Bonus of rebate?: the impact of income framing on spending and saving

All income increases a person's absolute wealth, but consumption decisions may be based more heavily on perceived changes in wealth. Change is computed by comparing a current state with a former state, and we predicted that people would be more likely to spend income framed as a gain from a current wealth state than income framed as a return to a prior state. Four experiments confirmed this prediction on people's memory for spending of a government tax rebate (Experiment 1), on unobtrusive self‐report measures of spending an unexpected windfall (Experiments 2 and 3), and on actual spending on items for sale in a laboratory experiment (Experiment 4). These results can be explained, at least in part, by the reference points implied in the framing of income (follow‐ups to Experiments 1 and 4). Discussion focuses on implications for the consumption of other commodities, assessments of risk, and government tax policies. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How Lutherans Read the Bible: A North American and Global Conversation

Abstract: Recent debates and conflicts over the interpretation of the Bible among Lutherans both in the U.S. and in other parts of the world impel us to consider our history in a Lutheran tradition, our present challenges, and an agenda for future directions. This introductory essay briefly introduces some of the distinctive Lutheran emphases in the use of Scripture, provides an overview of the other essays in this issue of Dialog which are largely focused on the North American context, and then offers a sample of what two Lutheran scholars in places other than the U.S. are thinking about their experiences as Lutherans using the Bible in places like Malaysia and Argentina.     

Internet access and use among homeless and indigent drug users in Long Beach, California.

There has been a growing interest in using the Internet to access a variety of populations for prevention education and health care. It is not clear that this is viable for homeless and other marginalized populations. The purpose of this study was to describe Internet access and use among a sample of homeless and indigent drug users. A brief questionnaire was developed to assess computer ownership, use, email, and Internet access and use. Participants were recruited through a community-based human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention program. 265 participants completed the questionnaire. While 55% had ever used a computer in their lifetime, only 25% had ever owned a computer, 24% had ever had their own email account, 33% had access to a working computer in the last 30 days, 10% had sent or received email in the last 30 days, and 19% had surfed or accessed information on the Internet in the last 30 days. Logistic regression predicting lifetime use of a computer showed predictive factors of having completed high school (Odds Ratio [OR] = 4.5; 95% Confidence Interval [CI] = 2.41, 8.38) and number of days used amphetamines in the last 30 days, per 5 days of use (OR = 1.64; 95% CI = 1.18, 2.27). Inversely related were age, per 5 years of age (OR = 0.78; 95% CI = 0.65, 0.93) and number of days used marijuana in the last 30 days, per 5 days of use (OR = 0.97; 95% CI = 0.76, 0.99). Very low access and usage suggest that Internet-based public health education models be reexamined for this population. The association with amphetamine use may indicate a facilitating effect of amphetamine by heightening awareness and increasing wakefulness.     

How does crime pay? The differentiation of criminal specialisms by fundamental incentive

Most attempts to determine offence specialisms have not benefited from any formal psychological framework of behavioural differentiation. Bandura's framework (Social foundations of thought and action, 1986) of the fundamental incentives to human action offers an interesting perspective on what might underlie differential patterns of offending. The framework draws attention to the distinction between Material, Power/Status, and Sensory incentives, leading to the hypotheses that crimes which share any one of these incentives will be more likely to be committed by the same person, as revealed through high inter‐correlations, but be less highly correlated with crimes with different fundamental incentives. To test these hypotheses the correlations between 42 offending behaviours as self‐reported by 185 convicted young offenders were examined. A Multidimensional Scaling analysis of the inter‐correlations revealed three distinct styles of offending that could be related to Bandura's Material (Cronbach's α = 0.94), Power/Status (α = 0.90) and Sensory (α = 0.76) incentives. The identification of this psychological basis for the differentiation of criminal styles provides a model for considering offenders' patterns of specialisation which is of value both in clarifying the aetiology of different types of crime and in considering which crimes may be behaviourally equivalent when trying to link them to a common offender or infer offender characteristics from crime scene information. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Seeing beyond the target: environmental context affects distance perception

It is commonly assumed that perceived distance in full-cue, ecologically valid environments is redundantly specified and approximately veridical. However, recent research has called this assumption into question by demonstrating that distance perception varies in different types of environments even under full-cue viewing conditions. We report five experiments that demonstrate an effect of environmental context on perceived distance. We measured perceived distance in two types of environments (indoors and outdoors) with two types of measures (perceptual matching and blindwalking). We found effects of environmental context for both egocentric and exocentric distances. Across conditions, within individual experiments, all viewer-to-target depth-related variables were kept constant. The differences in perceived distance must therefore be explained by variations in the space beyond the target.     

Practical Limitations in Making Decisions Regarding the Distribution of Applicant Personality Test Scores Based on Incumbent Data

For practitioners, the possibility of faking on personality tests has potential implications that are much broader than those captured by current theoretical debates over criterion-related validity, factor structure, or psychological processes. One unexplored potential impact of response distortion involves the pass rates associated with applying cutoff scores developed using a concurrent validation design to applicant samples. This practitioner-oriented paper compared applicant and incumbent scores on three personality dimensions and uncovered significant standardized group differences. These differences greatly influenced pass rates for three different selection models, which impacted expected utility of the selection system. Potential solutions for practitioners are provided, along with recommendations for future research in this area. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychologists in Orlando, Florida.     

Testosterone reduces conscious detection of signals serving social correction: implications for antisocial behavior

Elevated levels of testosterone have repeatedly been associated with antisocial behavior, but the psychobiological mechanisms underlying this effect are unknown. However, testosterone is evidently capable of altering the processing of facial threat, and facial signals of fear and anger serve sociality through their higher-level empathy-provoking and socially corrective properties. We investigated the hypothesis that testosterone predisposes people to antisocial behavior by reducing conscious recognition of facial threat. In a within-subjects design, testosterone (0.5 mg) or placebo was administered to 16 female volunteers. Afterward, a task with morphed stimuli indexed their sensitivity for consciously recognizing the facial expressions of threat (disgust, fear, and anger) and nonthreat (surprise, sadness, and happiness). Testosterone induced a significant reduction in the conscious recognition of facial threat overall. Separate analyses for the three categories of threat faces indicated that this effect was reliable for angry facial expressions exclusively. This testosterone-induced impairment in the conscious detection of the socially corrective facial signal of anger may predispose individuals to antisocial behavior.     

Ideology as instrument

Comments on the article by J. T. Jost, which argued that the end-of-ideology claims that emerged in the aftermath of World War II were both incorrect and detrimental to the field of political psychology. M. Glassman and D. Karno make three critical points. First, Jost objectified ideology as a grand strategy implemented at the individual level, rather than as an instrument used for a specific purpose in activity. In doing so, he set ideology up as an "object" that guides human behavior rather than as a rational part of human experience. Second, they take issue with the idea that, because somebody acts in a manner that can be categorized as ideological, there actually is such a thing as ideology separate from that event and/or political experience and that psychologists ought to understand the meaning of ideology in order to understand future human activities as outside observers. Third, Jost seems to see this objective ideology as a unidirectional, causal mechanism for activity, a mechanism that assumes individuals act according to ideology, which eclipses the possibility that immediate ideological positions are the residue of purposeful activity. Glassman and Karno suggest that it may be better to take a pluralistic view of ideology in human action. Where ideology does exist, it is as a purposeful instrument--part of a logically based action to meet some ends-in-view--a mixture of immediate goals tied to secondary belief systems (which have been integrated to serve the material purposes of the purveyors of these ideologies). So if we are to understand ideology, we can only understand it through its use in human activity.     

An event history analysis of union joining and leaving

This article examines parallel models of union joining and leaving using individual-level longitudinal panel data collected over a 5-year period. The authors utilized objective measures of joining and leaving collected from union and organizational records and took into account time by using event history analysis. The results indicated that union joining was negatively related to procedural justice and higher performance appraisals and positively related to partner socialization and extrinsic union instrumentality. Conversely, members were most likely to leave the union when they perceived lower procedural justice, where there was no union representative present in the workplace, and where they had individualistic orientations. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for theory and practice for trade unions.