Cares,Identification, and Agency Reductionism

Reductionists about agency maintain that an agent's causing something is reducible to states and events involving the agent causing something. Some worry that reductionism cannot accommodate robust forms of agency, such as self‐determination. One reductionist answer to this worry, which I call ‘identification reductionism,’ contends that self‐governing agents are identified with certain attitudes, and so these attitudes causing a decision count as the agent's self‐determining the decision. I argue that a prominent species of identification reductionism developed by Harry Frankfurt, Agnieszka Jaworska, Jeffrey Seidman, and David Shoemaker – according to which an agent is identified with his (deepest) cares – is inadequate.     

Anger in lineup identification and creation

As an approach-oriented emotion, anger appears to affect behavioral thresholds in a range of contexts. The current work consists of three experiments examining this in the context of eyewitness identification procedures. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the relationship between a witness' anger and identification reliability, and Experiment 3 examined the relationship between a lineup creator's anger and the quality of selected lineup fillers. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that anger during an identification procedure is associated with increased risk of false identifications and reduced confidence-accuracy calibration. Experiment 3 showed that anger is associated with lower quality of fillers selected by lineup creators. Together, these experiments suggest that anger may undermine the quality of eyewitness evidence, even when the witnesses themselves are not the ones experiencing anger and even when anger is not directed at the perpetrator or suspect.     

Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors May Be More Common and Severe Among People Identifying as a Sexual Minority

Research indicates that people who identify as a sexual minority are at higher risk of numerous negative outcomes, including self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs). The minority stress model proposes that people identifying as a sexual minority are at higher risk of these behaviors due to sexual orientation-specific stressors—however, it does not clarify whether SITBs will be more severe among these individuals. The present study tested whether SITBs are more common and more severe among people identifying as a sexual minority using several metrics, including frequency of SITB engagement, age of onset of SITB, desire to discontinue SITB engagement, and likelihood of future SITBs. Four independent research samples were used to test this model. Results were then combined and tested in an internal meta-analysis. Findings converge to indicate a longer and more severe course of SITB engagement among people identifying as a sexual minority. Future research is needed to replicate these findings and to advance the understanding of why this imbalance in risk and severity might exist, and how it can be prevented.     

Individual Differences in Various Parameters of Motor Learning

60 Ss practiced 6 days on the stabilometer. No reminiscence or warm-up decrement was found; loss of skill occurred from 1-day layoffs which lessened as learning progressed. A 3-component exponential equation fitted the learning trend (including relearning). Both individual differences and intra-individual variations decreased exponentially with practice, but the ratio of individual differences to mean score increased. Practice had little influence on adjacent trial rs. Between scores in any particular pair of separated trials, r decreased when increasing number of trials separated them. Averaging 8 initial and 8 final trials gave optimum learning score reliability (r = .95). Individual rates of learning were not appreciably correlated with amounts of learning (r = .23). Final performance levels could only be predicted 50% from initial skill and cumulated amounts of learning unless more than half of the total practice (i.e., more than 90% of the potential learning) had been accomplished. The pattern of zero order rs between amount of learning and initial and final skill levels differed markedly from that previously observed in learning the ladder climb.     

County-level IQ and fertility rates: A partial test of Differential-K theory

Human intelligence (IQ) correlates with a number of important life outcomes ranging from mortality and morbidity to social rank and status. Noticeably absent from the literature, however, has been a unifying framework from which to examine why IQ should correspond to so many seemingly disparate outcomes. Rushton’s Differential-K theory represents a theoretical perspective capable of accounting for the role of IQ in understanding human flourishing. We tested predictions suggested by Differential-K theory by examining the association between IQ at the aggregate level and two life-history variables: parental investment and fertility rates. Our results provide tentative support for some of the predictions of Differential-K theory.     

Color preferences in infants and adults are different

Adults commonly prefer blues most and greenish yellows least, but these hue preferences interact with lightness and saturation (e.g., dark yellow is particularly disliked: Palmer & Schloss (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107:8877–8882, 2010)). Here, we tested for a similar hue-by-lightness interaction in infant looking preferences, to determine whether adult preferences are evident early in life. We measured looking times for both infants and adults in the same paired-comparison task using all possible pairs of eight colors: four hues (red/yellow/green/blue) at two lightness levels (dark/light). The adult looking data were strikingly similar to other adults’ explicit preference responses, indicating for the first time that adults look longer at colors that they like. Infants showed a significant hue-by-lightness interaction, but it was quite different from the adult pattern. In particular, infants had a stronger looking preference for dark yellow and a weaker preference for light blue than did adults. The findings are discussed in relation to theories on the origins of color preference.