Effects of Diversity Management on Attachment

The theoretical underpinnings of this paper explain the process of organizational transformation to value differences and the attitudinal transformation of minority and majority individuals to appreciate diversity. As an empirical test of these theories, the research investigated absenteeism and psychological attachment in 2 Fortune 100 conglomerates in different stages of managing their diversity. Cox (1991) suggests that organizations evolve toward multiculturalism, a state in which employee differences are valued and appreciated. Analyses of 284 respondents reveal that majority and minority employees in a more multicultural firm experienced greater attitudinal attachment. Study results suggest that a culture that stresses inclusion of all individuals will have a positive impact on the demographic majority.     

Stability of nonlinear principal components analysis: an empirical study using the balanced bootstrap

Principal components analysis (PCA) is used to explore the structure of data sets containing linearly related numeric variables. Alternatively, nonlinear PCA can handle possibly nonlinearly related numeric as well as nonnumeric variables. For linear PCA, the stability of its solution can be established under the assumption of multivariate normality. For nonlinear PCA, however, standard options for establishing stability are not provided. The authors use the nonparametric bootstrap procedure to assess the stability of nonlinear PCA results, applied to empirical data. They use confidence intervals for the variable transformations and confidence ellipses for the eigenvalues, the component loadings, and the person scores. They discuss the balanced version of the bootstrap, bias estimation, and Procrustes rotation. To provide a benchmark, the same bootstrap procedure is applied to linear PCA on the same data. On the basis of the results, the authors advise using at least 1,000 bootstrap samples, using Procrustes rotation on the bootstrap results, examining the bootstrap distributions along with the confidence regions, and merging categories with small marginal frequencies to reduce the variance of the bootstrap results.     

Spiritual development: constructing an inclusive and progressive approach

This article examines the notion of spiritual development as it was conceptualised for state schools in Britain through the Conservative Government’s education reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, reforms which also introduced the National Curriculum. The article puts forward the argument that spiritual development was conceptualised in such a way as to attempt to reinstate progressive pedagogical values rejected by the National Curriculum reforms, but that the conceptualisation led to two conservative outcomes. First, spiritual development was not sufficiently robust to counteract the reforms and may have helped ease their passage. Second, education for the development of spiritual beliefs and values continued to be primarily located in Religious Education, even though a first principle of spiritual development was that spirituality should not be synonymous with religion in order that spiritual development should be inclusive. The article recommends that changes to Religious Education should be encouraged to ensure schools can provide opportunities for an inclusive and progressive education for spiritual development.     

Interaction Effects in the Theory of Planned Behavior: The Interplay of Self-Identity and Past Behavior

This research used a revised theory of planned behavior (TPB) model, which incorporated self-identity and past behavior—and the interaction between these constructs—in order to improve the model's predictive power in relation to consumer behavior (purchasing one's preferred beer). At Time 1, respondents ( N  = 108) completed measures of attitudes, perceived behavioral control, subjective norm, self-identity, past behavior, and intentions. Behavior was assessed 1 week later. All predictors were positively related to intentions. Self-identity and past behavior interacted to influence intentions: Self-identity had a stronger influence on intentions at low, rather than high, levels of past behavior. Intentions and past behavior were predictive of Time 2 behavior. These findings emphasize the need to consider identity issues in the TPB.     

Familiar other-race faces show normal holistic processing and are robust to perceptual stress

Other-race individuals are remembered more poorly and receive less holistic/configural processing than same-race individuals, at least when faces are novel. Here, we examine the amelioration of these effects with familiarity, using distinctiveness-matched Caucasian and Asian stimulus sets. We confirmed a cross-race deficit for upright faces following a single encoding trial, which disappeared rapidly with practice on a small set of other-race 'friends' and did not re-emerge when perceptual processing was put under stress (presentation in the periphery). We also examined holistic/configural processing for familiarised faces using the peripheral inversion effect (McKone, 2004 Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 30 181 - 197). A test for faces and nonface objects (dogs) confirmed the validity of this technique as providing a direct measure of holistic processing; we then showed that, after 1 h of training, holistic processing was as strong for other-race as same-race faces. We conclude that practice with other-race individuals can rapidly engage normal face-processing mechanisms.     

Gender Ideology and Motherhood: The Consequences of Race on Earnings

Using a nationally representative US sample, this study explores the relationship between gender ideology and the earnings of African American and white mothers over a 10-year period (1988–1998). We further investigate how factors related to fertility (i.e., age at first birth and the number of children) impact earnings for these mothers. Findings show, that regardless of race, a conservative gender ideology reduces women’s earnings but less so for African Americans compared to whites. With regard to fertility, the number of children is detrimental to the earnings of white mothers, but has no effect on the African American mothers in our sample. However, early childbearing does depress the earnings of African American women more so than for their white counterparts.     

Time perception and time perspective differences between adolescents and adults

The present experiment aimed to investigate the differences in time perception and time perspective between subjects representing two developmental stages, namely adolescence and middle adulthood. Twenty Chinese adolescents aged 15–25 and twenty Chinese adults aged 35–55 participated in the study. A time discrimination task and a time reproduction task were implemented to measure the accuracy of their time perception. The Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (Short-Form) was adopted to assess their time orientation. It was found that adolescents performed better than adults in both the time discrimination task and the time reproduction task. Adolescents were able to differentiate different time intervals with greater accuracy and reproduce the target duration more precisely. For the time reproduction task, it was also found that adults tended to overestimate the duration of the target stimuli while adolescents were more likely to underestimate it. As regards time perspective, adults were more future-oriented than adolescents, whereas adolescents were more present-oriented than adults. No significant relationship was found between time perspective and time perception.     

The congruency sequence effect emerges when the distracter precedes the target

The congruency effect in distracter interference tasks is typically smaller when the previous trial was incongruent as compared to congruent, suggesting the operation of a control process that minimizes the influence of irrelevant stimuli on behavior. However, both the conditions under which this congruency sequence effect (CSE) can be most easily observed without the typical learning and memory confounds, and the control process underlying it, remain controversial. We therefore tested a recent hypothesis that the CSE is most easily observed without the typical confounds when the distracter is processed before the target. In line with this “distracter head start” hypothesis, in Experiments 1 and 2 the CSE was larger when the distracter appeared before, relative to with, the target. Further, in Experiment 3, we observed a negative congruency effect after incongruent trials when a long interval separated the distracter from the target, consistent with a modulation of the response engendered by the distracter but not with a shift of attention toward the target. These findings reveal an important determinant of CSE magnitude when the typical learning and memory confounds are absent and new insights into the nature of control processes that contribute to this phenomenon.     

Convergent Validity of the Early Memory Index in Two Primary Care Samples

Karliner, Westrich, Shedler, and Mayman (1996) developed the Early Memory Index (EMI) to assess mental health, narrative coherence, and traumatic experiences in reports of early memories. We assessed the convergent validity of EMI scales with data from 103 women from an urban primary care clinic (Study 1) and data from 48 women and 24 men from a suburban primary care clinic (Study 2). Patients provided early memory narratives and completed self-report measures of psychopathology, trauma, and health care utilization. In both studies, lower scores on the Mental Health scale and higher scores on the Traumatic Experiences scale were related to higher scores on measures of psychopathology and childhood trauma. Less consistent associations were found between the Mental Health and Traumatic Experiences scores and measures of health care utilization. The Narrative Coherence scale showed inconsistent relationships across measures in both samples. In analyses assessing the overall fit between hypothesized and actual correlations between EMI scores and measures of psychopathology, severity of trauma symptoms, and health care utilization, the Mental Health scale of the EMI demonstrated stronger convergent validity than the EMI Traumatic Experiences scale. The results provide support for the convergent validity of the Mental Health scale of the EMI.     

Mental Health Services in Juvenile Correctional Facilities: A National Survey of Clinical Staff

This study determined the use of best practices in providing mental health services to youth within juvenile correctional facilities. A national sample of 94 (49.7 %) lead clinical staff from all available and qualifying facilities responded to a mail and on-line survey. There were no statistically significant differences across respondents versus nonrespondents for security level, gender served, or census region of facilities. Specifically, we examined the provision of facility-wide mental health programming, individual, group, and family counseling, and case management services. Examination of these services included the use of evidence-based interventions provided through an established curriculum and methods used to evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions. We also examined staff involvement, and the perceived quality of services and barriers to providing interventions. Participants reported using a variety of evidence-based interventions; however, participants also acknowledged using other approaches that may not have empirical support. Additionally, although at least half of the participants reported mandatory individual and group counseling, less than a third of the participants reported that their facilities required family counseling. Clinical staff also reported a variety of methods used for evaluating the effectiveness of mental health services. Additional findings, as well as implications for research and practice, are discussed.