A longitudinal study of work-based, adult-youth mentoring

Using a longitudinal design, this study explored the relation of urban high school student attitudes toward school, work, and self-esteem beliefs to work-based mentoring, mentor satisfaction, and employment status. Participants included high school students taking part in a formal work-based mentoring program, students who established informal mentoring relationships at work, students who worked without a mentor, and students who were not employed during the academic year. While there were no significant group differences in the measures at the start of the year, results at the end of the year showed that students in the formal mentoring program believed more strongly that school was relevant to work than those who worked without a mentor. Students with mentors had higher levels of self-esteem than those who did not work. Students who were highly satisfied with their mentors had higher levels of self-esteem and believed more strongly that school was relevant to the workplace than students who did not work. The implications of these results are discussed and future research areas are identified.     

Emil Kraepelin's dream speech: A psychoanalytic interpretation

Freud's contemporary fellow psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin collected over the course of several decades some 700 specimens of speech in dreams, mostly his own, along with various concomitant data. These generally exhibit far more obvious primary-process influence than do the dream speech specimens found in Freud's corpus; but Kraepelin eschewed any depth-psychology interpretation. In this paper the authors first explore the respective orientations of Freud and Kraepelin to mind and brain, and normal and pathological phenomena, particularly as these relate to speech and dreaming. They then proceed, with the help of biographical sources, to analyze a selection of Kraepelin's deviant dream speech in the manner that was pioneered by Freud, most notably in his 'Autodidasker' dream. They find that Kraepelin's particular concern with the preservation of his rather uncommon family name-and with the preservation of his medical nomenclature, which lent prestige to that name-appears to provide a key link in a chain of associations for elucidating his dream speech specimens. They further suggest, more generally, that one's proper name, as a minimal characteristic of the ego during sleep, may prove to be a key in interpreting the dream speech of others as well.     

Replications and Limitations of a Two-Factor Model of Child Witness Credibility

Two experiments are reported that test the idea that jurors perceive child witnesses in terms of a 2-factor model of credibility with the factors defined as cognitive ability and honesty (Leippe & Romanczyk, 1987; Ross, Millers, & Moran, 1989). In the first experiment, 300 mock jurors watched a realistic videotaped recreation of a sexual abuse trial and rated the credibility of the child witness. Mock jurors perceived the child witness in terms of 2 factors: cognitive ability and honesty. Only honesty predicted verdict. These findings were replicated in Experiment 2 ( N = 300) when only the child's testimony was presented and the perceptions of the child witness were not contaminated by the testimony of the other witnesses in the trial.     

Behavioral Goals for a Diverse Organization: The Effects of Attitudes, Social Norms, and Racial Identity for Asian Americans and Whites

This research identified 5 behaviors that may enhance the effectiveness of a diverse organization and used Fishbein and Ajzen's (1975) theory of reasoned action to identify predictors of these behaviors. Results from samples of White and Asian undergraduate students from 2 universities generally supported the Fishbein and Ajzen model. Attitudes and subjective norms were significant predictors of behavioral intentions when gender, race, and social desirability bias were controlled. Racial identity also had a significant, positive effect on attitudes toward diversity-related behaviors among the Asian American students, but no significant effect among Whites. These results supported our reasoning that members of historically excluded racial groups with strong racial identities will be most likely to welcome organizational attempts to become more pluralistic because pluralism means that their valued identities will be respected rather than repressed.     

Overestimating the Importance of the Given Information in Multiattribute Consumer Judgment

Consumer judgment often is based on incomplete or limited knowledge of the relevant attributes. We performed 3 experiments to investigate why these judgments are often insensitive to set size and why evaluations based on limited information tend to be stronger (more extreme and confident) than is warranted. The findings indicate that the importance of the given or known attributes is often overestimated, leading to evaluations that are overly extreme. The experiments also revealed important factors moderating this insensitivity to limited information. The overweighing of the given evidence was attenuated when participants were knowledgeable of the target domain. Overweighing and the formation of extreme judgments based on limited information was also diminished when participants considered their judgmental criteria prior to evaluating a target or when a comparison target described by different attributes was present.     

When Small Means Comfortable: Relations Between Product Attributes in Two‐Sided Advertising

The processes that mediate the effectiveness of 2‐sided advertising were studied. We predicted that (a) 2‐sided (vs. 1‐sided) advertisements increase perceived source credibility and that (b) the logical relation between the negative and positive product attributes mentioned in the 2‐sided ad (e.g., little space, implying a cozy atmosphere) facilitates favorable inferences about the positive attributes, especially when recipients have sufficient time to process the message content. Results supported these predictions. However, the effects of message type and processing time on attitudes were mediated by inferences about positive attributes but not by perceived source credibility. Implications of these findings for consumer judgment and decision making are discussed.     

The Reliability and Validity of Big Five Inventory Scores With African American College Students

The reliability and validity of scores on the Big Five Inventory (BFI; O. P. John, E. M. Donahue, & R. L. Kentle, 1991) were examined in a sample of 336 African American college students. Results indicated moderate reliability and structural validity for BFI scores. Additionally, BFI subscales had few meaningful correlations with self‐esteem and social desirability. La fiabilidad y la validez de los resultados del Inventario “Big Five” (BFI; O. P. John, E. M. Donahue, y R. L. Kentle, 1991) se examinan en una muestra de 336 estudiantes universitarios afro‐americanos. Los resultados indican una fiabilidad moderada y una validez estructural para los resultados del BFI. Adicionalmente, las subescalas del BFI tuvieron pocas correlaciones importantes con el auto‐estima y el deseo social.     

Taking consciousness seriously: A defense of Cartesian dualism

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Criminal attitudes to violence: Development and preliminary validation of a scale for male prisoners

Two studies report on the development and preliminary psychometric properties of a new scale measuring criminal attitudes to violence. In Study 1, the responses of a mixed sample of male prisoners were used to select 20 scale items from a larger pool. The final scale (the Criminal Attitudes to Violence Scale; CAVS) was designed so that it had a single‐factor structure and was uncorrelated with a measure of social desirability bias. It demonstrated high internal reliability, and a strong relationship to a self‐report measure of physical aggression. Significant differences were found in CAVS mean scores for various offence history comparisons, such as whether or not the offender was currently on sentence for a violent conviction. In the second study, most results from the first study were replicated with an independent sample of male prisoners. Further, compared to another scale measuring attitudes to aggression [the EXPAGG Instrumental subscale; Archer and Haigh, 1997b], the CAVS was a better predictor of general attitudes to crime. Mean CAVS scores were again significantly higher for current violent offenders than those on sentence for other types of offences. Lastly, the CAVS was moderately predictive of estimated risk of reconviction and re‐imprisonment. Overall these results suggest that this scale measures the construct of attitudes to criminal violence, which partially overlaps two other constructs: attitudes to aggression and attitudes to crime. Aggr. Behav. 30:484–503, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Emergence, Probability, and Reductionism

Abstract. Philosopher‐theologian Bernard J. F. Lonergan defines emergence as the process in which “otherwise coincidental manifolds of lower conjugate acts invite the higher integration effected by higher conjugate forms” (Insight, [1957] 1992, 477). The meaning and implications of Lonergan's concept of emergence are considered in the context of the problem of reductionism in the natural sciences. Examples are taken primarily from physics, chemistry, and biology.