Racial bias in decisions made by mock jurors evaluating a case of sexual harassment

White (N = 161) and Black (N = 152) college students served as mock jurors in a simulated civil case in which a female plaintiff accused a male defendant of sexual harassment. The authors experimentally manipulated the race (Black or White) of the litigants and asked the mock jurors to decide whether the defendant was guilty; to rate the certainty of their belief in the defendant's guilt; and, when they judged the defendant guilty, to recommend an award to the plaintiff. Mock jurors of both races tended to favor litigants of their own race and their own gender. Racial bias was highest among White male jurors and lowest among White female jurors.     

Effects of lexicality and distinctiveness on repetition blindness

The repetition blindness (RB) paradigm developed by K. M. Arnell and P. Jolicoeur (1997) was used to examine effects of lexicality (word vs. nonword target pairs) and target distinctiveness on RB. Distinctiveness was manipulated by having both targets (Experiments 1 and 2) or only the first target (Experiment 3) brighter than nontarget items. All 3 experiments demonstrated strong RB for word targets but no RB for nonword targets. This confirms that RB depends on pre-existing memory representations. In fact, there was repetition facilitation for nonwords in Experiments 2 and 3. These experiments also demonstrated that RB is reduced when targets are distinctive. This finding is better understood interms of RB as a failure of memory rather than as a failure of perception.     

Psychoanalytic goals,therapeutic action,and the analyst's tension

The author draws a distinction between the goals of psychoanalysis and its therapeutic action. Goals are consciously (or at least preconsciously) held by the analyst, and can be clearly articulated. Ideas about the mechanism of therapeutic action, in contrast, are hypothetical constructs, and cannot be completely spelled out. This is bound to leave analysts in a state of tension; we are certain about what we are trying to do, but what we are actually accomplishing is elusive. This tension may be optimal for the analyst, because attention must be paid simultaneously to the idiosyncratic relationship in the dyad and to the broader purposes of the analytic engagement.     

Equality in hiring permanent resident foreign nationals in the United States: when loyalty is the question, but not the issue

Permanent resident foreign nationals, who have been legally admitted to the United States, have the right to work. However, when deciding the constitutionality of a state statute that requires citizenship for a public domain job, the rights of permanent residents to seek gainful employment are balanced against the rights of state governments to ensure that important sovereign functions are entrusted only to their citizens. Several important Supreme Court decisions have been 5/4 split decisions because of this tension and dissenting judges have countered that the majority rulings were based on presumptions, and not facts, that citizens are more loyal than permanent residents. The judges have also disagreed about the level, within a civil service hierarchy, below which a citizenship requirement is unconstitutional. This article reviews United States court decisions for relevant issues and solutions, and shows how empirical studies in the area of human resource management can help resolve the issues that have caused the dissent. The analysis will be useful to legal and human resource professionals in the U.S. and other countries affected by surging global migration.     

Nature, culture, and explanations for erotic plasticity: reply to Andersen, Cyranowski, and Aarestad (2000) and Hyde and Durik (2000)

R. F. Baumeister's (2000) article on erotic plasticity was criticized by B. L. Andersen, J. M. Cyranowski, and S. Aarestad (2000) for not being biological enough and by J. S. Hyde and A. M. Durik (2000) for being too biological. Both critiques were based on drawing a polarized caricature of R. F. Baumeister's actual view, although the two caricatures are opposites. Actually, neither commentary questioned the gender difference R. F. Baumeister documented; rather, the dispute is about how to explain it, which is indeed a challenge remaining for further work. Although both commentaries provided valuable suggestions about how to approach an explanation, neither approach can provide a coherent account until various theoretical problems are resolved and seemingly contrary empirical findings are addressed.     

Joyce's Argument with Himself/Or, Reading Joyce's Inside Narrative

James Joyce's argument with himself about where he should practice his art and with what literary tradition he should identify—Irish, British, or European—is represented by several of the characters and episodes in his short story The Dead.In the main character, Gabriel Conroy, Joyce represented the conflicts that he himself experienced. But in many of the minor characters Joyce also reflected parts of his own wishes and fears.In this story, Joyce rejects the possibilities of artistic identification with Ireland and England, and, in the dynamics of the tale, arrives at the understanding that to fulfill his artistic aspirations, he must make an identification with the great European tradition, and also live in Europe; if he stays in Ireland or attempts to be an English author, he will be, as he portrays Gabriel to be, paralyzed, imitative, and a failure as an artist. Joyce himself took the decisive path that Gabriel could not choose.     

The relationship between out-of-school activities and positive youth development: an investigation of the influences of communities and family

There is growing evidence that participation in constructive leisure activities facilitates positive youth development. Empirical evidence also supports the influence of families and communities on positive developmental outcomes for adolescents. This study examined the relationship among attitudes toward family and community, participation in structured out-of-school activities, and pro-social behavior. As predicted, community aspects such as opportunities available and the attitudes the youth held toward the community, as well as their attitude toward family were predictive of activity involvement. Activity involvement, in turn, was predictive of pro-social behavior. Attitude toward family was also predictive of attitude toward the community. Attitude toward community was a direct predictor of the positive developmental outcome of pro-social behavior, although contrary to the original hypothesis, family influences did not have a direct effect on pro-social behavior. Implications for continued practice and change for a variety of sectors in the positive youth development field such as educators and educational institutions, youth-serving organizations, families, and policy makers are discussed, along with recommendations for continued research in this field.