Self-promotion is not ingratiating

Pairs of subjects participated in two unstructured conversations spaced one week apart. In the second session, one subject of the pair was asked to participate either as an ingratiator or as a self-promoter. Naive target subjects clearly distinguished between presenters attempting to appear likable or competent. As verified by observer subjects, ingratiators used reactive verbal and nonverbal behaviors, whereas promoters used proactive behaviors. Preparation time did not produce differential behavioral tactics. The results are discussed in terms of the use of conversational resources to produce the attributions of likability and competence.     

Academic Guidance in Medical Student Research: How Well Do Supervisors and Students Understand the Ethics of Human Research?

Research is increasingly recognised as a key component of medical curricula, offering a range of benefits including development of skills in evidence-based medicine. The literature indicates that experienced academic supervision or mentoring is important in any research activity and positively influences research output. The aim of this project was to investigate the human research ethics experiences and knowledge of three groups: medical students, and university academic staff and clinicians eligible to supervise medical student research projects; at two Australian universities. Training in research ethics was low amongst academic staff and clinicians eligible to supervise medical student research. Only two-thirds of academic staff (67.9 %) and students (65.7 %) and less than half of clinicians surveyed (47.1 %; p?=?0.014) indicated that specific patient consent was required for a doctor to include patient medical records within a research publication. There was limited awareness of requirements for participant information and consent forms amongst all groups. In the case of clinical trials, fewer clinicians (88.4 %) and students (83.3 %) than academics (100 %) indicated there was a requirement to obtain consent (p?=?0.009). Awareness of the ethics committee focus on respect was low across all groups. This project has identified significant gaps in human research ethics understanding among medical students, and university academic staff and clinicians. The incorporation of research within medical curricula provides the impetus for medical schools and their institutions to ensure that academic staff and clinicians who are eligible and qualified to supervise students’ research projects are appropriately trained in human research ethics.     

Should victim impact influence sentences? Understanding the community's justice reasoning

Victim impact statements have been introduced in response to growing community concern about apparent neglect of victims in the criminal justice system. Their use in sentencing is a contentious issue, because victim characteristics such as resilience or fragility can contribute to impacts. Is it appropriate for sentences to be influenced by consequences arising from chance victim circumstances unforeseeable by the offender? In the interest of achieving an optimal fit between the justice system and community expectations, this research examined a neglected question: how does the public reason about the issue? Using offense vignettes presented to 260 people in Western Australia, sentencing decisions were found to vary according to consequences arising from victim characteristics. There was little to indicate participants fully appreciated the issue; thus, further research is needed to clarify how justice reasoning principles are used, and to ascertain whether different decisions are taken when people are informed about the problem.     

Gender Role Stereotyping in Advertisements on Two British Radio Stations

The portrayal of men and women in two differentsamples of British radio advertisements was examined. Itupdated an earlier British study (Furnham &Schofield, 1986) which was recently replicated in Australia (Hurtz & Durkin, 1997). Onehundred advertisements from each of two London basedradio stations were content analyzed into eightcategories referring to the central figure of thecommercial; credibility, role, location, arguments, reward,product, accent and narrator. On both radio stationswomen were significantly more likely to be portrayedpromoting products for self-enhancement and with bodily health and domestic products, and food.There was only one significant difference in portrayalbetween the two stations, suggesting somegeneralizability of these findings. The results arediscussed in terms of development and maintenance ofgender role stereotyping in different aspects of themedia.     

Measurement Models for the Subjective Utility of Children1

Measurement models of subjective child utility were derived from theoretical typologies of expected consequences of children. Maximum likelihood estimates of the goodness-of-fit of each model to observed convariation among 18 indicators of subjective child utility were obtained, using data from 349 wives and 349 husbands. The best-fitting models included three distinct factors: personal rewards, personal costs, and normative rewards.     

The relationship between state anxiety and depressed mood: A validity study

The validity of the A-State Scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale was assessed using data from a general health survey. Depression and anxiety states were found to coexist, however, evidence from a factor analysis, showing items from the two tests loaded on separate factors, demonstrated that these states can be measured independently. Both the A-State and the Zung Scales were found to comprise two factors, and for each scale, one factor consisted of positively phrased items, and the other of negative items. The implications of these findings for the construct validity of the two scales are discussed.     

Boundary conditions in the common-factor-space,in the factorial analysis of ability

The author arrives at a simple rule for ascertaining when a matrix of correlations, with communalities reducing it to minimum rank, cannot be analyzed into factors such that every column of loadings has at least as many zeros as the number of common factors, as required by Thurstone. A more exact but arithmetically tedious rule is also deduced from Ridley Thompson's boundary conditions, and a correction is made to the latter.     

Comparison of consonantal and vocalic cues in selective adaptation

The acoustic cues to the phonetic identity of diphthongs normally include both spectral quality and dynamic change. This fact was exploited in a series of selective adaptation experiments examining the possibility of mutual adaptive effects between these two types of acoustic cues. One continuum of syllables varying from [εi] to [εd] and another varying from [ε] to [εi] were synthesized; endpoint stimuli of both series used as adaptors caused identification boundaries to be shifted. Cross-series adaptation was also attempted on the [ε?εi] stimuli, using [?], [∞], and [ai]. Only [ai] proved effective as an adaptor, suggesting the mediation of a rather abstract auditory level of similarity. The results argue strongly against interpretations in terms of feature detectors, but appear compatible with an “auditory contrast” explanation, which might in turn be incorporated within adaptation level theory in the form recently discussed by Restle (1978). The cross-series results further suggest that selective adaptation might be used to quantify the perceptual distance between auditory cues in speech.     

Effects of UCS intensity and postpeak acquisition trials on classical conditioning of the SCR

The present study examined the effects of UCS intensity and number of postpeak acquisition trials on classical conditioning and extinction of the SCR. A 2 × 3 design was employed in which subjects received either a 1, 2, or 4 mA shock UCS and either two or 16 acquisition trials beyond the peak CR. While conditioning was demonstrated during acquisition, there was no relationship between strength of conditioning and intensity of UCS. The phenomenon of stronger resistance to extinction following fewer acquisition trials (e.g., two past the peak CR) than with many (e.g., 16 past the peak CR) was demonstrated only for the groups that were conditioned with the 4 mA UCS. Resistance to extinction varied positively with UCS intensity, but only for the subjects who received two postpeak acquisition trials. Sixteen trials beyond the peak CR resulted in the UCS intensity having little or no effect on resistance to extinction.