Compliance in crisis: Concern,trust and distrustful complacency in the COVID-19 pandemic

Two studies tested a distrustful complacency hypothesis, according to which either concern or political trust would be enough to sustain law-abiding attitudes and compliance with health-protective policies during the COVID-19 pandemic; but the absence of both concern and trust would result in markedly lower support and compliance. Study 1 supported this hypothesis with NatCen nationally representative sample of Great Britain (N = 2413; weighted regression analyses), focussing on law-abiding attitudes. Study 2 (preregistered) replicated these findings with a representative sample (N = 1523) investigating support for COVID-19 policies and compliant behaviour. Participants who were less concerned about the consequences of the pandemic (for themselves and for others) and simultaneously less trustful of the government expressed weaker law-abiding attitudes and reported less compliance with COVID-19 restrictions. These findings have implications for policy and public health strategies in time of crisis.     

Subvocalization rate versus other predictors of the memory span

Two experiments were performed to determine how accurately the immediate memory span may be predicted from the subject's subvocalization rate, as compared with other subject and stimulus variables. In the first, span and free-recall measures were obtained for 24 subjects, each tested with four types of spoken material (nonsense syllables, random words, fourth-order approximations to English, and normal prose). Silent subvocalization rate, whispered subvocalization rate, speaking rate, and silent reading rate were also measured for each subject. The span (3.9-14 items) showed the highest zero-order correlation with silent subvocalization rate: r = .80. Multiple regression analysis confirmed this as the span's best predictor, partial r = .31. Similar results were found for free-recall scores. In Exp. 2 the digit span was correlated against measures of age, intelligence, subvocalization rate, perceptual speed, and memory search rate, for 40 subjects aged 7 to 17 yr. The best zero-order predictor was age (.62), followed by subvocalization rate (.57) and intelligence (.39). Multiple regression analysis indicated that the span was best predicted by age, partial r = .37, and subvocalization rate, partial r = .29. The span appears more closely related to subjects' internal speech rate than to other cognitive functions.     

Father-daughter incest families: A theoretical perspective from balance theory and GST

This paper focuses on a theoretical explanation of how marriages adjust and remain intact in father/daughter incest families. It uses concepts of Balance Theory and General Systems Theory to outline a vascillating balance that occurs between fathers-mother-daughters in incest families. Three groups of Incest, Oppositional, and Nonclinical family units were studied using the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB) circumplex model. The study found support for the use of Balance Theory and the systems principle of homeostasis as a way to understand the interactional dynamics in incest families. Therapeutic interventions are suggested.Curtis A. Levang has spent more than 10 years working with adult offenders at Hennepin County Adult Corrections in Plymouth, Minnesota. He also is in private practice, working with individuals, couples, groups, and families at Passages Counseling Center.     

Group Identity and Readiness to Change Unemployment Status

The authors assessed the degree to which unemployed individuals identified with an unemployed “in‐group” and the subsequent impact on readiness to change their unemployed status. Participants from 2 Australian employment agencies completed the Group Identification Scale and the Lam Assessment on Stages of Employment Readiness measure. Findings suggest that the extent of family unemployment affects unemployed in‐group identification and predicts readiness to change unemployed status. Duration of unemployment was negatively correlated with readiness to change. Results suggest that unemployed individuals form an in‐group. Interventions to assist unemployed individuals to return to the workforce should take this into account for effectiveness to be maximized.     

Family involvement and empowerment in mental health service provision for children with emotional and behavioral disorders

Involvement of families is a critical component in effective systems of care for children with disabilities and their families. We investigated the sociodemographic correlates of family involvement in mental health services for children who have emotional and behavioral disorders. Further, we investigated the relationship between family involvement and family empowerment. The Family Involvement Scale-Family Version was used to measure involvement of families in the provision of mental services for their children and the Family Empowerment Scale was used to measure pempowerment in families with children who have emotional and behavioral disorders. In additions, demographic data concerming family composition, race, education, incone, membership in a parent support group, and the mental health status of the children were also collected. The results showed that mothers, as well as respondents with less formal education, reported greater involvement in services for their children than fathers and those who were more educated. Further, the knowledge subscale of empowerment was significantly correlated with all, subscales of family involvement and personal empowerment was significantly correlated with the treatment subscale of family involvement.     

Judgments About Sexism: A Policy Capturing Approach

Different definitions of sexism have been usedby different experimenters and little attention has beengiven to the possibility that participants' definitionsof sexism might vary across individuals and across situations, just as the definitions ofinvestigators vary. Judgments about sexism areinextricably based on individual perceptions, values,and beliefs. It would seem reasonable, therefore toexamine individual conceptions of what constitutessexism. A total of 95 primarily middle-class Caucasianparticipants (68 females, 27 males) participated inthree studies investigating what information people use in deciding whether or not a male actor issexist. Six specific categories of information (or cues)were examined: (1) comments (or lack thereof) by theactor on a female target's physical appearance, (2) unwanted or inappropriate physical contact(or lack thereof), (3) assumptions (or lack thereof)about the target's work, personality, etc., based on hergender, (4) the target being interrupted (or not) by the actor, (5) an apparent powerdifferential (or lack thereof) between the actor and thetarget, and (6) assumptions by the actor aboutappropriate gender role behaviors. A policy capturingmethodology was employed in which three different sets ofscenarios, each describing a number of interactions(called profiles) between a target and an actor, werepresented to male and female participants who rated the degree of sexism exhibited by the actor ineach scenario. Policy capturing represents anideographic approach to research in which the primaryfocus is on establishing statistical parameter estimates that describe each individual's behavior in avariety of environmental situations. Only when that isaccomplished does the researcher examine the possiblenomothetic aggregations across participants. Thus many fewer participants are required than intraditional nomothetic approaches. Each profile set useda different subset of the cues which contained eithersubtle (Study 1), overt (Study 2), or very overt (Study 3)levels of the cues. Multipleregression analysis revealed that when relatively overtacts of sexism were described, most participants hadreliable policies; that is, their judgments werepredictable from the cues. However, when relatively subtleacts of sexism were described, most participants did nothave reliable policies; that is, their judgments werenot very predictable from the cues. There were large individual differences in howparticipants weighted the importance of various cues,especially with subtle cue levels, and in participants'mean sexism ratings.     

The Angry Patient: Case and Session Presentation

Responding to patients who become angry at the therapist is difficult for many clinicians. In the case and session presented, the patient is not only angry, but devalues the therapist by not paying while asking for more frequent sessions. The therapist loses it, states she is angry, and remains insistent on the patient keeping his bills paid or reducing the frequency of sessions. The therapist is conflicted over confronting the patient with what she believes has to change in order for his symptoms to diminish—the irrational beliefs, life style, and sense of entitlement related to the personality disorder of this patient, but likely to drive him away from treatment. The therapist engages in a risky confrontation and remains unclear about the eventual benefit of this response.     

Motion perception over long interstimulus intervais

Recent studies using moving arrays of textured micropatterns have suggested that motion percep-tion can be supported by two mechanisms, one quasilinear and sensitive to the motion of luminance-defined local texture, the other nonlinear and coding motion of contrast-defined envelopes of texture (Baker & Hess, 1998; Boulton & Baker, 1993b). Here we used similar patterns to study motion percep-tion under conditions previously shown to isolate the nonlinear mechanism (low micropattern densi-ties and positive interstimulus intervals [ISIs]). We measured direction discrimination for two-flash ap-parent motion over a much larger range of ISIs, and susceptibility to masking by incoherently moving “distractor” micropatterns. The results suggest that two nonlinear mechanisms can support motion perception under these conditions. One operates only for relatively short ISIs (less than c. 100 msec), is sensitive to small spatial displacements, and is relatively insensitive to distractor masking. The other operates over much longer ISIs, is insensitive to small spatial displacements, and is highly disrupted by distractor masking. These results are in line with previous studies suggesting that three mechanisms support motion perception.