Food and life,pleasure and worry,among American college students: gender differences and regional similarities

Questionnaires on food attitudes and behavior were completed by 2,200 American undergraduates from 6 regionally dispersed college campuses. Results indicate that a substantial minority of women and a much smaller minority of men have major concerns about eating and food with respect to both weight and health. Overall, 14% of women reported being embarrassed to buy a chocolate bar in the store. A 6-factor structure emerged: weight concern, diet and health orientation, beliefs about the diet-health link, food negativity/importance of food as a source of pleasure in life, eating disordered behaviors, and natural/vegetarian food preferences. There were surprisingly few regional differences, virtually none if race and social class were taken into account. Gender was the strongest predictor of responses.     

Racial identity and the MMPI in African American male college students

The relation of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) to the Racial Identity Attitude Scale--Black, Short Form (RIAS-B) was examined among 50 African American male college students in a reanalysis of unpublished MMPI data described in R. H. Dana (1993). This permitted study of relationships between MMPI scores and specific psychological variables hypothesized to produce cultural differences among African Americans. Results indicated RIAS-B scale scores functioned as predictors of MMPI scale scores. Similar research with the MMPI-2 incorporating larger samples that more adequately represent African American heterogeneity is needed. Methodological implications of these findings for MMPI-2 research with ethnic and racial groups are discussed, emphasizing the importance of research to depathologize African American racial and cultural identity.     

Memory performance and beliefs as a function of goal setting and aging

This research examined the impact of goals on memory and memory beliefs. Older and younger adults completed memory beliefs questionnaires and list recall at baseline. After additional recall trials, the questionnaires were repeated. In Experiment 1, participants were assigned to low challenge or high challenge goals. In Experiment 2, moderate challenge goals were compared to control. In both studies, participants were given a specific goal based on their own performance and received positive feedback for memory gains. Both older and younger adults responded to the goals, showing improved performance across trials, with little change in the control condition. Memory beliefs changed in the moderate and low challenge goal conditions, showing more striking changes for the older groups. These results confirmed that self-regulatory processes related to goal setting can have considerable impact on memory across the adult life span.     

All gifts large and small: toward an understanding of the ethics of pharmaceutical industry gift-giving

Much attention has been focused in recent years on the ethical acceptability of physicians receiving gifts from drug companies. Professional guidelines recognize industry gifts as a conflict of interest and establish thresholds prohibiting the exchange of large gifts while expressly allowing for the exchange of small gifts such as pens, note pads, and coffee. Considerable evidence from the social sciences suggests that gifts of negligible value can influence the behavior of the recipient in ways the recipient does not always realize. Policies and guidelines that rely on arbitrary value limits for gift-giving or receipt should be reevaluated.     

It takes one to know one: interpersonal sensitivity is related to accurate assessments of others' interpersonal sensitivity

Interpersonal sensitivity (emotional and social) is the ability to accurately assess others' abilities, states, and traits from nonverbal cues. The authors predicted that individuals' interpersonal sensitivity would be related to accurate judgments of friends' interpersonal sensitivity. Fifty participants were recruited, each bringing a friend to participate in performance-based, self-report, and other-rating measures of emotional and social sensitivity. Interpersonal sensitivity was related to accurate judgments of others' interpersonal sensitivity (the "it-takes-one-to-know-one effect"). Neither gender nor acquaintanceship was directly related to accurate judgments of interpersonal sensitivity, nor did either variable moderate the it-takes-one-to-know-one effect.     

“But Many of These Problems are About Funds…”: The Challenges Immigrant Settlement Agencies (ISAs) Encounter in a Suburban Setting in Ontario,Canada

A large number of studies have focused on the neoliberal political and economic restructuring of non-profit immigrant settlement agencies (ISAs) through a policy analysis framework. While policy analysis is key to determining how resources are distributed among non-profit organizations, the challenges that ISAs encounter in planning and delivering services extend beyond limited financial resources in the sector. This research focuses on the system-level challenges ISAs encounter in planning and delivering services to newcomers in the suburban municipality of the Peel Region, Ontario, Canada. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with frontline staff and executive directors in settlement organizations in Peel Region, Ontario, Canada, to understand the complex challenges they face within a highly federalized and neoliberal policy environment. The results indicate that although funding dollars are a large concern for ISAs, the conditions attached to funding, such as the types of programs settlement providers are able to offer, mandatory quotas, and restrictive eligibility criteria, hinder ISAs from being able to plan and implement programs that better respond to the needs of immigrants in Peel Region. The results also demonstrate that restrictive funding criteria contribute to competition with other ISAs for limited resources and challenge the structure and continuity of programs. Many of these challenges are exacerbated by the transportation system unique to suburban settings.     

EYE MOVEMENTS REVEAL THE SPATIOTEMPORAL DYNAMICS OF VISUAL SEARCH

Abstract— Given that attention precedes an eye movement to a target it becomes possible to use fixation sequences to probe the spatiotemporal dynamics of search Applying this method to a realistic search task, we found eye movements directed to the geometric centers of progressively smaller groups of objects rather than accurate fixations to individual objects in a display Such a binary search strategy is consistent with zoom-lens models panting an initially broad distribution of search, followed by a narrowing of this search region until only the target is selected We also interpret this oculo-motor averaging behavior as evidence for an initially parallel search analysis that becomes increasingly serial as the search process converges on the target.