals and intervening experiences were also manipulated following initial touching. In all instances performance was high, and there was no evidence of a decline in haptic sensitivity over the retention intervals employed. These surprising results were interpreted as consistent with the 1985 contention of Klatzky, Lederman, and Metzger that the haptic modality constitutes an expert system.     

College Students' Judgments of Verbal Sexual Harassment1

Most studies of sexual harassment focus on physical coercion or pressure for sexual favors. This research attempts to outline the factors involved in verbal sexual harassment, which is conceived of as a speech act similar to taboo language, with conversational “rules” and semantic categories that differentiate it from merely inappropriate language. One hundred thirty-seven college students rated 37 sexual remarks for degrees of sexual harassment and inappropriateness. Total harassment scores correlated with total appropriateness scores at r = .68; although harassment ratings were high, remarks were judged more inappropriate than harassing. Five harassment factors and six appropriateness factors emerged. Women rated harassment factors of euphemisms and obscenity as significantly more harassing, and appropriateness factors of objectification, belittling competency, and name calling as more inappropriate. We conclude that men, who are less likely to be targets of harassment, are more used to taboo language and “naming” games, and are reluctant to admit to harassment, even when remarks are deemed inappropriate. Practical implications for defining verbal sexual harassment are discussed.     

How are graphs read? An indication of sequence

Graphs are an extremely powerful communicative and analytical tool commonly used in both the behavioral sciences and computing (as well as many other fields). More than 2.2 trillion graphs are published annually, and these graphs are used to communicate a host of often very important information to readers. Yet despite the multitude of applications for which graphs are used, and despite the frequency of their use, little is known about how graphs communicate information or about the cognitive processes that readers use when they read and interpret the information presented within graphs. Insight into the answers to these questions can be obtained through the study of the techniques that people use to read graphs. This paper describes the research methodology and results of an empirical investigation into the viewing order in which readers choose to view the different components of graphs and into the length of time that readers spend studying each of these components.     

Wrapping services in an urban setting

Efforts to reform services for children and their families in Baltimore City have included providing Wraparound services to youth returned or diverted from out-of-state residential treatment. We briefly present the history and evolution of the system reform efforts in Baltimore City that were necessary to support the implementation of a Wraparound model of service delivery. The characteristics of the Wraparound service model is presented along with the referral pathway of the youth into the service system, the components of the service delivery system and an overview of step-down services and linkages utilized to transition the youth. Data are presented that demonstrate the level of community adjustment of a subset of the 121 youth served through the Wraparound model in contrast to the level of community adjustment achieved by nonequivalent comparison groups. We discuss the use of report card type of outcome measures, its user-friendly features, limitations, and the developmental steps needed to refine it further.     

The role of regression and range effects in determination of the power function for electric shock

A scale for the apparent intensity of electric shock applied to the forearm was derived from cross-modality matching functions relating noise level, number, and force of handgrip to both line length and shock. For each response mode, the effects of psychophysical regression were estimated from the line judgments and used to make adjustments in the corresponding shock judgments. For shocks ranging from (1.0 to 5.5 mA, combined estimates of subjective magnitude were found to grow as the 2.26 power of the stimulating current.     

The misperception of rotary motion

Two principles for predicting the relative frequency of illusory reversals of rotating plane objects were derived and tested empirically. Ten objects, variously’ combining valid and confounding depth cues, were used. Predictions based on the principles were confirmed in every case. The results are offered as an improved explanation of the Ames trapezoid illusion and other illusions of rotary motion.