Skepticism about Character Traits

The first part of this article discusses recent skepticism about character traits. The second describes various forms of virtue ethics as reactions to such skepticism. The philosopher J.-P. Sartre argued in the 1940s that character traits are pretenses, a view that the sociologist E. Goffman elaborated in the 1950s. Since then social psychologists have shown that attributions of character traits tend to be inaccurate through the ignoring of situational factors. (Personality psychology has tended to concentrate on people’s conceptions of personality and character rather than on the accuracy of these conceptions). Similarly, the political theorist R. Hardin has argued for situational explanations of bloody social disputes in the former Yugoslavia and in Africa, rather than explanations in terms of ethnic hatred for example. A version of virtue ethics might identify virtues as characteristics of acts rather than character traits, as traits consisting in actual regularities in behavior, or as robust dispositions that would manifest themselves also in counterfactual situations.     

Lay Theories of Personality: Cornerstones of Meaning in Social Cognition

Lay theories (or ‘implicit theories’) are cornerstones for social cognition: people use lay theories to help them make sense of complex and ambiguous behavior. In this study, we describe recent research on the entity and incremental theories (the belief that personality is fixed or malleable). In so doing, we demonstrate that each theory does not act alone. Instead, each is associated with a set of allied beliefs, the sum total of which cohere into two distinct meaning systems. We present evidence that these meaning systems produce systematic differences in a range of fundamental social cognition processes, with important implications for the field’s understanding of trait/situation attribution, moral judgment, person memory, and stereotyping. We further argue that because meaning systems serve a central meaning‐making function, people are motivated to believe that the meaning system they are using is effective and accurate. Accordingly, we present evidence that people exhibit processing distortions and compensatory mechanisms to minimize the impact of information that violates their meaning system. We discuss the implications of these findings for the field’s understanding of basic social cognition.     

Increases in Tolerance Within Naturalistic, Intentional Communities: A Randomized, Longitudinal Examination

The authors examine differential changes in values of tolerance among 150 participants discharged from inpatient treatment centers, and randomly assigned to either a self-help-based, communal living setting (i.e., Oxford House), or usual aftercare. Participants were interviewed every 6 months for a 24-month period. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to examine the effect of condition (therapeutic communal living versus usual aftercare) on wave trajectories of tolerance (i.e., universality/diversity scores). Over time, residents of the communal living model demonstrated significantly greater values of tolerance than usual aftercare participants. Communal living participants who resided in the house for over 6 months showed the most substantial increases in tolerance. Results support the notion that communal living residents may develop more tolerant attitudes by striving toward superordinate community goals (objectives held by (a) the whole group and (b) which individual members could not achieve alone).     

Toward a Better Bioethics

It has been argued that bioethicists too often tend to represent the interests of scientists and not of the broader polity. Indeed, bioethicists seem predisposed to discard the voices and viewpoints of all but the cognoscenti. Focusing particularly on human pluripotent stem cell research, this commentary explores a variety of characterizations of bioethics and bioethicists in relation to forbidding science. Rather than proselytizing or prohibiting, bioethicists should work in partnership with scientists and publics to craft scientifically well-informed and morally sophisticated debates about forbidding science.

A Task Analysis of Client Re-engagement: Therapeutic De-escalation of High-Conflict Coparents

Parents who are engaged in protracted conflict following a divorce are often referred to coparenting therapy. Episodes of intense conflict are common during these therapy sessions and often result in coparents disengaging from the therapist while they engage in escalating conflict with each other, potentially disrupting their progress in therapy. The purpose of this study was to identify how therapists successfully re-engage clients in the session. To understand this process, 24 disengagement events (12 successful and 12 unsuccessful) from 13 cases were analyzed using a task analytic approach. The sample included coparent dyads referred by the judicial system to a high-conflict coparenting therapy program. Task analysis was used to create a model of how re-engagement unfolds in treatment. The empirical model that resulted has five phases: (1) disengagement from the therapeutic process, (2) disruption of the conflict, (3) de-escalating the most escalated coparent, (4) de-escalating the other coparent, and (5) therapist buffered re-engagement. Successful episodes of re-engagement tended to have therapists who remained active throughout the conflict episode, used structuring interventions aimed at disrupting and then regulating the most escalated partner, blocked attempts to re-engage in conflict, and then repeated this process with the less escalated partner. Additional interventions that promote therapeutic re-engagement are described for each phase, and implications for clinicians and researchers are discussed.     

Producing mands in concurrent operant environments

This study examined strategies designed to increase the rate of targeted, low-probability mands in a concurrent operant environment. We examined the effects of schedule manipulations, prompt manipulations, motivating operation manipulations, and combined behavioral process manipulations. Increases in target mands were produced for all 8 participants. Schedule manipulations were effective in producing increased rates of targeted mands for 3 of 8 participants, whereas prompt manipulations were effective for 4 of 8 participants. Motivating operation manipulations were effective in producing increased rates of targeted mands for 2 of 8 participants and combined behavioral process manipulations were effective for the single participant exposed to the combination.     

Comparing the reinforcing efficacy of tokens and primary reinforcers

Token economies are one of the most commonly used behavior-analytic interventions. Despite literature supporting the use of tokens as tools for behavior change, little is known about the efficacy of tokens compared to that of the items for which they are exchanged. Results of previous research comparing the reinforcing efficacy of tokens and primary reinforcers have shown that both produce similar effects on responding. However, published findings have been confounded given the inclusion of primary reinforcers in the token-reinforcer test conditions. In this study, we established novel tokens as reinforcers. We then conducted a conditioned-reinforcer assessment using a tandem control to ensure that the tokens functioned as reinforcers. We used progressive-ratio schedules to compare the reinforcing efficacy of the tokens to high- and low-preference edibles that were also used as backup reinforcers. For both participants, we found that high-preference primary reinforcers maintained higher response frequencies than did tokens.     

Safe to sleep: Community-based caregiver training

Annually, thousands of infant deaths are classified as sudden unexpected infant deaths (SUIDs). In an effort to reduce the risk of SUIDs, the American Academy of Pediatrics has made a number of recommendations to educate caregivers, childcare providers, and healthcare professionals on safe infant sleep practices. The purpose of the current study was to extend the literature on safe infant sleep practices by teaching caregivers to arrange safe infant sleep environments using a mannequin and common infant items. We partnered with community-based agencies to evaluate the effectiveness of behavioral skills training delivered in a single training session as part of the ongoing pre- or postnatal care these agencies provided. Following training, all participants demonstrated a substantial change in responding and returned favorable social validity ratings. We discuss these outcomes in light of previous studies, limitations, and future directions.