THE WILL ROGERS ILLUSION IN JUDGMENTS ABOUT SOCIAL GROUPS

Abstract— Subjects' judgments of the mean of 12 scores were influenced by the way in which the scores were dichotomized. The estimated mean was higher when the three highest scores formed one group (e.g., payments for women) and the nine lowest formed the other (e.g., payments for men) than when the nine highest were one group and the three lowest the other. We call this phenomenon the Will Rogers Illusion (WRI). The WRI occurred only when estimates of the subgroup means were made prior to the estimates of the mean of the whole group. When the latter mean was judged first, the WRI was reversed. These and other data indicate that the means of subgroups can influence judgments of group means, a finding that is relevant to research on social stereotypes.     

God and free speech: A quaker perspective on the Satanic Verses controversy

This paper offers a Quaker perspective on the issues raised for British society by the Satanic Verses controversy. It is argued that the Quaker rejection of coercive power is founded upon the story of Jesus Christ. The origins of Quaker attitudes to free speech are located in seventeenth‐century Puritanism, arguing that Quakers share with Western secular defenders of free speech an internalization of the blasphemy taboo which issues in intolerance of anything held sacred. Furthermore, free speech rhetoric tends to ignore the power relations which sustain free speech in particular contexts. This is a neglect which, coupled with a secularized theory of race relations that ignores religious factors, renders its protagonists incapable of addressing anti‐Islamic prejudice, a phenomenon illustrated from press coverage of the controversy. The implications of this argument for British society and Quakers in particular are then considered. It is argued that an extension of legislation covering incitement to racial hatred to religion is the most appropriate legal response, but the greatest need is educational. Quakers and other Christian groups need to develop their own theological response to avoid passively replicating the dominant view in society.     

On the disunity of the self: A systems theory of personality

The views of a variety of theorists who have proposed that the mind may be usefully conceptualized as made up of a set of subselves are reviewed, and several principles are proposed for a possible systems theory of personality.     

Research in Consultation: Toward Better Analogues and Outcome Measures

Recommendations for improving consultation research include (a) strengthening consultation analogue research by incorporating “boundary” conditions into research designs and (b) extending the outcome measures used.     

Correlates of organizational commitment: Differences in the public and private sector

Private and public sector managers were compared regarding their job characteristics and organizational commitment. We hypothesized that job characteristics would be positively related to commitment and that sector would moderate that relationship. Moderated regression analyses revealed partial support for both hypotheses. The existence of clarity and challenge were positively related to commitment. Job characteristics demonstrated a stronger relationship with commitment among private sector managers. Explanations for these findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Local knowledge and comparative scientific traditions

This article argues that all knowledge is inherently local and that localness provides the basis for comparison between indigenous scientific traditions or knowledge production systems. As collective bodies of knowledge, many of the significant differences between knowledge production systems lie in the work involved in creating assemblages from differing practices. Much of the work can be seen in the social strategies and technical devices employed in creating equivalences and connections whereby otherwise heterogeneous and isolated knowledges are enabled to move in space and time from the local site and moment of their production and application to other places and times. In this way contemporary technosciences are compared with the knowledge systems of the medieval mastermasons, the Anasazi, the Inca, the Australian Aborigines and the Pacific navigators.     

Clarifying the task

Those who would enquire into therelationship between “health conceptions” and “health care consequences” are faced with a formidable task. In order to make this challenge manageable it is necessary to define the scope of the task as precisely as possible. Are we, for instance, faced with a purely theoretical challenge; a task for applied philosophy, or must we employ multi-disciplinary methods? This paper argues that while philosophy has a central clarifying role, inquiry into the relationship between “health conceptions” and “health care organisation” can be done properly only through the combined efforts of several disciplines. Unless we are to be concerned only with abstract models it is essential to take account of the reality of health care situations. Given this it is suggested that the study of “health conceptions” is only a part of a greater task (unless all conceptions are to count as “health conceptions”). What is needed is understanding of the possible and actual purposes of health care, and detailed study of their practical implications.     

Calibration of a color monitor for visual psychophysics

It has become common for stimuli used in visual psychophysical experiments to be presented on high-resolution color cathode-ray tubes (CRTs) such as the Barco CDCT 6551. These enable a flexibility of color, spatial-frequency content, temporal-frequency content, duration, size, and position that is not provided by most other media. CRTs are, however, not perfect; they suffer from the effects of temporal instability, spatial variability, lack of phosphor constancy, gun interdependence, and gun nonlinearity. This paper describes methods of assessing these aspects of monitor performance with respect to how significant each may be in psychometric terms. Although every application of CRT use in visual psychophysics is different, some general rules can be formulated to help ensure that unwanted effects are kept to a minimum. For the CRT used in this study (Barco CDCT 6551), a warm-up time of 30-45 min is necessary before chromatic and luminous stability ensues. Restriction of individual gun outputs to within 10%-90% of the possible range ensures that the effects of gun interdependence and lack of phosphor constancy are negligible. Calibration methods dealing with the linearization of gun output are also discussed.