Role and justice considerations in the attribution of responsibility to a rape victim

This study was designed to assess the extent to which social role and “just world” considerations would affect perceptions and attributions of responsibility to a rape victim. The rape victim was either a topless-bottomless dancer, a social worker, or a Catholic nun, and she was either acquainted or unacquainted with her assailant. In the acquainted condition, the dancer was attributed the greatest and the nun the least amount of responsibility, indicating that social role factors can govern the range of attributional judgments which might be made in any given instance. However, unacquainted victims were ascribed more responsibility for the rape than were acquainted victims, a difference which was significant when the victim was the nun. The latter findings are discussed in terms of Lerner's just world hypothesis. Significant sex differences were found in subjects' perceptions of and responses to the rape incident and, contrary to earlier findings, no relationship was found between victim attractiveness and punitiveness toward the wrongdoer.     

Is that all there is?

I take issue with two suggestions of Joel Feinberg's: first, that it is incoherent to suppose that human life as such is absurd, and, second, that a particular human life may be absurd and yet saved from being tragic by being fulfilled. I also argue that human life as such may well be absurd and I consider various responses to this.     

Use of Self-Report Measures of Anxiety and Depression in Outpatients with Schizophrenia: Reliability and Validity

The psychometrics of many self-report measures of anxiety and depression have been established for patients with anxiety disorders, but little is known about use of these measures in patients with psychotic disorders. This study examined psychometrics of commonly used self-report measures. Self-report measures and interviewer ratings were collected on 33 outpatients diagnosed with schizophrenia disorders. A sample of 46 patients with anxiety disorders completed the same self-report measures. Internal consistency was high for the self-report measures in both samples. Test-retest reliability was moderate to high. Scores on self-report measures were correlated with interviewer ratings and with scores on other self-report measures of similar constructs, supporting the convergent validity of the measures. Reliable and valid information about anxiety and depression can be obtained through administering the self-report measures to outpatients diagnosed with psychotic disorders. There was more overlap among measures than was expected, possibly because of poor discriminant validity. One explanation of this may be that anxiety constructs overlap more in patients with schizophrenia or related disorders than in non-psychotic populations.     

Personal goals and psychological growth: testing an intervention to enhance goal attainment and personality integration

We hypothesized that semester goal attainment provides a route to short-term psychological growth. In an attempt to enhance this process, we randomly assigned participants to either a goal-training program or to a control condition. Although there were no main effects of program participation on later goal attainment, important interactions were found. Consistent with a "prepared to benefit" model, participants already high in goal-based measures of personality integration perceived the program as most useful and benefited the most from the program in terms of goal attainment. As a result, they became even more integrated and also increased in their levels of psychosocial well-being and vitality. Implications for theories of short-term growth and positive change are discussed, as is the unanswered question of how to help less-integrated persons grow.     

Smiling and relative status in news photographs

To test the hypothesis that lower social status is associated with more smiling, the authors used newspaper photographs and their associated news stories as the basis for scoring the smiling and relative social status of the 2 individuals in each photograph. Independent raters judged smiling and 5 dimensions of relative status for 496 individuals in 248 newspaper photographs. There was no relation between status and smiling, although status and smiling were both related to other variables such as gender, age, and story valence. These findings add to a growing body of evidence that there is no generalized relation between smiling and status.     

Sigmund Koch as critical humanist

Just as Sigmund Koch was a good scientist without succumbing to scientism, he was a good humanist without succumbing to the popular distortions trading on the name of humanism. When humanistic psychology was seduced by the touchy-feely encounter group movement, Koch derided its technology of authenticity as shamelessly meretricious. Later, when postmodern humanists of deconstruction and textual analysis began to be heard in psychology, Koch wryly expressed his preference for the old-fashioned kind of humanism. Koch's interests and his conception of the domain of psychology thus transcended scientific and humanistic labels and boundaries. To be good science, human psychological studies have to start with and be guided by openness to all aspects of being human. No less in the present and future than during his lifetime, the implications of Koch's vision of psychological inquiry warrant discerning and disciplined attention.     

Disgust sensitivity and attitudes toward organ donation among African-American college students.

241 African-American college students (94 men and 147 women, mean age = 20.3 +/- 3.4 yr.) completed the 1994 Disgust Scale of Haidt, McCauley, and Rozin and a modified form of Parisi-Rizzo's 1987 Attitudes Toward Organ Donation Scale (negative subscale only) as well as a behavioral measure of intention to donate organs after death. Analyses indicated that the higher the disgust sensitivity, the more negative the attitude toward organ donation and the less likely the student was to indicate intent to donate organs. It was further shown that negative attitudes toward organ donation mediated the relationship between disgust sensitivity and the behavioral intention measure. Results highlight the complexity of the issues surrounding organ donation within an African-American population and provide additional empirical evidence for the development of a theoretical model to explain the organ donation phenomenon.     

Unnecessary Supplement

Studies in Philosophy and Education -