What breaks a leader: the curvilinear relation between assertiveness and leadership

The authors propose that individual differences in assertiveness play a critical role in perceptions about leaders. In contrast to prior work that focused on linear effects, the authors argue that individuals seen either as markedly low in assertiveness or as high in assertiveness are generally appraised as less effective leaders. Moreover, the authors claim that observers' perceptions of leaders as having too much or too little assertiveness are widespread. The authors linked the curvilinear effects of assertiveness to underlying tradeoffs between social outcomes (a high level of assertiveness worsens relationships) and instrumental outcomes (a low level of assertiveness limits goal achievement). In 3 studies, the authors used qualitative and quantitative approaches and found support for their account. The results suggest that assertiveness (and other constructs with nonlinear effects) might have been overlooked in research that has been focused on identifying what makes a leader rather than on identifying what breaks a leader.     

Violent offenses associated with co‐occurring substance use and mental health problems: Evidence from CJDATS

The present study examines the relationship between substance use, mental health problems, and violence in a sample of offenders released from prison and referred to substance abuse treatment programs. Data from 34 sites (n = 1,349) in a federally funded cooperative, the Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies (CJDATS), were analyzed. Among parolees referred to substance abuse treatment, self‐reports for the six‐month period before the arrest resulting in their incarceration revealed frequent problems with both substance use and mental health. For most offenders with substance use problems, the quantity of alcohol consumed and the frequency of drug use were associated with a greater probability of self‐reported violence. Mental health problems were not indicative of increases in violent behavior, with the exception of antisocial personality problems, which were associated with violence. The paper emphasizes the importance of providing substance abuse treatment in relation to violent behavior among offenders with mental health problems being discharged to the community. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Inexact Knowledge with Introspection

Standard Kripke models are inadequate to model situations of inexact knowledge with introspection, since positive and negative introspection force the relation of epistemic indiscernibility to be transitive and euclidean. Correlatively, Williamson’s margin for error semantics for inexact knowledge invalidates axioms 4 and 5. We present a new semantics for modal logic which is shown to be complete for K45, without constraining the accessibility relation to be transitive or euclidean. The semantics corresponds to a system of modular knowledge, in which iterated modalities and simple modalities are not on a par. We show how the semantics helps to solve Williamson’s luminosity paradox, and argue that it corresponds to an integrated model of perceptual and introspective knowledge that is psychologically more plausible than the one defended by Williamson. We formulate a generalized version of the semantics, called token semantics, in which modalities are iteration-sensitive up to degree n and insensitive beyond n. The multi-agent version of the semantics yields a resource-sensitive logic with implications for the representation of common knowledge in situations of bounded rationality.     

‘Our way of life is worth defending’: testing a model of attitudes towards superordinate group membership through a study of Scots' attitudes towards Britain

This research used a survey design (N = 227) to investigate Scottish people's support or opposition to independence from Britain. It was hypothesised that political attitudes towards supra‐national bodies are not a direct function of the degree of ingroup (Scottish) identification, but are moderated by the extent to which the expression of ingroup identity is seen as being undermined within the larger entity. This feeling of identity undermining is assumed to arise from perceptions of incompatibility with the outgroup and ingroup powerlessness within the common group. The results provided support for these hypotheses. Only for those participants who had high feelings of identity undermining did identification lead to stronger separatist attitudes. Moreover, incompatibility with the outgroup and ingroup powerlessness predicted feelings of identity undermining while this latter mediated their impact on attitudes to being part of Britain. These findings underline the importance of taking into account (a) the contents ascribed to identities and their relations, and (b) the practical ability to pursue a way of live based on these contents in order to understand the way identity processes shape attitudes towards superordinate groups. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parsing Pregroup Grammars and Lambek Calculus Using Partial Composition

The paper presents a way to transform pregroup grammars into contextfree grammars using functional composition. The same technique can also be used for the proof-nets of multiplicative cyclic linear logic and for Lambek calculus allowing empty premises.     

Situational consistency in behavioral patterns of aggressive boys: Methodological considerations on observational measures

The issue of situational consistency is of great interest for early intervention with aggressive boys, but efforts to show behavior stability across settings have been unsuccessful to date, due principally to methodological problems. It is argued here that a more appropriate matching of response form, interaction partner, and situations should increase the situation consistency of observed behavior. The results support this proposition in that, more crosssetting behavior consistency was found in the pairing of situations where aggressive boys (age 6–7 years) were interacting with an adult female (mother/child versus baby-sitter/child) than in the pairing of situations where the boys were interacting with an adult male (mother/child versus father/child) or with the teacher in a nondyadic situation (classroom). The implications of using an extreme group are also discussed.This research program was funded by Le Conseil Québécois de la Recherche Sociale, the Quebec Government's FCAR research program, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Ministry of Employment and Immigration, and the University of Montreal FDR program.