The expulsion from Disneyland: the social psychological impact of 9/11

People expressed many different reactions to the events of September 11th, 2001. Some of these reactions were clearly negative, such as political intolerance, discrimination, and hate crimes directed toward targets that some, if not many, people associated with the attackers. Other reactions were more positive. For example, people responded by donating blood, increasing contributions of time and money to charity, and flying the American flag. The goal of this article is to review some of Americans' negative and positive reactions to 9/11. We also describe two frameworks, value protection and terror management theory, that provide insights into Americans' various reactions to the tragedy of 9/11.     

Psychology out of the laboratory: the challenge of violent extremism

The idea that people inevitably act in accordance with their self-interest on the basis of a calculation of costs and benefits does not constitute an adequate framework for understanding political acts of violence and self-sacrifice. Recent research suggests that a better understanding is needed of how sacred values and notions of self and group identity lead people to act in terms of principles rather than prospects when the two come into conflict. Perhaps the greatest challenge is to better understand how sacred causes and moral imperatives diffuse through a population and motivate some (usually small) segment of it to commit violent actions. The challenge to psychology is to adopt an interdisciplinary focus drawing on a range of research methods and to become bolder in its choices of study populations if it is to be relevant to real-world problems.     

Ecological momentary assessment of bulimia nervosa: Does dietary restriction predict binge eating?

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between caloric restriction (CR) and binge eating (BE) using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Participants included 133 women with bulimia nervosa (BN) who completed an EMA protocol for 2 weeks. Logistic regression analyses tested whether CR increased the probability of BE episodes. The results revealed that the odds of BE increased on the day that restriction occurred as well as on the following day. In addition, both restriction and BE on one day predicted the likelihood of BE the subsequent day, but restriction for two days prior to the episode failed to add additional information for predicting BE. These findings support the cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) model of BN, suggesting that self-reported dietary restriction is predictive of subsequent BE episodes, and that reducing dietary restriction in treatment may lead to improvements in bulimic symptoms.     

Group cognitive-behavioral therapy for hoarding disorder: an open trial

Although cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) appears to be a promising treatment approach for hoarding disorder, treatment to date has been quite labor intensive. The goal of this study, therefore, was to assess the potential effectiveness of group CBT for hoarding, without home visits by the clinician. Forty-five individuals with hoarding disorder enrolled in either a 16 or 20 session program of group CBT; 30 (67%) completed treatment. Using mixed-effects models to account for missing data, we report data from 35 (78%) participants who provided enough data for analysis. Participants demonstrated significant improvements in hoarding symptoms, as well as symptoms of depression and anxiety, and quality of life. Improvements in hoarding symptoms were comparable to two published clinical trials on individual CBT for hoarding disorder. Results of this study suggest that group CBT for hoarding, without home discarding sessions by the clinician, may be an effective treatment option with the potential advantage of increasing treatment access by reducing clinician burden and cost of treatment.     

Visual statistical learning in the newborn infant

Statistical learning – implicit learning of statistical regularities within sensory input – is a way of acquiring structure within continuous sensory environments. Statistics computation, initially shown to be involved in word segmentation, has been demonstrated to be a general mechanism that operates across domains, across time and space, and across species. Recently, statistical leaning has been reported to be present even at birth when newborns were tested with a speech stream. The aim of the present study was to extend this finding, by investigating whether newborns’ ability to extract statistics operates in multiple modalities, as found for older infants and adults. Using the habituation procedure, two experiments were carried out in which visual sequences were presented. Results demonstrate that statistical learning is a general mechanism that extracts statistics across domain since the onset of sensory experience. Intriguingly, present data reveal that newborn learner’s limited cognitive resources constrain the functioning of statistical learning, narrowing the range of what can be learned.     

Does mentioning "some people" and "other people" in a survey question increase the accuracy of adolescents' self-reports?

A great deal of developmental research has relied on self-reports solicited using the "some/other" question format ("Some students think that… but other students think that…"). This article reports tests of the assumptions underlying its use: that it conveys to adolescents that socially undesirable attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors are not uncommon and legitimizes reporting them, yielding more valid self-reports than would be obtained by "direct" questions, which do not mention what other people think or do. A meta-analysis of 11 experiments embedded in four surveys of diverse samples of adolescents did not support the assumption that the some/other form increases validity. Although the some/other form led adolescents to think that undesirable attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors were more common and resulted in more reports of those attitudes and behaviors, answers to some/other questions were lower in criterion validity than were answers to direct questions. Because some/other questions take longer to ask and answer and require greater cognitive effort from participants (because they involve more words), and because they decrease measurement accuracy, the some/other question format seems best avoided.     

Starting over: a tentative theory exploring the effects of past relationships on postbereavement remarried couples

Using grounded theory methodology 24 participants were asked to discuss how the death of a previous spouse, either theirs or their partner's, was currently affecting their second marriage. Participants were interviewed individually and as a couple. The central category was memories of the deceased spouse. Six additional categories emerged from the data: past spouse on pedestal, current/past comparison, insecurity of current spouse, curiosity about past spouse/relationship, partner's response to curiosity, and impact on the current relationship. Existing literature, auditors, and participant feedback were all used to validate the results. Expanding on a tentative theory (Brimhall, Wampler, & Kimball, 2008), provisional hypotheses were developed, thus helping clinicians who work with complex issues involving remarried couples.     

Antecedents and consequences of psychological and team empowerment in organizations: a meta-analytic review

This paper provides meta-analytic support for an integrated model specifying the antecedents and consequences of psychological and team empowerment. Results indicate that contextual antecedent constructs representing perceived high-performance managerial practices, socio-political support, leadership, and work characteristics are each strongly related to psychological empowerment. Positive self-evaluation traits are related to psychological empowerment and are as strongly related as the contextual factors. Psychological empowerment is in turn positively associated with a broad range of employee outcomes, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and task and contextual performance, and is negatively associated with employee strain and turnover intentions. Team empowerment is positively related to team performance. Further, the magnitude of parallel antecedent and outcome relationships at the individual and team levels is statistically indistinguishable, demonstrating the generalizability of empowerment theory across these 2 levels of analysis. A series of analyses also demonstrates the validity of psychological empowerment as a unitary second-order construct. Implications and future directions for empowerment research and theory are discussed.     

A question of honor: Chief Wahoo and American Indian stereotype activation among a university based sample

For over 30 years, a debate has raged regarding the appropriateness of high school, university, and professional sports teams using American Indian mascots. Proponents of such mascots state that these images are traditions and honor Indigenous People. Opponents of these images argue that the symbols foster stereotypes (Pewewardy, 1999) and negatively affect American Indians (Fryberg, Markus, Oyserman, & Stone, 2008). The purpose of this investigation was to examine if exposure to an American Indian mascot activated American Indian stereotypes in a predominately European American sample. In addition, we explored the role of personal motivation, prejudice level, and experience on stereotype activation. We found that the Chief Wahoo image (i.e., Cleveland Indian's logo) compared to other images activated negative, but not positive, American Indian stereotypes. Participants' motivation to control prejudice, prejudice level, and experience did not predict negative stereotype activation. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.