Wealth inequality and activism: Perceiving injustice galvanizes social change but perceptions depend on political ideologies

What motivates people to engage in activism against wealth inequality? The simple answer is perceiving injustice. However, the current work demonstrates that these perceptions depend on political ideologies. More specifically, for political liberals who frequently question the fairness of the economic system, messages simply describing the extent of the inequality (distributive injustice) are enough to motivate activism (Study 1). For political conservatives, who are inclined to believe that inequality results from fair procedures, messages must also detail how the system of economic forces is unjust (procedural injustice; Studies 2 and 3). Together, these studies suggest perceiving injustice can galvanize social change, but for conservatives, this means more than simply outlining the extent of the inequality.     

Mental Health Utilization Among Diverse Parenting Young Couples

Mental health issues often become apparent as adolescents emerge into young adulthood. The use of mental health services is low among adolescents and young adults, and use is particularly low among minorities. In this study, we examine mental health utilization among diverse young parenting couples. The sample consisted of 296 couples. We used the social–personal framework to examine personal, family, partner relationship, and environmental predictors for using mental health services. We used the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model to assess actor and partner effects on mental health utilization. We also examined moderator effects for gender and internalizing and externalizing behaviors. We found that being female, being White, higher income, more conduct problems, and less anxious romantic attachment predicted mental health utilization. Significant moderator effects included depression × gender, depression × medical insurance, and stress × Latino. Implications for community mental health practice include conducting mental health assessments during medical visits and systematic mental health follow‐up for individuals and couples with identified mental health and support needs. Future research should include married couples and the spouse’s influence on mental health use and examine relevant parenting factors that may also predict mental health utilization among couples.     

Measuring work styles: Towards an understanding of the dynamic components of the theory of work adjustment

Work styles are an important yet largely unexplored component of the theory of work adjustment (TWA), describing a dynamic component of how individuals maintain and adjust fit with their work environment. The active work style (AWS) scale is the first attempt to develop a specific self-report measure of work styles suitable for longitudinal research. Results from three studies support Dawis and Lofquist's (1984) proposed four factor structure, but these factors are related through a second-order factor describing a person's generalised level of work activity and effort across time. The AWS scale demonstrated good evidence for reliability and validity, and strong measurement invariance across time signifying its suitability for longitudinal research. In line with expectations, overall work style was positively related to conscientiousness and work engagement yet unrelated to stress. When controlling for these variables, AWS was positively related to demands–abilities fit, but not needs–supplies fit. Limitations and possibilities for future research are also discussed.     

Stereotype Directionality and Attractiveness Stereotyping: Is Beauty Good or is Ugly Bad?

Dion, Berscheid, and Walster (1972), in their seminal article, labeled the attribution of positive characteristics to attractive people the "beauty-is-good" stereotype. The stereotyping literature since then provides extensive evidence for the differential judgment and treatment of attractive versus unattractive people, but does not indicate whether it is an advantage to be attractive or a disadvantage to be unattractive. Two studies investigated the direction of attractiveness stereotyping by comparing judgments of positive and negative attributes for medium vs. low and medium vs. high attractive faces. Taken together, results for adults (Experiment 1) and children (Experiment 2) suggest that most often, unattractiveness is a disadvantage, consistent with negativity bias (e.g., Rozin & Royzman, 2001) but contrary to the "beauty-is-good" aphorism.     

Speakers gaze at objects while preparing intentionally inaccurate labels for them

When describing scenes, speakers gaze at objects while preparing their names (Z. M. Griffin & K. Bock, 2000). In this study, the authors investigated whether gazes to referents occurred in the absence of a correspondence between visual features and word meaning. Speakers gazed significantly longer at objects before intentionally labeling them inaccurately with the names of similar things (e.g., calling a horse a dog) than when labeling them accurately. This held for grammatical subjects and objects as well as agents and patients. Moreover, the time spent gazing at a referent before labeling it with a novel word or accurate name was similar and decreased as speakers gained experience using the novel word. These results suggest that visual attention in speaking may be directed toward referents in the absence of any association between their visual forms and the words used to talk about them.     

Psychopathy in adolescent female offenders: an item response theory analysis of the psychopathy checklist: youth version

The present study examined the applicability of the PCL:YV items to a sample of detained adolescent girls. Item response theory (IRT) was used to analyze test and item functioning of the PCL:YV. Examination of IRT trace lines indicated that the items most discriminating of the underlying construct of psychopathy included "callousness and a lack of empathy", "conning and manipulation", and "a grandiose sense of self-worth". Results from the analyses also demonstrated that the items least discriminating in this sample, or least useful for identifying psychopathy, included "poor anger control", "shallow affect", or engaging in a "serious violation of conditional release". Consistent with previous research (Cooke & Michie, 1997; Hare, 2003), interpersonal and affective components of psychopathy provided more information than behavioral features. Moreover, although previous research has also found affective features to provide the most information in past studies, it was interpersonal features of psychopathy in this case, followed by affective features, that provided greater levels of information. Implications of these results are discussed.     

A study of the lagged relationships among safety climate, safety motivation, safety behavior, and accidents at the individual and group levels

The authors measured perceptions of safety climate, motivation, and behavior at 2 time points and linked them to prior and subsequent levels of accidents over a 5-year period. A series of analyses examined the effects of top-down and bottom-up processes operating simultaneously over time. In terms of top-down effects, average levels of safety climate within groups at 1 point in time predicted subsequent changes in individual safety motivation. Individual safety motivation, in turn, was associated with subsequent changes in self-reported safety behavior. In terms of bottom-up effects, improvements in the average level of safety behavior within groups were associated with a subsequent reduction in accidents at the group level. The results contribute to an understanding of the factors influencing workplace safety and the levels and lags at which these effects operate.     

Influence of recollection and plausibility on age-related deficits in associative memory

Age-related declines in associative memory are proposed to result from deficits in older adults’ ability to recollect the past. The present experiment investigated the ability of older adults to compensate for deficits in recollecting the past by using plausibility. Participants studied a list of word pairs that shared category or rhyme relations. To measure the processes used during the recognition memory test, participants provided self-reported explanations for their memory judgements. Older adults relied primarily on plausibility, and the younger adults relied on both plausibility and recollection. Older adults experienced both positive and negative consequences as a result of using a knowledge-based strategy to compensate for their decreased ability to recollect the past. Specifically, they were just as capable as younger adults at recognising previously studied items and correctly rejecting distractors that were inconsistent with the rule provided at study. However, they falsely recognised distractors that were consistent with that rule more often than younger adults.