Sex,Education and Procrastination: An Epidemiological Study of Procrastinators' Characteristics from a Global Sample

Procrastination is a common form of self‐regulatory failure with substantive connections to lower levels of health, wealth and well‐being. Conducting an epidemiological study, we determined the characteristics of prototypical procrastinators from a global sample based on several relevant self‐reported demographic variables. Using an internet sampling strategy, we surveyed 16 413 English‐speaking adults (58.3% women; 41.7% men: M age = 38.3 years, SD = 14), specifically on the variables of sex, age, marital status, family size, education, community location, and national origin. Almost all the results were statistically significant because of our large sample size. However, procrastination tendencies were most prominently associated with sex, age, marital status, education and nationality. Procrastinators tended to be young, single men with less education, residing in countries with lower levels of self‐discipline. Notably, procrastination mediated the relationship between sex and education, providing further support that men are lagging behind women academically because of lower self‐regulatory skills. Given procrastination's connection with a variety of societal ailments (e.g. excessive debt, delayed medical treatment), identifying risk factors and at risk populations should be helpful for directing preventative public policy. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nicknames of notorious American twentieth‐century deviants: The decline of the folk hero syndrome

This report examines the public use of personal nicknames for notorious American Twentieth Century Deviants. The analysis documents the frequency of nicknames by decade in the twentieth century, the category of the deviant act committed by the person nicknamed, and the connotations of the nicknames. The relationship between the use of nicknames for deviants, and deviants as folk heroes is explored. The data indicate that the public use of personal nicknames for deviants peaks in the 1920's and 1930's and has been declining ever since. This phenomenon parallels the decline in American's belief in the “rags to riches” type of folk hero.     

INFLUENCE OF ASSESSMENT CENTER METHODS ON ASSESSORS'RATINGS

Recently a number of authors have argued persuasively that performance ratings are influenced to a large extent by the way the rater selects, organizes, stores, and recalls information. Although the influence of the rater's cognitive processes on the obtained ratings has been considered in the job-performance evaluation literature, this issue has not been considered in the assessment center literature. The purpose of the present study was to examine how assessment center methods affect the way assessors organize and process assessment center information and affect the ratings they make. Independent groups of assessors underwent one of two methods for evaluating candidates in an assessment center. Data indicated differences in the convergent and discriminant validities and differences in the factor structures of the ratings for the two methods. The pattern of results suggested that the two methods for evaluating assessment center candidates affected the way the assessors organized the assessment center information and affected the obtained ratings. Future research should consider assessment center methods and assessors as sources of variation in assessment center ratings.     

Friend or foe? The role of latent inhibition in predator and non-predator labelling by coral reef fishes

In communities of high biodiversity, the ability to distinguish predators from non-predators is crucial for prey success. Learning often plays a vital role in the ability to distinguish species that are threatening from those that are not. Many prey animals learn to recognise predators based on a single conditioning event whereby they are exposed to the unknown predator at the same time as alarm cues released from injured conspecifics. The remarkable efficiency of such learning means that recognition mistakes may occur if prey inadvertently learn that a species is a predator when it is not. Latent inhibition is a means by which prey that are pre-exposed to an unknown species in the absence of negative reinforcement can learn that the unknown animal is likely not a threat. Learning through latent inhibition should be conservative because mistakenly identifying predators as non-predators can have fatal consequences. In this study, we demonstrated that a common coral reef fish, lemon damselfish, Pomacentrus moluccensis can learn to recognise a predator as non-threatening through latent inhibition. Furthermore, we showed that we could override the latent inhibition effect by conditioning the prey to recognise the predator numerous times. Our results highlight the ability of prey fish to continually update the information regarding the threat posed by other fishes in their vicinity.     

Beyond Conversation: Some Lessons for Nanoethics

One of the aims of the DEEPEN project was to deepen ethical understanding of issues related to emerging nanotechnologies through an interdisciplinary approach utilizing insights from philosophy, ethics, and the social sciences. Accordingly, part of its final report was dedicated to the question of what was accomplished with regards to this aim and what further research is required. It relates two insights: Nanotechnologies intensify the ambivalence of ongoing, long-term developments; and yet, our intuitions and received story-lines fail us as a guide to ethical and political matters concerning nanotechnologies.