Including others in the self

We propose that to some extent, people treat the resources, perspectives, and identities of close others as their own. This proposal is supported by allocation, attribution, response time, and memory experiments. Recently, we have applied this idea to deepening understanding of feeling “too close” (including too much of the other in the self leading to feeling controlled or a loss of identity), the effects of relationship loss (it is distressing to the extent that the former partner was included in the self, liberating to the extent that the former partner was preventing self-expansion), ingroup identification (including ingroup in the self), and the effect of outgroup friendships on outgroup attitudes (including outgroup member in the self entails including outgroup member's identity in the self).     

The Relationship Between the Constructs of Religiousness and Prejudice: A Structural Equation Model Analysis

Research examining the connection between religiousness and prejudice has used scales exclusively as proxies for the underlying constructs. Scholars in the psychology of religion, however, are ultimately concerned about the nature of religious constructs and their relationships with other variables, and the use of scales provides only indirect information concerning these constructs. To overcome this limitation, structural equation modeling (SEM) allows researchers to gather information about the relationship among constructs directly. The present study used SEM to examine the relationship between religion and prejudice using four of the most important and heavily researched constructs in the psychology of religion: religious commitment, orthodoxy, fundamentalism, and openness, as well as their relationships with three types of prejudice: racial, sexual orientation, and religious. The strongest results revealed that religious commitment, orthodoxy, and fundamentalism were linked positively with sexual orientation prejudice, whereas religious openness was linked negatively with that type of prejudice. Other religiousness–prejudice relationships were weaker and also more complex.     

Recidivism and dependency in a psychiatric population: An investigation with kelly's dependency grid

Over the years there have been varied attempts to explain or predict recidivism, which is a phenomenon whereby psychiatric patients are hospitalized repeatedly. Recent efforts to predict relapse have used specific symptoms (Harris, Bergman, & Bachrach, 1986), diagnoses (Kastrup, 1987; Lally, 1989), postdischarge treatment compliance (Caton, Koh, Fleiss, Barrow, & Goldstein, 1985), and the level of emotional expression in the family environment (Doane, Goldstein, Miklowitz, & Falloon, 1986) as relapse predictors. Despite progress, many unanswered questions remain. The present study examined recidivism from the perspective of personal construct psychology (Kelly, 1955). The Dependency Grid was administered to 33 first-admission patients, 39 recidivists, and 26 controls. As hypothesized, recidivists identified the smallest social network and the fewest people on whom they believed they actually could rely in a crisis. In contrast, patients experiencing their first admission offered an extensive array of individuals to whom they felt they could turn in a crisis. Controls reported the greatest number of social resources potentially available to them, but then selectively chose a sample of them as individuals on whom they would be comfortable relying. Results are discussed in terms of support for Kelly's personal construct theory.     

Child Delinquents: Examining the Market for Criminal Futures

This article investigates child delinquency (offenders younger than 13 years of age). The population of child delinquents under various dispositions in the state of Louisiana, at one point in time, is described. Eighty youth are examined using the following characteristics: Race, Gender, Age, Offense Type (violent, nonviolent) Crime Category (felony, status offense, misdemeanor, and felony or misdemeanor) and Disposition (supervision, secure custody, and non-secure custody). Child delinquency is an important topic because the younger the age of first offense the greater the probability of a delinquent and criminal career. Findings reveal very few youth in secure custody and black males account for over half of the population of child delinquents. Over 75% of the population was 12 years of age.     

Human Figure Drawing Indices of Sexual Maladjustment in Male Felons

Two figure drawing characteristics (the presence of nudity and drawing the opposite-sex figure first) purported to reflect sexual maladjustment were shown to be positively related to each other in a population of 1,000 male felons. Adult felons drew the male figure first significantly less frequently than did normal adults, adolescent delinquents and most other populations studied, and thus apparently have greater problems in establishing a masculine sexual identification. The presence of nudity in figure drawings is less common in the adult felon group than in the adolescent delinquent group. There was no relationship between the variables of type of criminal offense, ethnic group, age, intelligence, MMPI Mf score and sex of the first-drawn figure.     

FOXP2 in focus: what can genes tell us about speech and language?

The human capacity for acquiring speech and language must derive, at least in part, from the genome. In 2001, a study described the first case of a gene, FOXP2, which is thought to be implicated in our ability to acquire spoken language. In the present article, we discuss how this gene was discovered, what it might do, how it relates to other genes, and what it could tell us about the nature of speech and language development. We explain how FOXP2 could, without being specific to the brain or to our own species, still provide an invaluable entry-point into understanding the genetic cascades and neural pathways that contribute to our capacity for speech and language.     

Core work evaluation: The viability of a higher-order work attitude construct

A great deal of research examining work attitudes has shown that they are related to important employee behaviors. Most of this research has parsed attitudes into ever more refined assessments of specific features of the work environment. Although this research has yielded valuable insights, for practical, theoretical, and empirical reasons we argue that an examination of a more global evaluative summary of the work environment is needed. In the present study we develop, conceptualize, and provide empirical evidence for a global work attitude construct called Core Work Evaluation (CWE). The conceptual foundation for CWE is drawn from classic and modern theory on attitudes and attitude formation. To test our theoretical assertions we follow recent recommendations for the development of higher order constructs in a series of three empirical studies. The results found that CWE: (1) explains meaningful shared variance across the more specific indicators (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and work engagement) that is not merely the result of common method variance, (2) is distinguishable from nonevaluative features of the work environment and stable individual differences, and (3) predicts important work-related outcomes above and beyond its constituent indicators. Overall the results provided evidence of the viability of the CWE construct.     

Bias in Performance Ratings: Clarifying the Role of Positive Versus Negative Escalation

This study replicated and refined research on the effects of escalation of commitment in performance ratings. We utilized experimental manipulations in a laboratory setting to determine whether positive escalation or negative escalation (or both) could be responsible for the effect. In one session, participants (N = 210) were assigned to the perspective of the potential employee's supervisor and chose 1 of 2 candidates for a sales position. In a second session, participants rated the performance of (a) the individual they selected; (b) the individual they rejected; or (c) a third individual, whose preselection information they never viewed. Results replicated previous findings, such that ratings were biased upward when participants rated the performance of the salesperson they had originally selected. Results were not biased downward when individuals rated the performance of the salesperson they had rejected, however. Thus, our results suggest that positive escalation, and not negative escalation, was the cause of the bias.     

Achievement Goals,Feedback, and Task Performance

Prior research indicates that instructions to focus attention on learning versus performance and the nature of feedback provided have distinct implications for subsequent task performance. We first examined how assigned learning and performance goals and feedback valence interact to determine performance change. Individuals with learning goal instructions performed better after negative feedback but worse after positive feedback. In Study 2, we found that implicit theory, an individual difference that is antecedent to general goal orientation, interacted with learning/performance goal instructions to influence performance change after negative feedback. In both studies, goal instructions influenced performance attributions and affective states, but these variables did not mediate the effects of the goal instructions or performance feedback. We discuss the implications of these results for academic and employment settings.