Modernization,Rights, and Democratic Society: The Limits of Habermas’s Democratic Theory

Jürgen Habermas’s discourse-theoretic reconstruction of the normative foundations of democracy assumes the formal separation of democratic political practice from the economic system. Democratic autonomy presupposes a vital public sphere protected by a complex schedule of individual rights. These rights are supposed to secure the formal and material conditions for democratic freedom. However, because Habermas argues that the economy must be left to function according to endogenous market dynamics, he accepts as a condition of democracy (the formal separation of spheres) a social structure that is in fact anti-democratic. The value of self-determination that Habermas’s theory of democracy presupposes is contradicted by the actual operations of capitalist markets. Further democratic development demands that the steering mechanisms of the capitalist market be challenged by self-organizing civic movements.     

Shame coping styles and psychopathic personality traits

The convergent validity of the primary and secondary psychopathy scales of the Levenson, Kiehl, and Fitzpatrick (1995) Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (SRPS) were investigated by contrasting correlations between the two SRPS scales and self-report adaptive and maladaptive shame coping scales. The results, from a sample of 305 undergraduates, supported the convergent validity of the SRPS primary (selfish, uncaring, manipulative interpersonal style) and secondary (impulsivity and self-defeating behavior) scales; both possessed small but significant negative relationships with adaptive shame coping and small but significant positive relationships with externalizing shame coping. An opposing pattern of convergent validity was evidenced by partial correlations (controlling for SPRS scale covariance) that indicated the SRPS primary scale had a negative relationship and the secondary scale had a positive relationship to internalizing shame coping.     

Rationality As Conformity

We argue in favour of identifying one aspect of rational choice with the tendency to conform to the choice you expect another like-minded, but non-communicating, agent to make and study this idea in the very basic case where the choice is from a non-empty subset K of 2 ^A and no further structure or knowledge of A is assumed.     

The theory of "truth": how counterindustry campaigns affect smoking behavior among teens.

This study used structural equation modeling to test a theory-based model of the pathways by which exposure to the "truth" counterindustry media campaign influenced beliefs, attitudes, and smoking behavior in national random-digit-dial telephone surveys of 16,000 12- to 17-year-olds before, 8 months after, and 15 months after campaign launch. Consistent with concepts from the theory of reasoned action, youth in markets with higher levels of campaign exposure had more negative beliefs about tobacco industry practices and more negative attitudes toward the tobacco industry. Models also provided support for a social inoculation effect, because negative industry attitudes were associated with lower receptivity to protobacco advertising and with less progression along a continuum of smoking intentions and behavior.     

Reducing Youth Access to Alcohol: Findings from a Community-Based Randomized Trial

Underage drinking continues to be an important public health problem and a challenge to the substance abuse prevention field. Community-based interventions designed to more rigorously control underage access to alcohol through retailer education and greater enforcement of underage drinking laws have been advocated as potentially effective strategies to help address this problem, but studies designed to evaluate such interventions are sparse. To address this issue we conducted a randomized trial involving 36 communities to test the combined effectiveness of five interrelated intervention components designed to reduce underage access to alcohol. The intervention was found to be effective in reducing the likelihood that retail clerks would sell alcohol to underage-looking buyers, but did not reduce underage drinking or the perceived availability of alcohol among high school students. Post hoc analyses, however, revealed significant associations between the level of underage drinking law enforcement in the intervention communities and reductions in both 30-day use of alcohol and binge drinking. The findings highlight the difficulty in reducing youth drinking even when efforts to curtail retail access are successful. Study findings also suggest that high intensity implementation of underage drinking law enforcement can reduce underage drinking. Any such effects of enhanced enforcement on underage drinking appear to be more directly attributable to an increase in perceived likelihood of enforcement and the resultant perceived inconveniences and/or sanctions to potential drinkers, than to a reduction in access to alcohol per se.     

THE EFFECT OF PRINT ACCESS ON READING FREQUENCY

Studies on reading motivation have found that access to reading materials has an important influence on the amount students choose to read. There are few studies, however, that have examined print access in a comprehensive way to include home, school, and community resources. In this study, surveys and reading tests were administered to a class of eleventh-grade students (N = 24). Consistent with previous research, convenient access to reading material, regardless of a student's reading ability, was associated with more frequent reading. In addition, more voluntary or "free" reading was associated with higher levels of reading proficiency. Implications for providing students with easier access to reading materials are discussed.     

Mental chronometry and individual differences: Modeling reliabilities and correlations of reaction time means and effect sizes

We used a general stage-based model of reaction time (RT) to investigate the psychometric properties of mean RTs and experimental effect sizes (i.e., differences in mean RTs). Using the model, formulas were derived for the reliabilities of mean RTs and RT difference scores, and these formulas provide guidance about the number of trials per participant needed to obtain reliable estimates of these measures. In addition, formulas were derived for various different types of correlations computed in RT research (e.g., correlations between a mean RT and an external non-RT measure, between two mean RTs, between a mean RT and an RT effect size). The analysis revealed that observed RT-based correlations depend on many parameters of the underlying processes contributing to RT. We conclude that these correlations often fail to support the inferences drawn from them and that their proper interpretation is far more complex than is generally acknowledged.     

A Test of Competing Cognitive Explanations for the Boomerang Effect in Response to the Deliberate Disruption of Media-Induced Aggression

This study advances research on the boomerang effect in response to anti-aggression media literacy interventions. Previous findings indicate that elementary school children can become more aggressive after exposure to such interventions. We test two competing explanations for the boomerang effect, media priming and psychological reactance, in a 2 × 2 factorial experiment with elementary school children (N = 128). Findings indicate that children may cognitively process antisocial elements of an intervention program in a manner that runs counter to the intended effect of prosocial messages. Specifically, children who were exposed to a media literacy intervention with violent media clips as examples reported an increase in willingness to use aggression, whereas children who were exposed to the same lesson without the clips did not. Therefore, the boomerang effect is best explained by the processing of violent clips (media priming) and is not likely due to resistance to the instructional elements of the lesson (psychological reactance). Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.     

Beyond Cultivation: Exploring the Effects of Frequency,Recency, and Vivid Autobiographical Memories for Violent Media

Using Shrum's (1996) heuristic processing model as an explanatory mechanism, we propose that people who hold vivid autobiographical memories for a specific past experience with media violence will overstate the prevalence of real-world crime versus individuals without vivid memories. We also explore the effects of frequency and recency on social reality beliefs. A survey was administered to 207 undergraduate students who were asked to recall one violent television program or movie seen in the past. Participants were asked to write essays describing the violence, which were coded for vividness. Results support not only cultivation theory, but also the effects of memory vividness: participants with more vivid memories of blood and gore gave higher prevalence estimates of real-world crime and violence than participants with less vivid memories. Findings also suggest that females had more vivid memories for prior media violence than males. Implications for cultivation, the heuristic processing model, and vividness research are discussed.     

Engaging the Faith Community for Public Health Advocacy: An Agenda for the Surgeon General

This article proposes an agenda for the Surgeon General of the United States that is consonant with the traditional public health approach of “upstream” and “midstream” intervention addressing social and institutional determinants of health. Accordingly, this features a prominent role for expanded partnerships between the faith-based and public health sectors. Such an agenda would revise the current status quo for the Surgeon General, whose celebrated bully pulpit is currently focused more on encouraging “downstream” compliance with federal guidelines related to lifestyle behavior modification. A new faith-based agenda, by contrast, could more effectively advocate for core features of the traditional public health ethic, including primary prevention, the multiple determinants of population health, communitarianism and social justice, and a global perspective, supported by the historic prophetic role of the faith traditions.